"I will exist forever" is the antidote to fear.
If you question the fact that you have eternal life, and start to believe that you might come to an "end", that will induce fear. It's always the fear that your existence is under threat somehow.
All fears that seem to be caused by the world, such as someone threatening, or bad weather, or people driving badly, or threats of wars or whatever, it's all just more forms of the same idea. The idea that you might not be immortal and might not always exist, and that these things might have the power to end your life.
At first it might seem like fear is the effect or result of a belief that there is a power or cause outside of yourself threatening you. But actually it's a bit more subtle. It's not just a matter of them threatening you, because that could go one of two ways - you could go into fear or into laughter depending on whether you buy into it.
So it's not the fact that there are "threats" or "dangers" or whatever, it's a question of whether you yourself believe that you CAN BE in danger or BE threatened. And that always comes down to your personal responsibility of choosing whether to undermine your invulnerability or not.
The fact is that God gave you eternal life in your creation and you will never ever stop existing. This is a simple fact. It brings with it a sense of continuation, of extension. And that extension is love. And this is why love is the opposite of fear, and why love makes you feel safe.
If you will extend (love) forever then you are obviously safe because your extension has no end. If you withhold love you are holding back on your extension, thus holding back on the extension of your existence, which brings into question whether you will keep existing or not, which induces a feeling of fear or the believe that love is coming to an end.
Essentially this means that if you do not love, you will feel afraid, because you will feel like you're going to stop existing. And when you love, you will feel like you are invulnerable and will live forever. That's how it works. Extend love and you live forever. Stop extending love and you end your life, in fear, producing sickness and death.
Your never-ending existence is experienced as the extension of love. Ideas of endings are experienced as fear and death.
"Nothing real can be threatened."
"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."
"You are immortal and you cannot die".
"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."
There is no questioning the truth. There is only One truth and it's God's truth. Opinions are irrelevant.
The truth is factual. It is reality. To question it is to be in denial and confused.
Either you accept the truth or you deny it and pretend that something else is true.
This is the inescapable 'is-ness' of God.
When we're learning to awaken to the truth, we're sifting through our belief that something untrue is true, and are becoming clearer that only God's truth its true.
In accepting that God's truth is true, you are realigning your will with God's will. And that means that what you say will be truth-filled. But it won't be that you're speaking the truth due to being special, or highly intelligent, or having an intellectual grasp.
As the truth is communicated through you and as you make it yours, you are sharing it with God.
You will express it just as though you were a messenger of God, come to deliver and extend His being to others. Like a news reporter who faithfully just tells you what has really happened. You are a medium for communication, an open channel through which truth can be extended and shared.
As such the truth is not information that you acquire on your own, or an accumulation of personal knowledge or skills or abilities. It is not your opinion. The truth is already established permanently and either you choose to accept what it says or you stay in denial.
When you accept what it says, you share in it and join with it. And then you express from it. And it will sound like it's "you" saying some high-level truthful stuff, that you are somehow advanced, but it's really got nothing to do with you. It doesn't reflect on any kind of personal ego advancement or spiritual prowess. There is nothing special about it. It's not your's in isolation.
You share the truth with God, it is His and He is sharing it with you. You then are of service to it and share it with others, but not because you're well learned or special. Just because you've let go of being a special teacher and have become solely a Teacher of God.
Being a Teacher of God means you are teaching God's truth, by God's will, in the way God intended it. It has nothing to do with you developing your own personal special truth or platform or heroic standing or fame or even necessarily any kind of popularity.
To be a Teacher of God is to be sane, to extend the Kingdom, to communicate correctly with Holy Spirit, and to express unconditional love.
The ego produced the idea that when you cause something, it produces an effect, but the effect itself is not CAPABLE of causing something in turn.
This shows up in the relationship between mind and matter or mind and body. The body seems to be an "end result" but of itself it cannot create anything. The ego made the illusion that it can create children but really it is a dead end.
This is because the ego "separated" cause and effect, meaning that mind seemed to become cause and matter became effect, so that mind would seem to STOP being able to CREATE something that in turn can create.
When you think about your self in heaven, you are an effect of God. But in God's world cause and effect are not split apart like this, and an "effect" is NOT a dead end. When God creates something, he give it ALL of his own ability to create, and therefore it ALSO becomes a CAUSE.
You are an effect of God, which means you are still as God created you, but it DOES NOT MEAN that you therefore have to be whatever God forces you to be. You are not like the "body of God" or some kind of projection of Him that cannot think for itself or has no will of its own.
This is a very important point because in terms of the ego's thinking, if you are just an EFFECT, then you cannot CAUSE anything, and that basically means God created death, or created an end to extension.
You are created TO EXTEND, to CO-CREATE, and to CAUSE CREATION. You are an effect of God but you are ALSO FREE to cause of your own free will. If you were not given the freedom to be a cause, you could not be like God or in his likeness, and you would not be able to create like Him.
So God has created you, you are the effect of Him, but you are also a cause. God causes causes. God creates creators. And because you ARE a creator and you can create, you MUST HAVE freedom to WILL freely. Your independent free will was given you BECAUSE IT WAS NECESSARY in order to grant you the ability to create freely.
By God having created creators who can create creators, and IF those creations freely willingly choose to extend or "will like God's will", then creation extends endlessly as a continuous outflowing of creativity. When a creation of God freely chooses to dream and to pretend to oppose God's "intention" and tries to block their own free will, his "communication channels" are blocked and God thus recognizes his son is "sleeping" and creates the Holy Spirit to help him to FREELY CHOOSE whether/when to wake up.
"It should especially be noted that God has only one son, yet ALL HIS CREATIONS ARE HIS SONS, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts (T-2.VII.6:1-3)."
Although it leads by saying God has one son. It follows by telling us that God has MANY creations. And that therefore, it logically follows, that ALL of those creations must be PART OF the one son. ... that ALL of God's creations have the same characteristics, being made in HIS LIKENESS. They all share the same holiness, the same innocence, the same mentality, the same love. Yet there are many.
And because they are SO ALIKE AS TO BE IDENTICAL, yet still MANY... all of them together are "the sonship", and because oneness transcends separation the sonship as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. God + sons + angels + heaven + whatever else is all one big oneness, yet still SOMEHOW has multiple parts to it.
