IA´s Journal

[IA56]

The Law of Healing

This is a cours in miracles. As such, the law of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles 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 the separation is denied, it goes. For it is gone as soon as the idea that brought it has been healed, and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are same as comsequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness that it may be carefully preserved from reason´s light. Guilt asks for punishment, and its request is granted. Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin. The Son of God perceived what he would see because perception is a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, made to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known. What is perceived takes many forms, but none has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept apart from truth, it seems to have a meaning and 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 God given answer to the world of sickness, which applies to all its forms. God´s answer is eternal, though it works in time, where it is needed. Yet because it is of God, 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 al reality must be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projedted out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.God´s answer lies where the belief in sin must be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone and without cause. Perception´s laws must be reversed, because they are reversals of the laws of truth. The laws of truth forever wil be true, and cannot be reversed; yet can be seen as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies. It is impossible that one illusion be less a menable to truth than are the rest. But it is possible that some are given greater value, and less willingly offered to truth for healing and for help. No illusions has any truth in it. Yet it appears 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 illusions and are false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. God´s Will is one. And any wish that seems to go against His Will has no Foundation in the truth. Sin is not error, for it goes beyond correction to impossibility.Yet the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever past the hope of healing, and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it. Then would God´s Will be split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Himself.Thus has He lost His Mind, proclaiming sin has taken His reality from Him and brought His Love at last to vengeance´s heels. For such an insane picture an insane defense can be expected, but can establish that the picture must be true. Nothing gives meaning where no meanig is. And truth need no defense to make it true. Illusions have no witnesses and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived. Forgiveness is the only function here, and serves to bring thej oy this world denies to every aspect of God´s Son where sin was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not see the role forgiveness plays in ending death and all beliefs that rise from mists of guilt. Sins are beliefs that you between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you, another little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol represets is but your wish to be apart and separate. Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined in him, and not apart. We call it ”wish” because it still conceives of other choices, and has not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. Yet is this wish in line with Heaven´s state, and not in opposit into God´s Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full inheritance,it does remove the obstacles that you have placed between the Heaven where you are,and recogintion of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known before they were denied.Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a little wish that what is true betrue; a little willingness to overlook what is not there; a little sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world that death and desolation seemto rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to replace the World you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness bu twillingness that truth to be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is no sin. And every miracle is possible the instant that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are one. What is the Will of God? He wills His Son have everything. And this He guaranteed when He created him as everything. It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you hve is what you are. This is the miracle by which creation became your function, sharing it with God. It is not understood apart from Him, and therefore has no meaning in this world. Here does the Son of God ask not too much, but far too little. He would sacrifice his own identity with everything, to find a little treasure of his own. And this he cannot do without a sense of isolation, loss and loneliness. This is the treasure he has sought to find. And he 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, not protected. Sin is belief attack can be projected outside the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm comviction that ideas can leave their source made real and meaningful. And from this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack. Its failure their source, and seem to be beyond you to control or to prevent. What is thus kept apart can never join. Cause and effect are one, not separate. God wills you learn what always has been true: That He created you as part of Him, and this must still be true because ideas leave not their source. Such is creation´slaw; that each idea the mind conceives but adds to its abudance, never, takes away. This is as true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed, because the mind can wish to be deceived, but cannot make it be what it is not. And to believe ideas can leave their source is to invite illusions to be true, without success. For never will success be possible in trying to deceive the Son of God. The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together,not kept separate. The healing of effect without the cause can merely shift effects to other forms. And this is not release. God´s Son could never be content with less than full salvation and escape from guilt. For otherwise he still demands that he must make some sacrifice, and thus denies that everythingis his, unlimited by loss of any kind. A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its effects as is the whole idea of sacrifice. If loss in any form is possible,then is God´s Son made incompetent and not himself. He has forsworn his Father and himself, and made Them both his enemies in hate. Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve. And from their purpose they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to all illusions that were made another purpose that would justify a miracle whatever form they took. In every miracle all healing lies, for God gave answer to them all as one. And what is one to Him must be the same. If you believe what is the same is different you but deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, not separate. His Kingdom is united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be. This miracle but calls your ancient name, which you will recognize because the truth is in your memory. And to this name your brother calls for his release and yours.Heaven is shining on the Son of God. Deny him not, that you may be released.Each instant is the Son of God reborn until he chooses not to die again. In every wish to hur the cooses death instead of what his Father wills for him.Yet every instant offers life to him because his Father wills that he should live. In crucifixion is redemtion laid, for healing is not needed where there is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the answer to attack of any kind. So is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the name of love. To you to whom it has been given to save the Son of God from crucifixion and from hell and death, all glory be forever. For you have power to save the Son of God because his Father, willed that it be so. And in your hands does all salvation lie, to be both offered and received as one. To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural. It is not arrogant to be as He created you, nor to make use of what He gave to answer all His Son´s mistakes and set him free. But it is arrogant to lay aside the power that He gave, and choose a little senseless wish instead of what He wills. The gift of God to you is limitless. There is no circumstance it cannot answer, and no problem which is not resolved within its gracious light. Abide in peace, where God would have you be. And be the means where by your brother finds the peace in which your wishes are fulfilled. Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death. For what can save each one of us can save us all. There is no difference among the Sons of God. The unity that specialness denies will save them all,for what is one can have no specialness. And everything belongs to each of them. No wishes lie between a brother and his own. To get from one is to deprive them all. And yet yet to bless but one gives blessing to them all as one.Your ancient name belongs to everyone, as theirs to you. Call on your brother´s name and God will answer, for on Him you call. Could He refuse to answer when He has already answered all who call on Him? A miracle can make no change at all. But it can make what always has been true be recognized by those who know it not; and by this little gift of truth but let be itself, the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Immediacy of Salvation

