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Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 5. 3-26-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 5
5 The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The “fearful healer” is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful.

Jesus seems to be telling me that healing is consistent because it is of God. If there is fear there will be exceptions and so inconsistency. If I experience inconsistency in my healing then I would be a fearful healer and that is not possible because it is a conflict in terms. What could that mean? Fear is one thing and healer is something altogether different. I might as well say it is a black white picture. That would make as much sense.

And yet, I heal and sometimes I fall into fear and I don’t heal, because I heal through God and God is not fear. Here is what I think: When I heal there is no doubt or fear in my mind. I am a healer. When I am afraid, I doubt and so no healing occurs. I am not a healer. Only one of those statements is true even though there is the appearance of both. I know that there is nothing to fear. I know this is the truth and so I must be a healer. Therefore, when I see the appearance of a fearful healer, I am looking on nothing.

When I see the appearance of anything less than the truth, I know it cannot be true or real. I disregard the appearance of what cannot be. I turn toward the truth and look on what is real. I focus my attention on what I am, not what the ego would have me be. I forgive the appearance of fear, and I forgive myself for my temporary distraction. I remain innocent and fearless and free. I remain a healer.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: V.Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 4. 3-28-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph4
4 Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always sees something “special” in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack.

I am healed as I allow myself to be healed. It is as simple as that, and it is unfailing. I desire to remember who I am through forgetting who I thought I was, and it is done. I am strengthened each time I allow any healing at all, because each time I allow healing my mind is illuminated to the degree I am ready. As I remember who I am I accept the strength of God that is mine.

Magic always tries to weaken, because magic tries to convince me that I am less than what I am. I take medicine and I must believe that the power to heal lies outside my mind; therefore my mind must be weak. I solve my financial problems through shifting around the elements of the illusion so that I now prefer the way they appear, and I have convinced myself that the illusion is more powerful than mind.

Regardless of the form it takes, all problems are one problem and there is only one true solution. That solution is the Holy Spirit in my mind. As I call on that solution, my memory returns and I know who I am. This is strength. Attempting to solve my problems any other way, robs me of the memory of the strength available to me so it weakens me.

The solution may call for action in the world, but that action will be dictated from the Source of all Strength and so will not weaken. Believing that my solution comes from something outside me shifting and changing, weakens my trust and that makes the appearance of weakness. Of course, I cannot, as God’s Son, be weakened. But I can be confused and believe that I am weakened and what I believe is true for me.

As a healer I am calling on the strength of God and the Knowledge of God that is within me and part of me, but if I believe that it is in me alone, I am truly confused. In my confusion I forget who I am and I lose the certainty that allowed healing to occur through me. Even if the healer is aware that the healing is coming through her, she is still confused if she believes this makes her special.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 2. 3-26-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 2

2 Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

I read this paragraph and thought I understood it, then I was guided to read again more carefully.

Only minds communicate. Obviously I have no idea what true communication is because I thought it was what we do when we talk to each other. On more careful examination of this idea I see how flawed it is. What I say to you may or may not be true and even if it is true it may or may not be truth. In other words, I may be saying what I believe is true, but be wrong about it. Or I may be saying what I have convinced myself is true when all along I am really hiding the truth even from myself.

Perhaps what I am saying is for you alone. My words to your ears. In this case it is not true communication because it is limited and it separates. Limitation and separation have no place at all in the Kingdom. Words can be symbols for the truth but always, even under the best of circumstances, they will fall short of true communication. When we speak to each other, body to body, it is only vaguely similar to communication.

The impulse to communicate is the impulse to create. What passes for most communication is chatter. We speak on the surface of things because we cannot find words for what really matters and yet that impulse to communicate remains. So we try. We want to communicate, we want this very badly and we try to communicate even when it is very hard to do.

Have you ever tried to express something important and just couldn’t find words for it? I have had a few mystical experiences and I don’t know if words exist that could allow me to describe what actually happened and how it affected me. Yet I try anyway. I feel a strong need to communicate this and so I give them words even though the words only serve to diminish the experience.

In our true state communication is forever unbroken. What is known by one is known by all. We don’t need to fumble for words and disingenuousness is neither possible nor desired. How deeply freeing and satisfying it must be to truly communicate.

Communication is also the impulse to create. This is the reason we long to communicate and that we do so even when communication is so severely limited. We are creators and the impulse to create is not diminished because we are pretending to be something else. While we are in denial about our true nature we cannot create, but the impulse remains and so we try. We struggle to communicate, and we make as a poor substitution for creation.