"WE are creation; WE the SONS OF GOD. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For love remains with all its Thoughts, its sureness being theirs. God's memory is in OUR (many) HOLY MINDS, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator (W-pII.11.4:1-5)."
CLEARLY... "oneness" does not mean "just one by counting". We do not understand oneness. Oneness means SHARING AND EXTENSION. Oneness must be shared, it must extend, it must CREATE. This is how even "the one son of God" was created in the first place, because truly if there was ONLY ONE ONENESS, there would ONLY BE GOD, and there WOULD NOT BE A SON!
Oneness creates by extension of itself, and must extend in order to exist. Therefore, it HAS to create a son, and the son has his own creations, and God HAS to create many sons. Yet they are one.
When our EGO tries to understand how this is possible it becomes confused and it makes no sense, because THE EGO CANNOT UNDERSTAND GOD. It is simply something we have to accep is true, and TRUST that because Jesus has shared this information, IT MUST BE TRUE.
There are many sons of God, there are many minds that God created, ALL of them together is "the son ship" or what, TO GOD, is experienced as "ONE SON".... referring to the grand inclusive "experiences them all at once" kind of experience, knowing their equality and sameness, as though they are all identical, AND YET... He has created MANY BY NUMBER, somehow. In a way that we cannot possibly understand or get our head around, because numbers imply separation and bla bla bla bla bla.... NEVER will get this. It has to just be accepted as true, trusting that Jesus is telling us the truth.
"***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.***" (and nothing else).
"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."
The "world" God created, is a synonym for Heaven, which is a synonym for Creation or Sonship or Kingdom. As in the statement above, what God created is "man" (a synonym for souls/spirits) - the Sonship of souls. The Sons of God. These are all inside or are the Kingdom of Heaven. That is God's world. There is nothing else to it.
Notice also that it states NO LEVEL INVOLVEMENT, meaning no "level 2", no "dream", no "earth", nothing except ONE level of reality. All ASPECTS (parts of God, sons) are of the same order (same order of reality).
"The Kingdom of God contains all his Children and their creations."
The Holy Spirit is also technically a Child of God since God created Him.
The Kingdom of God DOES NOT contain ANYTHING ELSE.
And.... guess what folks. THAT'S ALL HE CREATED.
So in simple terms, God created the sonship, and then extends his creation through the sonship. He adds the Holy Spirit. AND THAT IS ALL.
Nowhere in this equation is God in the business of creating planets and galaxies. Nowhere does he get into making bodies or food or animals or television.
If you understand this, it is very simple and obvious.
ONLY THE HOLY TRINITY EXISTS.
This is what is means by "Only the creations of light are real". The creations of light are the Holy Spirit, the Sonship and the Sonship's extended creations (children of your will - living beings). The living world of light. That is all that exists.
God, the Sonship (and their creations), and the Holy Spirit.
That's all. And these creations (Sonship and HS) are perfect EXTENSIONS of God's nature. They are not bodies. They are not planets. They are not fish or ice-creams or digestive tracts or poop.
God only creates spirit beings.
Period.
"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."
Extension means... it transfers ONLY what was in the source, extending it outward, reproducing it perfectly. Nowhere in extension is anything happening that was not ALREADY God's nature. God is not a donut. God is not a hamster. God is not the Eiffel Tower. God can only extend absolute perfection of Spirit.
I'd like to try to explain from my point of view what a miracle is. However, I have to acknowledge that there are still some aspects of miracles I do not understand. So this is a work in progress. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Firstly, there are two levels. A higher level and a lower level. Think of each level as a realm of existence. The higher level is where God hangs out. In-between them is the idea of separation, and then below is where the ego hangs out. You could equate these to heaven and earth.
In truth, the higher level is the only causal power. In this higher level sits the Son of God who is dreaming, and in His dreaming he makes the lower level. He sort of projects it downwards from above. Mind, as cause, produces the picture of the world, an effect.
This picture of the world contains *everything* in the world, and he simultaneously puts in place everything that moves or seems to have affects on other things, plus the effects that those causes seem to have.
There are no causes inside the dream, only effects. So he is actually like a puppeteer pulling the strings to make BOTH the "causes and effects" or "victims and victimizers" do everything that they seem to do, and the "story" of how one causes the other is FICTIONAL.
In this perspective, cause and effect are VERTICAL. What is above, causes what is below. So this means everything in the world below is only an effect of the dreamer above.
Within the world below, however, there are illusions of separation, and many of these illusions make it SEEM as if there are independent causes within the dream. An example would be that the wind blows and makes the leaves on the tree move. Or a person kicks a ball.
The wind DOES NOT blow the tree - the wind AND the tree moving are BOTH dreamed SIMULTANEOUSLY by the higher level mind. The person does NOT kick the ball, the person kicking and the ball moving are BOTH dreamed simultaneously by a single mind, to create an ILLUSION of cause and effect when viewed in "linear time".
In this perspective, cause and effect are HORIZONTAL. Or in other words, there is an ILLUSION that something in the dream is able to "cause" something else in the dream to be an effect. In essence, this turns the "effect" of dreaming into a cause in its own right. So then we believe that this world contains "causes" which produce "effects". In the horizontal, causes are VICTIMIZERS, and effects are VICTIMS. And it is possible for victimizers to be affected as causes transform into effects and back again, because they are all the same ILLUSION.
Someone kicks you in the leg and you develop a bruise. If you are a body, this puts you AT THE EFFECT of the world, making you an instant VICTIM. Being born "by" the world into a body is an ILLUSION which makes you an instant victim, but in truth you are NOT at the effect of the world, and you are NOT "created by" your parent's bodies.
This horizontal perception of cause and effect is ENTIRELY illusory, because even the things which seem to "cause" other things, and the "effects" of those causes, are actually BOTH EFFECTS of the higher level mind which is the only cause of them. The higher level mind, in its vertical causality, manifests both the person kicking the leg, and the bruise on the leg, simultaneously, making it SEEM as though there was a horizontal cause of the bruise.
In the horizontal perception, we come to believe there are thus illusory "laws" which SEEM to describe what we are seeing happen from within this level, without being awakened to the true nature of cause and effect. It SEEMS to us that every action (cause) has an equal and opposite reaction (effect). The laws of physics are based on this. Science has gone to great lengths to describe the APPARENT way in which stuff happens at the level of being inside the dream, unaware of the higher level.
