A relationship with Jesus is pretty much required if you are to be into A Course in Miracles. He has stated in his own words that He:

a) has been appointed in charge of the atonement (of everyone) b) is your equal brother in love c) must be joined with in order to awaken d) is part of the Sonship with you e) is Christ and therefore is you as Christ, the One Son f) inspires all miracles and intercessions

g) is the way, the truth and the light, meaning there is no other way

h) wrote the book ;-)

i) will direct you very specifically

j) receives whatever you do to your brother as though to him k) has a plan for awakening/atonement

l) wants you to help with awakening and healing your brothers

Pretty much, Jesus is basically the 'LEADER' of A Course in Miracles. Jesus is not optional and a relationship with Him is not optional.

So ask yourself, if Jesus were to show up right now, would you be 'doing what Jesus does'? Would your application of ACIM and your miraculous expression of love align with how He would treat people? Would he be the only one to go around performing healings and miracles while the rest of us stand aside in fear?

To say A Course in Miracles presents a radical teaching is an understatement. It includes:

a) You are immortal

b) There in no death

c) Nothing happens to you that you don't choose

d) There are no victims

e) There is no reason for any fear

f) There is no world

g) You are not a human body

h) The physical universe is hell

i) All sickness is a choice

j) All death is suicide

k) You are not a separate person

l) All of history and time has not happened

m) There has never been war, nobody ever died

n) What you do to others you literally do to yourself

o) You are a child of God equal to Jesus

p) You are responsible for everything

q) You always get everything you ask for and nothing else

r) You can't forgive anyone but yourself

s) You are only Spirit, nothing else

t) Suffering is not real

u) Nothing has ever happened to you, or at all

v) You are just pretending to be separate from God

w) You are in Heaven already, dreaming of exile

x) Sin, guilt and fear are never called for or justified

y) Everyone shares the same One identity and mind

z) Only God is real

to name a few.

1. Nothing real can be threatened because reality is PERMANENT.

2. Nothing unreal exists because unreal things are TEMPORARY.

3. If something can be threatened, it can be changed.

4. If something can be changed, and given nothing REAL can be changed, that thing ****MUST NOT BE REAL****

5. Only UNREALITY can be changed.

6. God, who is REAL, and permanent, and cannot be changed or threatened, CAN ONLY CREATE that which is permanent, and unchanging.

7. Anything that CHANGES in ANY WAY, is temporary, ***UNREAL***, and *****NOT CREATED BY GOD*****!!!!

8. God who is real, can only create THE PERMANENT. He can only create eternal life. If something grows, changes, transforms, changes form, or dies, it is NOT A CONSTANT STATE ("reality is a constant state"). Therefore it *CANNOT BE REALITY*, it MUST BE an illusion, and it DOES NOT really exist.

9. Nothing unreal exists. Anything that changes does not exist. Herein lies the peace of God.

10. God is at peace because NOTHING REAL IS CHANGING.

In summary:

1. If it changes, IT IS NOT REAL.

2. If it cannot be changed, IT IS REAL.

Use this to evaluate *EVERYTHING*. Ask yourself.

Q. "Can this be changed?"

If the answer is YES, *****IT IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT*****

Example:

Does planet Earth change? Yes. It spins, it moves, it changes shape, it has oceans which flow, forests that grow and die, bodies that suffer and become sick, tragedies and horrors which transform and affect people and threaten things.

Therefore, EARTH IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT.

If you can’t accept this.... either

a) you have some difficulty understanding simple logic

b) you are confused about whether something changes or not

c) you can’t see why "changing things" is unreal because you’ve never had a sense of anything truly permanent to compare it to

d) you are in denial

e) you do not want to give up the world and want it to be reality, so are having wishful thinking

f) you are just not ready to accept this yet, which is ok, but that doesn’t CHANGE THE TRUTH.

I've been starting to read "Life and teaching of the Masters of the far East". It's a collection of books, recounting the stories of travelers who went to the far East and encountered several very spiritually advanced people.

The only other book I've read that's similarly inspiring, or alluding to the potential we have, is Yogananda's autobiography of a Yogi.

