Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Key to True and Lasting Healing

False healing heals the body in a part, but never as a whole. Its separate goals become quite clear in this, for it has not removed the curse of sin that lies on it. Therefore it still deceives. Nor is it made by one who understands the other is exactly like himself. For it is [understanding the other is exactly like himself} that makes true healing possible. When false, there is some power that another has, not equally bestowed on both as one. Here is the separation shown. And here the meaning of true healing has been lost, and idols have arisen to obscure the unity that is the Son of God.

Healing-to-separate may seem to be a strange idea. And yet it can be said of any form of healing that is based on inequality of any kind. These forms may heal the body, and indeed are generally limited to this. Someone knows better, has been better trained, or is perhaps more talented and wise. Therefore, he can give healing to the one who stands beneath him in his patronage. The healing of the body can be done by this because, in dreams, equality cannot be permanent. The shifts and change are what the dream is made of. To be healed appears to be to find a wiser one who, by his arts and learning, will succeed.

Someone knows better; this the magic phrase by which the body seems to be the aim of healing as the world conceives of it. And to this wiser one another goes to profit by his learning and his skill; to find in him the remedy for pain. How can that be? True healing cannot come from inequality assumed and then accepted as the truth, and used to help restore the wounded and to calm the mind that suffers from the agony of doubt. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.III.1-3)

All of God’s Creation is exactly like Himself. All that is real is Love and shares all of Its attributes. There can be no differences in the oneness of Love. The understanding that this is true is the basis for true healing. The one who needs healing believes he is different and separate from Love. His call for healing can only be truly answered by one who does not see him as different. He sees past the false image to the reality of Love that his brother is.

In the world there are many “healing” modalities that can seem to alleviate pain and suffering. But the modality alone can only offer a temporary fix. Yet used by one who

recognizes his unity with the Love that is his brother

, the modality may help facilitate the process that leads to his brother’s acceptance that he is Love and nothing else. It is only this that brings true and lasting healing.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freeing Ourselves from Belief in Death

Now [true healing’s] 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 [death] 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. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.II.4:4-6:4)

The lessons we need to learn to free ourselves from death are to recognize truth from illusion. The Course begins by telling us that only Love is real. This is the measure of Truth. The ego belief in separation began with the wish for specialness, to have something we can keep for ourselves alone. This wish denies the oneness of God’s Love. Differences cannot exist in what is one. Having bought into the ego’s thought system of separation, we have taught ourselves to believe that illusions are real and that the reality of God’s Love is untrue.

The lessons we have learned from the ego do not teach us to distinguish truth from illusion. At best they offer veiled substitutes still within the illusion of separation. To free ourselves from this dream world, we need to turn to the Teacher within for His lessons that show us the truth of Love’s Oneness. These lessons teach us that we remain Love as Love created us. They teach us to overlook the images of the world by recognizing they are illusions and have no meaning of their own.

The daily practice of choosing the Holy Spirit as our Guide opens our mind to His healing lessons. This is what frees us from fear of death and welcomes true healing. The end result of this practice is our return to the Heaven of God’s changeless Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Journey to True Forgiveness and Healing

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 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. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.II.2:1;3-4)

True healing comes when we have let go of all our barriers to Love. We no longer identify with the ego belief in separation. Until this forgiveness is complete, we still have lessons to learn. We still have barriers to Love’s presence in our mind.

The world we experience through a body is a mirror, a feedback mechanism that reflects back to us what we believe we are. While we believe we are separate from Love, we perceive images of separation as real. To undo this perception, we need the help of the Holy Spirit, Who is not deceived by this misperception. He knows that only Love is real while recognizing our belief in separation. Thus He is a bridge between changeless Love and our split mind that does not know what Love is.

The Holy Spirit is given us to teach us to discern truth from illusion. As we accept the Holy Spirit’s help to see past our misperceptions, the world becomes less threatening. We give less and less credence to our perceptions and welcome Christ’s vision to overlook them and see Love’s changeless presence. This is our journey to true forgiveness and true healing.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Love’s Presence Without Limit

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 free 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. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.II.1-2)

The introduction to A Course in Miracles states, “The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

True healing comes with true forgiveness — the release of barriers to Love’s presence. Sickness is a manifestation of our denial of Love, unforgiveness. As we let go of that denial through true forgiveness, Love’s presence returns to our awareness. The barriers to Love are laid down and the Light of Love shines on what we see. We see past the separate forms of the world and welcome Love’s kind vision. With this practice, our hearts are open to the unity of the Love we share with everyone eternally.

Calls for Love are joyfully answered with extensions of Love. The wish to separate is replaced by our innate will to join in oneness. As we progress in this journey of awakening to Love, peace and happiness become our daily experience. When true forgiveness is complete, we have accepted Love’s presence without limit.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Key to True Healing

For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it.

What he has done now must God’s Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison’s key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father’s Love. Yet help is given to him in the Voice his Father placed in him. The power to heal is now his Father’s gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth.