All of these ego laws, horiziontal laws, are SHOWN to be completely false and illusory, when the higher level decides to DEMONSTRATE that IT is the cause of everything. It is therefore possible for the higher level to decide to project a different image or dream, below, which is unlike the condition it was in previously, WITHOUT OBEYING any of the lower level illusory laws. Because the higher level "overrides" the lower level, any illusions of how things are supposed to happen, or what is supposed to be possible, are completely ignored.
The higher level is the level of love. But it is not just love as we think of love "separate from" other qualities. It is also joy, peace, life etc. In particular, it is ALIVE. God's love is a LIVING PRESENCE, which contains within it life-giving, eternal-life giving qualities. It is able to extend life forever. It is able to express SO MUCH "livingness", that it is permanently in a state of incorruptible "health", it is absolutely impossible for it to become sick or die, and it is therefore a state of immortality.
The life-giving quality of God's love, naturally EXPRESSES at all times. God is therefore ALWAYS giving life and continuing life. God's love is so life-giving and restorative and absolutely refuses to include any form of death or problem, that if any kind of illusion of sickness or death were "exposed" to it, it would be so INFUSED with life, that all signs of decay or sickness or death will be completely reversed. Health (light) will totally obliterate suffering (darkness), shining it away permanently.
This life-giving quality of God, is what we refer to as MIRACULOUS. It literally is 100% unlimited in what it can do, and there is absolutely nothing that can deter it or prevent it from healing, ie being in a permanent state of perfection. God is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. Permanently life-giving. And so is His Son. It is completely NATURAL for God and His Son to be permanently miraculous. If they were to seem to be not miraculous, something must have gone wrong! Miraculousness does not ever stop. It is an eternal aspect of God's creative power.
With this in mind, when we "descend" into the darkness, going down to the lower "level", into the ego world, hell, we are attempting to put distance between ourselves and God. The further we become distant from God, as though descending further downwards towards death (eventually to be buried in the ground), the more we will be blocked from the life-giving properties of God's loving expression. This will result in a mind which believes sickness and death are reality, and it will project a body which is sick and later dead.
Death, in the ego's world, is the final statement that God's life has ended, or that we are so distant from God's Will to Live, that "our" will to live is no longer a will to live, but a will to cease living, ie to die. This means we believe we are becoming *completely* separate from God. Death of the body and mind is the ego's final attempt to completely escape the realm where God's light shines. Only complete "non-existence" can seem to fulfill the ego's wish to be separate from where God is.
In the dark, our mind is believing in separation, and is therefore sick. We have blocks to awareness, so do not see the light very well. This causes us to attack ourselves and our body will show this. Forms of sickness will appear, and eventually the body will die because we have attacked it. In order to UNDO this and reverse it, even to reverse what shows up as physical death, we need a miracle. We need some of the miraculous life-giving radiance of God's love.
Exposure to such radiance will RESURRECT us back to life, first a restoration of health and life in the mind and body, and then later the completion of the resurrection in which the body disappears, because the mind has become SO pure that it can no longer be bound by a body image. There are degrees of darkness and because the body is an outward picture of an inner condition at all times, if the mind resurrects, the body will also. Any "symptoms" (fake effects) from the illusion of horizontal causality, will be UNDONE by the shift to vertical perception (true causality - mind over matter).
A "miracle" as we tend to think of it, seems to be a step towards God. Or as some people call it, a "shift in perception" from death to life. However, we need to be clear that God is permanently miraculous and so is His Son. The miraculous life-giving property of God never stops. The ability to do absolutely anything never comes to an end. The creative power of the mind never ceases. And God is ALWAYS being loving. Anything that comes from love as an expression of love, IS MIRACULOUS. This means that God is ALWAYS MIRACULOUS.
A miracle then, CANNOT BE defined as the shift from death to life itself. The miracle is the LOVE which EXPRESSES in order to PRODUCE a shift from death to life. The shift is an EFFECT. The shift takes place entirely in the realm of the ego's world, the lower level, the level of EFFECT, because a miracle is an expression from the higher level of love, shining down onto what is below, and lifting it upwards towards God.
A helpful analogy, is when Jesus says beautifully:
"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."
What this is saying is, miraculous healing love shines "down from above" onto the illusory world below where stuff seemed dead, giving it life, pulling it closer to itself, and "life" erupts to show SIGNS (symbols) of the immortality that has been extended from love. Love expresses, the dead come back to life, even forms and bodies and objects come back towards life. As far as forms of life can, being limited as symbols in a dream.
Corresponding to this then, realize that miracles come down from heaven, from the higher level, FROM LOVE, as an expression of Love, and BLESS what is below (the dusty dead world), bestowing upon it the MIRACULOUS radiance of love's life-giving properties, and therefore "bringing life" to what is there, RESTORING to being "more alive".
Jesus says in his analogy that the signs of life now spring up. Simply, what once was seemingly dead or even partly dead, has had some measure of its "dead-ness" lifted away, that thing has been RAISED upwards, vertically, towards God, and therefore is now in closer proximity to the life-giving power of God's love, and therefore COMES BACK TO LIFE. This even means that ROADKILL can be brought back to life, all "effects" of war can be undone, and all death reversed. The body can even be made immortal, incapable of sickness and death, because it is SO infused with the life-giving power of love. A miracle indeed.
Miracles are also referred to as a shift in perception - FROM HORIZONTAL TO VERTICAL PERCEPTION. As I described, when the mind changes how it sees things, and no longer sees things entirely in a "horizontal" way in terms of cause and effect, is no longer believing that one thing in the dream caused another thing, it shifts its VIEWPOINT by moving awareness VERTICALLY up towards God.
Vertical perception is the awareness that the higher level (love) is the ONLY CAUSE, and everything "below" that seems to be in the world - bodies and such, is ONLY EFFECT. This so-called shift into alignment with how God operates, is a shift into the recognition that cause is inside you not outside you, or to put it another way, cause is above, and all effects are below.
The "shifting" itself IS NOT the miracle as such. The shifting itself, the transition from darkness to light, is not really what causes healing. What causes healing is God's LOVE expressing FROM above, shining down onto what is below, causing what is below to be partly dissolved, such that the mind seems to shift upward.
This has to be true, because if the miracle itself - the miraculousness of love - were ONLY the shifting from horizontal to vertical, then once the "shifting" itself had been completed, the miracle would be ENDED, and that means, love would stop being miraculous. Love is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. It cannot stop being miraculous.
