If sickness is separation, the will to heal and BE HEALED is the first step toward RECOGNIZING WHAT YOU TRULY WANT. Every ATTACK is a step AWAY from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God HAS both Father and Son because he IS both Father and Son.
To unite having and being is only to unite your will with His, for He wills you HIMSELF. And you will yourself to HIM, because in your perfect understanding of Him, you KNOW there IS but One Will. But when you attack ANY part of God and His Kingdom, your understanding is NOT perfect, and what YOU will is therefore lost to you.
Healing thus becomes A LESSON IN UNDERSTANDING, and the more you practice it, the better teacher AND LEARNER you become. If you have DENIED truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you have, than those who have been healed BY it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to JOIN them is YOUR healing accomplished.
Every miracle which you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought which you ACCEPT, either FROM your brother or in your OWN mind, teaches you that you are God's Son. But in every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship. And denial IS as total as love. You cannot deny PART of yourself, simply because the remainder will seem to be unintegrated, and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning TO YOU, you will not understand it. To deny meaning MUST be to fail to understand.
You can only heal yourself, for only God's Son NEEDS healing. He needs it because he does not understand himself, and therefore knows not what he does. Having forgotten his will, he does not know what he WANTS. Healing is a sign that HE WANTS TO MAKE WHOLE. And this willingness opens his OWN ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, Whose message IS wholeness. He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him?
And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you invite as your guest WILL abide with you. The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, BECAUSE HE WILL NOT BE HEARD. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, but only because your care is a sign that you WANT Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest.
Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. HE will remain, but YOU have allied yourself AGAINST Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He CANNOT leave a part of God. But you will far more than patience. You will never rest until you know your function AND FULFILL IT, for only in this can your will and your Father's be wholly joined. To HAVE Him is to be LIKE Him, and He has GIVEN Himself to you.
You who have God MUST be as God, for HIS function became YOURS with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your minds, and let nothing that will obscure it enter. The Guest whom God sent you will teach you how to do this, if you but recognize the little spark, and are WILLING TO LET IT GROW. YOUR willingness need not be perfect, because His IS. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much, that you will gladly extend it. And by THIS extending, you will begin to remember Creation.
Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom YOU invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. But this is not REAL freedom, for it depends on how you see it. For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real. Know, then, Who abides with you, merely by recognizing WHAT IS ALREADY THERE, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.
No one can give unless he has. In fact, giving is proof of having. We have made this point before. What seems to make it hard to credit is not this. No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess.
How is this possible? For it is sure that if you give a finite thing away, your body's eyes will not perceive it yours. Yet we have learned that things but represent the thoughts which make them. And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind. Perhaps the form in which the thought seems to appear is changed in giving. Yet it must return to him who gives. Nor can the form it takes be less acceptable. It must be more.
Ideas must first belong to you before you give them. If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Herein is the idea of giving clarified and given meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased.
Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form. For this will change, and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.
Give gladly. You can only gain thereby. The thought remains and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they can not be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains; another who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in form most helpful to him. What he seems to lose is always something he will value less than what will surely be returned to him.
Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice. Nor can he fail to recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. 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.
Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. And sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once.
Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen, and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself.
The lilies that your brother offers you are laid upon your altar, with the ones you offer him beside them. Who could fear to look upon such lovely holiness? The great illusion of the fear of God diminishes to nothingness before the purity that you will look on here. Be not afraid to look. The blessedness you will behold will take away all thought of form, and leave instead the perfect gift forever there, forever to increase, forever yours, forever given away.
Now are we one in thought, for fear has gone. And here, before the altar to one God, one Father, one Creator and one Thought, we stand together as one Son of God. Not separate from Him Who is our Source; not distant from one brother who is part of our one Self Whose innocence has joined us all as one, we stand in blessedness and give as we received. The Name of God is on our lips. And as we look within, we see the purity of Heaven shine in our reflection of our Father's Love.
Now are we blessed, and now we bless the world. What we have looked upon we would extend, for we would see it everywhere. We would behold it shining with the grace of God in everyone. We would not have it be withheld from anything we look upon. And to ensure this holy sight is ours, we offer it to everything we see. For where we see it, it will be returned to us in form of lilies we can lay upon our altar, making it a home for Innocence Itself, Who dwells in us and offers us His Holiness as ours.
This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones.
It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything. It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you. It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see.
It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see.
It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think.
It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.
Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first. Look at a cup, for example.
Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast, and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it?
Look about you. This is equally true of whatever you look at. Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye. For example:
"I see only the past in this pencil."
"I see only the past in this shoe."
"I see only the past in this hand."
"I see only the past in that body."
