1. This is a course in miracles. As such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible it must occur.
2. All sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it is gone as soon as the idea that brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness that it may be carefully preserved from reason’s light.
3. Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted. Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sand. The Son of God perceived what he would see because perception is a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, made to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known. What is perceived takes many forms, but none has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept apart from truth, it seems to have a meaning and be real.
4. Perception’s laws are opposite to truth, and what is true of knowledge is not true of anything that is apart from it. Yet has God given answer to the world of sickness, which applies to all its forms. God’s answer is eternal, though it works in time, where it is needed. Yet because it is of God, the laws of time do not affect its workings. It is in this world, but not a part of it. For it is real, and dwells where all reality must be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.
5. God’s answer lies where the belief in sin must be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone and without cause. Perception’s laws must be reversed because they are reversals of the laws of truth. The laws of truth forever will be true and cannot be reversed; yet can be seen as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies.
6. It is impossible that one illusion be less amenable to truth than are the rest. But it is possible that some are given greater value, and less willingly offered to truth for healing and for help. No illusion has any truth in it. Yet it appears some are more true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions and are false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. God’s Will is one. And any wish that seems to go against His Will has no foundation in the truth.
7. Sin is not error, for it goes beyond correction to impossibility. Yet the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever past the hope of healing, and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it. Then would God’s Will be split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of two opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Himself. Thus has He lost his mind, proclaiming sin has taken His reality from Him and brought His Love at last to vengeance’s heels. For such an insane picture an insane defense can be expected but cannot establish that the picture must be true.
8. Nothing gives meaning where no meaning is. And truth needs no defense to make it true. Illusions have no witnesses and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived. Forgiveness is the only function here and serves to bring the joy this world denies to every aspect of God’s Son where sin was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not see the role forgiveness plays in ending death and all beliefs that arise from mists of guilt. Sins are beliefs that you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you, another little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol represents is but your wish to be apart and separate.
9. Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart. We call it “wish” because it still conceives of other choices and has not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. Yet is this wish in line with Heaven’s state, and not in opposition to God’s Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full inheritance, it does remove the obstacles that you have placed between the heaven where you are, and recognition of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known before they were denied.
10. Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a little wish that what is true be true, a little willingness to overlook what is not there; a little sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world that death and desolation seem to rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to replace the world you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a unity which holds all things within itself? There is no sin. And every miracle is possible the instant that the Son of God perceives his wishes, and the will of God are one.[1]
In my devotional practice today I underlined the laws of healing found in the first ten paragraphs of today’s text. I list them below so that you, too, may benefit from reviewing the laws of healing in your own devotional habit.
- All sickness comes from separation.
- Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted. Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sand.
- Perception’s laws are opposite to truth, and what is true of knowledge is not true of anything that is apart from it.
- God’s answer lies where the belief in sin must be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone and without cause.
- No illusion has any truth in it. God’s Will is one. And any wish that seems to go against His Will has no foundation in the truth.
- Sin is not error, for it goes beyond correction to impossibility. There is no sin.
- Nothing gives meaning where no meaning is. And truth needs no defense to make it true.
- Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself.
- And every miracle is possible the instant that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the will of God are one.
When we deny our separation from God, when we put aside our idolatry to the perceptual world of images, opposites, and opposition – the untruth that sickens us disappear. Sanity is restored to our troubled minds. There is no longer anything that relates to sickness and sin in the light of reason and truth.
Perception is a wish fulfilled; it is changeable and uncertain and can never be trusted. In a world of shifting sands fortunes can be made one day and leave us broke and penniless the next. But the riches of truth last forever. While we cannot take truth to the store and buy ourselves things in which to nourish or bedeck our flesh, when we know truth, the illusion becomes so apparent that we cannot invest our interest in the things that would hold us fast to pointlessness which takes us nowhere.
Let us forgive the perceptual world that would keep us apart. Let us forgive all that would deny our divinity and unity as God’s Son! For when I forgive what keeps us apart, I am wishing for all that would heal us and bring us together. I am consciously and with purposeful deliberation choosing the Will of God and acknowledging that my will and His Will are one. As long as I harbor ill-will and blame and grudge against you, I am making the perceptual world real, I am trusting in my insane, upside-down, oppositional ego-self rather than the Christ within me. I am not only pushing you away, but I am keeping myself outside the Kingdom. In other words, I am denying the miracle of God’s Grace. I can be nothing but sick in this realm of not loving you, and you are sick without me.
To be healed we must wish for oneness. This is our salvation for only in our oneness can we awaken from the shadowy dream of separateness and sin. When I make a little wish for oneness for you and me, I am warming to the Will of God. My cold, stony heart is melting, my long-standing grudges are evaporating into the mists of the past where they belong, my lower mind gives way to the Higher Mind of Christ. I have accepted the mercy and grace of God and now all I can do is to offer it to you, even as you offer it to me.
There is no sin that can stand between us when all we wish for is that truth be true, and we are one again. This is the law of healing for every miracle is possible when we recognize that what we want and what God Wills are the same!
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 26 The transition. VII The laws of healing 1-10. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons, visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
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