What happens is, once a shift to vertical has taken place and healing has been RECEIVED FROM ABOVE, and the level of communication has been raised (oneness increased, separation decreased), there are simply LESS BLOCKS to the extension of love. More love is allowed to SHINE from above, through the mind, and to extend outward.
It extends outward completely naturally because that is what love does all the time. So when you remove your block to awareness, whether you call it a shift or not, you REVEAL the presence of love in the mind, you open up to the higher level and allow it to shine through you, and therefore love can now EXTEND THROUGH YOU.
Removing blocks to love, is an act of removing blocks to the AWARENESS of love's presence, because love is ALREADY FULLY PRESENT, being miraculous all the time. Correction, shifting, purification, or removal of blocks, simply UNCOVERS the love which was trying to express, allowing it to express more.
Shifting perception DOES NOT CAUSE A MIRACLE and DOES NOT CAUSE LOVE TO EXIST. Love, miraculousness, already exists. That is the *ego's version of miracles*, which it thinks IT causes, because IT thinks that IT has power over love to make healing happen! The shift is seen by the ego as a cause, but it is an EFFECT from a higher level. A gift. A sign that the mind is WILLING TO RECEIVE LOVE, not an ability to 'make love happen'.
The shift merely puts us closer TO it and allows us to EXTEND it, thus RECEIVING healing FROM love. "We" do not cause healing by shifting perception, LOVE DOES ALL THE WORK. And this also means, that being open to RECEIVING LOVE from God is important in healing, not just doing stuff with your mind on your own. You do not have to do everything yourself, God WANTS TO HEAL YOU FOR YOU.
The INCREASE in the expressability of that love through you is what HEALS YOU. The shift does not heal, the unblocking does not heal, LOVE IS THE ONLY HEALER. Love is the miracle.
After a while, when you have removed enough blocks to love that you are starting to RADIATE LOVE on a more constant basis, or at least something approaching towards love, YOUR MIND is now being restored as a conduit or medium through which love can naturally extend.
This means you will now be willing and able to extend love outward. And since you're still in the body at the moment, that means you will be able to DO GOD'S WILL ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, ie you will be able to express the LOVE OF GOD, here, which means expressing God's LIFE-GIVING POWER, here, to HEAL and undo absolutely any sign of "non-life" you encounter.
In other words, you do not simply perform a miracle in order to shift your mind towards love. You shift your mind towards love SO THAT you can be miraculous. Otherwise it would mean that someone who is heavily steeped in ego lies, upon making their first little shift, is suddenly a full-blown miracle worker. That is pretty much impossible.
"Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST". This means that your purification efforts will have to happen first, possibly over a prolonged period of time, BEFORE you will GAIN ACCESS TO the right to perform miracles. This is because you need to remove quite a lot of blocks to love BEFORE love can flow through you fully enough to show up as miracles in your life or on behalf of others. If you have a lot of blocks to love, you are GETTING IN THE WAY of the extension of love and therefore are blocking miracles.
You are not miraculous just because you start studying the course or doing the workbook, or "shifting your perception". Miracles come LATER, after much purification work ie correction of your mind, letting go of ego, applying forgiveness etc. Shifts in perception are not miracles, but eventually they LEAD TO miracles. If you could suddenly shift your perception very much to a highly vertical perception, you could conceivably perform a miracle right now. But it is uncommon. Usually we have to "prepare" to be able to do that.
You will OPEN UP TO miracles over time, the more you release blocks to love, because you will be placing yourself closer to God and therefore regaining access to love, a willingness to extend it, and therefore miracles can work through you from God. You can then perform God's WILL, but you are not going to be able to perform God's will after a few perceptual adjustments.
However, at some point, you WILL get to the point where you are spending much more of your time IN vertical perception, not believing in the horizontal ILLUSION of causality, and will become much more miraculous. When miracles are not happening ALL THE TIME, something has gone wrong. This means that miracles are a PERMANENT PART of the NATURE of the Son of God. And of God. It is a natural part of love and life. When we are not being constantly miraculous, constantly loving, we are not performing miracles all the time, so something is wrong.
When we do become more consistently aligned with God's Will, the Power of God will now extend through us. We will now be ABLE to EXPRESS LOVE. And since we're still in this world, this means, we are able to render the MAXIMAL SERVICE to our brothers, which is what every miracle does. At this point, "miracle working" does NOT simply entail shifting someone's perception towards truth. It entails utilizing the vertical perception of the higher level (God/Love/Life) to OVERRIDE any and every illusory "effect", or "cause" in this world.
This means your holiness is very powerful and there is literally nothing that it cannot do in the world. Miracles expressing from the higher level, love, do not see orders of difficulty because they do not believe the lower-level illusion of cause and effect. They overthrow ALL physical laws because all laws on the horizontal level are FICTION. What appears to be a cause in the world is NOT A CAUSE. Any state or condition or sickness or form of suffering or even physical death, CAN BE REVERSED.
Why would you do this? Well, you're going be expressing a LOT OF LOVE. And it is NATURAL for love to be miraculous. It is NATURAL for love to want to HEAL, to reverse suffering, to undo ego pain, to heal the SEPARATION, and so if separation is showing up as physical sickness or broken bodies, LOVE WANTS TO HEAL IT. It is not God's will that ANYONE suffer or die. It is God's Will that EVERYONE experience perfect health and resurrection and permanent happiness.
Why express miracles in a world which isn't real? First of all, that's level confusion. Second of all, it's because this is what LOVE WANTS TO DO. Love wants to HEAL THE WORLD to resurrect everything to a reflection of perfect health and incorruptability, and to then bring everyone home across the tiny gap between that "real world" and heaven. The world NEEDS miracles of healing from love. And third of all, it is our FUNCTION in this world to HEAL, a function which we share with the holy spirit, and while we are here, it is our natural RIGHT and PURPOSE to heal at all times.
This means PERFORMING MIRACLES EVERY SINGLE DAY. God wants us to BE MIRACLE WORKERS, in the world, helping our brother, healing our brother SUPERNATURALLY through the Holy Spirit, DEMONSTRATING that vertical perception is the truth, demonstrating that ego laws DO NOT APPLY, and teaching everyone by EXAMPLE what the TRUTH OF LOVE IS. We ARE supposed to be going out and healing the sick and raising the dead and teaching everyone that God is Love and all limitations are fictional. Miracles are the MAXIMAL SERVICE you can render your brother, and that means, extending God's love TO EVERYONE, which WILL HEAL THEM.
