Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 28: The Two Dreams
2. The Cost of Healing
Is true healing frightening? To many, yes, because it shakes the foundation of their thought system. For sick and damaged bodies can be perceived as accusers, and accusation is a block to Love. Perceived lovelessly, these stand firmly in the way of trust and Peace, proclaiming that the frail can have no trust, and that the damaged have no grounds for Peace.
Who has been injured by their brother or sister in truth and could love and trust them still? It is believed that they have attacked, and will inevitably attack again. Protect them not from the guilt of their transgression, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected from them. To forgive may be an act of charity, but not their just due. They may be pitied for their guilt, but not absolved of it. And if you forgive them their transgressions, you only give them what they have not earned, and thus add to all the guilt that they really deserve, while allowing them to hurt again.
The unhealed cannot truly pardon, for they are the witnesses that pardon would be unfair. For the consequences of guilt would be retained in their bodies even if guilt were overlooked. No one can truly forgive an error the effects of which they believe are real. And what has consequences must be real, because what has been done is there to look upon.
True forgiveness is not pity, for pity seeks to pardon what it believes to be real. Good could not justly be returned for evil were evil true. True forgiveness does not first establish the reality of evil or even of error by witnessing to its consequences, and then forgive it. Who can say and mean, “My brother, sister, you have injured me, and yet because I am the more enlightened, I pardon you my hurt.” The hurt and the pardon cannot exist in truth together, being different. The continued existence of the consequence of harm denies the reality of its correction – forgiveness – and must make it false.
To give witness to harm and yet forgive it is a paradox that Reason cannot see. For this witness maintains that what has been done to you was real. And by giving pardon, you grant your brother or sister mercy, but seek to retain the proof that they are not really innocent. The sick and the damaged remain accusers in this perspective. They have not totally forgiven their sisters and brothers and themselves as well. For true forgiveness removes suffering. Those who have truly forgiven hold not the proof of guilt before their sisters and brothers’ eyes, its consequences witnessed to in their sick and damaged bodies. And thus they must have seen beyond guilt, and removed the witnesses to it from their own eyes.
Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who truly forgives is healed. And in their healing is the proof that they have truly pardoned what is unreal, and retain no trace of condemnation that they still would hold against themself or any living thing. Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your sister and brother and yourself. You must attest that errors had no effect on you to demonstrate they were not real. How else could you and your sisters and brothers be guiltless? How could their and your Innocence be justified unless errors have no real effect to warrant guilt?
An unforgivable error – a sin – would be beyond pardon just because it would entail effects that could not be entirely seen beyond and undone. In the undoing of its apparent consequences is the proof that it was merely a mistake. Let your mind be healed and all symptoms of its sickness undone that you may be truly forgiving, offering awakening to your sisters and brothers and yourself. A broken body awaits the healing of the mind. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect.
You will believe what you demonstrate and thus witness to your sisters and brothers. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you think and feel, say and do merely testifies to what you want to teach and learn. Your body can be means to teach that you cannot suffer harm. Its silent testimony to the mind’s health proclaims your sisters and brothers’ Innocence, and your own. It is this testimony that can speak with Power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is forgiveness for all mistakes born witness to. A miracle can offer nothing less to your sisters and brothers than it has given unto you. So does the miracle show that the mind has truly forgiven what was never done in Reality, and it is healed in that Instant. And so will your sisters and brothers have witness that their Innocence was never lost, and that their minds have been healed along with yours.
Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion Call of Life. This Call has Power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of fear and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Creator to Its Children, and of the Children unto their own true creations, will yet be the last Trumpet that the world will ever hear.
Sisters and brothers, in truth there is only Life and no death. We are free. And this you learn when you desire only to witness and teach and learn that you cannot be hurt. While you seem to suffer harm you witness that your blood is on someone’s hands, and so someone must stand condemned. But it is given you to witness that guilt in any form is merely the fabric of a senseless dream.
How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full Deliverance from guilt upon your sisters and brothers and yourself. Your mind’s healing undoes their pain, as well as yours. And you are healed because you wished them well. This is the law the miracle obeys: that healing sees no difference or specialness at all. It doesn’t come from pity, but from Love. And Love would prove that all suffering is merely a mistaken idea, a faulty perspective, a foolish wish with no real effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see no one with “blood” upon their hands, nor guilt upon their heart made heavy with the “proof” of separation and sin. And what you wish for them is given you to see.
The “cost” of your serenity is the serenity of your sisters and brothers. This is the “price” the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives in it a statement of the “fact” that your benefit in any form comes at the sacrifice of theirs. The Holy Spirit knows that your healing is the witness unto theirs, and cannot be apart from them at all. As long as they consent to suffer, you will be unhealed. But you can show them that their suffering is purposeless and entirely without cause. Demonstrate your healed mind, and they will consent no more to suffer. For then their Innocence has been established in your sight and theirs. And laughter will replace your sighs because the Children of the Divine remembered that they are Its Children.
Who, then, fears true healing? Only those who falsely believe that the state of their own serenity is the result of the “sacrifice” of their sisters and brothers’ health. Or who believe that their sisters and brothers’ weakness and helplessness represent grounds on which to justify their own pain. Or those who suffer constant pain or experience the continuous sting of guilt and take this to demonstrate that others are free because these others hold the sufferer bound. Or those for whom sickness and injury are desired to prevent a shift of balance in the “sacrifice” of their health as proof of their sisters and brothers’ guilt.
How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with arguments against true healing such as this? And need your healing be delayed because you pause to listen to delusion?
