What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting OFF and separating FROM? A gap perceived BETWEEN ourselves and what is seen as health? The good is seen OUTSIDE; the evil, IN. And thus is sickness separating OFF the self from good, and KEEPING evil there. God is the ALTERNATE to dreams of fear. Who shares in them can NEVER share in Him. But who WITHDRAWS his mind from sharing them IS sharing Him. There IS no other choice. Except you share it, NOTHING can exist, and YOU exist because God shared His Will with you, that His creation might create.
It is the SHARING of the evil dreams, of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering, of pain and loss, that makes them real. UNSHARED they are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone from them BECAUSE YOU DID NOT GIVE THEM YOUR SUPPORT. Where fear has gone, there love MUST come, because there ARE but these alternatives. Where one appears, the other DISappears. And which you SHARE becomes the only one you HAVE. You HAVE the one which you accept, because it is the only one you WANT. You share NO evil dreams, if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is NOT the dream he made. And so he CANNOT be a part of YOURS, from which you BOTH are free. Forgiveness SEPARATES the dreamer from the evil dream, and thus releases him.
Remember if you SHARE an evil dream, you will believe you ARE the dream you share. And, fearing it, you will not WANT to know your own identity, because you think that IT is fearful. And you WILL deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a "something" you are not. You WILL make war upon your Self, Which SEEMS to be your enemy, and WILL attack your brother, as a part of what you hate. There is no compromise. You are your Self, or an illusion. What CAN be between illusion and the truth? A middle ground, where you can be a thing that is NOT you, MUST be a dream, and CANNOT be the truth.
You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be the place where all your safety lies, and where your Self is safely hidden by what you have made. Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears, the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing IS; what listening is FOR. It is as little able to perceive as it can judge, or understand, or know. Its eyes are blind, its ears are deaf. It can NOT think, and so it cannot HAVE effects.
What is there God created can be sick? And what that He created not can BE? Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sounds. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and UNDERSTOOD. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not THEY that hear and see, but YOU, who PUT TOGETHER every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and MAKE a witness to the world you want.
Let not the body's ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that YOU imagined, and let THEM persuade their maker his imaginings were real. Creation proves reality because it SHARES the function ALL creation shares. It is not made of little bits of glass, a piece of wood, a thread or two perhaps, and put together to ATTEST its truth. Reality does not depend on THIS. There IS no gap which separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. Truth has left no room for them in ANY place or time. For It fills every place and every time, and makes them wholly indivisible.
You who believe there is a little gap between you do not understand that it is HERE that you are kept as prisoners in a world perceived to be EXISTING here. The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING. And there ARE no awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of recognizing love.
Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergences and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the heart of God and also of His Son.
Love's meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. He does not see that changing love must be impossible. And thus he thinks that he can love at times and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it. If it could make such distinctions it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.
Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God's, and all of love is His. There is no principle which rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same.
No course whose purpose is to teach you what you really are could fail to emphasize there is no difference in what you are and what love is. Love's meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.
No laws the world obeys can help you grasp love's meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love's meaning and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well. Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear its Voice.
Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes which you think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single step this course requests in your advance toward its established goal. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release.
Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this. For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world which seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meagre offerings and senseless gifts, and let the Gift of God replace them all.
Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this. And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love's meaning to your clean and open mind. And He will bless the lesson with His Love.
Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, never more to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future shines unlike the past in every attribute.
The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in strength and health to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love.
We will remember them throughout the day because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love, if we would know our Self. At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:
"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God
Which I would share with you. For I would learn
The joyous lesson that there is no love
But God's and yours and mine and everyone's."
The gap between you is NOT one of space between two separate bodies. This but SEEMS to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the SYMBOL of a promise, made to meet when you prefer, and separate until you both elect to meet again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and signify a meeting place to join. But always is it possible to go your separate ways. Conditional upon the right to separate will you agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. THE BODY SAVES YOU, for it gets away from total "sacrifice," and gives you time in which to build again your separate selves, which you believe DIMINISH as you meet.