The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the time when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trusting in your brother. This but reflects the little you would keep between yourselves, that you might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space. There is a distance you would keep apart from one another, and this space you see as time because you still believe youare external to your brother. This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interest perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation, not immediate results. Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time ist purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the source of fear.Salvation would wipe out the space you see between you still, and let you instantly become as one. And it is here you fear the loss would lie. Do not project this fear to time, for time is not the enemy that you perceive. Time isas neutral as the body is, except in terms of what you see it for. If you would keep a little space between you still, you want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. This makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld and given seem dangerous, with terror justified. Yet space between you is apparent now, and cannot be perceived in future time. No more can it be overlooked except within the present. Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects. And therefore must it be that if you fear, there is a present cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state. The plans you make for safety all are laid within the future, where you cannot plan. No purpose has been given it as yet,and what will happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects like its cause, is looking forward, looking back, but overlooking what is here and now. Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects already have been judged as fearful. And in over looking this, it is protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is now. It stands already here, in present grace, within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there is to time. The working out of all correction takes no time at all. Yet the acceptance of the workingout can seem to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has in it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at now. Why wait till they unfold in time and fear they may not come, although already there? You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it seems as if this is not so. Good in disaster´s form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in this idea. Why should the good appear in evil´s form? And is it not deception if it does? Its cause is here, if it appears at all. Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with sighing, and with ”reasoning”you do not understand it now, but will some day. And then its meaning will be clear. This is not reason, for it is unjust, and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is at hand. Given a change of purpose for the good, there is no reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as ”good” some day but now in form of pain. This is a sacrifice of now, which could not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what He gave with out a cost at all. Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be already in your mind. And this illusion is but one effect that it engenders,and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when restribution is perceived to be the form in which the ”good” appears, is but one aspect ofthe little space that lies between you, unforgiven still. Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning, and is not your just reward. For you have cause for freedom now. What profits freedom in a prisoner´s form? Why should deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the ”reasoning” that would maintain effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time, is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause must come as one. Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered from.And do not let it be disguised as time, and so preserved because its form is changedand what it is cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit´s purpose now is yours.Should not His happiness be yours as well?

Love

[IA56]

For They Have Come

Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation,with his freedom joined! However much you wish he be condemned, God is in him. And never will you know He is in you as well while you attack His chosen home, and battle with His host. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within him, that you may behold his glory and rejoice that Heaven is not separate from you. Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven all your sins, and left without a single one you cherish still? Forget not that a shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the face of Christ and memory of God. And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? The ground wheron you stand is holy ground because of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it with Their innocence and peace. The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light.Because of Them. It is Their Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground that hate hade scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have They undone. And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans to join with it, and make it like itself. The shadow of anancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They have come. What is hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands? When They come, time´s purpose is fulfilled. What never was passes to nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The incomplete is made complete again, and Heaven´s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of insanity to join Them on the ground whereon you stand. Heaven is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld so long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has been locked is opened; what has held apart from light is given up, that light may shine on itand leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world. The holiest of all the spots on earth is where and ancient hatred has become a present love. And They come quickly to the living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. There is no place in Heaven holier. And They have come to dwell within the temple offered Them, to be Their resting place as well as yours. What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven´s radiance. And all the lights in Heaven brighter grow, in gratitude for what has been restored. Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in . Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. No one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his home,and sheltered him from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall the Lord of Heaven and His Son give less in gratitude for so much more? Now is the temple of the living God rebuilt as host again to Him by Whom it was created.Where He dwells, His Son dwells with Him, never separate. And They give thanks thatThey are welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen Christ,and ancient scars are healed within His sight. An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle Gratitude do God the Father and the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever be.Now is the Holy Spirit´s purpose done. For They have come! For They have come at last!