In this book, the experiences and explanations that are given are quite eye-opening. If the stories are to be believed, and it's to be expected a lot of people have a hard time accepting it, here is some of what is claimed:

God has a power which He shares fully with us and which we are meant to use, and this power is capable of a) manifesting any object of any kind, b) healing absolutely all sickness, c) overcoming death, d) facilitating the transcendence of space and time for travel, e) being not only immune to but able to control all aspects of events and objects in the physical world, f) being able to materialize and dematerialize the body, g) the instantaneous manifestation of food and money supplied by God meaning you no longer have to rely on any limited resource or sources of objects from others, .... and various other things we'd consider 'miracles'.

Basically, what it's suggesting is, literally, that we are capable of absolutely ANYTHING if/when we join with God. It doesn't just mean that we give up everything and go to God, either, although some people eventually reach such a high position that they never want to leave there, although they can (like Jesus). It means that we can actually 'live forever' joined to an unlimited supply of provision. The people in the book, the masters, are hundreds of years of age, and yet appear to be 30-40 in age, youthful and in perfect health.

These kind of things give me more of a picture of 'whats possible' and clues as to what A Course in Miracles might be saying and meaning.

I realize now that when I read certain things in the Course, even if I THINK I am being absolutely open minded, I am still actually building upon meanings and learning that I had accumulated from before. Even if I think my learning is more open minded than others, it STILL is resting on what I already think I know and that skews the potential meaning. Also I do not know what I don't know... there are things, truths, that I simply am not aware of, and so when I think I am exactly 'getting' what the Course says, maybe I still am not... there could be a context or laws or information outside of my current awareness.

Then when I'm exposed to information like in this series of books, it makes me 'think twice' about what I thought I knew. It's eye opening.

There are two sets of tools. The ego has a set of tools, and the Holy Spirit has a set of tools.

When we are paying attention to the ego, in any given situation where we think something is a problem, we will reach into the ego's toolkit and pull out our favorite tools. We'll use them almost without question. For some reason, we think they will work, even though they usually don't. And we will apply them without even realizing we're doing so.

We might use denial, or rationalization, or justification, or aggression, or conflict, or attack, or projection, or scapegoating, or intellectualizing, or fear, or victimhood, or a guilt trip, or blame, or whatever it is, to try to find 'salvation' - to be saved from the problem.

The trouble is the ego's tools don't really work, and even though they say on the advertising they will solve the problem, they don't. They usually make the problem worse, in the big picture, while making it *seem* like they're working in the little picture. But they're very sneaky because the marketing hype is incredibly convincing and they're never what they appear to be.

We need another set of tools. We need the Holy Spirit's toolbox, and we need to be willing to reach for those tools when things are going to shit. But this might not seem easy. We are accustomed to almost habitually reaching for the ego, to 'use' it, to solve our problems. It's our trusty toolkit, we rely on it, we depend on it, we believe in it, we're attached to it like a favorite, and we don't want to part with it because we think it's valuable.

It's really up to you, do you want to use the ego, or use Holy Spirit?

Which one works?

Which one actually accomplishes a solution that you can live with and feel good about, which restores peace and brings a smile back to your face?

Part of the problem here is that we do not recognize what the tools are. We don't realize what tools we are using, yet alone whether they belong to the ego's toolkit or not, and yet alone knowing that there's a whole other set of tools at our disposal.

This is why we need to a) learn what the ego's tools are and how they operate, b) learn how we use them and why we use them and notice when we use them, c) look at whether they actually work - what the results are and whether we really want those results and why, d) what the Holy Spirit's tools are, e) what the results might be of using Holy Spirit's tools, and then f) actually learning to say no to the ego's tools and reach for the Holy Spirit's tools instead, especially in times of stress and upset.

Jesus is literally asking us to become spirit-identified rather than body-identified, to recognize that our body is merely an image being projected by our mind (which we can stop projecting at any time), and to learn to stop seeing ourselves AND others as bodies.

That's no small request either. We are so used to being bodies and seeing bodies, we think it is normal and natural.

One thing to realize is that a body is not a first-hand experience and it is not the origin or source of a person. It is a secondary layer placed OVER the inner spirit to try to hide it.