The body COULD not separate your minds, unless you WANTED it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you. Thus do you ENDOW it with a power that lies NOT within itself. And herein lies its power over you. For now you think that IT determines when you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with each other's mind. And now it TELLS you where to go, and how to go there; what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you CANNOT do. It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. And its "inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what YOU would do, and keep your PURPOSE limited and weak.
The body WILL accommodate to this, if you would have it so. It WILL allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred in between. And it WILL take command of when to "love," and when to shrink more safely into fear. It will be sick BECAUSE you do not know what loving means. And so you MUST misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose NOT their own. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear DEMANDS the sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained love MUST be feared, and only SOMETIMES present; SOMETIMES gone.
Thus is love seen as treacherous, because IT seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. You do NOT see how limited and weak is YOUR allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that it go away, and leave you quietly alone in "peace." The body, innocent of ANY goal, is your excuse for variable goals YOU hold, and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength OR weakness. Would you recognize that NOTHING stands between you? Would you know there IS no gap behind which you can hide?
There IS a shock that comes to those who learn their Savior is their enemy no more. There IS a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there ARE overtones of seeming fear around the happy message "God is Love." Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing MORE than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? Would you ALLOW the body to say "No" to Heaven's calling, were you not afraid to find a LOSS of self in finding God? And CAN your Self be lost by being found?
This section is inserted here because it deals with a more fundamental misuse of knowledge, referred to in the Bible as the cause of the Fall (or Separation). There are several introductory remarks which are intended to make these explanations less fear-provoking. The first is a couplet which I drew to your attention during the fragments of Midsummer Night's Dream, which you heard last night:
"Be as thou wast wont to be
See as thou wast wont to see."
It is noteworthy that these words were said by Oberon in releasing Titania from her own errors, both of being and perceiving. These were the words which re-established her true identity as well as her true abilities and judgment. The similarity here is obvious.
There are also some definitions, which I asked you to take from the dictionary, which will also be helpful. Their somewhat unusual nature is due to the fact that they are not first definitions in their chronological appearance. Nevertheless, the fact that each of them does appear in the dictionary should be reassuring.
Project (verb): to extend forward or out.
Project (noun): a plan in the mind
World: a natural grand division. (Note that you originally wrote "word" instead of "world.")
We will refer later to projection as related to both mental illness and mental health. It will also be commented on that Lucifer literally projected himself from heaven. We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection.
The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one. There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended. Projection, as defined above, (this refers to the verb) is a fundamental attribute of God, which he also gave to his Son. In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create. We have commented before on the FUNDAMENTAL error involved in confusing what has been created with what is being created. We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him. The next point, too, has already been made, but bears repetition here. The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS.
Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:
First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.
Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.
Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him.
These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now. The world, as defined above, WAS made as a natural grand division, or projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him.
It should be noted that the opposite of pro is con. Strictly speaking, then, the opposite of projecting is conjecting, a term which referred to a state of uncertainty or guess work. Other errors arise in connection with ancillary defenses, to be considered later. For example, dejection, which is obviously associated with depression, injection, which can be misinterpreted readily enough, in terms of possession fallacies (particularly penetration), and rejection, which is clearly associated with denial. It should be noted also that rejection can be used as refusing, a term which necessarily involves a perception of what is refused as something unworthy.
Projection as undertaken by God was very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father.
The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order.
When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception.
Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam." While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor.
The history of man in the world as he saw it has not been characterized by any genuine or comprehensive re-awakening, or re-birth. This is impossible as long as man projects in the spirit of miscreation. It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect.
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception of man's ability to USURP the power of God. It is again emphasized that he neither CAN nor HAS been able to do this. In this statement lies the real justification for his escape from fear. This is brought about by his acceptance of the Atonement, which places him in a position to realize that his own errors never really occurred.
When the deep sleep fell upon Adam, he was then in a condition to experience nightmares, precisely because he was sleeping. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming, and the content of his dream is fearful, he is initially likely to interpret the light itself as part of the content of his own dream. However, as soon as he awakens, the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream, which is no longer accorded reality. I would like to conclude this with the Biblical injunction "Go ye and do likewise." It is quite apparent that this depends on the kind of knowledge which was NOT referred to by the "Tree of Knowledge" which bore lies as fruit. The knowledge that illuminates rather than obscures is the knowledge which not only makes you free, but also shows you clearly that you ARE free.