Love

[IA56]

The End of Injustice

What, then, remains to be undone for you to realize. Their Presence? Only this; you have differential view of what attack is justified,and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused perception will block knowledge.It is not a question of the size of the confusion, or how much it interferes.Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs, and keeps Them there unknown.What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair to you?It means that there must be some forms in which you think it fair. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some, then, are given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless. And this denies the fact that all are senselss, equally without a cause or consequence,and cannot have effects of any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil that stands between. Their shining innocence, and your awareness that it is your own and equally belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited cannot be Heaven. So it must be hell. Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived the other must be seen. You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are in but Another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not your just desserts. Yet it is you who ask this of yourself, in deep injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him as yourself. What could be more injust than that he be deprived of what he is, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father´s Love and yours as not his due? Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else´s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else?And is it innocence that your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss.Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own. You think your brother is unfair to you because you think that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit´s purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose nothing can be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this one goal is but to take away all purpose form the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth. What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly, and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brings can you perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futil world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceivein justice anywhere, you need but say:

”By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son.
And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, whichTheir Presence shines away.”

Love

[IA56]

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM
The Picture of Crucifixion

The wish to be unfairly treated is a compromise attempt that would combine attack and innocence. Who can combine the wholly incompatible,and make an unity of what can never join? Walk you the gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no shadows in the night. But place no terror symbols on your path, or you will weave a crown of thorns from which your brother and yourself will not escape. You cannot crucify yourself alone. And if you are unfairly treated, he must suffer the unfariness that you see. You cannot sacrifice yourself alone. For sacrifice is total. If it could occur at all it would entail the whole of God´s creation, and the Father with the sacrifice of His beloved Son. In your release from sacrifice is his made manifest, and shown to be his own. But every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he is guilty of attack. Thus would you make yourself to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and need but look on you t realize that he has been condemned. And what to yo has been unfair will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him are you set free. Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for you will not escape the death you made for him. But in his innocence you find your own.Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated or in need of anything, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God´s Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in Hell and not in Heaven, where you are beyond attack and prove his innocence. The picture of yourself you offer him you show yourself, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is no pain and no reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence. The power of witness is believed becasue he points beyond himself to what he represents. A sick and suffering you but represtnts yourbrothers guilt; the witness that you send lest he forget the injuries he gave,from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture you accept, if only it can serve to punish him.The sick and merciless to everyone,and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, ”Behold me, brother, at your hand I die.” For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins. Sickness is but a”little” death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother you have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, because it witnessed to the guilt in him which you perceived and loved.Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a different you. It is a pictuer of a body still, for what you really are cannot be seen nor pictured. Yet this one has not been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. It witnesses to the eternal truth that you cannot be hurt, and points beyond itself to both your innocence and his.Show this unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look beyond it to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has never sinned; that nothing which his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That no reproach he laid upon his heart was ever justified, and no attack can evertouch him with the poisoned and relentless sting of fear. Attest his innocence and not his guilt. Your healing is his comfort and his health because it proves illusions are not true. It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for his world. Its only purpose is to prove guilt real. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. There are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death, and vanity of real concern with anything at all. The strongest witness to futility,that bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could love a life so soon cut short and not esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures could there be that will endure? And not the frail entitled to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives?Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral. There are not sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end a like within the termination of the grave. If this were true,there would be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys and cherish little pleasures where you can. Yet in this picture is the body not perceived as neutral and without a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can never be denied. Your function is to show your brother sin can have no cause. How futile must it be to see yourself a picture of the proofthat what your function is can never be! The Holy Spirit´s picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it all sings of accusation and of blamfulness. Pictured without a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in any way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from all experience of love or fear. For now it witnesses to nothing yet,its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is for.Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be given, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive. Into this empty space, from which the goal of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemtion, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its purpose. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it reprsents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, ”Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.” The simple way to let this be achived is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose was no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose was to foster guilt. Fort his insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents.This leaves no space in which a different view, another purpose, can be given it. You do not know its purpose. You but gave illusions of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing without a purpose cannot hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, its purpose andyour function both be reconciled at last and seen as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Fear of Healing

Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies are accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaming that the fail can have no trust and that the damaged have no ground for peace. Who has been injured by his brother, and could love and trust him still? He has attacked and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected from him.To forgive may be an act of charity, but not his due. He may be pited for his guilt, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him his trangressions, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him his trangressions, you but add to all the guilt that he has really earned. The unhealed cannot pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the consequences of the guilt they overlook. Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real. And what has consequences must be real, because what it has done is there to see.Forgiveness is not pity, which but seeks to pardon what it thinks to be the truth. Good cannot be returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first establish sin and then forgive it. Who can say and mean, ”My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt.”His pardon and your hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other and mus tmake it false. To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you deserves no pardon. And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their Brothers and themselves as well. For no on in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother´s eyes. And thus he must have overlooked it and removed it from his own. Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who forgives is healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing. Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sin shave no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless? And how could his innocence be justified unless his sin shave no effect to Warren guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just because they would entail effects that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undone lies the proof beundone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that they are merely errors. Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself. A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect.What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proven to him. A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he didee not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. Thus doest he miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. And hoplessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion call of life.This call has power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt.The ancient calling of the Father to His son, and of the Son unto his own, willyet be the last ♥♥♥♥♥et that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. Het hinks your blood is on his hands, and so hes tands condemned.Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream. How just are miracles! For they bestow and equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself. Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. It does not come from pity but from love. And love would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with no effects. Your Health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands,nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is given you to see. The ”cost” of your serenity is his. This is the ”price” the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives it as a statement of the ”fact” that your salvation sacrifices his. The Holy Spirit knows your healing is the witness unto his, and cannot be apart from his atall. As long as he consents to suffer, you will be unhealed. Yet you can show him that his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him your healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence has be enestablished in your sight and his. And laughter will replace your sighs,because God´s Son remembered that he is God´s Son. Who, then, fears healing?Only those to whom their brother´s sacrifice and pain are seen to represent their own serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represent the grounds on which they justify his pain. The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, but they are free. The constant pain they suffer demonstrates that they are free because they hold him bound. And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with an argument for sickness such as this? And need your healing be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity? Concider how this self perception must extend, and do not overlook the fact that every thought extends becasue that is its purpose, being what it really is. From an idea of self as two, there comes a necessary view of function split between the two. And what you would correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. Your brother´s sins becomes the central target for cerrection, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. Yours are mistakes, but his are sins and not the same as yours. His merit punishment,while yours, in fariness, should be overlooked. In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even see. The focus of correctionhas been placed outside yourself, on one who cannot be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is comdemned can never be returned to its accuser, who had hated it, and hates it still as symbol of his fear. This is your brohter,focus of your hate, unworhty to be part of you and thus outside yourself; the other half, which is denied. And only what is left without his presence is perceived as all of you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the other half until you recognize it is the other half. And this He does by giving both of you a function that is one, not different. Correction is the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as shared,it must correct mistakes in both of you. It cannot leave mistakes in one unhealed and set the other free. That is divided purpose, which can not be shared,and so it cannot be the goal in which the Holy Spirit sees His Own. And you can rest assured that He will not fulfill a function that He does not see and recognize as His. For only thus can He keep yours preserved intact, despite your separate views of what our function is. If he upheld divided function, you were lost indeed. His inability to see His goal divided and distinct for each of you, preserves yourself from the awareness of a fucntion not your own. And thus is healing given both of you. Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness are the same. With half a mind this is not understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind that is united, functioning as one because it is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as its only one. Here is the function given it conceived to be its own, and not apart from that its Given keeps because it has been shared. In His acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. His single purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he may accept his other half as part of him.

