The Agreement to Join

Chapter 28 – 3. The Agreement to Join

What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. For you
have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the
ladder separation led you down. The miracle alone is your concern at
present. Here is where we must begin. And having started, will the way be
made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the
dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to
one that is already being dreamed. Without support, the dream will fade
away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it.
 
No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And thus it
is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold agreement and accept the
part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt
without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you.
Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from separate
points of view. Uniting with a brother’s mind prevents the cause of sickness
and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness
comes from minds that separate.
 
The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined, and cannot
separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are
seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. ot allow your
brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own dream by
sharing it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and
you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been
bred. Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed,
where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm
belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight
not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you want above all
things that seem to glisten in the dream.
 
The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world of
dreams. The gap is little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form
of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. And thus it seems to
give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. The purpose of the gap is all
the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated, in a
body which you see as if it were the cause of pain.
 
The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. Yet
separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as
unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in
passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and
as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when
they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them
separate for a little while? Where are the grounds for sickness when the
minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of
sickness seemed to grow?
 
God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the
miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, for
He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. Let its effects be gone
and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. The
miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to
come and bridge His Son’s returning to Himself.
 
Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the
treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. The door is
open, not to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the
shining of a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like silver.
They have nothing left behind the open door. What is the world except a
little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months
and years? And what are you who live within the world except a picture of
the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and
uncertain bit of clay?
 
Be not afraid, my child, but let your world be gently lit by miracles. And
where the little gap was seen to stand between you and your brother, join
him there. And so sickness will now be seen without a cause. The dream of
healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never sinned. The
miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never
was. And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your
Father and your Self. The door is open, that all those may come who would
no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there.
And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come
to you.
 
This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown.
For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to
share. The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. And no one is
deprived or can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, and
shares it equally with him. And in Their sharing there can be no gap in
which abundance falters and grows thin. Here can the lean years enter not,
for time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. For love has set its
table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.