ACIM uses the term "sons" referring to God's many directly-created REAL sons, 82 times. Here are some of the quotes which are so blatant in their statement that God has created MORE THAN ONE SON.
"*PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him. Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."
"*It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."
"*The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."
"*Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin. And we who are His Sons are like each other, and alike to Him."
"*God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."
"*All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS."
"*Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons?"
"*We are creation; we the Sons of God."
"*Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION."
"*Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than YOU can establish God's. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know all Creation."
"*You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."
"*God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other."
"*Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete."
"*The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons."
"*When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy."
"* If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship."
"*If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."
"*The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."
To be a miracle worker, it is absolutely essentially to realize that, although you will perform miracles, it is not YOU that does them. It is actually the Holy Spirit who has the power to do them. Or rather, it is the POWER OF GOD that makes miracles happen. This power belongs to God, and comes from God, and is not of you, but you have it in you, so you can extend it.
When you become closer to identifying with Christ he will share that power with you, but generally speaking HE is the one who performs the healings. If someone says they are performing miracles all the time and make no mention of the Holy Spirit or God performing them, you know they are full of ego. We cannot lay claim to an “ability” that is exclusive to us - the power must be SHARED.
We are like “channelers of a healer” in a sense, with Christ/Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit performing healings through our hands. We allow God’s power to operate THROUGH us. It is not “our own” power or a special ability. It is ultimately the power of God that heals, and all power IS of God, and there is no other power. By acknowledging that it IS of God, you GAIN that power as well.
Only by admitting that you are absolutely nothing WITHOUT God, and are everything WITH God, can you become a true miracle worker. Your miracle-working power is your INHERITANCE. Literally, God is the source of all miraculous power, extended through the Holy Spirit, and shared by your soul.
All power to heal belongs to God and there is no other power. When you SHARE that power, that power can operate through you. It is never yours exclusively, or alone, or only for you. It is a universal power given universally to everyone, with effects far beyond your awareness.
It is not enough to say that ”miracles are expressions of love.” Nor is it enough to say they are ”merely” expressions of love between two people or a joining of two minds. God is love. God is the giver of life. Miracles are a spark of life. God gives life through you. You do not originate this love or this power, you extend it. You give what you have been given by God. This is why you can only give the miracles you have received (from God).
The power to heal, the light, the life force, the life-giving fuel, the resurrective potential, is all something that comes from God. He must be involved in its giving. He is the cause of the healing. He is the giver of the life. He is the raiser of the dead. But we are also needed as a conduit so that it can be expressed in this world. Thus we SHARE the Holy Spirit’s function of healing in the world.
“Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?”
”The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.”
“You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."
“To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power.”
“The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you. That is the reason that the miracle gives EQUAL blessing to ALL who share in it, and that is also why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help.”
“The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.”
“ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically.”
“A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers.”
“But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING.”
“You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth.”
“The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is.”
“The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says.”
"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."
"For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."
Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."
Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."
So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.
The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.
This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.
When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.
Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.
"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."
"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."
Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.
"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE."
So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.
The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. "
"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."
"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."
"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "
In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.
"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."
"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.
If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.
This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.
"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."
The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.
"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."
"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."
Ok. Let's take a fresh look at miracles.
Your task is to correct your perception, but this does not take place in isolation. What applies to you, applies to others. The Golden Rule is always in effect.
If you extend love to others and be loving toward them, you will open yourself to receive love and share in love. If you do not extend love to others, you will shut down your extension and block your own receipt of love. You will either love yourself AND your brothers equally, OR you will hate both of you. This is inescapable law with no exceptions.
Your task isn't just to fix yourself. Your task is to REJOIN in Holy Relationship with your brothers and to HEAL BOTH OF YOU, by allowing the love in you to go out to them. Your task is to repair your connection with them and restore communication of love and sharing. You have to learn to love other people so that you will also be loved. And that is an outward expression or extension. It's reaching out with love and embracing others "as yourself".
The Holy Spirit is a gift from God. The Holy Spirit provides accurate perception of the "real world", forgiven and innocent. He is in you and in your brother, regardless of whether your brother is aware of this. In order for you to see your brother correctly with love, you have to look WITH the Holy Spirit. You will see the Holy Spirit IN your brother when you are looking at Him WITH the Holy Spirit in you fully.
