IV: Healing as the Recognition of Truth
- Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Holy Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same source since inspiration comes from the Voice for God and certainty comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, who knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is still of God because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind that does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are unaware. Because they are unaware, they do not know.
- The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you He is in you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in God because you are part of Him. The miracles the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order of difficulty, because every part of creation is of one order. This is God’s will and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of it. When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. I said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is therefore not the opposite of remembering when it is properly perceived. Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, it can be used as a way out of conflict, as all proper perception can.
- The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned, because that would defeat its purpose. Therefore, it does not really learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has “learned.” The kind of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability that was applied to the learning. All you need do is make the effort to learn, for the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for the effort. If different abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction, or in one way. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one result, and by so doing, their similarities rather than their differences is emphasized.
- All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit Who understands how to use them properly. He uses them only for healing because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit understands that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering.
- 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.
- 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.
- Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, 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.[1]
Jesus tells us in today’s text reading that truth cannot be taught. It can only be recognized. We will recognize the truth when we find it– it will make sense to us, it will resolve conflict, it will set us free from that which keeps us asleep in a spiteful dream. The Voice for God within each one of us inspires us to seek the truth; and until we put all else aside and turn in that direction, we can have no confidence in God, because the clamors of the ego use the perceptual world and its ongoing dramas, conflicts, and crises to provide an alternate to our true Source and our real identity.
God created us whole and our wholeness is His Will. He knows all of His creations in wholeness. That which is broken, shattered, shameful, and sick is part of the deception which weakens and cripples us, keeping our true identities from our consciousness. This is the result of not remembering God; this is the result of being swept up in the perceptual world and heeding the clamor of the ego rather than the quiet certain Voice for God within.
Only as we experience Holy Spirit working through us can we learn that the Voice for God is in us. Holy Spirit is the mediator between that teaches us that we are part of God and in and of God. Every single part of creation is in one order, it is a whole, it is complete, and creation is connected – this is why there are no big miracles and small miracles, for every single part of creation has equal worth. The laws of God establish this; His Voice within us, reminds us of its truth. When we heal, we are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. We forget what is not true and which can never work in order to remember that which is true and will always work. Forgetting lies is not the opposite of remembering truth. When I believe a rumor that my friend has been spreading lies and blabbing my secrets to everybody, and later find out that it is not true – forgetting the lie that I had once believed helps me to remember her loyalty and discretion, giving us a solid foundation for our relationship rather than the brokenness and lack of integrity made by lies.
While Holy Spirit teaches us to forget lies so that we can remember truth better, ego has no such desire to teach us anything, but would rather have us keep repeating history extending the need for time. Keep killing, keep going to battle, keep us apart distrusting one another rather than sharing our cultures, embracing our differences, and accepting our equality. No worries! Holy Spirit uses everything the ego makes to teach us the opposite of what it has “learned.” It does not matter what it has learned, all we have to do is make the effort to learn from our time in the perceptual world. When we get past our ego and examine our lives in perceptual world, Holy Spirit’s unified goal becomes apparent in our minds for we begin to see how every effort we make in this direction contributes to our awakening. We begin to see that no matter how varied or intermittent or stunted our efforts, Holy Spirit uses each effort we make in the right direction, focusing on the relationships and parallels in our efforts instead of disparities and differences.
This morning in our devotional practice, James and I were discussing how at different times in our lives, we put our minds to searching for truth. We knew that what we had been taught was truth was not, but we looked to many different avenues – we read our bibles, we read the book of Zen, we read the Celestine Prophecy, I read William James and Joseph Campbell. We prayed. We practiced meditative poses. We went to one church and then another, separately and apart, we were on an ongoing spiritual quest that nobody would have guessed by judging from our outer lives. There were times we gave it up, it all seemed insane and impossible and yet the Voice for God kept calling to us, becoming increasingly clear, consistent, and concise amid all the racket of ego. Taking all our scattered efforts and unifying them over the course of time without using judgment, condemnation, mockery, or shame.
This is healing. As Holy Spirit teaches us, so must we teach others for this heals us to heal. Accepting and offering no judgment, no condemnation, no mockery, guilt, or shame, we offer only the recognition of who and what we are in God.
This is why we give our abilities to Holy Spirit who uses them for healing. Without giving our gifts to Holy Spirit, our abilities will be smothered or used for cynicism, blame, derision, and other forms of projection, which keeps us locked in separation instead of unity. When we are healed, we remember our wholeness in God. We forgot that, but Holy Spirit translates our forgetting into a way of remembering. All our talents are now devoted not to our egos but to bring health, healing, and wholeness, to help others recognize their truth in God.
The ego’s goal is not to unify, but its goal is unified. Ego’s goal – always and in all ways – is to divide and separate, while Holy Spirit seeks to unify and heal. There is no rank and division among who deserves healing and who does not. You need not have insurance, a lot of money, or know the right people. No matter how undeserving and unworthy a person may appear to be, healing is the way we undo the belief in differences for this is the only way to see the Sonship as one. Seeing the Sonship as one is in accord with the laws of God. The strength of this perception brings the mind into accord with God even while we identify with our human form because the reconciled Sonship serves the call of God within each one of us.
Part of the overall delusion is believing that we can oppose God’s Will. The will of the ego, the aim of its delusion, takes many different forms – all with the same goal – to leave us isolated, apart, and blaming one another, giving us nothing in the end. Nothing can oppose God’s Will. Even ego’s delusion serves, in the end, to bring us to God.
God has given us a gift that we both have and are. He has given us Holy Spirit, His Voice and when we do not heed His Voice, we forget that we have it. When we forget what we have, we forget what we are. Healing is simply remembering our true identity as God’s Son, not just for the few, but for all. Without recognizing the universality of our Sonship with God, the Sonship becomes meaningless to us. There can be no Sonship without everybody! Thinking otherwise is why we need healing, because all meaning is contained in the all-embracing laws of God.
When we seek only the Kingdom of God, we recognize that there is nothing else. God is All in all. All being is in Him who is all Being. When we recognize this fact we are healed because we forget the sense of danger the ego has induced in us by not recognizing it anymore in our brothers. When I can look upon Creation without fear, Holy Spirit is strengthened in me and in you, because I am no longer afraid to love you, to enjoy your company, to share with you my food and drink, to give you equal standing in the Kingdom of God. You are no longer my enemy because of our physical and cultural differences, you are my brother, you are my friend, you are one with me in God. Love comes to us when we refuse to listen to the media, to our ancestral chronicles of hatred and bitterness, to religious traditions which would tear us apart, teaching us it is the will of God to maim and kill one another. Love comes freely to the Sonship because that is what we are.
Today in your devotional practice, ask Holy Spirit to help you reject that which divides and shatters – and embrace Him Who unifies and makes us one. This is a blessed teaching, one in which will heal the world, bringing God’s Will to earth as it is in Heaven. Commit to recognizing all others as God’s beloved Son, thus healing them as you are healed through your loving thoughts, words, and deeds.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 7 The gifts of the kingdom IV Healing as the recognition of truth. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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