Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 27: The Transition to Holy Ground

 

6. What Must Occur for Healing to Be Possible

This is a course in miracles, a training in integrating and directing your mind so you will be able to allow miracles to be performed through you. And because all healing is a miracle and all miracles are healing, the laws of healing must be understood before the Purpose of the Course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles of healing 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.

All sickness comes from separation. When separation is appropriately denied any power, it is gone. For it is gone as soon as the idea that brought it has been healed, and been replaced by sanity. Separation and sickness are looked upon in this world as cause and consequence, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness so that it may be carefully preserved from Reason’s Light.

Guilt is a request for punishment, and its request is granted, not in Truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on the belief in unforgivable error.

The separated ones perceive what they choose to perceive, because perception is wish fulfillment. Perceptions change, and were made to take the place of changeless Knowledge. Yet is Truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known. What is looked upon takes many forms, but none has real Meaning. Brought to Truth, the senselessness of these forms and appearances, and of perception itself, is quite apparent. Kept apart from Truth, perception seems to have a meaning and to be real. 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 the Divine given Answer to the world of sickness Which applies to all its forms and appearances. The Divine’s Answer is eternal, though It operates in time where It is needed. But, because It is of the Divine, 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. Yet does the Divine’s Answer rest where the belief in separation and sickness must be, for only there can their effects be seen without cause, and utterly undone.

Ideas leave not their source, and their effects only seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected from the mind and seems to be external to it as perception is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source. Perception’s laws – the belief that what is projected from the mind is outside of it and governed by laws quite different than the Divine’s – must be reversed for healing to occur, because they are reversals of the Laws of Truth. The Laws of Truth forever will be true and cannot be reversed, yet can be perceived as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies.

It is impossible that one illusion be less able to be dispelled by Truth than are the rest. But it is possible that some are given greater value by the mind, and less willingly offered to Truth for healing and for help. No illusion has any truth in it. Yet it appears that some are more true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not Reality. What relevance has preference to the Truth? Illusions are illusory and are therefore the opposite of Reality and of Truth. Thus are they all false. Preference gives them no reality. Not one illusion is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what the Divine gave as Answer to them all.

The Divine’s Will is One, and any wish that seems to go against Its Will has no foundation in the Truth. The belief in sickness and sin is belief that these are not merely error, but go beyond being simple mistakes to the impossibility of correction. Therefore the belief that sin and sickness are real has made some errors seem forever past the hope of healing, and thus the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by Its Own opposite, which would be as real as It. Then would the Divine’s Will be split in two, and all Creation be subject to the laws of two opposing powers, until the Divine becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Itself. Thus would It have lost Its Mind, proclaiming that sickness and sin have taken Its Reality from It, and brought Its Love at last under retribution and death’s feet.

For such an insane imagination an insane defense can be expected, but cannot establish that the imagination must be true. Nothing gives meaning where no meaning is. And Truth needs no defense to make It true. Illusions can have no true witnesses or effects. Whoever looks on them is merely deluded.

Forgiveness is your only function here, and serves to bring to every aspect of the separated ones the Peace and Joy this world denies where unforgivable error was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not yet see the role forgiveness plays in ending all beliefs, including death, that rise from mists of guilt.

Unforgivable errors are beliefs that you impose between your sisters and brothers and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you and another little space to each of them. 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 merely your wish to be apart and separate.

Forgiveness takes away what seems to stand between your sisters and brothers and yourself. It is the desire that you be joined with them, and not alone. This Course calls it “desire” because you still conceive of other choices, and have not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. Yet is this desire to join aligned with Heaven’s State of Being, and not in opposition to the Divine’s Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full Inheritance, it does remove the obstacles that you have placed between the Realm of Heaven, where you are in Truth, and the Recognition of where and what you are.

Facts are unchanged, but they can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known before they were denied. Awakening, perfect and complete, asks only a little desire from you that what is true be true, a little willingness to see beyond what is not there, a little sigh that speaks as a preference for Heaven instead of for this world which fear and desolation seem to rule. In joyous Answer will Creation rise within you, to give you Heaven, wholly perfect and complete, in place of the world you look upon.

What is forgiveness but a desire and willingness that Truth be true? What can remain broken and unhealed from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is no sickness or sin. And every miracle is possible the Instant that the Children of the Divine perceive that their will and the Will of the Divine are One.

What is the Will of the Divine? It wills that Its Children have Everything. And this It guaranteed when It created them as Everything. It is impossible that anything be lost if what you have is what you are. This is the miracle by which creation became your Function, sharing It with the Divine.

