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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/14/12

Day 45
2 Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded. Should he be tempted to doubt this, he should not repeat his previous effort. That was already maximal, because the Holy Spirit so accepted it and so used it. Now the teacher of God has only one course to follow. He must use his reason to tell himself that he has given the problem to One Who cannot fail, and must recognize that his own uncertainty is not love but fear, and therefore hate. His position has thus become untenable, for he is offering hate to one to whom he offered love. This is impossible. Having offered love, only love can be received.

Jesus reiterates that an offer of healing is complete. If I doubt it has worked, there is no reason to repeat the healing, but rather, it is reason to return to my own healing. Doubt has arisen because I forgot Who it is that does the healing. I have forgotten that I am only the channel, through which healing occurs.

Still, it seems harsh to say that I am now offering hate rate than love, but if I think about it, I can see how this is true. If I think I have failed, this throws me into fear, and fear is hate. I have a friend with a chronic illness and I have prayed for his healing. There is little obvious sign that healing is taking place if I look at his body. When I begin to doubt that I did anything at all, I feel guilty as if it is my fault and I feel that if I were more worthy, the healing would occur.

In this frame of mind, I notice more ego thoughts creeping in. I have thoughts that it is really his fault. He is stubborn and doesn’t want to accept the healing. Its his fault he got this way. If he had a better life style, he would never have gotten sick. If we were more worthy, had been on a spiritual path, or would get on one, he would do better.

I feel ashamed of these thoughts and recognize them for the attack that they are. I see that I feel like I must attack this good friend of mine, because I must defend myself against the guilt I feel when I look at him. I began with the loving thought that I know he is not his story, and I know that he is perfect because of who he is. I know that he is healed because that is God’s Will. Then when I did not see the proof of healing I expected, that love became hate. It is the ego way.

Healing is always of the mind. Sometimes it also occurs in the body. Sometimes the patient needs time to accept the healing so as not to create more fear in his mind. I cannot know what is best for this person. Holy Spirit please heal my mind of these false thoughts. My brother does not need my hate, and neither do I. I am happy to disregard appearances and place my full trust in you.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/13/12

Day 44
7. SHOULD HEALING BE REPEATED?

1 This question really answers itself. Healing cannot be repeated. If the patient is healed, what remains to heal him from? And if the healing is certain, as we have already said it is, what is there to repeat? For a teacher of God to remain concerned about the result of healing is to limit the healing. It is now the teacher of God himself whose mind needs to be healed. And it is this he must facilitate. He is now the patient, and he must so regard himself. He has made a mistake, and must be willing to change his mind about it. He lacked the trust that makes for giving truly, and so he has not received the benefit of his gift.

If I feel the desire to repeat a healing, if I doubt the first healing worked, I must be judging from appearances. I would have approached the healing with a set outcome in my mind and then tried to achieve that outcome. Now when the outcome does not match my idea of what it should look like, I am disappointed and think something went wrong.

I asked Holy Spirit for a way to see this that would be clear to me. I see in my mind that I am standing before the patient. I have the desire to be a healing instrument and I start by telling the Holy Spirit how he should heal this person and what that healing should look like. Then I kind of (metaphorically) shove Him out of the way so I can make this happen. Oh my, this is hysterical!

Show me another one, Holy Spirit.

I’m standing before the patient with a desire to be a healing instrument. My mind is clear and I allow light to fill it. The Holy Spirit rises in my mind to meet the Holy Spirit in her mind and I am filled with joy to be used in such a miraculous way. I feel only love in this holy instant of joining, and gratitude that it is done.

Then I shift my awareness back into time and the body, and begin to doubt that such a thing could happen. I look at the patient and she seems the same to my body’s eyes. Did I do anything? Who do I think I am that I could heal anyone? What would people think if they heard me make such claims? And where is my proof?

I see, Holy Spirit, how this happens, and I also see that the healer needs healing. I recognize these thoughts and these feelings. I know what to do with them. Having seen them in my mind, and looked at them with you, having felt the fear and guilt, the shame and discouragement that they produce, I ask you to heal my mind. I long to return to the ease of surrender. I long to be the clear and open channel of healing.