Now, you of yourself cannot perform miracles or heal anyone. The light in you is healing, but you did not put the light there. God did. The love that is in you, which extends through you to others, is God's love. You can share in it, but not take possession of it. If you control it or block it or stand in its way, you hurt yourself and others. When you allow it to extend, IT provides healing. "Miracles are the Holy Spirit's gifts."
The Holy Spirit, being the idea of healing, isn't merely a static state of mind. It is a mind of love. It extends, and it HEALS. It can correct perception, dissolve error, shine away darkness, reverse sickness and death, and provide LIFE where it was lacking. When you become a "window" for the Holy Spirit to move THROUGH, this healing POWER goes out to the mind of another and heals them miraculously, which also restores health.
If your brother is lacking in some way, and calling for love, they have blocked their own ability to heal themselves. The light IN you is the same as the light IN them, being of God. This light is capable of healing them if you SUPPLY IT. The Holy Spirit is capable of SUPPLYING LIFE to others through you. You GIVE the Holy Spirit TO your brother, and HE supplies what is lacking, and they are healed. This is how miracles are performed. Miracle working is always about sharing love with others AND with yourself.
Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, for those who temporarily have less. That means if your brother is weak and you are strong, or he is deluded and you are more sane, the Holy Spirit in you shines on him and brings him up to your level. This is also why Jesus says "forgiveness is not complete unless both of you have been corrected" (paraphrase).
Miracles are not something that you do in isolation. Nor are miracles "just for you", like where your own perception undergoes a shift. They are a means of repairing and restoring your Holy Relationship with others. They undo the separation that keeps you and others apart. They benefit BOTH OF YOU. This is why they are a maximal service you can render another. "I am not healed alone".
Miracles are ENTIRELY about what you SHARE WITH other people. The amount of love you are willing to see in others, also establishes the amount of love you will see in yourself. When you "shine" toward others, heartfelt, loving past their body, and recognizing the holiness in them, you are extending love and "connecting" your mind to theirs. Minds can only be joined in love. When minds connect, separation is erased, illusions vanish, and there is healing. The power of love from the Holy Spirit moves THROUGH you and actively HEALS you AND the other.
Recently when I have been attempting to pray for someone "in isolation", and would ask that God heal them or a certain part of the body etc, I would keep experiencing healing in my own self. I kept thinking this was some crazy mistake, that I wasn't asking correctly or focusing my mind properly. But truth is, miracles heal BOTH you and others equally. So if you are to be a miracle worker, you better be ready to start getting healed.
This is also why you can only give the miracles you have received, which means you are only WILLING to see a certain degree of love in others, corresponding to how much you are wiling to see in yourself. To love others more you MUST love yourself more, which is why you are supposed to accept the atonement for YOURSELF, SO THAT you can GIVE the miracles (perceptual blessings, mind healing) you have received from that acceptance/receiving of truth/love.
"Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother". "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." All of these speak to miracle working by erasing the separation BETWEEN you and OTHERS. Separation is double-sided, it applies to you AND others. Healing therefore heals BOTH of you. *ALL MIRACLES* unite you with your brother, therefore ALL miracles are devices for undoing the separation BETWEEN YOU and healing your relationship/communion. They are applied to BOTH of you.
Now, the Holy Spirit is the only "cause" of miracles, although Jesus is also involved "miracles are corrections introduced into false thinking by ME". He and HS are One. But what makes YOU one of "God's miracle workers", is your willingness to ALLOW God's healing to be in you and through you. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." Meaning you have to learn to allow love to shine onto your brothers, through you, in order to stop blocking love's extension. Your willingness, which makes you a co-creator, allows you to "do His works".
What about miracles such as moving mountains? The Holy Spirit can do that. You, if you are willing enough "do not limit what I can do through you or you will limit what I can do FOR you", He CAN do extraordinary things. You "work" the miracle by allowing Him to move on God's behalf, which requires that you be a "perceiver of love" in order to make a pure enough request. Prayer is the medium of miracles and we do have to be in a "high" state of mind - a loving mind of miracle readiness - in order for miracles to be performed of this kind.
Just as it's not merely your perception of others that heals, but rather the Holy Spirit IN YOU that moves through you and heals FOR you (you are a medium, not an isolated thing), when you are perceiving correctly there is NO LIMIT to what "you and HE" can do together. It's teamwork. It requires you to have the right perceptual content - "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles", while also being free enough of ego and fear to let love extend ITSELF. *IT* does the healing. You, plus the power of God, can bring healing to the world.