So when you are looking at a body and you see fish and bones and eyes and a face and you think that as you look at THAT, you are SEEING the person, you are not. You are seeing a wall of denial and separation. A disguise. It's designed to BLOCK you from seeing the person that is "trapped" inside, locked up in the body and unseen by anyone.

The body is a device for separation. And the golden rule always applies. What we see in others we see in ourselves. In order to become aware that we are not a body ourselves we have to overcome all forms of separation and all attack. And only when we can not see ourselves as a body will we be able to see past the bodies of others.

This is also the meaning of "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind".... ie, if you can get to where you have awareness of God in your mind, you will STOP seeing bodies entirely because God is not a body. If you are seeing God, you are not seeing form. You cannot see two worlds. So this does NOT mean that you see God "in the world", it means that God is ALL THERE IS and THERE IS NO WORLD.

It's a huge challenge to actually get to an experiential state where a) you do not believe you are a body at all (genuinely), b) you do not see your body as your self, c) your sense of identity is not attached to the body whatsoever, d) you do not see others as their bodies, e) you recognize that all bodies are fictional puppets that people dangle in front of them to pretend to interact, and f) that you do not need a body at all in order to exist as divine spirit.

Overcoming the body is the same thing as overcoming death. If you can become free of the body consciously and deliberately without using death to do so, you no longer need a body and can make it disappear. It will become transparent and will vanish.

In ACIM there is a very strong theme, based on the Golden Rule, which describes a dynamic we are all supposed to adopt. It's the idea that giving and receiving are one.

"giving and receiving are the same" UrW225

In fact, that entire phrase appears SIX times in the course.

It is the backbone of the Golden Rule, which is a law of God, that what you do unto another YOU directly DO unto yourself. And this is on the basis that your brother - other people - are a PART OF YOU. And therefore, what you do to them, you literally are doing to the part of you that is SHARED with them.

But think about this for a moment, because it really makes NO SENSE AT ALL. Jesus presents it with what appears to be a nice voodoo-sounding phrase, which is laden with impossibilities:

"Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson: To HAVE, GIVE all TO ALL." UrT6F13

How on earth, can you give everything, to everyone, and still HAVE everything? This defies normal logic, does it not? It does not make sense. Ask anyone in the world how this is possible, they will probably be stumped. It seems totally false.

If I give you my dinner, I will not have my dinner. If I give you my car, I will not have the car. If I give you my money, I will not have the money. HOW can it MAKE SENSE, to say that if I give you everything, I will HAVE IT ALL? Or even worse, that I'm supposed to give what I have ***TO EVERYONE***? How is that even possible?

If you are savvy and paying attention, you should conclude that these kinds of statements MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL. They seem absolutely nonsense. They are totally out of line with what we experience in the world. How can they be true?

The big thing is... Jesus seems to be telling us that it is not only POSSIBLE, but the true law of God, that things which seem impossible to us are the ONLY possibility. That there is some WEIRD way by which something that makes absolutely no sense, IS in fact the truth.

He is telling us that we're supposed to "love others as ourselves" - as we would love ourselves, and knowing that they ARE a part of ourselves. How can this make any sense though? And be careful not to go into denial here and just PRETEND that "you believe it" because it sounds all magical and spiritual.

It seems ONLY to make sense to say that whatever I GIVE, I WILL LOSE. Yes? Have you ever experienced otherwise? Anything you have ever given you have lost. You have had to compromise. You have never been able to keep what you have given to anyone. Why is Jesus telling you that it is some kind of divine law or dynamic or way of relating to others that you're supposed to adopt? What nonsense!

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously." UrT1B18A

The thing is.. .. God's truth and laws are nothing like the laws of this world, or the dynamics of ego relationships, or the way by which physical objects interact and relate. What SEEMS to make sense to us here, is in truth absolutely nonsense. And that which SEEMS to be absolutely nonsense, is in fact the truth.

Now... that's a REALLY BIG CLAIM. Because now Jesus is telling us that something that seems to make NO SENSE, is in fact the truth! Nonsense is the truth?! Not only is it the truth, GOD HIMSELF apparently has a nature which makes NO SENSE.

Somehow, we're told, God gives everything to everyone, and yet keeps everything. And, supposedly we're supposed to adopt the same function, of giving everything to everyone, in order to have everything. And he even tells us that if we do NOT give it all away, we will have nothing. WHAT NONSENSE, SURELY?!

