Section V. The Function of the Miracle Worker 6-10
- 6. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
- 7. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
- 8. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
- 9. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
- 10. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
In today’s text, Jesus directs us again to perceive our bodies as nothing more than a learning device for the mind. The mind is the learner. Our Spirits, our true and holy Selves, are not learners – for they are like God and alive, vibrant, radiant with truth and all knowledge. It is our minds that are capable of learning, of being illuminated and awakened – our body just follows the dictates of our mind and believes in its creations and miscreations. When we recognize that our bodies are not who and what we are, when we recognize that our Spirits are the only real source of wisdom and truth, and that our minds are the determiners, the learners, the seekers, and the creators, our bodies are brought into proper alignment because we no longer depend on our body senses or functions as a means to truth.
Learning that leads to truth begins when our spirits awaken. When we begin to see that what we see with our physical eyes is not the way to truth the hallucinations of the world lose their grip upon our consciousness. This can be scary because we are afraid of what our spiritual eyes will show us – we have conjured up all manner of demons, imps, extraterrestrials, and angelic beings that bring doom, torment, and punishment to keep us from that which is spirit. We have aligned our beliefs in magic to that which is Spirit and truth. But the truth is that Holy Spirit is all the Spirit there is. God is All and in All. If we are seeing visions of demons and foul spirits we are not seeing truth because this does not come from God. If we see anything that disturbs our peace, upsets our happiness, or takes away our joy we can go straight to the truth of Atonement. We know that it is a lie and has no power to hurt us unless we choose to put our trust in it. Anything at all that we can dream up to pollute our minds with – disasters and disease, destruction and death – are simply not of God. They cannot be real except in the unholy imagination. When we accept the Atonement, we are accepting forgiveness for the lies we made up in darkness. We are accepting the truth of God. We are acting upon the Principle of Love, which is accepting Atonement to give Atonement. When we accept Atonement, we are delivered from the power of lies to hurt us because we no longer believe in them! We do not talk about them. We do not take sides for or against them. We do not waste our time trying to determine who said what and what they meant by it. We lose faith in what our physical bodies tell us about truth because we know there is no truth to be found in the physical realm which is a realm of magic and make-believe.
When we look to Holy Spirit we see nothing but forgiveness and love. We see absolutely nothing to be afraid of. All those stories about God’s wrath and vengeance are fabrications to keep us in fear of our Father instead of loving and seeking Him. Spiritual awareness makes us aware of the Everything of God where there is only love, truth, and goodwill. There is no room for darkness and the things of darkness in Him Who is Everything. If we are experiencing fear of any kind, we are trusting in lies and not the truth of the matter. We are to use our minds for God and not against Him. Protecting our mind from the illusion and applying our minds to Atonement, is the only remedy for all untruth.
In paragraph eight, Jesus tells us that our fear of healing comes from our inability to see how sick we really are. We want to pretend that humanity has the answers for humanity, that we are evolving in an upward way – that our technological advances, our medical systems, and our scientific discoveries hold the answers for our problems. But Jesus tells us very plainly that everything we see with our physical eye is beyond correction. Physical devices cannot correct physicality. As long as we continue to believe that the hallucination, the magical realm of the physical world is real in any sense of the word, our attempts to correct it will be mistaken. When we accept the world as truth, our real vision is hidden from us, and we like it that way because looking within means we have to face the truth about our selves and humanity. We made up a lie. We deluded ourselves. We separated our consciousnesses from all that is truth, love, and everlasting life and have accepted the fictional versions we made to substitute for true Creation. Until we recognize that the world we see has no reality, we have no way of recognizing the truth of the matter and we go on, humpity-dumptiy, the egg on the wall, looking for the king and all his men who can put us together again. Searching in the magical kingdom for more magic to cure what magic has made of us, we come to the conclusion – sooner or later – that there has to be a better way!
Restored to God’s Kingdom, we have no need of healing for we are whole. It only follows, that healing is a temporary need that arises only in the space and time belief system. Healing is a means of protection during our sojourn in time. Without healing which rests on the principle of charity, we would eventually destroy each other and every other species on this planet.! Charity allows us to see another in love’s perfect light even when we do not see ourselves in the same light. When we are kind to one another, when we look past our differences, when we show affection and devotion to Creation instead of preying upon Creation, we are expressing charity which is about the only height of love that we can conceive of in the separated realm. Embracing and practicing charity is essential to right-mindedness, Jesus teaches. When we view one another with charity we are reaching for Atonement. We are daring to believe that what we see is not the real story. We are healed and we heal others through expressions of charity.
We practice charity when we look on our brothers as we would have others look upon us. It is an act of charity to overlook his foul language, his bad manners, his crooked acts, irksome habits, and dastardly deeds and offer him forgiveness instead of offering him judgment and condemnation. Instead of holding our brother accountable for his humanity, we offer Atonement and recognize and acknowledge the God in him. If he had already accepted Atonement for himself, he would have no need for our charity. Charity is an acknowledgement of a need for healing and a recognition that no matter what our physical perception may tell us, it is accepted. We will waste no time yapping to other people about our brother’s sins. We will have no sense of shame to impose upon him for his failings as a good and decent human being. We will not preach, lecture, or impose our religious beliefs upon him. We will simply offer him Atonement and go our merry way, not necessarily forgetting about him, but certainly not fretting over him and believing the untruth about him, even if he is still exhibiting untruth in time and space.
Jesus says that revelation is the only thing that transcends our sense of time and space and hopefully all of us can experience revelation which takes us straight to the heavenlies and gives us wonderful experiences that are far beyond what we can expect in our day-to-day existence as mortals. However, all of us can perform miracles. As expressors of charity, miracles workers from all over the world, across all spans of time and space, stand with Christ instead of against Him. We seek and we find. We realize we are sick, and we are healed. We bring Him our darkness; He fills us with light!
When you offer me charity and I offer you charity we are offering miracles. We are shortening time because we are finally grasping the true meaning of salvation, of Atonement, of the Second Coming of Christ. When I look upon you as God’s son, my holy vision corrects your attachment to that which is not true, both backwards and forwards in all degrees of time. When I refuse to gossip about you, tell stories, repeat confidences, and otherwise disrespect the God within you, I offer you a place of trust, a place of peace and calm and holiness within me which enlarges the gifts of God in both of us. When I speak of your goodness, your gentleness, kindness and good deeds, and only that – your goodness, gentleness, kindness, and virtue expands as well as my own. Building relationships upon principles of charity makes our very relationships miraculous correcting our past and present and future, assuring our place in the Kingdom of God.
[1]A Course in Miracles. Chapter 2:V.6-10. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). pp. 26-27.
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