And what will the nature of these miracles be, will it be that we help someone to see differently? Perhaps. ANY expression of love is miraculous. But love is also capable of healing the sick, raising the dead, reversing death, undoing all suffering, curing all incurable diseases, even transforming bodies into different bodies. Love has so much power that it also is capable of DEFYING ALL PHYSICAL LAWS, including laws of gravity and space and time and size and mass and properties of matter and anything else which is an ILLUSION on this level.
This means, if necessary, you will have the ability to DO ANYTHING if it is helpful and loving. If it demonstrates that the egos' horizontal laws are COMPLETELY UNTRUE, and easily proven to be false, you will be willing to do it. If that means, lifting up a car with your mind to show that gravity means nothing, so be it. If it means, moving an entire physical mountain in order to show that the mind has power over the world, so be it. If it means manifesting food out of thin air to feed 5000 people, so be it. If it means making your body walk on water to prove that the laws of physics are bullshit, so be it.
You will walk this earth PROVING that cause and effect are VERTICAL, proving that love has the power to GIVE LIFE to the dead, curing what everyone says cannot be undone, proving that resurrection is God's Guarantee, and there will be literally NOTHING that your holiness cannot do. You will heal sick people, you will raise the dead, you will move mountains, and you will SAVE THE WORLD.
Saving the world does not so much mean that you save it FROM some attacker, but rather, that you save it from itself, because it is an ILLUSION. The ultimate healing of all the world will be the restoration of "immortal bodies" temporarily, the total undoing of all sickness across the entire planet, the recognition of the real world by the entire sonship, and then the complete DISAPPEARANCE of the universe, revealing that ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL.
Miracles are the MEANS of the atonement - how YOU get there, but because they are expressions from a higher level of love, you will also BECOME PART OF THE ATONEMENT by continuing to express love even as you are about to accept the atonement, still in a body, walking the earth. You become part of the atonement by becoming part of LOVE, part of God's Will, and DOING WHAT GOD WANTS YOU TO DO, which is to extend love and healing to everyone who needs it!
This is why you will join the "great crusade" and be part of the plan of atonement long-term, because it is YOUR NATURAL FUNCTION when you have received healing and naturally desire to alleviate the suffering of others. You will not have any willingness to support or keep sickness in yourself OR in others. You will be miraculous ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY. Being miraculous is a PERMANENT QUALITY of the Son of God and all of God's creations. Being constantly miraculous in this world is NORMAL. Being un-miraculous is ABNORMAL. You will also have no desire to "opt out" of this crusade. Jesus needs active miracle workers to bring about the resurrection!
Miracles raise everyone towards God's eternal life. We are to use them WHILE it seems there is a "need". But miracles really acknowledge that "there is nothing to heal" just as forgiveness recognizes "there is nothing to forgive" and God's power recognizes "there is nothing to have power over". So long as illusions persist however, miracles HEAL the illusion, forgiveness UNDOES the ego, and God's power DEMONSTRATES what is true.
Miracles mean life. Resurrection of "what is dead" and brought back to life is the goal of the atonement. Miracles lead to revelation and atonement as the ultimate healing. We are in a state of semi-death right now, in this dream world, separate from God. We NEED miracles. The whole world NEEDS miracles from God. This world NEEDS LOVE.
And love will restore life, to turn the world into a SYMBOL of life, and then the symbol will give way to REAL LIFE. The lower level will disappear (since it was never real) and all that will be LEFT will be the higher level of God/heaven/truth. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect, a cause in how to express the miracle of love from that higher level, not to suffer as a victim of fake effects of death in an ego illusion!
Then we will simply extend God's love forever, which has been happening all along, continuing the miracle of eternal life.
THIS IS HUUUUUGELY IMPORTANT!!!!
"To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."
"To have all, give all to all."
"Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."
This is a MASSIVE and far-reaching truth, which is very simple but very profound. It is literally the means by which you can be healed and perform healing. It is the rule for how you are able to receive love.
The ego's laws are opposite to God's laws. It's idea of giving is loss. Here's how the ego thinks...
You are empty because you have nothing. You cannot give anything because you are lacking. If you were to give, you would lose even more of what you have. Since you have nothing, you cannot give anything. Giving anything means losing it. Giving fully means having nothing left. Giving is sacrifice and to be avoided otherwise you will deplete yourself. To give is to lose everything and to die. If you give all of yourself you will cease to exist. Therefore, keep everything for yourself and do not share it.
This is completely opposite to God's thought system, which goes like this...
You can only give what you have. When you give, it proves that you must have it. Anything worth having is shared by everyone. To prove you have something you have to give it. Giving it means you have it to give, which means you still have it after giving it. Giving it away gives it to another, while you retain it also, meaning you both now share it, and it has increased. Giving everything you lose nothing. Giving does not deplete you, it supplies you because it increases your supply. Giving away what you value makes it stronger in you and allows you to keep it. Giving brings you to life and resurrects others. Give all of yourself and you will gain eternal life.
God's system works this way because, strange as this may seem, in reality nothing is just "static". Love isn't just something that sits there glowing. Love has to be extended, it has to be given, it has to shine. Love is a kind of transfer and SHARING process. It cannot be for you alone and it must radiate and go OUT. If it does not go out, it is not SHINING, and without shining it is not extending, and without extending it becomes dull, inert, lifeless, darkened and depleted. Love by its very nature IS GIVING, otherwise it is not love.
Love to be what it IS must be shared and given. This is why God Himself HAS TO CREATE through sharing, so that He can maintain HIS radiance and continue being loving. He can't just sit there fiddling with his belly button. He has to extend and radiate in order TO SHINE, in order to give, in order to HAVE. If God were to stop giving he would cease to exist. Extension and creation are the natural function of all things real. They MUST be given and go out and increase. Otherwise they have no life and they cease to exist.
This is contrary to what we are used to in this world. We think that objects are concrete solid things which we transfer and lose, that giving them away we lose them and cannot keep them or share them. This is a highly unnatural state of affairs because all of spacetime was designed to function OPPOSITE to how God's world functions. We are used to the idea that everything in this world exists "in and of itself", separate from other things, and can exist independently WITHOUT sharing. In fact the ego asserts that the only way for you to have anything is to NOT share it. To grab it for yourself before anyone gets it, which is selfish.