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." UrT3G15

Here for example Jesus is saying not only are there souls created by God (hold that thought), but also that EACH of them knows God COMPLETELY. Which means, that I can have everything, and you can have everything, and we can both have everything simultaneously. WHAT THE F?! .... How can that make any sense at all?

How can you have everything, while I also have everything, without either of us having to compromise or share or take turns? But he's telling us that's how it is. And he describes this dynamic as miraculous - it IS a course in the miraculous, after all.

So here's the big issue. It is CLEARLY evident that all of the things which are true of God, and all of the dynamics of his creation and reality and the workings of his relationships and so on, SEEM TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE.

They entail seemingly mind-bending possibilities, such as you handing over your entire inheritance and still having it all. Such that, in fact, when you give everything, the other person you gave it to now HAS IT ALL, AND YET... you ALSO have it all, which means the total amount HAS INCREASED. F me!

"God Himself created the law by creating BY it. And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did." UrT7C7

We're told that the entire Kingdom of God INCREASES, because when you GIVE ALL TO ALL, you still HAVE it all, and now everyone else HAS everything you gave, and now it is DOUBLED. So there is constant increase of everything real. This is a real dynamic in reality. How can this make any sense at all, that when you give stuff away IT MULTIPLIES?!!! What?

What it then boils down to, is that the ultimate truth is, God's nature, the nature of reality and oneness, what is possible, what is a fact, will always SEEM TO MAKE NO SENSE TO YOU. It will in fact seem like a collection of paradoxes. And it will seem like nonsense. And anything that is true WILL seem to be nonsense to your ego, and to your earthly way of thinking, and to the way that you REASON all your conclusions. They are all nonsense.

Here's the climax of my post. There is much debate about oneness and non-duality and so on. And people generally will say that whatever MAKES SENSE, must be the truth. Screw that! God has dynamics which DO NOT make sense to ordinary reasoning. Giving everything away in order to keep it, what?! What's given increases when you give it away, what?! It seems like nonsense. BUT IT IS TRUE.

So you should NOT be quite so certain, that God's reality and workings are supposed to fit nicely into what you think "makes sense". In fact, if you think that God's functioning makes sense based on ordinary reasoning, YOU ARE CONFUSED.

To normal reasoning, God's workings are supposed to look like paradoxes. They are SUPPOSED to look like contradictions. They are SUPPOSED to look like they make no sense at all and can't be true!! Because the reasoning being used to LOOK at it is itself BACKWARDS and false.

The people who thus claim ACIM is non-duality are using backwards reasoning to claim that "oneness" and "it's all God" and "you don't exist" makes perfect sense. That's a total fail. God is capable of BREAKING all your rules and TRANSCENDING all your little limitations and requirements.

ACIM clearly is teaching a transcendental thought system which, to the way that most people think, DOES NOT make sense. And this is supposed to reveal to you, at some point, that THE WAY YOU THINK IS WRONG. Not just what you think, but HOW. Not just the line of your thinking and the conclusions you come to that you THINK make sense, but the entire method and logic that you use to draw conclusions IS MISTAKEN. It is OPPOSITE to the nature of God.

This is why ACIM is not non-duality. Non-duality is far too absent paradoxes. It contains none of the mind-bending transcendence of laws and limits present in the Golden Rule. It has no recognition of the fact that God can do things which SEEM impossible, including the creation of multiple sons/souls who themselves are creators in reality, WITHOUT VIOLATING ONENESS. Which... you guessed it, seems like it would be "totally impossible" and "totally nonsense", BUT ISN'T.

So you should really get used to the fact that reality WILL NOT make sense to your typical reasoning. Your conclusions are all back to front and entirely within the separation-based thought system of the ego. Even non-duality and oneness are ego constructs resulting from a way of reasoning that doesn't even acknowledge the rule-breaking nature of God.

If you think this is not correct, think again. Think again about the facts we're being taught. We're being told to do something that seems TOTALLY COUNTER INTUITIVE. Which seems to run TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how your ENTIRE thought system works. To treat others in the knowledge that they are a part of you, such that what you do to them you do to yourself. That is not something that makes any sense to the world's thinking.