Love

[IA56]

Beyond All Symbols

Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradictin in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose.Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unitelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as ”weakened-power” or as ”hateful-love?” You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a ”hateful-love,” a”weakened-power,” and above all, a ”living-death.” And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought,where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there. The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out,because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied. An empty space that is not seenas filled, an unused interval of time not seen as spent and fully occupied become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make itself at home.No preparation can be made that would enhance the invitation´s real appeal. For what you leave as vacant God will fill, and where He is there must the truth abide. Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation is. For this there are no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand for more than everything? Yet true undoing must be kind. And so the first replacement for your picture is another picture of another kind. As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality. Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen. Forgiveness is not yet a power know as wholly free of limits. Yet it sets no limits you have chosen to impose.Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is represented temporarily. It lets the Holy Spirit make exchange of pictures possible, until the time when aids are meaningless and learning done. No learning aid has use that can extend beyond the goal of learning. When its aim has been accomlished it is functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use that now you fear, but yet will love. The picture of your brother given you to occypy the space solately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. For you will give it overwhelming preference. Nor delay an instant in deciding that it is the only one you want. It does not stand for double concepts. Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within itself it is the same. The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is not cancelled out. And thus is God left free to take the final step Himself. And what will ultimately take the place of every learning aid will merely be. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing that the eyes have ever seen or ears have Heard remains to be perceived. A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to recieve Its Own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The choice you fear to lose you never had. Yet only this appears to interfere with Power unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. You do not know the peace of power that opposes nothing. Yet no other kind can be at all.Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. He would merelt be, and so He merely is.

Love

[IA56]

The Quiet Answer

In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict ha no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done. Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind,solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there. Such is the holy instant. It is here that all your problmes should be brought and left. Here they belong, for here their answer is. It must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be resolved,if it is brought to where the answer is. Attempt to solve no problems bu twithin the holy instant´s surety. For there the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside there will be no solution, for there is no answer there that could be found. Nowhere outside a single, simple question is ever asked. The world can only ask a double question. One with many answers can have no answers. None of them will do. It does not ask a question to be answered, but only restate its point of view. All question asked within this world are but away of looking, not a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing in different form. The world asks but one question. It is this: ”Of these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?” Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. ”Which sin do you prefer? That is the one that you should choose. The others are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your servant and also you friend. But tell is what you want,and it will serve you lovingly and well.” And this is not a question, for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs, except that what it states takes question´s form. A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. Just as the body´s witnesses are but the senses from within itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions that are asked. Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new and nothing has been learned. An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but merely asks what the response should be. But no one in a conflict state is free to ask this question, for he does not want an honest answer where the conflict ends. Only within the holy instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the question does the meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to separate your wishes form the answer, so it can be given you and also be received. The answer is provided everywhere. Yet it is only here it can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers question truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded, asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so, unless the answer tells ”of whom,”itwill remain unrecoginzed, unheard, and thus the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself. The holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an answer that is not entailed within the question asked. It offers something new and different from the question. How could it be answered if it but repeats itself? Therefore, attempt to solve no problemsin a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems because they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what the question is. Within the world the answers merely raise another question, though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy instant,you can bring the question to the answer, and receive the answer that was made for you.

Love

[IA56]

