on which salvation rests. For healing is
the opposite of all the world's ideas
which dwell on sickness and on separate states.
Sickness is a retreat from others, and
a shutting off of joining. It becomes
a door that closes on a separate self,
and keeps it isolated and alone.|
Sickness is isolation. For it seems
to keep one self apart from all the rest,
to suffer what the others do not feel.
It gives the body final power to make
the separation real and keep the mind
in solitary prisons, split apart
and held in pieces by a solid wall
of sickened flesh which it can not surmount.|
The world obeys the laws <that> sickness serves,
but healing operates apart from them.
It is impossible that anyone
be healed alone. In sickness must he be
apart and separate. But healing is
his own decision to be one again,
and to accept his Self with all its parts
intact and unassailed. In sickness does
his Self appear to be dismembered and
without the Unity Which gives It life.
But healing is accomplished as he sees
the body has no power to attack
the universal Oneness of God's Son.|
Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth,
but healing demonstrates that truth is true.
The separation sickness would impose
has never really happened. To be healed
is merely to accept what always was
the simple truth, and always will remain
exactly as it has forever been.
Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must
be shown that what they look upon is false.
And healing, never needed by the truth,
must demonstrate that sickness is not real.|
Healing might thus be called a counter-dream
which cancels out the dream of sickness in
the name of truth, but not in truth itself.
Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins
<that> never were accomplished, healing but
removes illusions that have not occurred.
Just as the real world will arise to take
the place of what has never been at all,
healing but offers restitution for
imagined states and false ideas which dreams
embroider into pictures of the truth.
Yet think not healing is unworthy of
your function here. For antichrist becomes
more powerful than Christ to those who dream
the world is real. The body seems to be
more stable and more solid than the mind.
And love becomes a dream, while fear remains
the one reality which can be seen
and justified and fully understood.
Just as forgiveness shines away all sin,
and the real world must occupy the place
of what you made, so healing must replace
the fantasies of sickness you have held
before the simple truth. When sickness has
been seen to disappear in spite of all
the laws which hold it cannot but be real,
then questions have been answered. And the laws
can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.|
Healing is freedom. For it demonstrates
that dreams will not prevail against the truth.
Healing is shared. And by this attribute
it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold
that sickness is inevitable are
more potent than their sickly opposites.
Healing is strength. For by its gentle hand
is weakness overcome, and minds which were
walled off within a body free to join
with other minds, to be forever strong.|
Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange
of all the world of sorrow for a world
where sadness cannot enter are the means
by which the Holy Spirit urges you
to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach
how easily salvation can be yours;
how little practice you need undertake
to let His laws replace the ones you made
to hold yourself a prisoner to death.
His life becomes your own as you extend
the little help He asks in freeing you
of everything that ever caused you pain.|
And as you let yourself be healed, you see
all those around you or who cross your mind
or whom you touch or those who seem to have
no contact with you, healed along with you.
Perhaps you will not recognize them all,
nor realize how great your offering
to all the world when you let healing come
to you. But you are never healed alone,
and legions upon legions will receive
the gifts that you receive when you are healed.|
Those who are healed become the instruments
of healing. Nor does time elapse between
the instant they are healed and all the grace
of healing it is given them to give.
What is opposed to God does not exist.
And who accepts it not within his mind
becomes a haven where the weary can
remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed,
and here are all illusions brought to truth.|
Would you not offer shelter to God's Will?
You but invite your Self to be at home,
and can this invitation be refused?
Ask the inevitable to occur
and you will never fail. The other choice
is but to ask what cannot be to be,
and this cannot succeed. Today we ask
that only truth will occupy our minds
that thoughts of healing will this day go forth
from what is healed to what must yet be healed,
aware that they will both occur as one.
We will remember, as the hour strikes,
our function is to let our minds be healed
that we may carry healing to the world,
exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy,
and separation for the peace of God.
Is not a minute of the hour worth
the giving to receive a gift like this?
Is not a little time a small expense
to offer for the gift of everything?
Yet must we be prepared for such a gift.
And so we will begin the day with this,
and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which
we will conclude today at night as well:
"When I am healed, I am not healed alone,
and I would share my healing with the world
that sickness may be banished from the mind
of God's One Son, Who is my only Self.
"
Let healing be through you this very day.
And as you rest in quiet, be prepared
to give as you receive, to hold but what
you give, and to receive the Word of God
to take the place of all the foolish thoughts
that ever were imagined. Now we come
together to make well all that was sick,
and offer blessing where there was attack.
Nor will we let this function be forgot
as every hour of the day slips by,
remembering our function with this thought:
"When I am healed, I am not healed alone,
and I would bless my brothers, for I would
be healed of them as they are healed through
me
."
