Many of our prayers ask for healing. In one way or another, healing is all we ever ask for.  On some level, most problems can be reduced to a kind of illness. It may be physical, or emotional. Perhaps the disorder is financial or collective. Whatever the manifestation of illness, it’s source almost always seems to be fear.

Fear interferes with all things good. When I act based on fear, I often receive some version of that which I feared. For fear is a form of prayer which, like all prayer, brings to us the object of our anxiety. Choose not, then, based on a fear.

Even when I don’t act on my fears, they serve to block the solutions which I seek in prayer. Fear interferes energetically with healing, since it’s a prayer in negative. Healing, then, is the surrender of all fears. It’s to get out of my own way. This is the first step in any worthwhile prayer. It creates an open space into which the healing nature of reality infills the void within vacated by fear.

Fear is of time. The mind, trained in the annals of time, almost always dwells on some past trauma or some fantasy of the future. Incidents from the past seem to justify my fears, which I then predict will repeat in my future. Focused almost exclusively on my fears, I leapfrog over the reality of the present moment, resurrecting an effigy of my fear in its place. To relinquish my ideas of time, then, is the second prerequisite of an effective prayer. For so long as I believe that my prayers will only be answered in some future state, for just that long do I push the actuality that my prayer has already been answered now into a time which may never arrive.

What if I was already healed? What if all that I prayed for, deep in my heart, was already here?

Healing consists in allowing that which already is to be. It is non-doing. It means acknowledging that which is, not changing something which isn’t into something which is. I fail to see that only my denial of health makes sickness possible. A change of awareness is all that’s required for me to realize that I’m already healed.

Our minds are so powerful that they have convinced us that we are sick, when really, we never have been.  Allowing that part of the miracle which I most perceive myself to be in need of to work; that’s all we need ‘do.’ Healing, then, is an act of surrender. It’s to permit a natural process to work itself out on whatever plane on which I believe sickness to exist. To pray is to relinquish the blocks to healing’s presence in my life, to surrender whatever expression I’ve come to see its absence as taking. To heal – to pray – is an act of unlearning, not learning. It’s an act of acknowledgment, not a request.

In the end, illness can only truly be treated with love.  Love, by its nature, is present everywhere, yet only in the present moment. For it’s always now. It’s in all places, yet always only here. For you are always here and now.

With these things said, there are lesser truths which have passed into this world with you, along with whatever forms your illnesses seem to take.

If an illness stays with us, perhaps it needs to. Maybe it has a message for us, some buried grievance, some interred grief which must be unearthed, some frustration, some blocked energy trapped within which needs to flow. That pain may have accompanied you into this world along with your birth, and so it may represent unfinished business. Or it may be illness that was created in some moment after your birth. In either case, it’s from the past. This is why you must relinquish your belief in time if you want healing to occur. For sickness, like fear, is of time. Your belief in time creates it. When that old pain is dusted off and examined, your only course is to relinquish it. Once it’s released, the wholeness which it once concealed is reclaimed. Healing results. Consider, then, that all illness is temporary.

Most of us die from some sickness, but death is release, not a final condition. In this way, we can see illness as the great liberator.

Most of us focus on the physical manifestation of an illness, and these are but symptoms. They shouldn’t be ignored, and the remedies of your era should be used fully. These may consist of procedures, of medicines, or of rites. The specific form which these nostrums take is unimportant as long as you believe in them. All medicinal cures are placebos, requiring only faith. It’s trust in their efficacy which gives all cures their power to restore. For trust opposes fear, and expels all illness.

Yet to concentrate simply upon a symptom is to pay attention only to a medical cause. On the physical level, medical conditions have medical causes, but they can also be traced to psychological, emotional and metaphysical origins. This is because the cosmos itself has mental causes, and not merely physical origins. When these deeper, nonphysical causes are identified and abandoned, the surface manifestation will also resolve. For illness is both a message and a messenger. It has something to say to us.