"The ego is the idea of selfishness." (not sharing anything).
But the trick is, and this is a HUGE thing, anything REAL is totally opposite to that. You cannot HAVE anything real WITHOUT sharing it. Whether it be atonement, love, peace, happiness, life, joy, creation, power, unity, relationship, holiness, forgiveness, healing, ... whatever the attribute of truth and life, anything of God HAS TO BE GIVEN AWAY in order TO HAVE IT. And giving it away INCREASES it, and causes you to not only have it but to also have MORE of it.
It's kind of like, everything that's real is like a FLOW. You have to switch the tap on. If the tap is closed there is NO water. When the tap is open, the water flows out and it is now being both given out of one end and received in the other end. As giving happens, receiving happens. As you give anything REAL away, you GAIN it. As you share an idea, it is strengthened and increased. As you LOVE, you FEEL MORE LOVED. As you PROVIDE what others lack, you GAIN. This is God's law. This is how it works.
"By denying his mind any destructive (selfish) potential, and reinstating its purely constructive (sharing) powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."
All things that are real are devoid of SELFISHNESS. All things that are real MUST BE SHARED. They cannot be ONLY for you. You cannot possess reality or love or happiness. If you WANT any of the divine properties or virtues, you HAVE TO be willing to SHARE them. You share them by EXTENDING them.
Even mind, the minds that God created, have only a single function. Their only function is EXTENSION. Mind HAS to extend. Mind does not just sit there in a box being a static observer. Mind must FLOW the spirit.
"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."
"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 mind and the spirit's natural condition is one of GIVING AWAY EVERYTHING. In fact God, in His creation of you, gave you EVERYTHING that He had. The ego would claim that if God were to give you everything of Himself, there would be NOTHING LEFT! In fact, for God to FULLY create you, He SHOULD Have ceased to exist afterwards. But this is ridiculous. God did not DIMINISH by creating you, God INCREASED CREATION by ADDING YOU to Himself. And He did this by SHARING Himself.
"Nothing real can be increased except by SHARING."
Sharing is giving. Sharing is NATURAL. Sharing is the law of God and of everything real. Sharing does not JUST mean "I have it and so do you". It means GIVING. You supply what you want to have. You give what you want to get. You have to give in order to HAVE. This is a fundamental law. If you do not give what you want to have, you will LOSE IT. If you do not GIVE LOVE, GIVE LIFE, GIVE HAPPINESS, GIVE PEACE, you will LOSE IT!!
You are a LIGHT. Light must shine in order to BE light. It has to radiate and go out. It has to be given. If you do not SHINE, by GIVING your light to others, offering yourself, shining into their minds to join with them, to give illumination TO them, YOU will fail to shine. And in your failing to shine you will HAVE NO LIGHT. And if you have no light to give, it is BECAUSE you are not shining it.
The ego lays a trap for you. It suggests that if you are feeling alone, unhappy, unloving, darkened, weakened, lacking, needy, afraid, etc... there is no way to solve it. It insists that because you are "this way", you HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE. And therefore CANNOT shine. And therefore ARE NOT LIGHT. If you believe this, you are stuck. If you believe how things APPEAR when you "seem to be lacking", you will believe you CANNOT LOVE, because you NEED love and DO NOT HAVE IT. This is a lie.
What the ego does not know is that you have free will. And your will is capable of ASSERTING itself at any time, freely. And that means you can CHANGE your mind. And it also means therefore, that even if you SEEM to be lacking love, or lacking supply of anything real, and have nothing, and are empty, you CAN GET THE MOTORS RUNNING, you can KICKSTART it, you can GET THE JUICES FLOWING, by WILLING to do so. And you will to do so by having a little willingness TO love, TO extend, TO give.
When you do this, it applies the power and force of your mind to SHIFT the stickiness, the blocks, the lack, the appearance of nothingness, and starts to MOVE the "energy". You start to FORCE yourself to shine, in a sense. And thus you start to emit light and love. And as you do so, your supply increases FROM God. Because by giving anything OF God, it is increased and is strengthened in you. So if you assert yourself, by GIVING LOVE AND LIGHT to another, you will find that YOUR mood uplifts and YOU feel happier and YOU get healed.
"When I heal I am not healed alone."
"Miracles (supplying lack) benefit both the GIVER and the receiver."
See, your natural function is either creation or healing. In heaven you create by being an EXTENDER and GIVER of God. You GIVE what God has Given YOU, in order to INCREASE it and retain and share it. Similarly on earth your function is healing, whereby you are supposed to be HEALING all the time. And that means that as you GO TO HEAL, as you GIVE healing, offer love, send light, etc, YOU get healed as well. You receive what you give.
It's kind of like putting the cart before the horse, to the ego, because you have to GIVE FIRST, in order to receive. As you give, you receive. Opening up the flow, opens the flood gates and in comes the supply from Heaven. This is the ONLY way it can work. The ego says this is backwards and its impossible to give what you do not have. That's a lie. You only seem not to have it BECAUSE you are not giving it, and as soon as you give it, you become AWARE that you have it.
Everything real is GIVEN, SHARED and TRANSFERRED. You can only HAVE anything worth having BY giving it. If you want to be happy you have to give it. If you want to feel loved you have to love others. It is in LOVING THEM, that you SHARE the love, and thus FEEL the love. Love comes IN to fill the 'vacuum' of suction caused by your outflowing of love. Love is PULLED through you from Heaven, AS you give Heaven to another. God shines in you, as you GIVE GOD. This is the ONLY WAY IT CAN WORK.
It is not possible to be happy without giving happiness. It is not possible to feel God's love without giving it. It is not possible to be joyful without GIVING. It is not possible to HAVE anything real without giving it away. Sharing is the fundamental law. Even atonement has to be SHARED and GIVEN. Even your HEALTH has to be GIVEN in order to be received. Mind has to extend and not be arrested in its extension otherwise it will LACK health. Any form of lack is evidence of not giving and not extending.
We are not blobs that sit in isolation and possess things and surround ourselves with our hoard of treasure. To do this is to HAVE NOTHING. You can gain the whole world and lose your soul this way.
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?""
"The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss."
