Time Changes, Book Club: Friday April 8th, 8 pm Paris Time, 2 pm New York time
Friends,
The next Book Club meeting is this Friday, April 8th : 8pm Paris time, 2 pm New York time. Kathryn will be hosting.
The quote for this week is transcribed from a question answered by Rupert Spira (YouTube link below).
Q. …does this mean that we, as presence, can heal the human form, or…?
A. What it means is that you can know yourself as presence, and in doing so know that what you already are doesn't require healing. You can't mix the levels. You either know yourself as consciousness and consciousness is whole, as you know that's what the word health means, it means wholeness, so consciousness knows nothing of sickness. The infinite cannot know sickness or death or suffering. It can only know the whole. There can only be sickness, death and suffering from the perspective of a part, a fragment, and so you can either know yourself as consciousness, as perfect health now, complete, whole, no suffering, no death, or you can take out your binoculars and look at your experience through the limited perspective of your mind, in which case you will see a woman of a certain age, who has some health issues and, etc., and that's not an incorrect view, it's just a limited view, so both of these views… “I am pure consciousness and perfectly healthy”, and the view “I am a body that has health issues and wants to heal myself, to improve my health”…both these points of view are valid on the level on which they are spoken.
Now you could, just to refer back to your question about consciousness healing the body, you could ask the question “would knowing myself as consciousness (taking the first point of view), have a healing effect on the body that I perceive” (from the second point of view), and we could say that that part of illness that is caused by the belief in separation may be healed when that belief disappears, however not all illness is caused by the belief in separation, and that part of any illness that is not caused by the belief in separation will not be cured by the remedy or the disappearance of that belief.
Q. What's an example of a part of an illness that might be caused by the belief in separation…
A. Let's take the example of anxiety…let's say that someone is so anxious and fearful that their body is, without their realizing it, in an almost continual state of tension, the muscles in the back of their neck are all knotted up and as a result of this they experience regular headaches. The headaches are a direct result of the tension in the muscles and the tension in the muscles are a direct result of anxiety, and the anxiety is a direct result of the feeling of separation… “I am a temporary finite self”…so going in the other direction, the sense of separation disappears, the tension disappears, the muscles relax, the headache goes. However, if you are fully aware of yourself as unlimited, perfectly healthy whole, inherently peaceful consciousness, and you are walking down the street and you trip and you fall over and you bang your head on the pavement, you will also have a headache, but the cause of your headache is not the belief in separation, so knowing yourself as infinite consciousness won't necessarily get rid of your headache--same symptom, two different causes and two different remedies.
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Hope to see you at the Book Club!