"I see only the past in that face."
Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to omit nothing specifically. Glance briefly at each subject, and then move on to the next.
36) "My holiness envelops everything I see."
From my holiness does the perception of the real world come. Having forgiven, I no longer see myself as guilty. I can accept the innocence that is the truth about me. Seen through understanding eyes the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself.
37) "My holiness blesses the world."
The perception of my holiness does not bless me alone. Everyone and everything I see in it's light shares in the joy it brings to me. There is nothing that is apart from this joy, because there is nothing that does not share my holiness. As I recognize my holiness, so does the holiness of the world shine forth for everyone to see.
38) "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."
My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save. What is there to be saved from except illusions? And what are all illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me. In the presence of my holiness, which I share with God Himself, all idols vanish.
39) "My holiness is my salvation."
Since my holiness saves me from all guilt, recognizing my holiness is recognizing my salvation. It is also recognizing the salvation of the world. Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid. And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world.
40) "I am blessed as a Son of God."
Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son.
Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven is inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?
The progress of the teacher of God may be slow or rapid, depending on whether he recognizes the Atonement's inclusiveness or for a time excludes some problem areas from it. In some cases, there is a sudden and complete awareness of the perfect applicability of the lesson of the Atonement to all situations. This, however, is comparatively rare. The teacher of God may have accepted the function God has given him long before he has learned all that his acceptance holds out to him. It is only the end that is certain. Anywhere along the way, the necessary realization of inclusiveness may reach him. If the way seems long, let him be content. He has decided on the direction he will take. What more is asked of him? And having done what was required, would God withhold the rest?
That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood, if the teacher of God is to make progress. The idea that a body can be sick is a central concept in the ego's thought system. This thought gives the body autonomy, separates it from the mind, and keeps the idea of attack inviolate. If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible. A body that can order a mind to do as it sees fit could merely take the place of God and prove salvation is impossible. What then is left to heal? The body has become lord of the mind. How could the mind be returned to the Holy Spirit unless the body is killed? And who would want salvation at such a price?
Certainly sickness does not appear to be a decision. Nor would anyone actually believe he wants to be sick. Perhaps he can accept the idea in theory, but it is rarely if ever consistently applied to all specific forms of sickness, both in the individual's perception of himself and of all others as well. Nor is it at this level that the teacher of God calls forth the miracle of healing. He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed.
When a teacher of God fails to heal, it is because he has forgotten Who he is. Another's sickness thus becomes his own. In allowing this to happen, he has identified with another's ego, and has thus confused him with a body. In so doing, he has refused to accept Atonement for himself, and can hardly offer it to his brother in Christ's Name. He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal. Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. Step back now, teacher of God. You have been wrong. Lead not the way, for you have lost it. Turn quickly to your Teacher, and let yourself be healed.
The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him. A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick. It is your function to recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple. Atonement is received and offered. Having been received, it must be accepted. It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies. All else must follow from this single purpose.
Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? This is insanity indeed. It is not up to God's teachers to set limits upon Him, because it is not up to them to judge His Son. And to judge His Son is to limit his Father. Both are equally meaningless. Yet this will not be understood until God's teacher recognizes that they are the same mistake. Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him. No longer does he stand apart from God, determining where healing should be given and where it should be withheld. Now can he say with God, "This is my beloved Son, created perfect and forever so."
It is your forgiveness that will bring the world of darkness to the light. It is your forgiveness that lets you recognize the light in which you see. Forgiveness is the demonstration that you are the light of the world. Through your forgiveness does the truth about yourself return to your memory. Therefore in your forgiveness lies your salvation.
Illusions about yourself and the world are one. That is why all forgiveness is a gift to yourself. Your goal is to find out who you are, having denied your identity by attacking creation and its Creator. Now you are learning how to remember the truth. For this, attack must be replaced by forgiveness, so that thoughts of life may replace thoughts of death.
Remember that in every attack you call upon your own weakness, while every time you forgive you call upon the strength of Christ in you. Do you not then begin to understand what forgiveness will do for you? It will remove all sense of weakness, strain and fatigue from your mind. It will take away all fear and guilt and pain. It will restore the invulnerability and power God gave His Son to your awareness.
Let us be glad to begin and end this day by practicing today's idea, and to use it as frequently as possible throughout the day. It will help to make the day as happy for you as God wants you to be. And it will help those around you, as well as those who seem to be far away in space and time, to share this happiness with you.
As often as you can, closing your eyes if possible, say to yourself:
"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.
I would fulfill my function that I may be happy."
Then devote a minute or two to considering your function, and the happiness and release it will bring you.
