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instant, however weak it may seem to be. The Holy Spirit uses that little willingness on my behalf
and I feel at least some relief.

I may need to come back and try again a little later and the Holy Spirit assures me He is always there,
never impatient, always gentle and loving, ready to offer me His comfort. And so I practice again and
again and again. In times of my own impatience, I can look back and see much progress has been
made. It is truly worth the effort. This gives me encouragement to continue the practice, for I truly
want the peace and freedom that forgiveness offers.

Lesson 136 “Sickness is a defense against the truth.”

Today's lesson makes it clear the extreme length we are willing to go to deceive ourselves into
believing that we are a body in a world of separation where pain and loss and death are real. All this
comes from valuing specialness over oneness and God's gift of all of His Love given to all.

Maintaining a separate identity is the means by which we keep our specialness and the body is the
chief mechanism for making individuality (specialness) real. Because the body is so central to
maintaining the sense of the reality of individuality, defending this image and our identification with
it is top priority. The ego does not hesitate to use sickness as a means of reinforcing this
identification. When the body is in pain, it seems to command our full attention. It's difficult to feel
peaceful when the pain seems to have all of our attention. This lesson points out that this is a choice,
but we deceive ourselves into forgetting that we made the choice so that it seems to happen to us.

It surely doesn't seem that we make the choice to get the flu. But this lesson goes to a much deeper
level than the surface symptoms. They are just the effect of the decision to value separation
(specialness) over the Love of God. Sickness is just a means of defending our specialness. We made
our specialness and will defend it "at all cost." Pretty extreme!

Here Jesus is showing the game for what it really is. We now have the opportunity to end the self
deception. We will end it the instant we cease to value specialness more than the Love of God. This
single change in values will completely reverse our perception of reality. As we value God's Love
over specialness, a body no longer is the means to make separation real. It becomes a useful
instrument which serves as a means to extend Love to all our brothers, no longer used for attack and
defense, the body is healthy, because it serves a healthy mind that values Love and offers It to all.

Holy Spirit, guide my thoughts today, that I might see beyond form to the Light of Love that is
everywhere. Help me to recognize false values and let them go so that I can make room for the one
magnificent gift that outshines all others -- the Love of God.

To me this is one of the most helpful lessons of the Course. Here Jesus describes what I call "the
quick forgetting." In paragraphs 3-5 he explains just how we make the choice to maintain the illusion
of separate bodies and then forget that we made this decision so that it looks like something
happens to us and that we had nothing to do with it.

In paragraph 6 he gets to the core of why we made the decision to create the illusion of separate
bodies. "When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within
themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole; successful in effect, and
never to be seen as whole again." (6:3)

Lessons by Marlyn Marval Feb 23th thru April 9th 2015