To focus exclusively on a symptom and its physical roots is to focus on a fear. It’s to place all our efforts on control; control of the symptom, control of the body. The body itself is but an emissary of the emotions and of the spirit. Being unbound, spirit and its expression in feelings are contrary to control. The very constricting measures designed to accomplish healing, when focused on to the exclusion of what the illness symbolizes, are also those measures which rein in spirit. Methods of healing which address only symptoms create blockages of energy. Constricted energy is, on a deeper level, the cause of illness in the first place. Since healing must occur on all levels, so must treatment.

To heal is to see yourself as already healed. It’s to not interfere with an inevitable healing process. It’s to place your attention on something else besides the sickness; not as a form of denial, but with the assurance that your condition has already been healed. To give too much heed to sickness is to concede energy to it. The more attention you pay to an illness, the more energy you feed it. This grows illness rather than cures. At the very least, to concede attention and energy to illness will simply transform it into another bodily, mental or cultural expression. It will change form, but the sickness will remain. This isn’t to say that an illness should be denied. It must be acknowledged and accepted before it can heal. Yet disease can be deprived of energy by focusing on its opposite, which is health. This, too, is a kind of prayer.

Throughout history and indeed, even before history began, every culture has had two types of healers: diagnosticians and treaters. They can be combined within the same individual. Use these healers, for they are also messengers and the interpreters of the messages which sickness seeks to convey. You may interpret the messages of illness yourself, yet you may not be the best interpreter of what the sickness represents. Illness usually arises for reasons other than you consciously know, which is why the illness took the form it did in the first place. It is best, therefore, to invite in a third party whom you trust to render a second opinion.

Acknowledge that your nature extends beyond the boundaries of your skin. In fact, your nature is limitless because it’s connected to the limitless. Ultimately, it’s only your focus on the boundary itself – your biological form – which causes illness. For illness is a manifestation of your belief in limits, and especially in your belief that you are limited in extent. To heal, realize that the miracle of healing offered you is also limitless. It can heal any disease or lack, regardless of how minor or severe. The same miracle responds to any difficulty, regardless of the form the problem seems to take. Therefore, open yourself to that part of the miracle which you believe yourself to be in need of. Realize that the miracle of healing is nothing you can earn, but that it is given as an unexpected, unearned gift. It is yours because you, too, are part of an unbounded nature. You are the miracle itself. All you need do is look out at the universe without fear to see that this is true. To do this is simply to look upon the universe with love.

To recognize your limitless nature, you need relinquish your belief in the ultimate reality of your body, and in its ideas of pleasure and pain. The body, as boundary, is the symbol of limit, of finitude. It’s the belief in spacetime which holds you back from healing and keeps illness in place. This isn’t to say you should deny your material existence, but only to acknowledge that your home is not here, and that you’re more than the limit signified by your endings in space and time. For you are wayfarers here, and to see all conditions as temporary is to make yourselves aware that illness is also an impermanent state.

To pray is to acknowledge that healing has already occurred; that your prayers have already been answered; that only your belief in time and space stands in your way. For if you believe you can only be healed in the future, the time of your illness is prolonged by your belief.

You have been given all things from the foundation of the universe, for you are the universe, and what lies beyond it. The miracle passed here with you when you were born into the world, and you carry it still, unchanged, in your hearts from the time of your births. To acknowledge this invulnerable innocence is to heal. It need only be accepted, and by your affirmation of its presence, it is summoned, and it heals that which was never diseased, but which only seemed to be, in the dream of space, in the illusion of time.

The satisfaction of any unmet need or desire is found within. Love stands behind all things, beneath all other desires you may entertain. You are loved beyond your comprehension, and it’s only when this you forget this fact that you focus on illness and seem to sicken.

Love alone heals. All other healers are its midwives. Healing is the light which emanates from you and from all things. It is the lamp by which you see the road to joy. Remember this, and all is well.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just