VIII. From Perception to Knowledge, P 1
1 All healing is release from the past. That is why the Holy Spirit is the only Healer. He teaches that the past does not exist, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore no one in the world can know. It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows also it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all. It therefore does not consider where it is, because the concept “where” does not mean anything to it. It knows that it is everywhere, just as it has everything, and forever.
Journal
Jesus says that all healing is release from the past. In another place in the Course he says that all healing is essentially a release from fear. This tells me that a release from the past is a release from fear. So I asked how this could be. How is it that fear and the past are associated? The answer is in this paragraph.
Here is how this seems to me. Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit teaches us that the past does not exist, and without the belief in the past, we know ourselves only in eternity. In eternity there is no perception because we have knowledge. In fact, if we have knowledge, we cannot exist in the world. So what is perception and how is it different than knowledge?
Perception is what we have instead of knowledge while we believe we exist outside eternity. Knowledge is certain and unchanging. Knowledge is true now and later and in every circumstance. In fact, knowledge undoes now and later and circumstances. Perception, on the other hand is only what we currently believe to be true. It might be true or it might not. It might be true at this moment, and different in another moment. Perception is an product of time, so it doesn’t exist outside of time.
Here is an example of perception. I had a text from my child that seemed very unkind and judgmental. I felt first angry, then sad. When we spoke in person, I realized she had been making a joke, something that was not obvious in a text. So for awhile I read the words and thought I knew what they meant. That was my perception. Then I spoke to her and the meaning of the words changed. That was my new perception of the same words.
Remembering this incident it is easy for me to see why it is that perception causes us to feel like the world is not stable, and why we feel insecure and therefore fearful.
If we had knowledge instead of perception all this would change. But here is something interesting that Jesus tells us in this paragraph. If we had knowledge we would not see ourselves as in this world. We would know that we dwell in eternity. Eternity is without a where and without a when. Without a when there would be no past.
What would there be to fear without a past? Every frightening or regretful thought I have ever had was based on something I did or heard or learned in the past. The ego thoughts that I bring to the Holy Spirit for healing would not exist if I did not keep them alive through memory, which is the present view of the past. So without a past there would be no need for healing. If there were nothing to be healed, there would be no fear.
The mind that knows it is in eternity knows that it is everywhere, just as it has everything, and forever. I repeated this promise here just because I like to remind myself of the goal and the reason I do the work and stay true to my purpose.
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