Healing and the Changelessness of Mind

Chapter 7.5
 
Healing and the Changelessness of Mind
 
The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which
is quite apart from what they are used for. That is a decision. The effects of
the ego’s decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no
elaboration, but the Holy Spirit’s decision to use the body only for
communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need
clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own
vocation.
 
Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to
communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you
that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need
the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the
mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is
not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance
with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a
teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach
what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and
poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor
teacher and a poor learner.
 
Healing is the one ability everyone can develop and must develop if he is to
be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit’s form of communication in this world,
and the only one he accepts. He recognizes no other, because he does not
accept the ego’s confusion of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but
they cannot hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies,
but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the
mind. This situation, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but
you must remember that magic always involves the belief that healing is
harmful. This belief is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds
accordingly.
 
Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives
nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic
always sees something “special” in the healer, which he believes he can
offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift
comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand
God if he thinks he has something that others lack.
 
The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of him always
works. Unless the healer always heals by him the results will vary. Yet
healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict-free, and only
the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging
that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously
accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict.
 
Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any
exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be
meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The
“fearful healer” is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that
only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful.
 
Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions.
 
Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation, because it induces
separation. Healing always produces harmony, because it proceeds from
integration. It is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is
of God can be counted on, because everything of God is wholly real.
 
Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by his voice, and is in
accord with his laws. Yet if healing is consistent it cannot be inconsistently
understood. Understanding means consistency because God means
consistency. Since that is his meaning, it is also yours. Your meaning
cannot be out of accord with his, because your whole meaning and your
only meaning comes from his and is like his. God cannot be out of accord
with himself, and you cannot be out of accord with him. You cannot
separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing his Being
with you.
 
The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful
to them. That is because he thinks he is giving something to them, and is not
receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited
because he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own
ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. True learning is constant, and so
vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in
one instant and change the world in the next. That is because, by changing
his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him
for change. This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God
created it, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn
through the ego. This places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson
that seems contradictory;–you must learn to change your mind about your
mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless.
 
When you heal, that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing
the changeless mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have
changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is
only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes his Mind. He himself may
think he can, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does
not know what his Self is. If you see only the changeless in him you have
not really changed him. By changing your mind about his for him, you help
him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him.
 
As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows
you an image, or an idol that you may worship out of fear, but will never
love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will
understand it. Understanding is appreciation, because what you understand
you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have accepted it
with love. That is how God himself created you; in understanding, in
appreciation and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this,
because it does not understand what it makes, does not appreciate it and
does not love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that every
time it deprives someone of something, it has increased. I have spoken often
of the increase of the Kingdom by your creations, which can only be created
as you were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in
you to give. Do you not want to give it?
 
You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget
him. To forget me is to forget yourself and him who created you. Our
brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and
of him Who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their
minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful a
light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten
yours. I do want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind,
and that Mind is ours. See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is
everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all
things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you
perceive only what is true.
 
Come therefore unto me, and learn of the truth in you. The mind we share is
shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly they will be healed. Let
your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them
make them aware of the light in them. This light will shine back upon you
and on the whole Sonship, because this is your proper gift to God. He will
accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to him and
therefore to his sons. This is true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who
sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, he
calls upon you to love God and his creation. You can appreciate the Sonship
only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all
thought.