¹ Cure is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body "better." When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.

² He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.

³ The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.

⁴ Atonement heals with certainty and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

⁵ Peace be to you who have been cured in God and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

⁶ This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is and knows that no illusion can be real.

⁷ Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is and then applied to what is sick so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?

⁸ Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts—so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it, and it must be found.

⁹ We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false and can be cured because they are not true.

¹⁰ So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but this can cure. Today we hear a single Voice which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal quiet home of God.

¹¹ We waken hearing Him and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are the same. We have no need to make them different and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear Him now. We come to Him today.

¹² With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:

¹³ Only salvation can be said to cure. speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.

¹⁴ And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends and we remember Who we really are.

Course in Miracles

Original Edition

TEXT

Chapter 12

The Problem of Guilt



V. The Two Emotions

Par 33-44

³³ We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in common—they are all insane. They are made of sights which are not seen and sounds which are not heard. They make up a private world which cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them.

³⁴ Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ. Yet the figures that he sees were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers and do not include their reactions to him. Therefore he does not see that he made them and that they are not whole. For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only.

³⁵ It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer them, and no one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other because they saw in them a shadow figure in their own private world. And thus it is that you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others, you are literally attacking what is not there.

³⁶ The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize that they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything is disordered and where what is within appears to be without. Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot see.

³⁷ You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where when it comes it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred as your brother, you are not seeing him. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love and draw away from it. Yet fear attracts you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your brothers offer you, you do not see. As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity.

³⁸ You see what is not there, and you hear what is soundless. Your behavioral manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness, you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone.

³⁹ Little children, would you offer this to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you are offering it to Him. And He will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is unworthy of Him. Yet He would release you from it and set you free. His sane answer tells you that what you have offered yourself is not true, but His offering to you has never changed. You who know not what you do can learn what insanity is and look beyond it. It is given you to learn how to deny insanity and come forth from your private world in peace.

⁴⁰ You will see all that you denied in your brothers because you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing nigh unto them, you will draw them to yourself, perceiving them as witnesses to your reality, which you share with God. I am with them as I am with you, and we will draw them from their private worlds, for as we are united, so would we unite with them. The Father welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should offer Him. For every Son of God is given you to whom God gave Himself. And it is God to Whom you must offer them to recognize His gift to you.

⁴¹ Vision depends on light, and you cannot see in darkness. Yet in the darkness in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams, although your eyes are closed. And it is here that what you see you made. But let the darkness go, and all you made you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision. Yet from denying vision, it does not follow that you cannot see. But this is what denial does, for by it you accept insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your own perceptions. Yet for this, light must be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see.

⁴² Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness and yet still within you is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your vision comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees for you as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them unto you. For He loves what He sees within you, and He would extend it. And He will not return unto the Father until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him.

⁴³ You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father for you.

⁴⁴ The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw the Son, they have risen in Him to the Father. And all this will they understand because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them and recognized Him. In the sanity of His vision, they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.

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