Lead in for p. 61 (after insert)
The preceding sections were inserted because of the necessity of distinguishing between real and false knowledge. Having made this distinction, it is well to return to the errors already listed a while back. It might be well to recapitulate them here. The first involved the fallacy that only the physical is real. The second involved things rather than people. The third involves the endowment of the physical with non-physical properties. And the fourth clarified the misuse of knowledge. All of them were subsumed under possession fallacies. The denial mechanism for three has already been set forth in some detail, and will also continue after the following:
(Retyped)
The corresponding denial mechanism for 1) is the sense of PHYSICAL inability, or IMPOTENCE. The denial mechanism for 2) is often bankruptcy. Collectors of things often drive themselves well beyond their financial means, in an attempt to force discontinuance. If this idea of cessation cannot be tolerated, a strange compromise involving BOTH insatiable possessiveness and insatiable throwing-away (bankruptcy) may result. An example is the inveterate or compulsive gambler, particularly the horse-racing addict. Here, the conflicted drive is displaced both from people AND things, and is invested in animals. The implied DEROGATION of people is the cause of the underlying EXTREME superstition of the horse racing addict.
The alcoholic is in a similar position, except that his hostility is more inward than outward directed.
Defenses aimed at protecting (or retaining) error are particularly hard to undo, because they introduce second-order misperceptions which obscure the underlying errors still further.
The pseudo-corrective mechanism of three is apt to be more varied because of the more inclusive nature of the error, which has already been mentioned. Some of the possibilities are listed below:
One aspect of the possession/possessed conflict can be raised to predominance. If this is attempted in connection with POSSESSING, it leads to the paranoid solution. The underlying component of "being possessed" is retained in the "persecution" fantasies, which are generally concomitants.
If "being possessed" is brought to ascendance, a state of some sort of possession by external forces results, but NOT with a major emphasis on attacking others. Attack BY others becomes the more obvious component. In the more virulent forms, there is a sense of being possessed by demons, and unless there is vacillation with a), a catatonic solution is more likely than a paranoid one.
The FOCUSED paranoid has become more rigid in his solution, and centers on ONE source of projection to escape from vacillation. (Aside: It should be noted that this type of paranoia is an upside down form of religion, because of its obvious attempt to unify into oneness.)
Both 1, 2, and 4 are more likely to produce neurotic rather than psychotic states, though this is by no means guaranteed. However, 3 is inherently more vulnerable to the psychotic correction, again because of the more fundamental level confusion which is involved.
It should be noted, however, that the greater fear which is induced by 3 can ITSELF reach psychotic proportions, thus forcing the individual closer and closer to a psychotic solution.
It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles.
The emphasis on mental illness which is marked in these notes reflects the "UNDOING" aspect of the miracle. The "DOING" aspect is, of course, much more important. But a true miracle cannot occur on a false basis. Sometimes the undoing must precede it.
At other times, both can occur simultaneously, but you are not up to this at the moment.
Further, insights into mental illness can be misused, and lead to preoccupation with one's own symptoms. This is why this area is less constructive for most people than a course primarily devoted to mental health. However, some professions will find (some?) principles of mental illness constructive, especially those which are concerned with mental illness in others. This obviously includes psychologists.
The obvious correction for ALL types of the possession-fallacy is to redefine possession correctly. In the sense of "taking over," the concept does not exist at all in divine reality, which is the only level of reality where real existence is a meaningful term.
No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment. Even in very mild forms, this kind of association is risky, and may spread quite unexpectedly, particularly under external stress. This is because it can be internally controlled ONLY if EXTERNAL conditions are peaceful. This is not safe, because external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet.
Why should you be at THEIR mercy? This issue is VERY closely related to the whole possession issue. You insist on thinking that people CAN possess you, if you believe that their thoughts (or the external environment) can affect you, regardless of WHAT they think. You are perfectly unaffected by ALL expressions of lack of love. These can be either from yourself and others, or from yourself to others, or from others to you. (I'm glad you passed that test. It was crucial. This is ref. to Helen Schucman reluctance to take dictations as given.)
Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others.
Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing's place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God.
False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a "nicer" one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be apt to strike again. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer IS answered. Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.
This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again.
We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.
This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.
This is not death according to the world, for death is cruel in its frightened eyes and takes the form of punishment for sin. How could it be a blessing, then, and how could it be welcome when it must be feared? What healing has occurred in such a view of what is merely opening the gate to higher prayer and kindly justice done? Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive. There is no partial healing. What but shifts illusions has done nothing. What is false cannot be partly true. If you are healed your healing is complete. Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive.
False healing rests upon the body's cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God's substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. At last the gate of Heaven opens and God's Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him.
Why would you not perceive it as RELEASE from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not ACCLAIM the truth, instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an EASY path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way seem thorny, rough, and far too difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell, instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or ANY loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give up NOTHING; until you understand there IS no loss; you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will NOT see the many gains your choice has offered you.
Yet, though you do not see them, they are there. Their CAUSE has been effected, and they MUST be present were their cause has entered in. You have accepted healing's Cause, and so it MUST be you are healed. And, being healed, the power to heal must ALSO now be yours. The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause, nor is it, in itself, a cause. But where its Cause is MUST it be. Now IS it caused, though not as yet perceived. And its effects are THERE, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace.
It HAS been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. It HAS been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of RETAINING sin and pain. For pain and sin are ONE illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. Where they are causeless, their effects ARE gone, and love MUST come wherever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You ARE free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, and ALL effects of hatred and attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should WELCOME the effects of love.
Your Guest HAS come. You asked Him and He came. You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them, and take them for your own. He NEEDS your help in giving them to all who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. They WILL be healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid.
You do not see how much you now can GIVE, because of everything you have received. Yet He Who entered in but waits for YOU to come where you invited HIM to be. There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings can be obtained. For they are where He is that brought them with Him, that they might be yours. You can not see your Guest, but you CAN see the gifts He brought. And when you LOOK on them, you will believe His Presence MUST be there. For what you now can do could not BE done without the love and grace His Presence holds.
Such is the promise of the living God; His Son have life, and every living thing is part of him, and nothing else has life. What YOU have "given" life is NOT alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive APART from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. Confusion follows on confusion here, for ON confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its basis does not change, although it SEEMS to be in constant change. But what is that except the state confusion really MEANS? Stability to those who are confused is meaningless. And shift and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.
The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is POSSIBLE. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. The body can APPEAR to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. And this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the PURPOSE of the body is.
Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be MORE than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that God be LESS than all He really is. What, then, becomes of YOU, for it IS you of whom the sacrifice is asked? For He is told that part of him BELONGS to Him no longer. He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are YOU made more, and He is lessened by the loss of you. And what is GONE from Him becomes your god, PROTECTING you from being part of Him.
The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it CAN fail to be what you demanded it to be. And you WILL hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not MORE than it should be, but ONLY in YOUR failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee.
As something, is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be the sum of everything, then what is NOT in Him does not exist. And His completion IS its nothingness. Your Savior is NOT dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him Savior unto YOU, and ONLY this. His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more NOR less than what is his.
Accepting the Atonement for yourself means NOT to give support to someone's dream of sickness and of death. It means that you share NOT his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned instead on YOU. Thus have they NO effects. And YOU are free of dreams of pain because you let HIM be. UNLESS you help him, YOU will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. And you become a figure in HIS dream of pain, as he in YOURS. So do you BOTH become illusions, and without identity. You could be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil dream you share. You can be sure of just ONE thing; that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear.
There is a way of finding certainty RIGHT HERE AND NOW. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams, WHATEVER form they take. For you will lose identity in them. You FIND yourself by NOT accepting them as causing you, and GIVING you effects. You stand apart from them, but NOT apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join with ONE, but let the OTHER go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the MIND you WOULD unite, but NEVER with the dream. It is the DREAM you fear, and NOT the mind. You see them as the same, because you think that YOU are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion IN YOURSELF you do not know and cannot tell apart.
