10.12.25 "Laughing Away Pain & Sickness" with Rev. Tony Ponticello

ACIM focuses on healing as a foundational tenet in the spiritual development it is leading us towards. It is revealed as our only true function while we are here in physical reality. "You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating." (Tx.12.23) While I came into ACIM with a strong interest in healing, I didn't relate to it like my one and only function. However I am perfectly comfortable with that thought now.

Many years ago in my "BC" life (Before Course) I was impressed by the story of Norman Cousins. Cousin's was a successful magazine author and editor. He was editor in chief of Saturday Review from 1940 to 1971. In 1964 he contracted a painful and crippling connective tissue disease and was hospitalized. He was told there was no hope of recovery. However, he felt that the hospital was a terrible environment and checked into a nice hotel instead. He surrounded himself with things that made him laugh and began to binge watch old episodes of a wonderfully funny television show named Candid Camera, and other comedy shows and movies.

He also did various nutritional protocols which included healthy fresh food and large doses of Vitamin C. He experienced a remarkable full recovery. He wrote about his experience in a 1979 book named, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. The book was very successful and movies and documentaries were made of it. I saw one of the documentaries and read the book. The fact that he healed himself primarily with laughter and good nutrition rung very true to me. It was reasonable. "Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. ... Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas." (WkBk.190.3-4)

"Laugh" or "laughter" are talked about 43 times in ACIM. Here's another one, "He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed." (WkBk.187.6) I always resonated with the fact ACIM had such a strong emphasis on laughter and happiness. It was one of the reasons I felt so comfortable in embracing it fully as my own spiritual path. I now also fully embrace healing as my one and only function here and what a blessing to find healing and laughter completely intertwined.