"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating." --- "you share His function on Earth" ... " do His works".
So miracle working is entirely to do with upholding the Golden Rule, it applies bi-directionally to you and others at the same time, they heal both of you (unless you are already healed), and they ALWAYS involve OTHERS.
Here is a selection of pertinent quotes....
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient. ... The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide."
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"The Holy Spirit CANNOT fail to undo FOR you everything you have learned" ... "The little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything."
"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."
"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" ... "He will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I WILL LET HIM."
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"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."
"Miracles are ENERGIZERS."
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"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit’s form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows. "
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"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."
"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."
"Miracles are not of this world.
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"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth"
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"The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship."
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"What you acknowledge in your brother, you ARE acknowledging in yourself. What you share you STRENGTHEN."
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"Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed."
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"The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself."
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"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
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"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
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"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."
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"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others."
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"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both."
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"A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
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"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
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"Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? You could not do so, if you realized that YOU CAN ONLY DARKEN YOUR OWN MIND. As you bring HIM back, so will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."
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"The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you WITH them, and free YOU from the past. Would you, then, hold the past AGAINST them?"
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"And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he."
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"The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns ... That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."."
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"Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it."
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"But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."
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"I give the miracles I have received." ... "No-one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."
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"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.
The light in them shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."
Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you recognize that there is nothing that NEEDS forgiving. It is a recognition in which you know there is no sin, sin is impossible, attack is impossible, so nothing can have happened to be forgiven. It's an awareness of innocence.
Forgiveness however isn't "passive", it is ACTIVELY converting illusions into truth. It is actively translating sin into error. It is actively interpreting and changing something. It is causing a healing and radiating life.
What you do to get your mind INTO the state of forgiveness, in which forgiveness is "complete", or in which you are "completely forgiving all the time", as an attitude, is what we might call "purification" or correction or healing.
Healing, or shall we say, being in a state in which you or another is healed, must entail similarly a recognition that "there is nothing that NEEDS healing." If we are focusing on "something is wrong", we are reinforcing and giving reality to sickness and damage. If we think a person "is a sick body", that's actually an attack on their immortal nature.
Like forgiveness then, proper healing entails a recognition that there is nothing to heal, because it recognizes immortality and wholeness and harmlessness. It recognizes invulnerability and permanence and the impossibility of attack/sin/guilt. It ASSERTS only "you are fully alive".
Perhaps we can then say that you can ONLY correctly heal, as in correctly forgive a sick person, by looking for and focusing on the NON-SICK self in them. Finding the pre-existing UNCHANGED perfection in them. Recognizing them as NOT SICK, as not broken or damaged, as not guilty or punished, and as not a victim. And certainly not a body.
Holding this light for the person, shining the truth into them, seeing them IN the light WITH light AS light, is the absence of a BELIEF IN sickness. It places no attention ON the sickness. When you have made sickness real and are reacting to it, even trying to "fix it", you're giving it power and reinforcement. In order to heal sickness you have to NOT give sickness any power. Which means giving it no direct attention. The symptoms will disappear naturally when the UN-SICKNESS is given power.
Now, we have to be careful that we're not saying .. I'm not just going to "do nothing". We're not talking about NOT performing a miracle of healing. We're not talking about just idly sitting there. We're talking about HOW TO HEAL. You heal by actively choosing to "see health". To join with your brother's mind in the light and through a light-based vision. To SHINE LIGHT into them on purpose, to deliberately FILL them with light so that they are enlightened.
Just because we're recognizing that the person doesn't REALLY need healing, and isn't REALLY sick, doesn't mean we're just ignoring it or doing nothing about it. We must focus on their immortal self, remembering the truth about them, taking all attention off any illusion of a mortal self or a body self, and putting all attention on who they really are. Acknowledging who they are FOR them.
Recognizing their LACK OF SICKNESS for them. This is a SERVICE. "A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
To reject and thus to CANCEL all belief in, reality of, attention given to, power in, sickness or damage, WITHDRAWS power from those things and weakens them in your mind. Because you are joining in love/light with your brother's mind this weakens it in their mind also because you do not support their belief in being mortal.
Simultaneously, to not support death is to ASSERT LIFE. This is an actual active assertion, an EXPRESSION of love. Something which goes out and is given and is can be received by another. Something that can be shared. While you remove all power from death and mortality and ideas of a person being a body, you GIVE all power to where it belongs - to their immortal christ self which is flawless and perfect and has nothing wrong with it.
