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Manual for Teachers: 7. SHOULD HEALING BE REPEATED? P 2. 2-18-18

7. SHOULD HEALING BE REPEATED? P 2
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.

Journal

Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded.

This is not a hope or a possibility; this is a fact. When I pray for someone’s healing, I have succeeded. It is done and does not need my continued effort. The Holy Spirit accepted my prayer for healing and so has already used it. Jesus doesn’t say that I don’t need to keep trying; he says that I should not repeat my effort. There must be a reason he would phrase it like this, and there is.

When I feel like I need to keep trying it is because to do so would indicate a lack of faith, my uncertainty would not be love but fear. When I pray for someone’s healing, that is an act of love. When I doubt the healing, that is an act of fear. Then Jesus is very blunt as he says that fear is hate. Yikes! I never want to do that. I offered love and so it impossible that I now offer hate where love has been received.

In the past, I have made this mistake. I would pray for someone and then I would watch for proof that the person was healed. If I did not see signs of healing, I would pray again. I have since learned that the illusion is not a reliable source of information. Sometimes the effects of the healing show up in a way that I can see it, but not always. I have learned to trust the Holy Spirit to complete His function and so now I trust that healing has occurred.

I will use myself as an example. I have asked for healing of certain beliefs that are the root cause of both emotional distress and physical illness. I know that this has been done because I asked. Some of these beliefs are clearly undone in my mind. Some still show up in their effects, but they are undone as well. The physical manifestation is waiting for my acceptance, and that will occur, as I am willing to release the guilt that prevents me from accepting it.

I am part of a prayer ministry through Pathways of Light, and when I accept a prayer request, I agree to pray for the person for 30 days. The way this works for me is that I pray for their healing and then after that when I look at my prayer list, I express my gratitude for their healing. I might think of something else to do, such as to pray that they will feel God’s gentle touch on their hearts and so be comforted, but I do not repeat the original healing as that is done.

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Study of Text: C 15, VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 4. 2-19-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 4
4 You do not find it difficult to believe that when another calls on God for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that when God answers him, your hope of answer is diminished. On the contrary, you are more inclined to regard his success as witness to the possibility of yours. That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict.

Journal

The idea that we are created in the image of God has always confused mankind because we think that we are these bodies, each one different than the other. We think that we are separate individuals with separate desires and conflicting goals and that we are each a different self. So which of these is God’s image of which we were created?

When we understand that God is not an image of any kind and that He is an idea, then we can begin to understand, at least a little, what God is. And if we are created like God, then we, too, must be an idea. What a strange thought that is to us who have become attached to the idea of form and think we are that. It might be scary even until the mind has become accustomed to the idea.

Ideas seem so insubstantial to us after believing in flesh and blood for so long. And yet, flesh and blood, even in the illusion, dies and decays, whereas, an idea never ceases to exist and, in fact, gets only stronger as it is shared. It is because we are not sharing ourselves as an idea while we identify with the ego, that we feel weak and vulnerable. Thank goodness, that we cannot actually be a body and that we remain a thought in the Mind of our Source.

Cate Grieves suggested a helpful meditation for me to do. She said: You might try to imagine your body floating in the sea or a river. Just allowing it to “be”. Let it float and surrender all control. Then let it float next to leaves on the surface and watch how the water takes your body and moves it in the flow of the water. Just keep releasing any resistance to allowing it to be taken in any direction. Stretch your arms out wide and legs apart and completely give yourself over.

I think this meditation is my practice in total surrender. Because God is an idea and I am an idea in Him, I can give myself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. After all, that is what He did in our creation. He gave all of Himself to us. I would emulate this unreserved giving and fearlessly and joyfully give all of myself to Him in gratitude for my creation.

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Manual for Teachers: 7. SHOULD HEALING BE REPEATED? P 1. 2-16-18

7. SHOULD HEALING BE REPEATED? P 1
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.

Journal
Oh my, I have fallen prey to this particular error more than once. I have prayed for someone and then returned to worrying about him or her. In the moment of prayer, my faith and trust were strong, and the gift was given, the healing was accomplished. But then I would begin to hear the ego voice warning of discouraging things to come, and pointing to effects that seem to indicate failure, and I would get sucked back into the story and become uncertain.

The result is that the healing was not complete. It was not complete because I did not receive my healing. When we give, we always receive. In returning to doubt and fear, I blocked my own gift. When that happens the only thing to do is to consider myself as patient, and my own mind that requires correction.

In Chapter 8 of the Text, it says this.

Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you.

My uncertainties and doubts will be removed from my mind, simply because this is my desire. The only reason I sometimes forget this is because I forget who I am. I am not this body/personality ego construct I often identify with; I am the Son of God, and the strength of God is in me and working through me as I decide to use it. So when I truly desire a false thought to be removed from my mind, it must be done.

And why would I ever not want the belief in my littleness removed? Why would I hang onto doubt and fear? Clearly, I think it holds value. The most insane value placed on keeping my ego self intact is that on some level I think that it is protecting me from God. It is an insane desire because I exist in the Mind of God and so how could I be protected from God and why would I need it even if it could be accomplished. This is just the hallucination of a mind driven mad by fear. I do not want these thoughts anymore for they cost me the peace of God.

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Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 3. 2-15-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 3
3 All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness is power, and by sharing it, it gains in strength. If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses. Someone must always lose if you perceive yourself as weak. Yet there is another interpretation of relationships that transcends the concept of loss of power completely.

Journal
I remember one time when I was a young woman and dating, I had an electrical problem at my house. I jokingly said that maybe I needed to trade my pipefitter boyfriend for an electrician boyfriend. But really, is this a joke? I’ve had three marriages in my life and in every single one of them, I was looking for something from these men that I thought I needed. I felt that I was weak in certain areas and needed something from someone I saw as strong.