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. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.I.3:5-5:3)

True forgiveness is the key to healing. It undoes the belief that we are a body, capable of separation, and guilty because of that perceived separation. Pain, fear and guilt are all signs that we have identified with a false, separate image of what we are. This identification imprisons us in a limited body with eyes made to see only illusions. Because of this identification, this belief cannot be undone without help. By the grace of God, we have been given the Help we need to be called upon in every present moment. It is God’s Voice, eternally in our mind, ready to help the moment we are willing to accept it.

If our body is in pain, it may be helpful to use a physical means to relieve the pain or “cure” the body’s illness. The Course acknowledges that we may need physical means to help the body because healing solely through a change of mind might be perceived as fearful. But we must recognize that this does not heal the cause. We still remain imprisoned in our mind by the mistaken belief that we are separate from God.

True healing comes as we turn away from belief in the body’s perceptions and give our attention to the vision of Christ which will show us our innocence. It will show us that nothing has really happened to change the eternal Love we were created to be. Rather than deny that the body experiences pain, we ask for help to forgive our decision to be separate from God, to see with Christ’s vision.

For most people this is a process with many steps that lead us to greater and greater confidence that we are Love. We give diminishing credence to experiences in the world. Our mind moves away from fear and guilt toward greater peace. We are freeing ourselves to accept our oneness with God and accept His gift of peace, joy and Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing the Reality of Eternal Innocence

Do not mistake effect [sickness] for cause, nor think that sickness is apart and separate from what its cause must be. [Sickness] is a sign, a shadow of an evil thought [the cause] that seems to have reality and to be just, according to the usage of the world. It is external proof of inner “sins,” and witnesses to unforgiving thoughts that injure and would hurt the Son of God. Healing the body is impossible, and this is shown by the brief nature of the “cure.” The body yet must die, and so its healing but delays its turning back to dust, where it was born and will return.

The body’s cause is unforgiveness of the Son of God. [The body] has not left its source, and in its pain and aging and the mark of death upon it this is clearly shown. Fearful and frail it seems to be to those who think their life is tied to its command and linked to its unstable, tiny breath. Death stares at them as every moment goes irrevocably past their grasping hands, which cannot hold them back. And they feel fear as bodies change and sicken. For they sense the heavy scent of death upon their hearts.

The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only [true forgiveness] can give rememberance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. Forgiveness must be given by a mind which understands that it must overlook all shadows on the holy face of Christ, among which sickness should be seen as one. Nothing but [a shadow]; the sign of judgment made by brother upon brother, and the Son of God upon himself. For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.I.1-3)

The body is an ego construct made to reinforce the belief in being separate from God’s Love. It denies the Son of God’s eternal unity with his Creator. As part of the ego’s belief in death (separation from the Source of all Life) sickness seems to make the belief in separation real. All this cannot be true because only Love’s oneness is real.

This is a central message of the Course. It is so important that Review VI of the Workbook lessons directs us for 20 days to affirm the thought, “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.” This thought, fully accepted, would free us from the body’s limits and unify our minds with the Mind of God. We would remember that we are united as God’s one Son, the extension of His Love. This is true healing, for Love sees no sin. It sees only the innocence of Christ as real.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freedom to Be Love

Do not confuse [Christ’s] function with your own. He is the Answer. You the one who hears.

And what is it He speaks to you about? About salvation and the gift of peace. About the end of sin and guilt and death. About the role forgiveness has in Him. Do you but listen. For He will be heard by anyone who calls upon His Name, and places his forgiveness in His hands. Forgiveness has been given Him to teach, to save it from destruction and to make the means for separation, sin and death become again the holy gift of God. Prayer is His Own right Hand, made free to save as true forgiveness is allowed to come from His eternal vigilance and Love. Listen and learn, and do not judge. It is to God you turn to hear what you should do. His answer will be clear as morning, nor is His forgiveness what you think it is.

Still does He know, and that should be enough. Forgiveness has a Teacher Who will fail in nothing. Rest a while in this; do not attempt to judge forgiveness, nor to set it in an earthly frame. Let it arise to Christ, Who welcomes it as gift to Him. He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name. He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key. Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing silently open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.III.5:8-10;6-7)

Just listen. That’s our part in the process of forgiveness. The practice of pausing and stepping back from our perceptions and judgments is the key to bringing inner peace to our lives. It disengages from our involvement in the world so we can open our minds to the inspiration of Christ. Now we are receptive to His teaching of forgiveness.

The ego does not know how to forgive because it is afraid of Love. It is the Love in us that sees the innocence of Love in others. It sees past the forms of the world and joins with the only reality that is Love.

The means we use to disengage from our experience in the world does not matter. But it is important that we be willing to accept the possibility that our perception may be mistaken. This is the willingness the Christ Mind needs to bring us Its way of seeing.

It is Christ’s vision that shows us a forgiven world. It shows us that we are forgiven and teaches us that we are God’s Son, His extension of Love. It teaches us that Love’s innocence is ours and we are free to be as Love created us.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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