Selfishness is ego. Selfishness is holding on tightly to what you try to keep, causing it to slip through your fingers. Whatever you try to posses will leave you. Whatever you give you will retain. This is the law. There is no exception. If you want love you must give love. If you want happiness you must make happy. If you want health and healing you MUST BE A HEALER.
"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."
"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal."
This is the secret to happiness. Share it. Give it. Supply it. Flow it. Emit it. Radiate it. Transfer it. Send it. Communicate it. Teach it. Extend it. And then it will be yours. Everything you give you receive. If you do not give it, you will not receive it. To give is to live.
This is tied to the GOLDEN RULE. How you DO GIVE to others, YOU DO receive. What you give them, you receive. What you give them, you have. What you make true of them is true of you. If you give hate you receive hate. If you fail to give you fail to receive. Give love to have love. Love doesn't hide in a cave. Giving and receiving are one!
"For giving and receiving ARE the same. "
""Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. I must return It, for I want It mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind, and keeping it within Its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead."
To be a miracle worker, it is absolutely essentially to realize that, although you will perform miracles, it is not YOU that does them. It is actually the Holy Spirit who has the power to do them. Or rather, it is the POWER OF GOD that makes miracles happen. This power belongs to God, and comes from God, and is not of you, but you have it in you, so you can extend it.
When you become closer to identifying with Christ he will share that power with you, but generally speaking HE is the one who performs the healings. If someone says they are performing miracles all the time and make no mention of the Holy Spirit or God performing them, you know they are full of ego. We cannot lay claim to an “ability” that is exclusive to us - the power must be SHARED.
We are like “channelers of a healer” in a sense, with Christ/Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit performing healings through our hands. We allow God’s power to operate THROUGH us. It is not “our own” power or a special ability. It is ultimately the power of God that heals, and all power IS of God, and there is no other power. By acknowledging that it IS of God, you GAIN that power as well.
Only by admitting that you are absolutely nothing WITHOUT God, and are everything WITH God, can you become a true miracle worker. Your miracle-working power is your INHERITANCE. Literally, God is the source of all miraculous power, extended through the Holy Spirit, and shared by your soul.
All power to heal belongs to God and there is no other power. When you SHARE that power, that power can operate through you. It is never yours exclusively, or alone, or only for you. It is a universal power given universally to everyone, with effects far beyond your awareness.
It is not enough to say that ”miracles are expressions of love.” Nor is it enough to say they are ”merely” expressions of love between two people or a joining of two minds. God is love. God is the giver of life. Miracles are a spark of life. God gives life through you. You do not originate this love or this power, you extend it. You give what you have been given by God. This is why you can only give the miracles you have received (from God).
The power to heal, the light, the life force, the life-giving fuel, the resurrective potential, is all something that comes from God. He must be involved in its giving. He is the cause of the healing. He is the giver of the life. He is the raiser of the dead. But we are also needed as a conduit so that it can be expressed in this world. Thus we SHARE the Holy Spirit’s function of healing in the world.
“Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?”
”The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.”
“You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."
“To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power.”
“The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you. That is the reason that the miracle gives EQUAL blessing to ALL who share in it, and that is also why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help.”
“The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.”
“ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically.”
“A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers.”
“But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING.”
“You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth.”
“The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is.”
“The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says.”
I haven't been focusing on miracles for a while, but kind of accidentally lately I've been finding myself exposed to some statements about miracles. I seem to be seeing them in a different light. Which is funny because "seeing in the light" is a big part of it.
There is one thing ACIM says fairly clearly and it's that miracles are ONLY seen in light. It also says miracles and vision are completely connected to each other. At times it also suggests miracles are so high in terms of states of consciousness, as to be right up at the christ level. Such as that the eyes of christ deliver them to all they look upon.
It also tells us that miracles, seen in light, are all over the place. A miracle stands next to what seemed to be a false perception, and these miracles are even there when we don't see them. We can block awareness of the miracles but that doesn't mean they're not there. And that suggests they are "ways of seeing."
I also found in experience recently that in one instance where I was driving behind a car and was about to scapegoat and then chose not to, kind of "holding back" the projection of guilt, Jesus called it a miracle. So then that got me thinking, what is a miracle really? We're also told that miracles and grievances are opposites. Also that ego-projection and miracles are opposites. So that tells us a bit about the state of mind or the activities of mind.
We're also told that miracles don't "do" anything, although we're also told they UNDO the interference that the ego was DOING. They "correct" the mind and sort of straighten out perceptions. They're also described as the translation of denial into truth. Also that miracles merely remind the mind of who the dreamer is, ie putting your awareness back in touch with you being causal and not seeing yourself as a victim or as in a position to scapegoat.
Miracles appear to be tied into true perceptions, as though they are glimpses of an accurate perception of something. But we're also told that they are thought creations, that they can energize others, that they can supply a lack. And that they are expressions of love. In prayer love is received, and in miracles love is expressed.
The impression I'm getting is that the love is coming down from a higher level ie heaven, and we are the open door who has to extend them. This is a sort of cause-effect chain, where God gives us the miracles and then we transfer them to others. As in "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."
If we are in a state of christ mind where we're fully open to the truth, then we are fully able to extend and pass on these miracles, these parcels of love. It's almost like they reflect the idea of creations, in which we are co-creating with God, extending God and paying forward what we've received. This is why you can only give the miracles you've received.
On the one hand it seems that a miracle is like a gift of love, a form of healing, which corrects the mind and lifts it up out of false perceptions into true perception. As stated in terms of miracles "entailing" a sudden shift into vertical perception. At the same time this gift of love has power and healing in it, as all love does, and so while it corrects your sight and you "see with the miracle" or through the miracle-sight, you also extend that love and power and it can cause things to happen.
Jesus also refers to them as examples of right thinking. Right thinking is sanity and true perception. Accuracy of thought and mind. These moments of clarity and non-attack and non-judgement and non-projection, recognize sinlessness ie as in forgiveness, and broadcast that wholeness of mind to the whole sonship. They are thus also expressions of holy relationship ie total unconditional relationship.
Since Jesus refers to them as thought-creations, and that thoughts can create higher or lower realities, these miracles are clearly a function of mind and thought, which includes power and love, as kind of acts of "higher dreaming". These miracles lift up the mind and heal it, as in "interceding for your holiness". And as a result you see correctly, and your correct seeing has corrective properties which can shine light into other minds and correct them.
