Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section
Chapter 3: How Is Healing Accomplished?
2. The Shift in Perception
Healing must occur in exact proportion to the recognition of the valuelessness of sickness to those experiencing it. One need only say with full conviction: “There is no gain at all to me in this experience,” and they are healed. But to say this with full conviction they must first recognize certain facts.
This Course has emphasized that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is merely a flawed problem-solving approach being projected onto the body, then it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it, and must undo it.
The resistance of the world to recognizing this fact is enormous, because the existence of the world of illusions depends on the body being the decision-maker. Terms like “instincts” and “reflexes” represent attempts to endow the body as being causal outside of the mind. Actually, such terms merely state or describe the problem of the world in general, and of sickness specifically. They do not answer or resolve it.
The acceptance of the truth that sickness is a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it alone would use the body, is the basis of true healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient or person experiencing infirmity decides that this is so, and they recover. If they decide against recovery, then they will not be healed even if their symptoms temporarily subside or disappear.
Who is the real physician? Only the mind of the patient themself. The outcome is what they decide it will be. Special healing agents may seem to be ministering to them, yet these only give form to the patient’s decision for healing, made in their own mind. If the patient chooses to employ such agents, this is merely to bring tangible form to their desires. And it is this the agents do if they seem to be effective, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say with conviction: “I have no use for this experience of sickness,” and every form of infirmity would be cured at once.
What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this: the recognition that sickness is a decision of the mind, and that therefore the cause of infirmity has nothing to do with the body.
What does this recognition “cost?” It costs the world you look upon, for the world will never again appear to rule or control the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs: not with the world, but on them who perceive it, either clearly or as it is not. Each one merely perceives what they choose to perceive. No more and no less. The world does nothing to them. They only think it does, unless they know that it does not. Nor do they do anything to the world simply because they are mistaken about what it is. Herein is the Release from guilt and sickness both, for they are the same.
Yet to receive this Release, the immateriality of the body when its proper role in the Plan of Awakening is understood must be an acceptable Idea. With the acceptance of this Idea is pain forever gone. But with It also goes all confusion about Creation. Does not this follow of necessity? Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. The transfer value of one true Idea has no end or limit. The final outcome of this learning is the Remembrance of the Divine.
What do guilt and sickness, pain, disaster and all suffering mean when the Divine is remembered? Having no purpose, they are gone. And with them also go all the effects they ever seemed to cause. Cause and effect in their true sequence simply replicate Creation. Seen in their proper perspective, without distortion and without fear, they reestablish the awareness of the Presence of Heaven.