The Holy Spirit shows me one more picture. Its like I am looking at a split screen. On one side I stand in light with my brother. We are holding hands and are at peace. Our minds are being healed. On the other screen, I stand facing my brother. I want to heal him but there are so many things to consider and I am confused and uncertain.

Thank you, Holy Spirit. I gladly surrender the desire to be the one in charge. Knowing my part is what it means to have a healed mind.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/12/12

Day 43
4 It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. And it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient’s mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God’s treasure house can never be empty. And if one gift is missing, it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God. What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything?

What stands out for me in this paragraph are lines 3 and 4.

Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient’s mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him.

The healing is accomplished through the union of the Holy Spirit, in both minds, for a single purpose, which is to accomplish a change of mind. So the Holy Spirit in the patients mind determines what is needed. The Holy Spirit in my mind offers this gift. What is my part? It seems that I am to step back and allow it to happen. Stepping back means I will not try to direct the healing or make it happen. I will not decide what it should look like and if it is successful. I will not decide what the gift is, or how it should be accepted.

I will simply be the willing instrument of healing. No wonder I don’t have to be concerned about what happens to my gifts. Once again, I realize that while my part is vital, it is very small. I used to be distracted when the ego resented this, and wanted to do more and wanted credit. I don’t even hear the ego’s complaints anymore. I am only grateful to know my part and to know that I can do what is asked of me.

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Study of Manual for Teachers 2/11/12

Day 42

3 It is not the function of God’s teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them. Once they have done that they have also given the outcome, for that is part of the gift. No one can give if he is concerned with the result of giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. Trust is an essential part of giving; in fact, it is the part that makes sharing possible, the part that guarantees the giver will not lose, but only gain. Who gives a gift and then remains with it, to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate? Such is not giving but imprisoning.

If I pray for someone and then watch them to see if they have accepted my prayer, I am not offering a true prayer because my concern is an expression of doubt, and healing is an expression of faith.

I remember that I used to feel that way. Some years ago I took a Reiki class and did some practice treatments on friends. When I would give a treatment, I would feel wonderful. It was like being energized and happy at the same time. I had a couple of very extraordinary experiences with the people I worked with, too.

I did it for my aunt. I had her lie down of course, and I spent an extra long time with her. Afterwards she told me that she had been concerned because an ongoing back problem made it painful for her to lie flat, but that she had no pain during the treatment at all. She enjoyed it very much and asked me to do it again.

Another lady I worked with had cancer all over her body. She could not lie down so I worked with her sitting up. She later told me the night after was the first time in a very long time that she was able to sleep through the night.

I stopped doing the Reiki because I thought I knew what the outcome was supposed to look like. Because the outcome did not always meet those expectations, I thought it meant I had failed. This attachment to outcome made me feel inadequate and unworthy of being a healer.

Now I think back on that and realize that I don’t know what anyone needs when it comes to healing. They probably don’t know what they need, so why should I think I know. I also understand how it feels to think they should accept the healing. When I thought they should, and they didn’t, it’s like they let me down, and so in typical ego fashion, it became their fault that I didn’t heal them. It took a long time, but I no longer have these concerns.

I’m learning a lot about healing as I study the Manual for Teachers, and also from my recent study of The Song of Prayer. I feel comfortable with this particular section. I know that time is an illusion and so what difference does it make when a prayer is accepted? I know that healing is real so it is never lost, and only increases. I also know that it is not my job to evaluate the outcome of the healing, or to keep an eye on the patient to be sure they accept my gift. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-10-12

Day 41

2 Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given it will be received. And what is time before the gifts of God? We have referred many times in the text to the storehouse of treasures laid up equally for the giver and the receiver of God’s gifts. Not one is lost, for they can but increase. No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain it has been received, and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.

The ego will always judge, but I don’t have to believe its judgments. It judges by appearances and I am learning to distrust appearances. I accept that my part in healing is to know the truth for my brother, and how it is received, or when it is received is not my business. I trust that truth is never lost and only increases. Would I want someone to accept healing if it means it will increase his fear? Are we not fearful enough as it is?

