ARCIM

Daily Lesson 102 ~
April 12

I share the Divine’s Will for Peace and Happiness for me.

You do not want to suffer. You may think it buys you something, and may still believe a little that it buys you what you want. Yet this belief is surely shaken now, at least enough to let you question it, and to suspect it really makes no sense. It may not have gone as yet, but lacks the roots that once secured it tightly to the dark and hidden places of your mind.

Today we try to loosen its weakened hold still further, and to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and in truth does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have bound yourself by nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of the Divine.

For several days we will continue to devote our hourly five-minute practice periods to exercises planned to help you reach the Peace and Happiness that the Divine’s Will has placed in you. Here is your Home, and here your Safety is. Here is your Peace and Happiness, for here there is no fear. Here is awakening. Here is Rest at last.

Begin the longer practice periods today with this acceptance of the Divine’s Will for you:

“I share the Divine’s Will for Peace and Happiness for me, and I accept These as my function now.”

Then seek this function deep within your mind, for it is there, only awaiting your choice. You cannot fail to find it when you learn it is your choice, and that through your choice you share the Divine’s Will.

Be happy and at peace, for your only function here is perfect Peace and Happiness. You have no need to be less loving to the Children of the Divine, including yourself, than It Whose Love created Its Children as loving as Itself.

Besides these hourly five-minute rests, pause frequently today to tell yourself that you have now accepted Happiness and Peace as your one function. And confirm that you are joining with the Divine’s Will in doing this.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 7: Healing and the Realm of Heaven Within

 

4. Real and Unhealed Healing

The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It is therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite apart from what the potentials are used for, which is a decision. The effects of the ego’s decisions in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here. But the Holy Spirit’s Decision to use the body only for communication has such direct connection with healing that it does need clarification.

The unhealed healer obviously does not understand their own vocation. Only minds communicate directly. Since the ego cannot obliterate the inspiration to communicate because this is also the inspiration to create, it can only try to teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. The ego, then, tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and therefore is self-sufficient.

But we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning. This must be so, because you can act in accordance with what you do not believe, and fail to act in accordance with what you do believe. But acting or not acting in this way will weaken you as a teacher and as a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you can only truly and therefore consistently teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. An unhealed healer, then, will teach both healing and sickness – the sickness or confusion of mind not yet healed in them – and will be both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

Healing is the one ability that everyone can develop, and must develop if they are to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit’s Form of Communication, and the only form It knows. It recognizes no other, because It does not accept the ego’s confusion of mind and body. Minds communicate but they cannot hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. The fact that the body has been confused with the mind is sickness and can therefore also be used either for real healing, which addresses the actual cause of illness – i.e., the mind’s confusion – or for enchantment, which attempts to treat the symptom of the mind’s confusion appearing in the body. But you must realize that enchantment “healing” is always the application of the ego’s belief that real healing, the healing of the mind, is dangerous. This is its totally insane premise, and from it the ego proceeds accordingly.

Real healing only strengthens what is real. Enchantment healing always tries to weaken what is real. Real healing only perceives in healers that which everyone shares with them. Enchantment healing always perceives something special in the healer, which the unhealed healer believes they can offer as a gift to someone who does not already have it. The practitioners of enchantment healing may believe that this gift comes from the Divine to them, but it is quite evident that they do not understand the Divine if they think they have something that others do not have.

It might well be asked why some actual healing can result from this kind of thinking, and there is a real reason for this, namely, that however misguided the unhealed healer may be, and however much they may be trying to strengthen their own ego, they are also trying to help. They are conflicted and unstable, but at times they are also offering something valuable to the Divine Family. The only thing the Divine Family can accept from this is healing because that is the only thing that is real in it. When the so-called enchantment healing “works,” then the impulses both to help and be helped have coincided. This is coincidental, because the unhealed healer may not be experiencing themself as truly helpful at the time. The belief in the mind of the one receiving healing that the unhealed healer is being truly helpful helps heal the unhealed healer.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t work by chance, and the healing that is of Spirit always works. Thus unless the healer always heals by the Holy Spirit, the results will vary. But healing itself is Consistence, because only Consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that they can sometimes heal and sometimes not, unhealed healers are obviously accepting inconsistency. They are therefore in conflict, and teaching conflict.