Like you, your brother thinks HE is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself. For YOUR identity depends on his reality. Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. He is not brother made by what he DREAMS, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your brother, as is yours to him. 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.
Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and NOT on dreams of fear. Let him acknowledge who he IS, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in YOURS. With faith in yours, HE will not be released, and YOU are kept in bondage to his dreams. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have SUPPORTED in each other's minds. Be certain, if you do YOUR part, he will do his, for he will JOIN you where YOU stand. Call not to him to meet you in the gap BETWEEN you, or you MUST believe that it is YOUR reality, as well as his. You CANNOT do his part, but this you DO when you become a passive figure in his dream INSTEAD of dreamer of your own.
Identity in dreams is meaningless BECAUSE the dreamer and the dream are one. Who shares a dream must BE the dream he shares, because, BY sharing, is a cause produced. You share confusion, and you ARE confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. What is the same seems different, because what IS the same appears to be unlike. His dreams are yours, because you LET them be. But, if you took your OWN away, would he be free of them, and of his own as well. Your dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. But if you see there IS no truth in yours, his dreams will disappear before his eyes, and he will understand what MADE the dream.
The Holy Spirit is in BOTH your minds, and He IS One, because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is ALWAYS one. No-one is sick, if someone ELSE accepts his union WITH him. His desire to be a sick and separated mind can NOT remain without a witness or a cause. And both ARE gone, if someone wills to be united with him. He has dreamed that he was separated from his brother, who, by sharing NOT his dream, has left the space between them vacant. And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.
The Holy Spirit's Function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture IN ITSELF. To each he offers his identity, which the WHOLE picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit, which he insisted was himself. And when he sees THIS picture, he will RECOGNIZE himself. If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.
I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS.
Who seeks for substitutes, when he perceives HE HAS LOST NOTHING? Who would WANT to have the "benefits" of sickness, when he has received the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot BE a loss, and what is not of Him has NO effects. What, then, would you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is JOY in separation, and its giving up WOULD BE A SACRIFICE. But miracles are the result, when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your willingness to LET illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. And there will be NO loss, but ONLY gain.
Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body. You do not have to ATTACK physically to accept this interpretation; you ARE accepting it simply by the belief that attack can GET YOU SOMETHING YOU WANT. If you did NOT believe this, the IDEA of attack would have no appeal to you.
When you equate yourself with a body, you will ALWAYS experience depression. When a Child of God thinks of himself in this way, he is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself ONLY in them, he has cut himself off from salvation. Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body ONLY as a means of communication. Being the communication link between God and His separated Sons, He interprets everything YOU have in the light of what HE is.
The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS.
This is God's way of making unlimited what YOU have limited. His Voice does not see the body as YOU do, because He knows the ONLY reality that ANYTHING can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function HE has given. Communication ENDS separation. Attack PROMOTES it. The body is ugly or beautiful, savage or holy, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see the use to which you put YOURS.
If the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of the union of the Sonship, you will not see ANYTHING physical except as WHAT IT IS. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly. MISuse it and you WILL misunderstand it, because you have already done so BY misusing it. Interpret ANYTHING apart from the Holy Spirit, and you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack and LOSS OF PEACE.
But ALL loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of ANY kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, HIS power and glory are lost to you and SO ARE YOURS. You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your OWN salvation, which MUST bring him his. Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS. As part of YOU, HE is holy. As part of ME, YOU are. To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of YOU.
Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing. You are not OF yourselves. And He of Whom you ARE has willed your power and glory FOR you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you so will it yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from YOU, but YOU have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name's sake, because His Name is YOURS.
Remember that the Bible says, "The word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly speaking, this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely SEEM to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be MADE into flesh except by belief, because thought is NOT physical. But thought IS communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only NATURAL use to which it can be put. To use the body UNnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.
There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to place him in a curriculum which he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he MUST become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately WHY the world is depressing. The Holy Spirit's curriculum is NEVER depressing because it is a curriculum in joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.