The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. The ego can do nothing about the impulse to communicate and the impulse to create so it tries to convince us that this is the purview of the body, and we accept this without question. We believe that we can only communicate through speaking words. We believe that we can only create with our hands.

In accepting these limitations, we are accepting the ego belief that we do not need the mind, and that separation is real and we are bodies. How very small we make ourselves and our world. In believing that the body is sufficient unto itself, what we think no longer matters to us, and all is about behavior. We have taught ourselves to believe the unbelievable, that as long as we don’t act on our dark thoughts, they don’t really matter, and only behavior counts.

Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. I remember the first time, as a young teenager, I learned the hard lesson that people don’t always say what they believe. I walked up to a group of girls at school and one of them said to me that I looked really nice in my new outfit. Later I discovered that she really meant that she thought my outfit was pretty awful.

People’s actions are not always congruent with their thoughts. Sometimes it is deliberate as it was with the girl in my class, and sometimes it is unconscious. Sometimes it is meant to hurt, but often it is meant to hide what we think of as our awful secrets, or to put on a front designed to convince others that we are what they expect us to be.

We want to be liked and loved, and yet we don’t feel likable and lovable. We notice the dark thoughts in our mind and think we will never be accepted if people know what is going on in there. We imagine that our ego is more awful than everyone else’s when actually we all share the same ego.

This is one of the reasons I often share my ego thoughts as teaching examples. I will no longer hide behind appropriate behavior. I will expose the ego thoughts that would otherwise keep me in the belief that we are different. To be a good teacher and a good learner, I must be consistent in what I teach. This means a change must occur at the level of the mind, not at the level of behavior.

All of my life I had tried to bring my behavior into accord with what was expected of me. I wanted my behavior to teach what I was, even though it was not the truth. Then I learned to allow my mind to be healed knowing that behavior is always informed by the mind. A healed mind teaches healing consistently, thus assuring that I am a good learner and a good teacher.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: V.Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 1. 3-25-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind
1 The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego’s decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit’s decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.

The body and all the body says and does, and all the thinking ego mind chatters on about, can be used to take us deeper into the illusion or it can be used to return us to the Kingdom. We, the “ego we”, make a decision about this. We do this, not once, but in each moment. I see this clearly as do we all once we have come this far in the Course. If ever you have noticed an ego thought such as judgment, and then realized that this thought is not true and you are not interested in it, then you have made a choice to use the ego thinking as a path home instead of a path further into the illusion.

Most of us begin our path by becoming aware of the ego thoughts and behaviors, and understanding that they are not making us happy. Then we learn that there is an option and we spend some time making a decision to allow that option. Typically, we will choose God sometimes, and at other times we will defend our illusions because we are not ready to give them up. We can spend a lot of time going back and forth on this.

What must happen eventually, is that we embrace the Holy Spirit’s use of the body as a true communication device at all times. When we realize that we have one function, that our life has one purpose, and that is to wake up, we begin to make the one choice in every situation. We choose to bring every dark thought to the Light, defending none of them.

Until we fully embrace this choice, we remain an unhealed healer, at times being effective and then falling back into darkness again. My daughter is an English teacher. Imagine how confusing it would be for her students if today, she taught you had to put a period at the end of each statement, and then tomorrow she taught that you could ignore that rule when you wanted to. She would not be a very successful teacher and her students would leave her class confused. Eventually, she would be confused herself because, teaching confusion, she would learn confusion.

In the same way, we will awaken more quickly if we teach a consistent lesson. Our minds will be healed if we unfailingly choose to use the body as a healing opportunity rather than a separation device. It is a choice and the more consistent we are in our choosing; the more effective we will be as both learner and teacher.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: IV.Healing as the Recognition of Truth, Paragraph 6. 3-24-14

IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth Paragraph 6
6 To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own “will” as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do not use it, you forget that you have it. By not remembering it, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in accordance with the laws of God, and recognizing their universality. Without this recognition, you have made the laws meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is contained by them and in them.

It is God’s Will that His children remain as He created them. Therefore they can only be Love, holy, and perfect in every way. His children are the light of the world, and forever innocent. The ego offers us another will, a will of our own. Through this will, we see God’s children as small, vulnerable, fragile, evil, and above all, as guilty. Fortunately, the gift of the ego is not real. It is nothing. A will separate and different from the Will of God cannot exist, and so we can only pretend to be in opposition to God. We can only pretend His children are something He did not create.

Because only God’s Laws are true, none of the ego nonsense applies to me, but if I think it applies to anyone or anything, I will lose the knowledge of who I am and will believe the ego laws are real. In remembering the ego laws, I will forget the truth. In seeing my brother through the filter of ego will, I am choosing to forget the truth about myself as well. My brother is myself and so what I believe about my brother, I believe about myself.