Don't be deceived that making sense of something means it is true. An entire system of thought can have internal consistency and seem to make total sense, and yet be entirely wrong. We are not here in the business of just being a sheep that follows the basic little conclusions the ego comes up with.

"It's all one therefore there can't be many"... nonsense.

"God couldn't create anything otherwise there would be separation" .... nonsense.

"If I exist then I must be an ego" ... nonsense.

"If there are many things in reality then reality is dualistic". ... nonsense.

The truth is FAR more mind-bending and waaaaaaaaay outside the box of how you think about things. If you have not encountered all the paradoxes and found a way to live with them, you are still squarely locked into the ego's thought system.

"ACIM is non-dualistic" is a conclusion drawn by egos following all of the ego's rules of separation-based reasoning, without showing the slightest sign of appreciation for God's PARADOXICAL nature, in which two completely opposite-seeming things can be simultaneously true, WITHOUT it being wrong.

If you think everything about God's nature has to sound like it makes nice tidy sense, you haven't even begun to recognize what God is like. God is a creator, and oneness DOES have real parts to it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that fact at all. If YOU see a gross contradiction, YOU have not escaped the ego's mindset.

I've been starting to practice very simple "loving prayer".

It's so simple that it actually has taken me quite a long time to come to realize that this is effectively all you need to produce healing. Love, itself, is the healing "agent". It doesn't matter so much what you think or say in words. It's the presence of love that is the REQUIRED ingredient, and really the only ingredient. One time I was feeling love, trying to do this, and Holy Spirit said excitedly "that's all you need!"

While the Course also says you must pray, must have love in your heart, must ask with your heart, do not need words (because God only understands what your heart desires), and that you must have strong trust/faith, really it basically boils down to:

"PRAY LOVINGLY"

As Jesus also says, minds that JOIN become healed because this joining makes it impossible for them to believe in separation since you do not support the separation idea, and ALL sickness comes from the perceived separation between brothers. Joining is ONLY possible IN LOVE.

So what I've been simply doing is, getting quiet and becoming very SINCERE. That doesn't mean serious. It means honest, sincere, heartfelt, present, humble, admitting to love... and then simply trying to LOVE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. This sounds easy or simple but when you have ego it can be quite difficult to "just love".

f you've tried it yourself you might find you actually struggle to FEEL love or for love to be your main focus or experience. Especially if fear is present. Miracles require the absence of fear, and the absence of fear IS LOVE. So by moving INTO love you automatically HEAL YOUR OWN FEAR, making it easier TO LOVE. You CAN somewhat talk yourself INTO more love by speaking lovingly about a person while trying to BE LOVING. The more lovingly you speak of someone, the more you are speaking truth about them, the more you are HEALING them.

I have been finding that as I do this, after a short while I feel much more loving, I come more into awareness of God's presence, I feel more "holy" and innocent, and I actually start to tune into the mind of the other person somehow. It's as if they start to show up in my awareness and we sort of merge. This is only possible through love. "Miracles unite you with your brother."

I've done this a few times for a particular person and each time they seemed distinctly happier and more "sane" and "stronger" afterwards. ie more healed.

It really is this simple. Simply pray lovingly with your heart and be very genuine and sincere in lovingly asking God for what beautiful lovely things you want for the person. You can even visualize them receiving healed body parts. You can also "petition" God's "mercy" to recognize the person should not suffer and does not deserve to be unhappy etc. Thus what you want for them, you simultaneously want for yourself. You get healed also!

If you think about it, every time Jesus PRAYER FOR SOMEONE, He did so LOVINGLY, and with love, and that's the "language of God". This is how prayers are truly given and understood and answered! Even Jesus says that He himself will respond to "an unequivocal call" to Him. Sincerity and depth of love and therefore wholeness and certainty are important.

You cannot make your brother WHOLE unless you are acting IN WHOLENESS in a loving/whole way. ie you have to be COMING FROM LOVE. If you are not "speaking love", you are not REALLY talking to God, you are talking to the ego. The course says that doing so will render the prayer SEEMINGLY UNMET because the EGO will meet it and not God. To talk to God you have to talk with sincere genuine love, and that is how you ASK GOD, and that is how you SHARE LOVE, and the love does the healing!