Miracle don't just "take away" the illusion of sickness which seemed present. They also ASSERT and EXPRESS and RE-ESTABLISH or "repair" what was given by God. By "cancelling" what is not really there, miracles remove the ego and the guilt and the symptoms of sickness. This IS A CHANGE, but it a change in the direction of REMOVAL, resulting from an ASSERTION or expression of love's power. "THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."
"A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."
All fearful reactions to someone's physical state are your own unforgiven deceptions. Trying to manage, control, defend against, make go away, all physical APPEARANCES of sickness is wasted effort. It's part of you giving power away to them, because you do not remember who you are. Having stopped knowing yourself, you have entertained the idea of mortality and death YOURSELF, and have forgotten you are unchangeable. As a result you begin to believe that you are a mortal body, that other people are mortal bodies, that your bodies are being changed and that you need to desperately do something to stop it.
None of that business and reaction helps at all. As Jesus frequently tells me, "relax", ie chill and stop dwelling on what's going wrong. Stop buying into the appearance of a LIE, and let us remember that ALL sickness is an illusion. There is no REAL sickness. And focusing on the body of another results from your OWN body-identification, which is you forgetting your own true nature. That means YOU need a miracle of healing for yourself.
"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
To get your own mind right requires you remembering and knowing yourself, tuning into the fact you remain as God created you, recognizing why you cannot change or be changed, and identifying with your IMMORTAL SPIRIT. Knowing that you cannot be hurt, cannot be sick, cannot die and cannot suffer. Once you have accepted this for yourself and have thus received healing and correction, you can now GIVE what you have received. And this is where you become able to give a miracle as "a creative energizer."
It is creative energizers that are GIVEN TO OTHERS. This is where you now EXTEND the light of christ you've seen in yourself, and SHARE it with another. Where you have joined the Holy Spirit in his view of you within yourself, and now see that same unchangeability in another, focusing on their immortal nature and their incapability of being sick. You tell them psychologically, "you are immortal and perfect and you can never be sick." You recognize in the light of truth that their body and their sickness IS NOT TRUE. That it cannot be true in light of God's truth. Only God's truth is true and nothing else is true.
It is in this "joining in christ" or "sharing light" with another that both of you are resurrected. In which "those who temporarily have more give to those who temporarily have less." It is where you recognize your brother's inestimable worth as equal to your lovable value in God. And where you see the other as ALREADY HEALED AND WHOLE. Already perfect, created by God to be perfect forever. ALREADY devoid of sickness. INCAPABLE of suffering. In which death and sickness and deformity and disability as IMPOSSIBLE.
Thus do you know you brother as one with you, like you, whole like you, healed like you. Thus do you know your neighbor as yourself. Thus do you support ONLY LIFE, and completely give no attention whatsoever to the illusion of death or the goal of death. In which your ONLY goal is life, shared with the Holy Spirit, in which you ONLY RESURRECT, and CAN ONLY HEAL.
"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal (others). By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others (heal others). The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them (because they are immortal)."
"To the ego, the goal is death, which IS its end. But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life (life=eternal life/immortality), which HAS no end."
"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him (his immortal self), you have not really changed (healed) him at all (have seen him as not NEEDING healing). But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him (recognizing his immortality), you help him undo (heal) the change his ego thinks it has made in him. "
"Your brother has a changelessness (immortality) in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds (symbolic of his immortality). The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED."
"True healing is the realization you were never sick" - ACIM
The implication of this is that in order to heal or be healed, you do NOT need to find the 'cause of the sickness'. You need to go BEYOND the cause of the sickness to where sickness HAS NO CAUSE. The sickness was produced by a denial or a blockage or an unwillingness to accept that there IS NO SICKNESS AT ALL.
So then if you go looking for the cause, this not only infers that you believe that you are sick and the sickness exists because of a 'real cause', but also that the sickness stems from some kind of 'causal mistake' somewhere in the mind. Like a root or a decision that was wrong. A starting point.
It seems there is something that you 'did' which then produced a bunch of symptoms after it. But even without symptoms coming after it, that initial 'sin' isn't causing sickness to show up somewhere else separate from it - the belief in the sin IS the sickness. It is sickness because THERE IS NO SIN and to believe otherwise IS to be sick/mistaken.
