“Let Me Be Strong for You” —
Healing and Love Are the Same

This article was inspired by an upcoming surgery for spinal stenosis I’ve been guided to have in the very near future, and an episode of fear associated with it that came to visit me recently. I seemed to be swimming in it the other day, and decided to pause, quiet my mind and commune with Jesus. I must admit I was feeling a bit fragile. But I knew better than to resist the feelings that were rising within me and passing through.

As I was deep in my meditation, I heard Jesus break into my thoughts, telling me, You don’t have to be strong for me. Let me be strong for you. He was reminding me not only of his Love for me but of the power of the Love of God to heal anything unlike itself. And that is why for me, as the title of this article reflects, Healing and Love are one and the same. 

Most of us are very familiar with the story in ACIM of the moment when a tiny mad idea crept into the mind of the Son of God, and instead of laughing at its absurdity, God’s Son accepted it as a serious idea. He believed it was true, and in so doing, like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, he made up a world of his own and ever since has been lost within it, a prisoner of his own making. In short, he fell asleep to his own reality as a creation and child of God.

Yet neither reality nor creation were affected in any way. Creation by both the Father and the Son continues interrupted. The real world merely awaits the return of our awareness. We remained joined as One with God and with our brothers. 

Even a simple smile given to a brother is a holy instant of Love shared and experienced by both. If we pay close attention, we will feel an energetic shift the instant we smile. It is Love expressed. Even a simple smile contains Love’s healing power.

Love cannot be defined, for it is Love that defines us. And as we “be” the Love that we are, it will tell us of Itself and we will come to know its divine nature. We are the Love we seek. In ACOL, Jesus tells us that joining is where the realm of the One unites with the realm of the many. D:Day31.7  True joining produces an experience of our shared identity in God.

It is a perfect Plan that in Truth is already accomplished. This undoing, or Atonement, has begun—and once begun is unstoppable and thus already inevitably accomplished. C:19.19 We are asked to accept the fact that God’s Plan of Atonement worked and it, as well as all of us, are accomplished. 

All miracles are inspired by Love, which brings me back to my theme: In truth healing and love are the same. Only that which is embraced by Love has any Reality at all. Love IS Reality, Love IS Creation, Love IS the remedy for anything “appearing” unlike Itself. Therefore, it is Love that heals, it is Love that forgives, it is Love that inspires Miracles. Love brings Reality to anything that is devoid of Love.

Love is the only litmus test in determining the Reality of anything.

Love gives meaning where there is no meaning. Love gives purpose to what has no purpose. Love is the creative energy of God’s universe. Love is the substance that gives Reality to an unreal world. Love is what gives meaning and purpose to bodies that were made by fear. Love’s creative power transforms what is not Love into Love. Love heals because it brings life to the lifeless and perfection to the imperfect.

As scripture teaches, God is Love and he who abides in Love abides in God and God in him. Jn:4.16

How could I ever hold a grievance against anyone when the eyes of God are looking back at me through their eyes? In seeing the Love and Light of Christ shining back at me through the eyes of my brothers are we both healed.

Jesus recognized his Truth and saw himself in each of his brothers and remembered God. By recognizing Christ in his brothers he remembered the Christ within himself. Jesus was the God-Man, both human and Divine, awake and alive, walking among us as one of us. To awaken to our Christ-Consciousness and sustain it while still in form is what Jesus accomplished and he is helping us do the same. Death of the body does not need to precede our Soul’s awakening.

For me, “heart” has always been the word-symbol for Love. At the very beginning of A Course of Love, Jesus says, Let us define heart as the center of being, that place from which all feeling arises. C:1.1  We are beings of Love, being Love. We are Love being Itself. The heart is not a thought system, nor has it ever been split like the mind. The heart shares only Love. What your heart has shared with your mind is shared with all minds, and what your heart has to share is only Love. Thus has Love returned to Love. C:32.6

Since Love is the only Reality, Love is what we are awakening to and it is also the means of our awakening. Whenever there is a call for Love, it is the heart that responds. Jesus describes the heart as the abode of Christ and the bridge between the human and the divine. T2:3.3, T3:6.5

Thus Jesus emphasizes the union of heart and mind in ACOL. The unification of our mind and heart with the mind and heart of God is more powerful than anything the ego thought system could unleash upon us. Such is the power of wholeheartedness. 

Wholeheartedness is a unified state of Being. It remembers everything, including the instant just before it accepted that crazy, mad idea that it was possible to be separate from ItSelf and separate from its Creator. It remembers Its Truth and the Truth of our brothers and all of God’s Creation.

Recent messages of Jesus received through our loving brother, Sabastián Blaksley in his seven-book series Choose Only Love reinforce the teachings ACIM and ACOL. Jesus emphasizes the importance of our learning to “accept” ourselves as creations of Love and of God: You cannot access and remain in the consciousness of unity—and therefore in your eternal unconditionality—if you believe yourself to be anything other than love. Moreover, you cannot remain in the consciousness of Christ if you do not unconditionally accept the fact that everything around you is love expressing itself. Your sisters and brothers are love. The creatures of the Earth are love. The moon and a snowflake, with all their beauty, are love. Everything that is real is love. Nothing unreal truly exists. CHOL BkIV:4.II.6

Love knows itself through Its expression within each of us. All Reality is a sharing and extending of Love’s eternal nature. Love is healing because healing is Love and Love is ALL there is. 

Editor’s note: A few days after composing the above essay, Lana’s surgeon reviewed recent tests and told her that surgery was unnecessary.

Lana Carolan has been a student of ACIM for about 40 years and, more recently, of ACOL and CHOL. Lana can be reached via Facebook or email, lcarolan49@gmail.com.