Dismayed by the failure of my physicians' last resort, I was sitting up in bed reading a passage from an old journal of John Wesley about spiritual healing. It quoted a friend as saying: "I could not move from place to place, but on crutches. In this state I continued about six years. At Bath I sent for a physician but before he came, as I sat reading the Bible, I thought, `Asa sought to the physicians, and not to God; but God can do more for me than any physician'; soon after rising up, I found I could stand. From that time I have been perfectly well."
As soon as I finished this passage I thought it should be applied to my own case, and laid the book aside. A great mental stillness and inner indrawing came over me at the same time. I saw that all the methods hitherto used to eliminate the disease were futile precisely because they were the ego's own methods, whether physical, magical, mental, or mechanical. I had exhausted them all. So the ego had to confess its total failure and cast itself on the mercy of the higher power in humiliation and prayer. I realized that instead of thinking that I or my physicians were competent to cure the disease, the correct way was to disbelieve that and to look to the Overself alone for healing. I saw that the stillness was its grace, that this quietness was its power. It could best cure me, if only I would relax and let it enter. So I surrendered to it and within a few weeks was healed.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 5 : The Healing Power of The Overself > # 153
