Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section

Chapter 3: How Is Healing Accomplished?

8. How Are Healing and Atonement Related?

Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There are no levels or orders of magnitude of difficulty in miracles or healing because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete Concept possible in this world, because It is the Source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as the idea of special areas of hell in Heaven is inconceivable. Accept Atonement’s perfect Correction for all illusions and mistakes and you are healed.

Atonement is the Divine’s Word of Truth and Love. Accept Its Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept Its Word and every miracle and healing have been accomplished.

To forgive is to heal. The Teachers of the Divine have taken accepting the Atonement for themselves – accepting Its total forgiveness by extending it to everyone – as their only function and therefore their sole responsibility. What is there then that cannot be healed in and through them? What miracle could be withheld from them?

The progress of the Teachers of the Divine in the advancement of their own learning may be slow or rapid depending on whether they recognize the Atonement’s Inclusiveness, or for a time exclude some problem areas from It. In some cases there is a sudden and complete awareness of the perfect Applicability of the Lesson of the Atonement to all situations, but this is comparatively rare. The Teachers of the Divine may have accepted the function that the Divine has given them long before they have learned all that their acceptance holds for them. It is only the End that is certain. Anywhere along the Way, the necessary realization of Inclusiveness may reach them. If the Way seems long, let them be content. They have decided on the Path they will take. What more was asked of them? And having done what was required, would the Divine withhold the rest?

That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood if the Teacher of the Divine is to make progress in their own learning of awakening. The idea that a body can be sick is a central concept in the ego’s thought system. This thought separates the body from the mind, gives it autonomy, and keeps the ideas of opposition and fear intact. If the body could really be sick, Atonement would be impossible. A body that can order a mind to do as it wants, were that real, would merely take the place of the Divine, and prove awakening to be impossible. What then would be left to heal? The body would have become lord of the mind. How then could the mind be returned to the Holy Spirit unless the body were killed? And who would want healing and awakening at such a price?

Certainly sickness does not appear to be a decision. Nor would anyone actually believe that they want to be sick. Perhaps they can accept the idea in theory, but it is rarely if ever consistently applied to all specific forms of sickness, both in the teacher’s perception of themself and of all others as well. Nor is it at this level that the Teacher of the Divine calls forth the miracle of healing. To call this forth they see beyond the mind and body, beholding only the Presence of Divine Essence shining before them, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception.

Healing is the result of the recognition by the Teacher of the Divine of who it is that needs healing. The need of healing is of both the mind of the one who has chosen the illusion of sickness, and the Divine Family Itself, Which remains incomplete as long as any Child of the Divine believes themself to be separated, sick, and absent from It. This recognition has no specific reference. It is true of all things that the Divine created. In recognizing this all illusions become open to healing.

When a Teacher of the Divine seems to fail to heal, it is because they have forgotten who they are. In this forgetting, another’s appearance of sickness thus reflects the sickness of their own mind. In allowing this to happen, they have identified with another’s ego, and have thus confused themselves with a body. In so doing, they have refused to accept the Atonement for themself, and can hardly offer It to their sisters and brothers in the Name of Divine Essence. They will, in fact, be unable to truly recognize their sisters and brothers at all, for their Creator did not create bodies, and so they are perceiving in their sisters and brothers only the unreal. Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. When this confusion occurs, the Teacher of the Divine has temporarily lost their way. They must now turn quickly to their Teacher, and let themself be healed. They must step back and let Truth lead the Way.

What Atonement offers is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in It is the Power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to the Divine, and thus unfaithful to It. Those who believe themselves sick perceive themselves as separate from the Divine. Would you then perceive them as separate from you, when they need your help? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made them sick. It is your function to recognize for them that what they believe about themselves in all appearances of infirmity is not the Truth. It is your forgiveness that must show them this.

Healing is very simple: Atonement is received by the healer and offered to the one in need of healing. Having been received, Atonement must be accepted through being extended. It is in the receiving, then, that healing rests. All else must follow from this single Purpose.

What can limit the Power of the Divine Itself? In the illusion of time, only the mind that is not yet ready to accept the forgiveness the Divine has already given, and the mind that judges this unreadiness. To believe that it is your function to compel a mind to accept forgiveness or to withhold faith in healing when unreadiness is perceived is insanity indeed. As this Course has said, all Gifts given through a Teacher of the Divine are received by Spirit regardless of appearances, and that is enough. Anything other than this is unfaithfulness and becomes a limit the teacher believes they have set on the Divine’s Power.

It is not up to the Divine’s Teachers to set limits upon the Divine, because it is not up to them to judge Its Children. To judge the Divine’s Children is to limit their Creator. Both ideas are equally meaningless. Yet this will not be understood until the Divine’s Teachers recognize that these are both the same mistake. Herein do they themselves receive Atonement, for they withdraw their judgment from the Children of the Divine, accepting them as the Divine created them. No longer do they stand apart from the Divine, determining where healing can or should be given and where it can or should be withheld. Now can they hear the Divine’s Own Judgment:

This is my beloved Child, created perfect, and remaining forever so.