I had often heard about the creative power of our attitude, of our inner mindset, of our thoughts, especially through the spiritual mind training of A COURSE IN MIRACLES, however I hadn’t been able to use this effectively for my own recovery. Doubts always remained. Could all this be true? Could I be responsible for my entire experience – from A to Z? This felt like a slap in the face. Often it got me real angry. I just couldn’t get it.

I had already been suffering from progressive MS and recurrent depression for 23 years and to get around I had to use walking aids or wheelchairs. In the last years of this sad phase I would furthermore suffer from constipation, incontinence, fatigue and neuropathies.

All in all this whole situation felt like an agonizingly slow process of dying, losing one capability after the other. I had often tried to get up to high buildings in order to jump down and end this suffering once and for all. However the fear this might not solve a single problem of mine and would only leave tears behind, not to mention that it would really be painful, consistently stopped me.

Then what finally slingshot me out of this hell was that one night I just was entirely fed up with all this dying-business. This here was my life and I wanted to live it abundantly and be happy again, and share this with others!

What I was fed up with most of all was this constant fear that had meanwhile crept over so many areas of my life like some exuberant cancer. Fear, fear, fear, wherever I looked in my life. Meanwhile I was afraid of everything. My fear of walking seemed to be at the core of it all. Of course there also was fear of eating something wrong. There was fear of smoke, fear of white bread, fear of meat, fear of my hunching about on two canes, fear of peoples’ reaction who saw me that way, fear of falling down, fear of death, fear of life. Fear of everything!

And it was this very fear that I had cultivated and pampered for so very long supplying it with my entire life-energy that I rendered a crucial kick that night. I wanted to live and be happy again and in communication. Not tomorrow or in a week, but right now!

In deciding so, without noticing, I had finally steered my mental attitude fundamentally into the right direction. And obviously this decision was driven by such sincerity and conviction that my depression was over instantly. Not so my MS-symptoms, however I really didn’t care about them anymore and gradually they began dropping away, each day a bit more. Meanwhile for walking I mostly don’t even need a walking cane any more. And generally as many abilities as I had lost over the decades began to come back to me.

Soon I picked up the COURSE IN MIRACLES again and realized I read it with completely new eyes. There was such thankfulness I felt for this mind training that was so clear and so radical. It literally felt like being taken by the hand through this COURSE.

In our weekly Course-groups ever more clearly the Voice for God, as it is called there, the Voice of the Holy Spirit or of Universal Intelligence began speaking through me. I just had to open up and hand over the management of the group to this higher intelligence. In some miraculous way I immediately felt guided to say exactly what would be helpful for us all just at this very moment.
Sometimes all barriers dropped away and nearly our entire group would plunge into the basic oneness of all of life.

It was experienced there is this Living Stillness and Peace deep within that becomes available the more that I give myself up to it. As I see it, all true healing and recovery comes from there. It feels like a radiant inner home that is absolutely unshakable. It feels like an unlimited inner reservoir of healing and life and happiness widely open to everyone who is willing to open up to it.

So there is actually only one thing I changed to get there:
I choose happiness and health the moment something unhappy comes along in my mind. Be it a feeling of guilt or a feeling of anger or a feeling of fear or a feeling of pain. Yet different from earlier on in my life, today I’m extremely determined in this.

And whenever any kind of relapse shows up, it doesn’t take long and I remember to take this as but another chance to find back to this inner radiant home of ours and to deeply refresh and recover in it.

It is truly our mind that is in charge of the way our lives develop. Any experience – good or bad – is but a mirror in which we can learn something about the attitudes we have adopted. And if the experience presenting itself to me does not match my Soul’s wish to be free and happy and in communication, it is my attitude I have to change first of all for the good to occur again.

Happiness is not some fleeting coincidence. Happiness is a decision. Happiness is not tied to outward circumstances. Happiness is a God-given quality of the Soul and can be chosen again anytime we forget it.

The COURSE IN MIRACLES offers a wealth full of information and thought-exercises in this respect. I’d just like to point out one of them here. It’s a pivotal one:

We can mentally hand over our problems and plans and feelings and thoughts to God’s Holy Spirit that in truth we are one with.

In case we need a visualization for that, we can picture hands of light reaching toward us, and put our personal issues right in there – our problems, our plans, our feelings, our thoughts.

Generally this takes frequent repeating and time. However sooner or later one will notice how suggested solutions for our problems are being given us by the light of this higher intelligence, how our plans are being returned to us purified, and how only those of our feelings and thoughts are upheld that make us and others truly happy.

Yet particularly this inner exercise leads to experiencing that we are indeed never alone, that the Good Spirit of Life always is here with us and that we can call on it anytime.

Christoph Engen, April 11th 2015
http://www.atemverlag.de