Can anything of the Divine not be for all, and always? Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the entire idea of exceptions of any kind seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they were made by fear. The “fearful healer,” like the unhealed healer, is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does not make joyful, while healing does. Fear always makes exceptions; healing never does. Fear produces dissociation because it induces separation. Healing always induces harmony because it proceeds from integration. Healing is predictable because it can be counted on.

Everything that is of the Divine can be counted on because Everything of the Divine is wholly real. Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by the Voice of the Divine, and is in accord with the Divine’s Laws. But if healing is Consistence, it cannot be inconsistently understood. True Understanding means Consistence because the Divine means Consistence. And because that is Its Meaning, It is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with Its, because your whole meaning, and your only meaning, comes from Its Meaning and is like Its. The Divine cannot be out of accord with Itself, and you cannot be out of accord with It. You cannot separate your holy Self from your Creator, who created you by sharing Its Being with you.

Unhealed healers want gratitude from their sisters and brothers, but they are not wholly grateful to them. This is because they think they are giving something to them, and not receiving something equally desirable from them in return. Their teaching is therefore limited because they are learning so little. Their healing lesson is limited by their own ingratitude, which then becomes a lesson in sickness.

True learning is constant and so vital in its Power for transformation that a Child of the Divine can recognize their own Power in one Instant, and transform the world in the next. That is because by fundamentally changing their mind they have transformed the most powerful device that was ever created for transformation. This in no way contradicts the Changelessness of mind as the Divine created it. But as long as they learn through the ego, the separated ones will think that they have changed the mind from how the Divine created it. This does place them in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seems contradictory. They must learn to fundamentally change their mind about their mind. Only by this can they learn that their true mind is changeless.

That is exactly what you are doing and learning when you heal truly. You are recognizing the changeless mind in your sisters and brothers by seeing and knowing that neither they nor you could have changed your mind from how the Divine created it. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in your sisters and brothers. It is only the Holy Spirit in them that never changes Its Mind. They themselves must have thought that they could change their mind from how the Divine created it, and have done so, or they could not perceive themselves as separate or sick. They therefore do not remember what their holy Self is. If you see only the Changeless in them, by seeing It in yourself through the Holy Spirit in both of you, you have not really changed them at all. But by fundamentally changing your mind about theirs for them, you help them undo the change their ego thinks it has made in them, as you do for yourself.

Just as you can hear two voices, so you can perceive in two ways. The way of looking with the body’s eyes shows you an image, which may become an idol that you defer to out of fear, but that you will never love. The way of seeing with the spiritual eye shows you only Truth, which you will love because you will understand It. Understanding is appreciation, because what you understand you can identify with, and by embracing it as part of you, you accept it with Love. This is how the Divine Itself created you, in Understanding, with Appreciation, and in Love. The ego is totally incapable of understanding this, because as a faulty mechanism of the split mind it does not understand what it makes, it does not appreciate it, and it does not love it. It incorporates in order to take from. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone or something of anything, it has increased.

This Course has spoken of the Increase of the Realm of Heaven by your creations, which can only be created as you were created—with total Love. The whole Glory and perfect Joy that are the Realm rest in you to give. In your right mind you want to give this. You cannot forget the Creator because I am with you and I cannot forget It. To forget me, who can never forget you and our Home together in our Creator, is to forget yourself and That Which created us. Many of our sisters and brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and of That Which created us. Through this remembrance you can help them fundamentally change their minds about themselves, as I can help you change yours. Your mind is so powerful a Light that you can see into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. As each mind becomes enlightened, the Light to awaken those remaining asleep becomes ever stronger, and the goal of Atonement closer.

The idea of sharing the body in communion or deep connection with others is to share nothing. Would I try to share an illusion with the holy Children of our Holy Creator? But I do want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is Everywhere and in Everything. It is Everything because It encompasses all things within Itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this because you perceive only what is true. Walk therefore with me and learn of the Truth in you.

The Mind we share is shared by all our sisters and brothers, and as we perceive them truly they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them help them be aware of the Light in them, which we all share. This Light will shine upon you and on the whole Divine Family because this is your proper gift to the Divine. The Divine will accept it and give it to the Divine Family, because it is acceptable to It and therefore to Its Children. This is the true Communion of the Spirit, Who sees the Altar of the Divine in everyone, and by bringing It to each one’s appreciation calls upon all to love the Divine and Its Creation.