There is so much that we cannot understand from where we see ourselves right now. Fortunately, the truth does not need our understanding. The ego wants to know. It wants to understand. It wants proof, and it wants that proof to meet its expectations. I am not the ego. I choose to let the ego be. “I hear you, ego. I just don’t believe you.”

The Voice I believe is the one that speaks for God. It speaks softly and reassuringly of certainty, of gifts that increase with the giving, of healing that cannot fail. I don’t need to understand this for it to be true. So I do my part; I give my willingness to see past appearances and to know the truth of my brothers and sisters, and of myself.

I was preparing for a Study with the Scribe Workshop, trying to get all my customers taken care of so they wouldn’t need me in the week I was gone. It required even more driving than I normally do, and I started experiencing spasms of pain that seemed to be associated with my bladder. Being in a sitting position and driving were very painful. I was gritting my teeth and forging ahead because this stuff had to be done.

When the pain got worse, I thought about how hard it would be to sit in the cramped seats of the plane. And then I thought of sitting for hours as I attended the workshop. I knew it would be hard to pay attention through the pain. I told Holy Spirit that I didn’t know what to do about this and asked for His help.

The pain disappeared. Just like that! It was gone! I stood there in my room absolutely astonished at the suddenness of the relief. I wondered what this meant, but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I just accepted the healing in gratitude. I did not have another spasm of pain until the plane taking me home touched down on the tarmac. And then the spasms began again.

At first I was very disappointed, and I felt confused. I was grateful that my prayer was answered. I had been pain free the entire trip from beginning to end just as I had asked. But I thought this meant I was healed and now it seems I was wrong. I felt let down. What did this mean?

I went to the doctor and found out the cause of all the pain. I got some medicine that solved not only that problem but another one as well. I also asked Holy Spirit to help me understand healing, and He brought me to this study. I still don’t understand why I accepted only a part of the healing, but I am certain this healing awaits me.

It is not lost on me that I asked for a partial healing. I told Holy Spirit that I would be willing not to be in pain during the workshop. I didn’t say that I would be willing to accept a complete healing. I didn’t notice this when it happened, but only in retrospect. As we are studying this section I wonder about fear of healing.

I didn’t think I had fear of healing, but since that is what has come up, I am asking that my mind be healed of that fear. I wonder if it is really a fear of not being healed. If I were not healed when I asked, would that mean that I am not worthy?

Would it mean that God really is mad at me and wants to see me suffer? This is what Regina calls the fear that the truth is not true. Perhaps I think that pain is better than finding out I am not worthy. Whatever is going through the ego mind, I trust that I will accept my healing when I recognize it as a blessing and not a curse. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-9-12

Day 40

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN?
1 Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for, he may ask for death. Healing must wait, for his protection. 

I’m glad that Jesus begins by assuring us that healing is always certain, because appearances have caused me to doubt the healing. When I read this the first time it was like a light bulb coming on. I saw how true it is that sometimes people are not ready for healing. I talked about the healing I accepted to be free of allergies. More than once I have listened to people talking about how bad their allergies are and how they suffer for them.

I tell them about my experience and wait for their reaction. A few of them are very excited, and ask for a name and phone number, and some of those have later thanked me because now they, too, are allergy free. Most of them listen to my story (after all, good manners insist we give the other person equal time) and then they go right back to their story of suffering. They love their story and want to keep it.

Why do we hold onto the stories of suffering when we could be free of them? I think we tell our stories so often that we have come to believe we are these stories, and to give them up is to give up our very selves, our identity. I think that the stories are where we hide from God, and to give them up is to become naked before God and that is very frightening for us, because we misunderstand the nature of God and fear punishment for our “sin” of separation.

Sometimes the suffering becomes unbearable and we seek relief through death. Sometimes it becomes unbearable and we allow temporary relief, only to take up a different story of suffering as protection from God. And then, sometimes, we begin to change our minds. We begin to allow the light of truth to shine in our minds, and start to doubt the ego story of a fearful God. We are finally ready to accept the gift of healing that has been offered to us.