Let related thoughts come freely, for your heart will recognize these words, and in your mind is the awareness that they are true. Should your attention wander, repeat the idea and add:
"I would remember this because I want to be happy."
There is but one interpretation of ALL motivation that makes any sense, and, because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment, it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. EVERYTHING ELSE is an appeal for healing and help. That is what it IS, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can BE appropriate EXCEPT the willingness to give it TO him, for this and ONLY this is what he is ASKING for. Offer him anything ELSE, and YOU are assuming the right to attack his reality, by interpreting it AS YOU SEE FIT.
Perhaps the danger of this to your OWN mind is not yet fully apparent. But this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that an appeal for help is something ELSE, you will REACT to something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as IT is, but NOT to your perception OF it. This is poor reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing ALL calls for help as exactly what they are, EXCEPT YOUR OWN PERCEIVED NEED TO ATTACK. It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT unreal.
You would not do this except for your UNWILLINGNESS to perceive reality, WHICH YOU WITHHOLD FROM YOURSELF. It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No-one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth for him has become what he WANTS it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help AS WHAT IT IS, it is because YOU are unwilling to give help, AND RECEIVE IT. The analysis of the ego's "real" motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition. For in both, a brother's errors are "uncovered," and he is then attacked FOR HIS OWN GOOD. What can this be, BUT projection? For HIS errors lay in the minds of his INTERPRETERS, for which they punished HIM.
Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are REFUSING help. Would you maintain that you do not NEED it? Yet this IS what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal. For only by ANSWERING his appeal, can YOU be helped. Deny him YOUR help, and you will NOT perceive God's answer to YOU. The Holy Spirit does NOT need your help in interpreting motivation, but you DO need HIS. ONLY appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts, and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into YOUR awareness, IF YOU PERCEIVE THEM TRULY. And ALL your sense of strain comes from your attempts NOT to do just this.
How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of Reality, Who understands what it is. He does NOT change His mind about reality, because REALITY does not change. Although YOUR interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He GIVES them to you because they are FOR you.
Do not attempt to "help" a brother in YOUR way, for you cannot help YOURSELVES. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will recognize your OWN need for the Father. Your interpretations of your brother's need is your interpretation of YOURS. By giving help, you are ASKING FOR IT. And if you perceive but one need in yourself, you WILL be healed. For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be, and if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ, brings the remembrance of your Father closer to YOUR awareness. For the sake of YOUR need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer YOU.
By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that HIS criteria are equally applicable to YOU. For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear, and face it WITHOUT DISGUISE, as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.
Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others, and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that FEAR is an appeal for help. This is what RECOGNIZING it really means. If you do NOT PROTECT it, HE will re-interpret it. That is the ultimate value TO YOU in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If ONLY attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it IS, the REALITY of fear MUST dawn upon you. For fear IS a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.
To empathize does NOT mean to JOIN IN SUFFERING, for this is what you must REFUSE to understand. This is the EGO's interpretation of empathy, and is ALWAYS used to form a special relationship, in which SUFFERING is shared. The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.
The clearest proof that empathy, as the ego uses it, is DESTRUCTIVE, lies in the fact that it is applied ONLY to certain types of problems, and in certain people. These it SELECTS OUT and JOINS WITH. And it NEVER joins, except to strengthen itself. Having identified with what it THINKS it understands, it sees ITSELF, and would INCREASE itself by sharing what is LIKE itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always EMPATHIZES TO WEAKEN. And to weaken is ALWAYS to attack.
You do NOT know what empathizing means. But of this you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by, and let the Holy Spirit relate THROUGH you, you will EMPATHIZE WITH STRENGTH, and both of you will gain in strength, and NOT in weakness. Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything that YOU value to come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it, NOR TO HEAL IT in your own way. You do NOT know what healing IS. All you have learned of empathy IS FROM THE PAST. And there is NOTHING from the past that you would share, for there is nothing there that YOU WOULD KEEP.
Do NOT use empathy to MAKE THE PAST REAL, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let the healing be done FOR you. Keep but one thought in mind, and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge the situation, and DETERMINE your response BY judging it. Focus your mind only on this:
"I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except NOT TO INTERFERE."
If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. Therefore you must be at peace. Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution. Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation.
Your only problem has been solved! Repeat this over and over to yourself today, with gratitude and conviction. You have recognized your only problem, opening the way for the Holy Spirit to give you God's answer. You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. And you can recognize the answer because the problem has been identified.
You are entitled to peace today. A problem that has been resolved cannot trouble you. Only be certain you do not forget that all problems are the same. Their many forms will not deceive you while you remember this. One problem --one solution. Accept the peace this simple statement brings.
