Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

Three months in a hospital! I stood this, learned to stand, thought about walking, till finally my willingness to carry my hunger strikes, my unwillingness to follow their wishes, my constant request that they please let me go home, was honored. I didn’t care whether letting me go home was death or life. Just let me go!

They gave a pass that transferred me to a hospice, as I was close to dying. They called it, “Failure to thrive.”

Sabryna was outraged. “He will not die! He will have a perfect recovery! He’s going home!”

One of the doctors reluctantly changed the form: “Going home.”

At last! Nor more wishing to die. Lucky knew what I didn’t…we’d meet soon enough.

All at once I could look out familiar windows again, the islands about me, the birds, the sky, the clouds and the stars. A rented hospital bed, in my living room, but no streets, no concrete. Around me the books, two assistants here at home, cooking, caring.

How would Donald Shimoda have healed me, if I had asked for help? Knowing his truth, it would have taken no time, instant complete healing.

What do I have to do right now? No help from my friend, no help but my highest sense of right.

I thought about death. Like anyone, I had split-seconds, near misses, but never a long-term test of my highest right, nothing that pressed against me day after day with its suggestions:

“You can’t sit, you can’t stand, you can’t walk, you can’t eat (OK, you won’t eat), you can’t talk, you can’t think, don’t you know you’re helpless? Death is so sweet, no effort, you can let go, let it take you to another world. Listen to me. Death is not a sleep, it’s a new beginning.”

Those are fine suggestions, when we’re desperately tired. When it seems impossible, it’s easiest to let a lifetime go.

Yet we shrug the suggestions away when we want to continue with a life that isn’t quite finished.

What must I do, to live again?

Practice.

Practice: I see myself as perfect, every second a new image of perfection, over and over and over, second after second.

Practice: My spiritual life is perfect right now. All day, every day, perfection always in my mind, knowing how perfect I am in spirit. I am a perfect expression of perfect Love, here and now.

Practice: Choose delight, that I am already perfect, now, a perfect portrait of my spiritual self. Always, ever, perfect. Love knows me this way, I do, too.

Practice: I am not a material human being. I am a perfect expression of perfect Love.

Practice: As I know this, the perfection of my spirit will affect my belief of body, change it to a mirror of spirit, free of the limits of the world.

Practice: The body is already perfect in spirit. Earth is a world that offers beliefs of illness. I decline them. I am a perfect expression of perfect Love.

Practice: It’s not the false beliefs that trouble us, it’s accepting them, gives them power. I deny that power, refuse it. I am a perfect expression of perfect Love.

Practice, over and over, never changing from a recognition of perfection. When do I stop practicing? Never.

At first I walked six steps, exhausted through the last three. I am a perfect expression of perfect Love.

Next day, twenty steps: I am a perfect expression of perfect Love.

Next day, a hundred and twenty: I am a perfect expression of Love.

At first I was dizzy standing up. It dissolved with practice, with constant repetition of what I knew for truth.

I am a perfect expression of perfect Love, right here, right now. There is no permanent damage.

Balance-practice, the little swiveling platform, and a fluffy foam pillow in the corner till I could stay upright, I am a perfect expression of perfect Love, without falling.

I switched from pajamas to street clothes, in time. I am a perfect expression, set my steps to an electric treadmill.

Two hundred steps one day,