Like most of the steps I have taken while awakening, this one has not been clear-cut. I have had moments of great clarity and have received remarkable healings of both mind and body. But they do not transfer to every part of my life, and I step forward, only to retreat into fear, then move forward again. But no matter how often I do this little dance, I always move forward with more certainty than before.

One other thing that jumped out at me as I read this was this:

The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient.

You may be familiar with Dr. Hew Lin and his use of the Hawaiian healing practice of Ho’oponopono. Dr. Hew Lin healed an entire ward of criminally insane patients without ever seeing any of them. He simply read their files, and forgave himself for what he was seeing.

While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal. When he was asked about how this was accomplished, he said, “I was simply healing the part of me that created them.” The Course tells us that our only job is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. The way we heal, is to accept healing for ourselves.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 2-8-12

Day 39

III. The Function of the Teacher of God

1 If the patient must change his mind in order to be healed, what does the teacher of God do? Can he change the patient’s mind for him? Certainly not. For those already willing to change their minds he has no function except to rejoice with them, for they have become teachers of God with him. He has, however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what healing is. These patients do not realize they have chosen sickness. On the contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they open-minded on this point. The body tells them what to do and they obey. They have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it, they would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them the separation is quite real. 

2 To them God’s teachers come, to represent another choice which they had forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder. His thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted as true. As God’s messengers, His teachers are the symbols of salvation. They ask the patient for forgiveness for God’s Son in his own Name. They stand for the Alternative. With God’s Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given them. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death. Behold, you Son of God, what life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this? 

3 Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes. To do this is to forget that all of them have the same purpose, and therefore are not really different. They seek for God’s Voice in this brother who would so deceive himself as to believe God’s Son can suffer. And they remind him that he did not make himself, and must remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect. The truth in their minds reaches out to the truth in the minds of their brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced. They are thus brought to truth; truth is not brought to them. So are they dispelled, not by the will of another, but by the One Will with itself. And this is the function of God’s teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as separate from God’s.

In these three paragraphs on healing, Jesus explains the roll of the Teacher of God in facilitating the healing of his brother. In healing, the body is not involved in any way, not the patient’s body nor the healer’s body. In fact, not even words are needed. Healing is achieved mind to mind, or more accurately within the mind since there is truly no gap between our minds.

What about doctors, medicine, laying of hands, moving of energy and all forms of healing? Do they have no place in this? Jesus has said previously that special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his own choice. Sometimes we are unable to make that leap from sickness to health in one bound, as it would cause too much fear. I think that all these forms have nothing to do with the actual healing, but may be helpful symbols for the patient.

The actual healing itself is a beautiful process. First the teacher of God must be healed in his own mind of the idea of sickness having any value. He must be healed of the idea of degrees of sickness, and all belief that sickness has anything to do with the body. It is the absolute certainty, the complete honesty (consistency) in the teacher’s mind that is healing.

My experience has been that this can be done in a moment of clarity. In that moment there is no confusion in the mind of the teacher. Perhaps this clarity will not yet be permanent, but will be greatly reinforced as she offers herself for this purpose.

My heart is touched by the gentleness of healing. The healer is a symbol of the truth, the representative of another choice; he stands for the Alternative to the confusion that exists in the patients mind. Jesus says that the teacher’s thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted as true. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death.

This reminds me of how the Holy Spirit works with me. He doesn’t demand or force, or impinge on my choices in any way. He remains perfectly consistent and perfectly unaffected by my illusions, and this unwavering steadfastness to truth draws me to Itself. He is my memory of God, and who can resist that memory?

The certainty of the Teacher of God shares this function as he is the memory of health, the truth in his mind lighting the way for the one who has temporarily forgotten who he is. Faith that his light will ignite the light that exists in his brother, the teacher of God is patient and waits without fear for acceptance of this gift. Isn’t it a beautiful thing to see how the attributes of God’s teachers come together in this way?

Jesus says that his teachers come, not to heal the sick, but as a benediction. Of course! His teacher’s do not believe in sickness! What is there to heal? As they remain unaffected by the appearance of sickness they are not reinforcing illusion, but are strengthening the truth in their brother’s mind. “And this is the function of God’s teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as separate from God’s.”

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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