It's really so simple, yet so buried underneath so much ego complexity and control issues and fear and the authority problem and trying to do it all yourself and all of the other mistakes of an unhealed healer. This is why you must "become loving" ie return to awareness of love FOR YOURSELF in order to BE HEALED so that YOU CAN HEAL. "I will heal as I let you teach me to heal". "You can only give the miracles you have received." If you want to give a miracle to another YOU have to be READY, WILLING AND ABLE to do so, having ACCEPTED love for YOURSELF. That's what forgiveness and atonement are for, equipping you with love SO THAT you can perform miracles.

There is a huge amount of resistance to the idea that ACIM is teaching us to perform LITERAL miracles. As in, healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, etc.

The resistance comes because the ego's thought system is completely proven false when a miracle happens. The ego has absolutely no way to understand it, no way to stop it, no way to interfere with it, and does not know what is happening. This means the ego is going to have a huge resistance to the miracle.

So anyone with an ego left, is going to be resistant to the idea of miracles, because the ego does not believe in cures, or sudden revelations, or instantaneous healing, or defiance of the law of gravity, or any other thing which the miracle demonstrates is possible.

Miracles are expressions of love, therefore expressions of truth. When the truth "happens", it will demonstrate HOW, and the FACT that, all of the ego's so-called "laws" are not true. The miracle bypasses space and time and completely ignores ALL ego laws and just does whatever God wills.

From the ego's perspective, it is frantic to try to deny and block and explain how the miracle did what it did, to try to diminish it and cover its effects so that it will be less obvious that the ego has just been shown to be totally false. Anyone with an ego, which is almost every Course student, is going to therefore have a huge resistance to "real miracles" because they are seen as an attack by the ego. They are the truth, come to demonstrate that the ego's ways are completely illusory and cannot be believed.

There is nothing a miracle cannot do. And that totally blows the ego's mind.

To the ego, miracles should not be possible. There is nothing in the ego's thought system that supports them. When they happen, the ego may go into shock or fear or denial to try to resist it.

If you were in Jesus's presence and some person had died and He told them to come back to life and they did and they stood up and were not dead, you would be like, holy FUCK!

If you were in Jesus's presence and a person that you knew for years who was born blind, suddenly had real eyeballs, and can see perfectly, and there is absolutely nothing in your ego belief system to support how this is possible, you might well run the hell in the other direction!

If you were in Jesus's presence and his body suddenly disappeared in front of your eyes, then reappeared, then disappeared, then reappeared, several times, like someone was flipping a light switch, you'd be like, FUCKING HELL! What the fuck is going on?!!

If you were in Jesus's presence and He suddenly turned the tree you were sitting under into a bunch of flowers and handed them to you, and you took them, and then the flowers turned into a snake which you threw to the ground, and then the snake turned back into a tree, you'd be like, HOLY COW! What the F just happened here?

But in each of these situations, Jesus's demonstration of miracles would have educated you on WHAT IS POSSIBLE, and those possibilities would have taken your awareness far outside the realm of the LIMITATIONS that you are used to believing cannot be transcended. Obviously if Jesus's body is switching on and off like a light switch, it shows you that the body is not really physical. That alone will blow your mind but also you will never again be able to believe completely that bodies are real.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIM

So it's simply that students are anti-miraculous because their ego's are still strongly believing in a state of being where NO MIRACLES happen, a highly unnatural state where there is NO LOVE. That's the ego's entire focus. It doesn't believe in miracles, it doesn't believe it's possible to change one object into another, or that bodies can come back from the dead, or that sickness can suddenly disappear, or that people can grow new eyeballs out of nowhere. It doesn't want anything to do with this ego-law-defying demonstration of truth.

Also given that all resistance to the truth produces sickness and miracles are demonstrations of the truth, people could actually CHOOSE to become sick as a defense against witnessing a miracle. If the miracle were sufficiently outside their mind's ability to accept it as real, they might cling tightly to the body through sickness and pain in order to try to escape from it. Ultimately you could say that all sickness is caused by a refusal to accept that miracles are possible. Or that people get sick because they choose NOT to perform miracles.