In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must be ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together. The problem must be gone because God's answer cannot fail. Having recognized one, you have recognized the other. The solution is inherent in the problem. You are answered and have accepted the answer. You are saved.
Now let the peace that your acceptance brings be given you. Close your eyes and receive your reward. Recognize that your problems have been solved. Recognize that you are out of conflict, free and at peace. Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work.
Assure yourselves often today that your problems have been solved. Repeat the idea with deep conviction as frequently as possible. And be particularly sure to remember to apply the idea for today to any specific problem that may arise. Say quickly:
"Let me recognize this problem has been solved."
Let us be determined not to collect grievances today. Let us be determined to be free of problems that do not exist. The means is simple honesty. Do not deceive yourself about what the problem is, and you must recognize it has been solved.
As all therapy is psychotherapy, so all illness is mental illness. It is a judgment on the Son of God, and judgment is a mental activity. Judgment is a decision, made again and again, against creation and its Creator. It is a decision to perceive the universe as you would have created it. It is a decision that truth can lie and must be lies. What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? And who could weep but for his innocence?
Once God's Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. It has been asked for and will be received. And all who ask for illness have now condemned themselves to seek for remedies that cannot help, because their faith is in the illness and not in salvation. There can be nothing that a change of mind cannot effect, for all external things are only shadows of a decision already made. Change the decision, and how can its shadow be unchanged? Illness can be but guilt's shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?
The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. Sickness and death and misery now stalk the earth in unrelenting waves, sometimes together and sometimes in grim succession. Yet all these things, however real they seem, are but illusions. Who could have faith in them once this is realized? And who could not have faith in them until he realizes this? Healing is therapy or correction, and we have said already and will say again, all therapy is psychotherapy. To heal the sick is but to bring this realization to them.
The word "cure" has come into disrepute among the more "respectable" therapists of the world, and justly so. For not one of them can cure, and not one of them understands healing. At worst, they but make the body real in their own minds, and having done so, seek for magic by which to heal the ills with which their minds endow it. How could such a process cure? It is ridiculous from start to finish. Yet having started, it must finish thus. It is as if God were the devil and must be found in evil. How could love be there? And how could sickness cure? Are not these both one question?
At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the "healers" of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself. This has some merit in a world where "degrees of error" is a meaningful concept. Yet must their cures remain temporary, or another illness rise instead, for death has not been overcome until the meaning of love is understood. And who can understand this without the Word of God, given by Him to the Holy Spirit as His gift to you?
Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. Yet if such were really the self, defense would be impossible. Therefore, the defenses sought for must be magical. They must overcome all limits perceived in the self, at the same time making a new self-concept into which they cannot return. In a word, error is accepted as real and dealt with by illusions. Truth being brought to illusions, reality now becomes a threat and is perceived as evil. Love becomes feared because reality is love. Thus is the circle closed against the "inroads" of salvation.
Illness is therefore a mistake and needs correction. And as we have already emphasized before, correction cannot be achieved by first establishing the "rightness" of the mistake and then overlooking it. If illness is real it cannot be overlooked in truth, for to overlook reality is insanity. Yet that is magic's purpose; to make illusions true through false perception. This cannot heal, for it opposes truth. Perhaps an illusion of health is substituted for a little while, but not for long. Fear cannot long be hidden by illusions, for it is part of them. It will escape and take another form, being the source of all illusions.
Sickness is insanity because all sickness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees. One of the illusions by which sickness is perceived as real is the belief that illness varies in intensity; that the degree of threat differs according to the form it takes. Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane.
A madman will defend his own illusions because in them he sees his own salvation. Thus, he will attack the one who tries to save him from them, believing that he is attacking him. This curious circle of attack-defense is one of the most difficult problems with which the psychotherapist must deal. In fact, this is his central task; the core of psychotherapy. The therapist is seen as one who is attacking the patient's most cherished possession; his picture of himself. And since this picture has become the patient's security as he perceives it, the therapist cannot but be seen as a real source of danger, to be attacked and even killed.
The psychotherapist, then, has a tremendous responsibility. He must meet attack without attack, and therefore without defense. It is his task to demonstrate that defenses are not necessary, and that defenselessness is strength. This must be his teaching, if his lesson is to be that sanity is safe. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the insane believe that sanity is threat. This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. But neither is it safe. And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal.
Salvation's single doctrine is the goal of all therapy. Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily, and healing is accomplished. The body is not cured. It is merely recognized as what it is. Seen rightly, its purpose can be understood. What is the need for sickness then? Given this single shift, all else will follow. There is no need for complicated change. There is no need for long analyses and wearying discussions and pursuits. The truth is simple, being one for all.