Creation is not understood apart from the Divine, and therefore has no meaning in the world of separation and illusion. Here do the Children of the Divine ask not too much, but far too little. They would sacrifice their own Identity with Everything to find a little treasure of their own. And this they cannot do without a sense of isolation, loss, and loneliness. These become the treasure they have sought to find. And they could only be afraid of it.

Is fear a treasure? Can uncertainty be what you want? Or is it a mistake about your will and what you really are? Let us consider what the error is, so it can be corrected rather than protected.

Separation is the belief that attack can be projected outside the mind where the belief arose, and leave its source. Here is the firm conviction made real and meaningful to those who believe that ideas can leave their source. And from this error does the world of guilt and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence while cherishing attack. Its failure lies in that you still feel guilty, though without understanding why. Here effects are separated from their source. They seem to be beyond your power to determine.

Cause and effect are one, not separate, but what is kept apart by the mind cannot join. The Divine wills you learn what always has been true: that It created you as Part of It, and that this must still be true because ideas leave not their source. Such is Creation’s Law: that each Idea the mind conceives only adds to its Abundance, and never takes away. This Law manifest in this world is as true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed, because the mind can wish to be deluded but cannot make itself be what it is not. And to believe that ideas can leave their source is to invite illusions to be true, without success. Success will never be possible in trying to delude the Children of the Divine.

The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, not kept separate. The apparent healing of effects appearing as sickness without the healing of their cause can merely shift effects to other forms. And this is not Release. The Divine’s Children could never be content with less than release from all guilt, and full awakening. For otherwise they will still insist that they must make some sacrifice, and thus deny that Everything is theirs, unlimited by loss of any kind. A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its effects as is the entire idea of sacrifice. If loss in any form is possible, then are the Divine’s Children made incomplete and not themselves. Nor will they know themselves or recognize their true will. In their nightmare of the belief in loss they will have foresworn their Creator and their holy Self, and in fear and guilt believe that both have become their enemy.

Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve until this purpose is withdrawn from them. And from their assigned purpose illusions derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. The Divine gave to all illusions another purpose that would justify a miracle, whatever form the illusions took. In every miracle all healing is, for the Divine gave one Answer to all illusions. And what is the same to It must be the same, not different, regardless of difference in forms and appearances. If you believe that what is the same is different or that what is different is the same, you only deceive yourself. What the Divine calls One will be forever One, not different. And what is not One with the Divine can only be a dream.

The Realm of Heaven is united. Thus It was created, and thus will It ever be. The miracle simply calls your eternal Nature and Name, Which you will recognize because the Truth is in your Memory. And to this Nature and Name your sisters and brothers call for their Release and yours. Heaven is shining on the Children of the Divine. Deny them not, that you may be released.

The separated ones are born anew each Instant, until they choose not to die again. In every wish to hurt they choose death instead of what their Creator wills for them. Yet every Instant offers Life to them because their Creator wills that they should live. Awakening has been placed in the separation, for healing is not needed where there is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the Answer to attack of any kind, for so is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the Name of Love. All Glory be forever to you to whom it has been given to awaken the Children of the Divine from separation and the belief in hell and death. You have Power to awaken the separated ones because your Creator willed that it be so. And in your hand does all awakening rest, to be both offered and received as one.

It is natural to use the Power that the Divine has given you as It would have It used. It is not arrogant to be as It created you, or to make use of what It gave to answer all Its Children’s mistakes, and set them free. But it is arrogant to lay aside the Power that It gave, and choose a little, senseless wish for death instead of what It wills. The Gift of the Divine to you is limitless. There is no circumstance It cannot answer, and no problem that is not resolved within Its gracious Light.

Abide in Peace, where the Divine would have you be. And be the means whereby your sisters and brothers find the Peace in which your shared will is fulfilled. Let us unite in bringing Blessing to the world of separation and fear. For what can awaken each one of us can awaken us all. There is no difference among the Children of the Divine. The Unity that specialness denies will awaken all who sleep and dream, for what is One can have no specialness. And Everything belongs to each of us. No wishes can lie between a brother or sister and what truly belongs to them. To take from one is to deprive them all. And yet to bless even one gives Blessing to them all as One.

Your eternal Nature and Name are the Divine’s and thus belong to everyone, as theirs to you. Call on your sisters and brothers’ Nature and Name and the Divine will answer, for on It you call. Could It refuse to answer, when It has already answered all who call on It?

A miracle can make no true change at all. But it can allow what always has been true to be recognized by those who forgot. And by this little gift is Truth merely allowed to be Itself, the Children of the Divine allowed to be themselves, and all Creation freed to call upon the Nature and Name of the Divine as One. And it is this that must occur for healing to be possible.