I didn’t love myself very much and I wanted them to make me feel like I was loveable. I wanted them to make me feel valuable and special. I wanted security and stability in my life and I thought they could provide it. I wanted someone to keep me company and relieve my boredom, and someone to be there for me when I felt down, someone to take my side, to defend me.

You might wonder what is wrong with this attitude as it is very common, even considered normal. But as Jesus says in this paragraph, “If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses.” If the giving and taking are balanced, the relationship seems to work, but inevitably, the balance shifts back and forth, and someone begins to feel like they are coming out on the losing end and then there is a power struggle.

When relationships are looked at with complete honesty, they begin to look more like bargains than like love, and bargains can be broken when one party or the other feels they are giving too much and not receiving enough in return. If one believes that this neediness is love, then love seems like a pretty iffy proposition.

This is not the powerful unconditional love that Jesus talks about in A Course in Miracles. He is going to explain to us in this section that there is another way to have a relationship, one in which there is sharing rather than taking and holiness is shared and thus strengthened. How lovely to think of a relationship in which nothing is needed from the partner, and everything is shared freely, lovingly and gratefully with no thought of scarcity or loss.

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Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 4. 2-14-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 4
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?

Journal
When someone’s body is sick I know that the only thing that happened is that the mind is confused. In its confusion, it projected its guilty thoughts onto the body. When I pray for them, I am asking the Holy Spirit to heal the mind. Once this is done, the healing is guaranteed because the Holy Spirit never fails at His function.

The only thing left for me to do is to trust. It can be a temptation to worry that I don’t see progress, but that is like a prayer that says please maybe heal this one. That is not a prayer I want to say. The prayer I want to say is one of absolute certainty that the one who is experiencing a sick body is mistaken and that mistake is easily corrected.

When I doubt the Holy Spirit, I ask for correction of my mind that is now the one confused. I have learned to accept that the prayer is always answered and when it is accepted is not my concern. It is really just a matter of faith, faith in my brother, faith in myself and faith in God. That doesn’t mean that ego thoughts will go away. But with practice, I have learned that I don’t have to believe in the ego fears and doubts.

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Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 2. 2-13-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 2
2 You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant we share our faith in God’s Son because we recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our appreciation of his worth we cannot doubt his holiness. And so we love him.

Journal

Jesus knows that we don’t have a lot of faith that perfect love is in us, so he offers us his perfect faith in us. What a good brother he is! He reminds us that all our brothers receive the same gift. They have perfect love in them, too. And so we must have faith in them as well. This was always hard for me before. There was always someone I didn’t trust, that I could not accept as having perfect love.

I would see that one person or those few people and my sight was arrested at their bodies. I saw their ego personality and their ego actions and that was as far as I could get. But something happened recently, and my mind shifted. Suddenly, I could see how everyone is holy. Now I can’t un-see it.

We are just consciousness, or awareness, or All That Is, or Christ, whatever term you like. The consciousness that I am is not like the consciousness you are. It IS the consciousness you are. The body and the personality, these are just the ego construct that each of us develops as we live in the world, and this is what makes us appear different. But that difference is artificial. What we are beneath that artifice remains as it always was, and it is exactly the same in every one of us. And it is very holy.

Think of ego bodies as containers of different shapes, sizes, and colors, each unique in its form. But inside each container is the essence of what animates it, and that essence is not different from container to container. It is from the same infinite pool, poured into the different containers. And when the container is no longer needed it is discarded, but the essence of who we are remains as it always has been, unaffected by the container that once held it.

So now, when I am tempted to judge the container, I find it is not possible for me to see that one as different or separate from me. I am part of God and I am very holy and so is everyone else. No matter what is happening in this dream, I cannot forget that. I cannot forget that the one who seems separate from me is really… well, me, us, the Son of God. In every case. No exceptions.

That is me over there, acting like a fool. Haha. Sometimes it is me over here acting the fool. But our actions change nothing. We are just one great Whole acting as if we are not. There is no one to judge, no one to blame. There is just the One. Yes, I see your body over there doing its thing, but I recognize your holy self and I love you.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 3. 2-12-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 3
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.

Journal
Our part in healing is to know the truth about them without being influenced by appearances. Then we are done. It is not our part to look for results. It is not our business how the gift is accepted. Knowing the truth about someone in the face of the false image of sickness requires faith, and watching to see how the gift is accepted is a lack of faith. It is like praying for certainty and in the next breath praying for doubt. Or praying for reality in one breath and in the next, praying for an illusion.

What I have noticed for myself is that fear gets in the way sometimes, and when it does, I begin to doubt. Jesus has asked me to step out of the boat and walk to him over the water. I get right out of that boat and I am traipsing across the water just fine. Then I start to look around and see what I’m doing, fear sets in and I doubt I can do what Jesus asks so I sink.

When someone sends me a prayer request they sometimes give me a lot of detail as to what is going on in their life. I understand that they are afraid but I know that they don’t need to be. I completely disregard what they think is happening and I know only what is true for them. But when it is someone I know well, like one of my children or a good friend, I can get sucked into the story and begin to feel the fear that they feel. Fear just clouds the mind and makes it hard to remember the truth.

Those are the times when I have to back up and ask for correction for myself. My mind has become confused and I need the Holy Spirit to heal it. I trust the Holy Spirit to always heal because that is His function. I have faith in Him so I experience healing and I can go back to truly praying for that loved one. I can again see him or her with clarity; completely disregarding the images my eyes show me. And if they are not ready to accept the gift of healing, that is OK. It is there waiting for them when they are ready. That part is for them to do, not me.

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