In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it IS. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is NOT. It becomes ONLY a means by which the part of the mind which you have separated from your Soul can reach beyond its distortions and RETURN to the Soul. The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense the body DOES become a temple to God, because His Voice abides in it by directing the use TO WHICH YOU PUT IT.
Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. ALL mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind CANNOT be made physical, but it CAN be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching OUT, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not STOP at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.
The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else.
To use a medium of communication as a medium of ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE PURPOSE. This releases the mind from the temptation to see it in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One Light in which it can be really understood at all.
To confuse a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be meaningfully arrested at its own aids, and hope to understand them OR its real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. 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.
The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression INSTEAD of joy, you CANNOT be listening to God's joyous teacher, and you MUST be learning amiss. To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind's purpose IS one.
Attack can only be an assumed goal of the body, but the body APART from the mind HAS NO PURPOSE AT ALL. You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made flesh. But mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing this limit ON YOURSELF. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape FROM limitations?
To conceive of the body as a means of attack of any kind, and to entertain even the possibility that joy could POSSIBLY result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum, and is interfering with his ability to accept it AS HIS OWN.
Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is ONLY God's. When yours is unified, it IS His. Interfere with His purpose, and YOU NEED SALVATION. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more are any of the RESULTS of your condemnation. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have condemned yourself. But if ALL condemnation is unreal, and it MUST be unreal because it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE no results.
Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness OF its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them. THERE IS NO ATTACK, but there IS unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is EXTENSION. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to Creation in God.
We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to be salvation. Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself. You are not bound by them. Yet to understand that this is so, you must first realize salvation lies not there. While you would seek for it in things that have no meaning, you bind yourself to laws that make no sense.
Thus do you seek to prove salvation is where it is not. Today we will be glad you cannot prove it. For if you could, you would forever seek where it is not and never find it. The idea for today tells you once again how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else.
Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.
It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics, and of health. Protect the body and you will be saved. These are not laws, but madness.
The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your "laws" would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body.
There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, - over and over until you realize that it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to His Will. Your magic has no meaning. What it is meant to save does not exist. Only what it is meant to hide will save you.
The laws of God can never be replaced. We will devote today to rejoicing that this is so. It is no longer a truth which we would hide. We realize instead it is a truth which keeps us free forever. Magic imprisons, but the laws of God set free. The light has come because there are no laws but His.
We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would include, for example, the laws of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the body's protection in innumerable ways. Think further; you believe in laws of friendship, of "good" relationships and reciprocity.
Perhaps you even think that there are laws which set forth what is God's and what is yours. Many "religions" have been based on this. They would not save, but damn in Heaven's name. Yet they are no more strange than other "laws" you hold must be obeyed to make you safe.
There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you. You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made, there are no substitutes, and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws forever give and never take.
Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the laws you thought upheld the world you thought you saw. Then listen further. He will tell you more. About the love your Father has for you. About the endless joy He offers you. About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for creation; denied to Him by his belief in hell.
Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him. Thus is creation endlessly increased. His Voice will speak of this to us, as well as of the joys of Heaven which His laws keep limitless forever. We will now repeat today's idea until we have listened and understood there are no laws but God's. Then we will tell ourselves, as a dedication with which the practice period concludes:
"I am under no laws but God's."
We will repeat this dedication as often as possible today; at least four or five times an hour, as well as in response to any temptation to experience ourselves as subject to other laws throughout the day. It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved.
No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach which carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.
Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self deception. And like all the rest its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.
Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.
Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by your self.
It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your "reality" which makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. Mistake this not for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do.
Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and as wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.
Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when, for an instant, truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth.
You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.
Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than Everlasting Life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.
Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slaves to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?
God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.
Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts, and yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.
It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion. For it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.
Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where it has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.
This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free. And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness, and let the truth be as it has always been:
"Sickness is a defense against the truth.
I will accept the truth of what I am,
And let my mind be wholly healed today."
Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.
Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this; the body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains, and nothing more.
Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.
Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:
"I have forgotten what I really am,
For I mistook my body for myself.
Sickness is a defense against the truth,
But I am not a body. And my mind
Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."