Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 19: The Passing of the Dream

8. Through the Eyes of Faith

This Course said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to Truth, Peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by which the wholeness of the dedication can be safely assumed. But we also said that Peace without faith will never be attained, for what is wholly dedicated to Truth as its only goal is brought to Truth by faith. This faith encompasses everyone involved in any situation, for only thus the situation is perceived as meaningful and whole. And everyone in a situation must be perceived as being involved, or else your faith is limited, and your dedication incomplete.

Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Children of the Divine. And they are healed because you offered faith to them, lifting them up to the Holy Spirit and releasing them from every demand your ego would make of them. Thus do you see them free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since It shares it, It has given it, and so has healed through you. It is joining Spirit in a united Purpose that makes this Purpose real to you, because you make It whole through your joining. And this is healing. The body is free of infirmity because you came to the Holy Instant without the body, having released it, and joined the Mind in which all healing rests.

The body cannot heal because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing in itself. Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it for. It is obvious that a segment of the mind can perceive itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs, the body becomes the split mind’s weapon, used against the Universal Purpose to demonstrate the “fact” that separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion, acting accordingly, perceiving what is not there, hearing what Truth has never spoken, and behaving senselessly through being imprisoned by insanity.

Recall the earlier statements that faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and that to use it will carry you straight to illusions. For faithlessness is the perception of a brother or sister as a body, and the body cannot be used for purposes of union except in fantasies. If, then, you perceive your sisters and brothers as bodies, you have established a condition in which uniting with them in Reality becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to them will have separated you from them, and kept you both apart from being healed. Your faithlessness will have thus opposed the Holy Spirit’s Purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the body, to stand between you. And the body will seem to be sick, for you will have made of it an adversary of healing in your mind, and the opposite of Truth.

It is easy to realize that faith must be the opposite of faithlessness. But the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they are. Faithlessness would always limit and oppose, while faith would remove all limitations and make whole. Faithlessness would separate and destroy, while faith would unite and heal. Faithlessness would interpose illusions between the Children of the Divine and their Creator, while faith would remove all obstacles that seem to rise between Them. Faithlessness is entirely dedicated to illusions, faith wholly to Truth.

Partial dedication to two completely opposite ideas is impossible. Truth is the absence of illusion, illusion the absence of Truth. They cannot be united, nor perceived in the same place. For if part of Truth were illusory, it would render all Truth meaningless. And if even one illusion were true, it would make the entire realm of illusions into the Truth, an insane idea when conceived clearly. Therefore to dedicate yourself to both Truth and illusion, even partially, is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain. For part of the Truth would be sought through the body, thought of as a means for seeking out reality through separation, while the other part would heal through Union, and therefore call upon the mind and not the body. The inevitable compromise would be the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind. For this divided goal would give both body and mind an equal reality, an idea that would seem to be possible only if the mind were limited to the body, and divided into little parts with seeming completeness but without Connection.

The divided and impossible goal of dedication to both Truth and illusion will not harm the body. But it will keep the delusional thought system in the mind. Here, then, is where healing is needed. And it is here that healing is. For the Divine gave healing where the sickness is, and did not establish remedy where sickness cannot be. Sickness and its Remedy are always together, and when they are seen together then all attempts to keep both Truth and illusion in the mind, where either must be found, are recognized as dedication to illusion. And this dedication is given up when it is brought to Truth, and seen as totally irreconcilable with Truth in any aspect or in any way.

Truth and illusion have no connection in Reality. This will remain forever true however much anyone seeks to connect them. Illusions are always connected through being illusions, as Truth is One. Each illusion is merged in itself, an entire thought system, but totally disconnected from other illusions. Where there is no overlap, there separation must appear to be complete. And to perceive this is to recognize where separation is, and where it must be healed in the mind.

The result of an idea is never separate from its source. The idea of separation produced the body, and remains connected to it, making the body sick because of its identification with the idea. You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection. For this concealment seems to keep your identification with the body safe from the “attack” of Truth. It is time to understand how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused you have become about your true Identification because of it!

You do not yet perceive how great the devastation is that has been wrought by faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack that seems to be justified by its results in maintaining a world of separate bodies and private minds. For by withholding faith in the truth of yourself and your sisters and brothers, you look upon what is unworthy of faith, and cannot look beyond the barrier to what is joined with you in Spirit.

To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share It. By faith you offer the gift of freedom from the past, which you have received. You do not use anything your brother or sister has done before to condemn them now. You freely choose to see beyond their errors, seeing beyond all barriers between yourself and them, and thus seeing them as one with you. And in that Unity you see your faith is fully justified. While in truth there is no justification for faithlessness, faith is always justified.

Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a Part of Love as fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgment of Union. It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Child of our most loving Creator, loved by It like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is the Creator’s Love that joins you, and with gratitude for Its Love you would keep no one separate from yours. Each one is beheld just as they are seen in the Holy Instant, united in your Purpose to be released from guilt. You see Divine Essence in them, and they are healed, because you behold what makes faith forever justified in everyone.

Faith is the Gift of the Divine through the Holy Spirit, Whom the Divine has given you. Faithlessness looks upon the Children of the Divine through the body’s eyes and judges them unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith the Children of the Divine are seen already forgiven, free of all the guilt they laid upon themselves. Faith sees them only now, because it looks not to the past to judge them, but would see in them only what it would see in you. Faith perceives not through the body’s eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the Messenger of the new perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to you.

Faith is as easily exchanged for Knowledge as is the Real World. For faith arises from the Holy Spirit’s Perception, and is the sign you share This with Spirit. Faith is a gift you offer to the Children of the Divine through Spirit, as wholly acceptable to Its Creator as to It. And therefore offered to you.

Your holy relationship, with its new Purpose, offers you faith to give to each other. Your faithlessness had driven you apart, and so you did not recognize awakening in each other. But faith unites you in the Holiness you see, not through the body’s eyes, but in the Sight of It Who joined you, and in Whom you are united.

Grace is given to a mind, not to a body. And the mind that receives It sees instantly beyond the body, and beholds the Holy Place where the mind is healed. There is the Altar where Grace is given, and in which It resides. Then offer Grace and Blessing to each other, for you stand at the same Altar where Grace was given for both of you. And be you healed by Grace together, that you may heal through faith.

In the Holy Instant you stand before the Altar the Divine has raised unto Itself and both of you. Lay faithlessness aside and come to this Altar together. There will you see the miracle of your relationship as it was created anew through faith. And there it is that you will realize that there is nothing faith cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to all error. For what the Messengers of Love are sent to do They do, returning the glad Tidings that what They were sent to do has been done, to you who stand together before the Altar from which They were sent forth.

As faithlessness will keep your little realms separate and barren, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that It would make of your holy relationship. For faith brings Peace, and so it calls on Truth to enter and make lovely what has already been prepared for Loveliness. Truth follows faith and Peace, completing the process of making lovely that They begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. But Truth will stay forever.

Let, then, your dedication be wholly to Truth and to the Eternal. And learn how not to interfere with the Eternal or attempt to make It prisoner to time. For what you think you do to the Eternal you do to yourself, because you are eternal. Whom the Divine created as Its Children are prisoner to nothing, being Cocreators of All, along with their Creator. A body can be imprisoned, but an Idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way, except by the mind that thought It. For every idea remains joined to its source, which is its liberator or its jailer, according to which its source chooses as its purpose for itself.