The Healing Example

The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be healed. Bu the can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not have? And who can share what he denies himself? The Holy Spirit speaks to you. He does not speak to someone else. Yet by your listening His Voice extends, because you have accepted what He says. Health isthe witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when it has been demostreated is it proven, and must provide a witness that compels belief. No one is healed through double messages. If you wish only to be healed, you heal. Your single purpose makes this possible. But if you are afraid of healing, then it cannot come through you. The only thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are not healed,and cannot heal. This does not mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind to heal. For if it were, there were no need for healing then. But it does mean, if only for an intent, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient.Miracles wait not on time. The holy instant is the miracle´s abiding place.From there, each one is born into this world as witness to a state of mind that has transcended conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battle ground, and demonstrates that war has no effects.For all the hurt that war has sought to bring, the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted upand comforted. There is no sadness where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just one instant of your love without attack is necessary that all this occur. In that one instant you are healed, and in that single instant is all healing done. What stands apart from you, when you accept the blessing that the holy instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing, for the One Who blesses you loves all the world, and leaves nothing within the world that could be feared. But if you shrink from blessing, will the world indeed seem fearful, for you have withheld its peace and comfort, leaving it to die. Would not a world so bitterly bereft be looked on as a condemnation by the one who could have saved it, but stepped back because he was afraid of being healed?The eyes of all the dying bring reproach, and suffering whispers. ”What is there to fear?” Consider well its question. It is asked of you on your behalf.A dying world asks only that you rest an instant from attack on yourself, thatit be healed. Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is there received is left behind on your returning to the world. And being blessed you will bring blessing. Life is given you to give the dying world. And suffering eyes no longer will accuse, but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave. The holy instant´s radiance will light your eyes, and givet them sight to see beyond all suffering and see Christ´s face instead. Healing replaces suffering. Who looks on one cannot perceive the other, for they cannot both be there. And what you see the world will witness, and will witness to. Thus is your healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs one lesson that has perfectly been learned. And then, when you forget it, will the world remind you gently of what you have taught. No reinforcement will its thanks withhold from you who let yourself be healed that it might love. It will call forth its witnesses to show the face of Christ to you who brought the sight to them, by which they witnessed it. The world of accusation is replaced by one in which all eyes look lovingly upon the Friend who brought them their release. And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies. Problems are not specific but they take specific forms, and there specific shapes makeup the world. And no one e the nature of his problem. If he did, it would be there no more for him to see. Its very nature is that it is not. And thus,while he perceives it he can not perceive it as it is. But healing is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all. This is because they really are the same, despite their different forms. All learning aims at transfer, which becomes complete within two situations that are seen as one,for only common elements are there. Yet this can only be attained by One Who does not see the differences you see. The total transfer of your learning is not made by you. But that it has been made in spite of all the differences you see, convinces you that they could not be real. Your healing will extend, and will be brought to problems that you thought were not your own. And it will also be apparent that your many different problems will be solved as any one of them has been escaped. It cannot be their differences which made this possible,for learning does not jump from situation to their opposites and bring the same results. All healing must proceed in lawful manner, in accord with laws that have been properly perceived but never violated. Fear you not the way that you perceive them. You are wrong, but there is One within you Who is right. Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who really understands its laws, and Who will guarantee that they remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what he has taught you to yourself, and He will do the rest. And it is thus the power of your learning will be proved to you by all the many different witnesses it finds. Your brother first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may seem to have a problem that is different from the rest. Yet they are solved together. And their commom answer shows the question could not have been separate. Peace be to you to whom is healing offered. And you will learn that peace is given you when you accept the healing for yourself. Its total value need not be appraised by you to let you understand that you have benefited from it. What occurred within the instant that love entered in without attack will stay forever. Your healing will be one of its effects. Yet all the witnesses that you behold will be far less than all there really are. Infinity cannot be understood by merely counting up its separate parts. God thanks you for your healing, for He knows it is a gift of love unto His Son, and therefore is it given unto Him.

Love

[IA56]

The Witnesses to Sin

Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud,obscurin voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is the same. This is the law of pupose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has. Sin shifts from pain to pleasure,and again to pain. For either witness is the same, and carries but one message:”You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt. You can have pleasure,too, byt only at the cost of pain.” These witnesses are joined by many more.Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are alla like. Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin´s witness but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back. Yet which is foremost makes no difference. Sin´s witnesses hear but the call of death. This body, purposeles swithin itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell you what it is it feels. It does not know.It tells you but the names you gave to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality. You cannot choose among them which are real, for anyone you choose is like the rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. You do not make a witness true because you called him by truth´s name.The truth is found in him if it is truth he represents. And otherwise he lies,if you should call him by the Holy Name of God Himself. God´s Witness sees not witnesses againt the body. Neither does He harken to the witnesses by other name that speaks in other ways for its reality. He knows it is not real. For nothing could contain what you believe it holds within. Nor could it tell a part of God Himself what it should feel and what its function is. Yet must He love whatever you hold dear. And for each witness to the body´s death He sends a witness to your life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is not real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for all sin´s witnesses do His replace. The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin´s witnesses are called. It merely proves that what they represent has no effects. And this it proves becasue its own effects have come to take their place. It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. It is no longer there. The One Who brings the miracle perceives them all as one, and called by name of fear. As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto life. It is a witness no one can deny, for it is the effects of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it represents. Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. How foolish and insane it is to think a miracles bound by laws that it came solely to undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. And they attest different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the thrones of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. It is their sameness that the miracle attests. It is their sameness that it proves. The laws that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God Himself has guaranteed the stregth of miracles for what they witness to. Be you then winess to the miracle, and not the law of sin. There is no need to suffer any more.But there is need that you be healed, because the suffering and sorrow of the world have made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance. The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness, that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. The holy instant will replace all sin if you but carry its effects with you. And no one will elect to suffer more. What better function could you serve than this? Be healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to you. And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love´s symbols take the place of sin.

Love