The ego laws say that I can be good while others are bad. In fact, they say that I am good only in comparison to the evil I see in others. Ego says goodness can be splintered into pieces and pieces can go their own way, some remaining good and others becoming evil. Ego will is the right to decide what is good and what is evil.

God’s Law says that what God creates good, remains good, and wholeness can only and always remain whole. God’s Law says there is no will but God’s Will and so we remain safe in spite of our dream of other wills and other laws.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text,IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth, Paragraph 7. 3-21-14

IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth Paragraph 7
7 Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly because they are the laws of truth. But seek this only, because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is All in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him Who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you, by not recognizing its existence in your brother. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge fear. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Sonship, being what the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not. This enables you to remember what you are.

“God is All in all in a very literal sense.” God is All so I cannot be something separate from God. I am in God, part of Him. This means I am beyond all harm and there is nothing to fear. If there was something to fear it would mean scary stuff is in God, but God is Love and so this cannot be true. This is what I am to remember.

“Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you, by not recognizing its existence in your brother.” Because I had forgotten who I am and where I am, healing was needed. Before we accepted the idea of separation there was no fear. It is the ego that induces the sense of danger we feel. That makes sense to me, because if there were no bodies and if there was only one in harmony within Itself and in God, where would the danger come from? In God there are no bodies and no disharmony, therefore there is nothing to fear.

I was thinking of my son as I read this. He had surgery recently in the hopes of ending years of pain. The pain is receding only slowly and he is afraid it might not go away at all. It might seem to the ego mind that the loving thing would be for me to commiserate with him, to be afraid for him and with him.

The ego mind says, “I am so afraid for my son. I can’t stand to think of him being in pain forever. I am afraid he will give up if this surgery doesn’t work. I am afraid for him because I love him.” But is this really love? Is love fear? If I believe his fear thoughts and join him in that fear, I only increase the belief in fear in both of us. Do I believe in God, or do I believe in fear? Do I want to teach Love or do I want to teach fear? What I teach is what I learn.

There is fear in my son’s mind, but there is also God. I choose which I support, and I can as easily choose to support the truth in his mind as I can choose to support the fear in his mind. It is up to me. Which do I want to make stronger for both of us? By choosing to acknowledge love rather than fear as real, I am choosing and therefore strengthening the Holy Spirit in my son and in myself.

The sane choice is obvious and the only reason there is any disturbance in my mind is because I have chosen wrongly so often that I have taught myself to believe in something that does not even exist. There is no fear in God, so there is no fear. Now I am teaching myself to forget the false lesson I have learned so well, so that I can remember the truth.

It is simple and easy to do. If I feel fear, I seek first and only the Kingdom of God. God loves me and doesn’t want me to suffer so it is His Will that I return to His Love. Because it is His Will, there is no possibility of failure. I am meant for love not for fear. Because I want both my son and myself to be free of suffering, I continue to forget the lessons of pain and fear that I learned from the ego. I continue to disregard appearances, and I remember for us both that there is only God’s Love.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, IV.Healing as the Recognition of Truth, Paragraph 5. 3-20-14

IV. Healing as the Recognition of Truth, Paragraph 5

5 The ego’s goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit’s, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, Which is in all of you.

Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This is the sentence that draws my attention. How does this work? I asked for clarity and this is what came to me. I heal others by seeing the truth in them. This applies in all cases regardless of circumstances. If someone is sick, I know this cannot be.

Yes, the body takes on the projection of the dark thoughts in the ego mind and appears sick. But that one is not the ego or the body. That one is the spirit, he is God’s Son and cannot be sick. I heal him by not believing the dark thoughts and not believing in the effects of those thoughts have any validity. These effects, the sickness in the body, are meaningless and will be undone as the mind is healed. My part in the healing of the mind is to know this as completely as I can. I do not allow my mind to be distracted by false appearances.

This is just as true and applicable if the effect of wrong minded thinking takes the form of mental illness, or emotional upset. It is no different if the effect appears as financial hardship or broken relationships, or addictive behaviors. There is only one problem and that is a belief that we are separate from God. The solution is the certainty that this cannot be true. This is healing.

As we heal through our willingness to know only the truth, we are healed. Our willingness grows and with it our certainty. We learn that we are one as our light enlightens another, and we learn that all sickness is the same sickness and all healing occurs as a result of the same true thought. We learn that different appearances are meaningless and that shifting form does not mean shifting reality. As we heal and are healed we learn that there is only one problem and one solution and in so doing, we learn to perceive the Sonship as one.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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