It may appear that these things are the 'cause' of sickness, but really their presence at all is the 'cause' because they are blocking an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of divine health. They are blocking the atonement, which is that sickness has NOT occurred.
So in order to BE healed, you need to get past all notions of symptoms being real, and past all notions of a cause being real, and REMEMBER that there is no 'real' cause because sickness is not real. You need to remember that YOU ARE NOT SICK. And in that light, in that awareness, the sickness is not believed in, is not seen, and does not exist. Thus any 'manifestation' of it must disappear.
So if you're addressing the sickness, fighting with the sickness, trying to find the cause of the sickness, trying to uproot the sickness, trying to figure out where the sickness came from, or how to fix the sickness, you are barking up the wrong tree and the ego knows it. This only reinforces your belief in it.
The ONLY healing is in surrendering the ego, letting go of the need for the sickness - which ultimately is to block the awareness of NATURAL HEALTH. The only purpose of sickness is as an obstacle to peace and a resistance/defense against the truth. Its only purpose is to choose not to acknowledge that YOU CANNOT BE SICK because you are immortal spirit - Christ!
So let's stop. And let's move into ACCEPTING that we are 100% healthy. Let's move into allowing God's presence to heal. Let's move into recognizing that sickness can never be real, and the belief that it is real IS the sickness. And then let's drop this ego pretense that sickness is happening and admit the truth: As Christ, as God's creation, you are immortal and immune and invulnerable and immaculate. Nothing has happened and nothing can happen to make you sick. You can never be sick because God has created you innocent forever.
So all of this other 'sickness' is just the belief that you are not that, that you are not Christ, innocent, immortal and invulnerable. Your thoughts about the sickness are attack thoughts - "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability". But your invulnerability cannot BE attacked. Believing that it can IS an error, and error is sickness. Sickness is not the TRUTH, sickness is a LIE. And ultimately, death is a lie.
Own up to your immortality today.
"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions." .... ie the mind IS separate from bodily conditions. And since "if I defend myself I am attacked", if you try to DIRECTLY defend the body you will attack it and keep it sick.
However...
"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, ***and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument*** through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over."
Therefore, by recognizing that the mind is distinct from the body and NOT at the effect of the body, the mind assumes a position of healing, which HEALS the body. By focusing first on the healing of the mind, the healed mind HEALS the body.
"The mind, being sane, heals the body."
These statements are not saying that you can just focus on mind and ignore the body's condition. Or that by recognizing mind is SEPARATE from the body - thus not affected BY it - that the mind would still maintain or allow the body's sickened state.
Instead, Jesus is saying that once you DO see that your mind IS NOT your body, THIS state of mind will CAUSE the body to heal.
"Now is the body healed by miracles."
Then the body will become "a healthy serviceable instrument."
It is made healthy due to the removal of the level confusion that's inherent to the belief that the mind IS the body, or that the identity is the body/ego. Once you become clearer about WHAT YOU ARE, and what mind is, the mind adopts its natural HEALING function and cures all sickness.
This teaching has nothing to do with just escaping the body and being only identified with spirit - which IS a goal - but the EFFECT of this goal is that mind regains its POWER, and can now CAUSE healing and life to be restored.
In other words, you heal the body INDIRECTLY by DIRECTLY healing the mind so that IT IN TURN heals the body. But if you swap this around and try to heal the body first without healing the mind, you won't get a lasting healing.
"Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death."
While it's true that if you FOCUS ON the body first and foremost, you are really reinforcing it as real and really sick and separate. And this attacks it and keeps it sick. In that state of mind you are NOT really in a position to "heal it".
So it seems like a PARADOX... or counter intuitive. .. but you in fact are being instructed that if you DO want the body to heal, you GO ABOUT IT BY healing the mind/identity, SO THAT this leads to the mind mind indirectly healing the body.
By focusing on the body first you are trying to really bring about death in the NAME of healing. But if you focus on healing the mind first you are attempting to bring about LIFE, and this RAISES THE BODY FROM DEATH.
"A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means."
"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."
These sections from the Course present one of the most CORE parts of Jesus's teaching - that you must USE YOUR BODY to demonstrate the innocence that you believe in. Anyone demonstrating sickness or death believes in attack and is NOT carrying out God's will.
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to DEMONSTRATE they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"
"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."
"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
"It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.
Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."
"The Holy Spirit’s picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.
Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""
Below are two very important paragraphs. I say this because these MIGHT be the only two paragraphs which make this specific point in the whole course.