Thinking of someone like Jesus in a state of christ-mind, or near to it, he was so sided with heaven's laws that he could constantly radiate and pass on that miraculousness at will. He could use the mind, in combination of thought and belief, and with the power of God behind it, to cause things to happen. And each of these were love-based expressions. Including raising the dead and healing the sick and moving mountains. The mind is just naturally miraculous and powerful when it's in its healed state.
So miracles are definitely tied to mind, and to seeing, and to light, and to forgiveness, and to giving and receiving, and to extension of God and love. They are acts, performances, expressions, doings, which emit out of the mind and are given and shared, as part of the natural outgoing of love and its unlimitedness. Someone miraculous has the light of God in their eyes and just sees everything with sparkling light and can effortlessly bestow blessings of supernatural transformation everywhere they go.
"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise."
If a miracle can be as simple as a right-minded non-attacking non-scapegoating non-projecting opposite to a grievance, where you "look and wait and judge not", in which you are being closer in alignment to how the Holy Spirit sees, then we're asked to basically get our mind-seeing into the light where it can bestow miracles all the time. Seeing forgiveness given to everything. Meeting all things with heavenly blessing.
Or something like that.
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
Your mind in its natural healthy state, extends outwards and joins with other minds, connecting to them intimately. Your mind extends past your body, past the body of others, and joins with the holiness in them. It shares itself with them and thus unites with the Holy Spirit in them.
But if your mind is not allowed to fully extend all the way to the other mind, past all physical obstacles, your mind "falls short". It seems to focus on something "in between" you and another. Whether it be that you are focusing on the body of another, or your own body.
This focusing on the obstacle between you, usually bodies, means you actually have dipped down into false perception. And now your mind is blinded by perception of form. And that means you are failing to OVERLOOK or extend or fully move past the obstacles. Your mind basically "stops at" the outside surface of apparent forms and bodies.
This lack of full extension, sort of stopping off along the way to pay attention to form, is a state of mental sickness. It really only occurs due to some kind of "withdrawal" from others, an unwillingness to share, a lack of openness, a lack of joining. Which means that you have pulled back from the relationship and are only going part way towards union with them.
That's a problem, because that means part of your mind is in your brother, and part of it is now "separated off" within yourself, and the two parts are not connecting fully. And this "gap" forms, the separation gap, in which the body exists. And now you perceive obstacles and appearances and bodies "in between" you and the REST of you.
Having done this, you are now sick, and your mind is now starting to TARGET the body. It's becoming blocked by form and "blinded" by sight of form. Your perception is dropping into false perception and you're dipping down into ego. And by doing so, you are now making illusions seem real to you.
Sight of the body now becomes an obstacle, and a target, and a weapon, and something used to SEPARATE you and your brother, or you and the rest of you. And this is the use of body for attack. And by doing this you are kind of holding the body up in-between you and your brother and are pretending it is a picture of your self. And it now becomes a picture of crucifixion.
Since your mind is no longer extending fully all the way to the light in another mind, instead of going OUT, it is not aimed DOWN. And it starts heading into the darkness rather than the light above.
This is going to push the body into states of darkness and distortion, and the body now literally becomes sick. And the mind is now USING the body for attack, by making it real, and focusing on it. And by so doing the body will now turn into the absence of health and healing.
You then enter a state which is familiar to most of us, where you now seem to "have a problem", and the problem seems real. Your body is sick and having issues. And your attention is on it. And it seems real. And you can't seem to get past it. And seeing it frightens you. And now you begin looking for solutions.
The ego solution at this point is to try to ATTACK the BLOCKAGE that you're seeing, ie target the body or the apparent sickness, with weapons of truth, trying to make it go away. You can hurl courseisms at it in the hope that you will undo it. Like you can say ok, this sickness is not real, it's an illusion, it's not really there etc. But this all still depends on believing that it IS THERE. And having failed to overlook it is really the problem in the first place.
So what is the trick to it? This will sound a bit counter intuitive but essentially, in order to heal the body you have to not make it real. You have to stop focusing on it. Stop making it an obstacle coming between you and others. And stop using it as proof that your mind is not REACHING your brother. If it is seen as an obstacle, and in fact if it is seen AT ALL, your mind is not fully extending.
It's really only the mind's choice of whether to fully extend, or partly extend, which produces health or sickness in the body. When it fails to extend fully (to give unconditional love), it falls short and "invents" separation devices in-between itself and others. And this shows up AS A BODY, and proceeds to turn from a healthy body to a sick body. The more you make this obstacle real the worse it gets, until it dies from attacking it.
So in fact when the mind RETURNS TO EXTENDING, which essentially IGNORES the body entirely, overlooking it, looking PAST it to the light, that is what "indirectly" heals the body. It lifts away from the body all of its attack and its use of the body for separation. So by practically forgetting about the body completely and SEEING PAST it to the light in another mind, joining with them, the body moves into INVISIBILITY. And it is this that is miraculous and heals the body.
So the trick is to actually just LOOK PAST the problem, push beyond the obstacle, see THROUGH the physical matter, seek out THE LIGHT beyond, and focus ONLY on that (seeking the Kingdom first), and this automatically heals the body. It heals because the mind is not not an attacking mind, it's a whole mind, a sane mind, and a whole mind has a HEALING EFFECT on the body as it "passes through it."
So there's a knack to it because there's great temptation to make the body REAL and THEN try to heal it, which locks in the sickness. And now you're at war with it which is a double denial. You have to stop being blocked by it, stop focusing on it, expand your mind, focus on the light, and therefore OVERLOOK the body. That is FORGIVENESS. And this UNDOES all of the strange distortions of sickness in the body because now a non-attacking, HEALTHY mind is moving through it.
The Holy Spirit in fact, when using the body solely for communication, communicates ONLY HEALING, and recognizes essentially that the body is NOT important AT ALL. This isn't a spiritualization of the body, it's more like IGNORING IT completely. It is recognized as having NO FUNCTION. And the only thing happening is the mind basically ignoring it and moving PAST it to do its business. This then heals the body because it is not given any reality.
"17. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal."
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is not an end."
"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds need not the body to communicate. The sight that sees the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have not been brought in line."
"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. "
"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."
"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 mind's purpose is one."
"Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. THERE IS NOT 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."
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."
"You have done miracles, but it is QUITE apparent that you have NOT done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind, and joined with it. When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."
"Christ's vision has one law. 2It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.
The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."