A Course in Miracles
Manual for Teachers
Section 5
How Is Healing Accomplished?
Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for.
Healing is impossible without this.
Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in
pain. Who would choose suffering unless he thought it brought him
something, and something of value to him?
He must think it is a small price
to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is an election; a
decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is
strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as
danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God’s Son
on his Father’s throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to
keep all power for Himself. Only by His death can He be conquered by His
Son.
And what, in this insane conviction, does healing stand for? It symbolizes
the defeat of God’s Son and the triumph of his Father over him. It represents
the ultimate defiance in a direct form which the Son of God is forced to
recognize. It stands for all that he would hide from himself to protect his
“life.” If he is healed, he is responsible for his thoughts. And if he is
responsible for his thoughts, he will be killed to prove to him how weak and
pitiful he is. But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength.
Now has he given himself what God would give to him, and thus entirely
usurped the throne of his Creator.
Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of
sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in
this” and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts.
First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If
sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it
is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it.
The resistance to
recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you
perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker. Terms like
“instincts,” “reflexes” and the like represent attempts to endow the body
with non-mental motivators. Actually, such terms merely state or describe
the problem. They do not answer it.
The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for
which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for
healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he
decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only
the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is.
Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his
own choice. He chooses them in order to bring tangible form to his desires.
And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all.
The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, “I have no use
for this.” There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.
What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the
recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the
body. What does this recognition “cost”? It costs the whole world you see,
for the world will never again appear to rule the mind.
For with this
recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but
on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he
chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He
only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was
mistaken about what it is. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both,
for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body
must be an acceptable idea.
With this idea is pain forever gone. But with this idea goes also 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 lesson is the remembrance of God. What do
guilt and sickness, pain, disaster and all suffering mean now?
Having no
purpose, they are gone. And with them also go all the effects they seemed to
cause. Cause and effect but replicate creation. Seen in their proper
perspective, without distortion and without fear, they re-establish Heaven.
If the patient must change his mind in order to be healed, what does the
teacher of God do? Can he change the patient’s mind for him? Certainly not.
For those already willing to change their minds he has no function except to
rejoice with them, for they have become teachers of God with him.
He has,
however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what
healing is. These patients do not realize they have chosen sickness. On the
contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they openminded
on this point. The body tells them what to do and they obey. They
have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it, they
would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them the separation is quite
real.
To them God’s teachers come, to represent another choice which they had
forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder. His
thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted as true.
As God’s messengers, His teachers are the symbols of salvation. They ask
the patient for forgiveness for God’s Son in his own Name. They stand for
the Alternative. With God’s Word in their minds they come in benediction,
not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given
them. It is not their hands that heal.
It is not their voice that speaks the
Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently
they call to their brothers to turn away from death: “Behold, you Son of
God, what life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?”
Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in
which their brother believes. To do this is to forget that all of them have the
same purpose, and therefore are not really different. They seek for God’s
Voice in this brother who would so deceive himself as to believe God’s Son
can suffer. And they remind him that he did not make himself, and must
remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect.
The truth in their minds reaches out to the truth in the minds of their
brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced.
They are thus brought to truth;
truth is not brought to them. So are they dispelled, not by the will of
another, but by the union of the one Will with itself. And this is the function
of God’s teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as
separate from God’s.
Manual for Teachers
Section 5
How Is Healing Accomplished?
Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for.
Healing is impossible without this.
Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in
pain. Who would choose suffering unless he thought it brought him
something, and something of value to him?
He must think it is a small price
to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is an election; a
decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is
strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as
danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God’s Son
on his Father’s throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to
keep all power for Himself. Only by His death can He be conquered by His
Son.
And what, in this insane conviction, does healing stand for? It symbolizes
the defeat of God’s Son and the triumph of his Father over him. It represents
the ultimate defiance in a direct form which the Son of God is forced to
recognize. It stands for all that he would hide from himself to protect his
“life.” If he is healed, he is responsible for his thoughts. And if he is
responsible for his thoughts, he will be killed to prove to him how weak and
pitiful he is. But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength.
Now has he given himself what God would give to him, and thus entirely
usurped the throne of his Creator.
Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of
sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in
this” and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts.
First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If
sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it
is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it.
The resistance to
recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you
perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker. Terms like
“instincts,” “reflexes” and the like represent attempts to endow the body
with non-mental motivators. Actually, such terms merely state or describe
the problem. They do not answer it.
The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for
which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for
healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he
decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only
the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is.
Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his
own choice. He chooses them in order to bring tangible form to his desires.
And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all.
The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, “I have no use
for this.” There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.
What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the
recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the
body. What does this recognition “cost”? It costs the whole world you see,
for the world will never again appear to rule the mind.
For with this
recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but
on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he
chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He
only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was
mistaken about what it is. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both,
for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body
must be an acceptable idea.
With this idea is pain forever gone. But with this idea goes also 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 lesson is the remembrance of God. What do
guilt and sickness, pain, disaster and all suffering mean now?
Having no
purpose, they are gone. And with them also go all the effects they seemed to
cause. Cause and effect but replicate creation. Seen in their proper
perspective, without distortion and without fear, they re-establish Heaven.
If the patient must change his mind in order to be healed, what does the
teacher of God do? Can he change the patient’s mind for him? Certainly not.
For those already willing to change their minds he has no function except to
rejoice with them, for they have become teachers of God with him.
He has,
however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what
healing is. These patients do not realize they have chosen sickness. On the
contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they openminded
on this point. The body tells them what to do and they obey. They
have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it, they
would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them the separation is quite
real.
To them God’s teachers come, to represent another choice which they had
forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder. His
thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted as true.
As God’s messengers, His teachers are the symbols of salvation. They ask
the patient for forgiveness for God’s Son in his own Name. They stand for
the Alternative. With God’s Word in their minds they come in benediction,
not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given
them. It is not their hands that heal.
It is not their voice that speaks the
Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently
they call to their brothers to turn away from death: “Behold, you Son of
God, what life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?”
Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in
which their brother believes. To do this is to forget that all of them have the
same purpose, and therefore are not really different. They seek for God’s
Voice in this brother who would so deceive himself as to believe God’s Son
can suffer. And they remind him that he did not make himself, and must
remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect.
The truth in their minds reaches out to the truth in the minds of their
brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced.
They are thus brought to truth;
truth is not brought to them. So are they dispelled, not by the will of
another, but by the union of the one Will with itself. And this is the function
of God’s teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as
separate from God’s.