A teacher of God is someone who is still in the dream, in a body, thus USING the body's eyes, while ALSO having a highly developed spiritual eye/christ vision.
They do not have 100% christ vision ONLY, because if they did the veil of spacetime would lift entirely and they would no longer see the world at all. You cannot see the real world ONLY if you are invested in still seeing the illusory world at least a little. "You cannot see both worlds" FULLY. But you CAN see both worlds PARTLY.
JUST PRIOR to that state of perfect perception, you utilize TWO ways of perceiving, IN PARALLEL (overlaid). This allows you to see the illusory world of bodies, sickness, war and death, BUT in such a way through alignment with the spiritual eye that all of these things register to your mind as FALSE, UNREAL, NOT TRUE.
You can see them, BUT NOT BELIEVE THEM. This allows you to see a call for love, see the sick and dying, see the suffering, BUT be in a position to provide miracles to help those in need because you are NOT DECEIVED by what you see.
Your mind RECOGNIZES illusions are illusions - that the illusory world is not true. But you DO still see it, until the veil lifts completely. This puts you in a unique position to be a Teacher of God, a miracle worker, who CAN HELP OTHERS whom you SEE as in need of help, WITHOUT your mind being deceived.
This overthrows the idea that "if you see it its yours" because it recognizes that we have access to TWO TYPES OF EYES - the body's eyes and the spiritual eye. And we use BOTH of them at once, until true perception is perfected. A kind of double vision. Which means you can still see things which ARE NOT yours, without barely any belief in them, just enough to be truly helpful.
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
"M-8.6. The body’s eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."
I don’t like having to go into Bible references, but there is one statement Jesus made which encapsulates in one place all the key miracle working principles of ACIM. It’s to do with moving mountains. There are different versions but this is a good one:
"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith."
There are key parts to this which are ALL important and have ACIM principles to back them up.
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1) You must pray with your heart. It doesn’t matter what words you say because God does not understand words, but He understands what is in your heart.
ACIM: "Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for you receive. But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. It does not matter. God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality."
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2) You must have faith and trust in the Holy Spirit. Faith means trusting in God’s laws. "I am under no laws but God’s". Faith means believing, knowing, accepting (atonement), aligning with, the Will of God.
ACIM: "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought you saw."
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3) You must BELIEVE that it will happen and be convinced, essentially that it has alread been received.
ACIM: "There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid and giving them away."
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4) This believing entails a kind of IMAGINATION or VISUALISATION of the END RESULT of what you want to happen. Ie seeing the mountain in the sea in your mind’s eye.
ACIM: Not sure on a quote for this yet but other miracle workers have taught that the mind’s eye/imagination must be used to visualize what the person or thing will be like AFTER it has been healed/received. E.g. picturing someone swinging their arms around after paralysis has been removed.
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5) You must not have any doubt or fear. NONE. That means there will be LOVE and WHOLENESS in your heart and mind and perception.
AICM: You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do. But they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt.
Remember my own question, before you ask yours "Oh ye of little faith, wherefore didsth thou DOUBT."
(Reference to Christ and the apostles walking on water.)"
"Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles" - meaning, shifts in perception are not miracles because they are not *wholeness*. You must perceive with wholeness/love.
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6) Prayer is the medium of miracles. You must actually pray to "ask" and receive. The miracle doesn’t happen by just looking at the mountain.
"We said before that prayer is the medium of miracles."
"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."
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7) God/Holy Spirit are the power that makes the miracle happen, "not you". They work through you. The Holy Spirit is not a metaphor. It is a SPIRIT, a permanent creation of God, and it shares the POWER OF GOD.
"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God's creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively."
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8) You must be single minded. That comes from being whole hearted, aware of love.
"A divided will can accomplish nothing." Or "a split mind can accomplish nothing" or "an untrained mind can accomplish nothing."
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Through these principles used in this combination, THIS is how supernatural miracles are performed. This may however be easier said than done. To have no fear. To have love in the heart. To be single minded you have to be aware of love, your heart has to be whole. You can’t have any fear or doubts. You have to have STRONG belief.
ACIM also puts it this way:
"There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."
"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don’t really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains.
It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don’t believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."
Remember this: "There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do."
This is a course in HOW TO MOVE A MOUNTAIN. That is a miracle.
What we need to do, is learn to PRACTICE THE PRINCIPLES.