 Today, we continue with chapter 2, section, Healing as Release from Fear. Our emphasis is now on healing. The miracle is the means, the atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. To speak of a, quote, miracle of healing is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is not a miracle. The atonement, or the final miracle, is a remedy, and any type of healing is a result. The kind of error to which atonement is applied is irrelevant. All healing is essentially the release from fear. To undertake this, you cannot be fearful yourself. You do not understand healing because of your own fear. A major step in the atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. Sickness, or not right-mindedness, is a result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is a miss on one level can adversely affect another. We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion. For all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion that made magic rest on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. This error can take two forms. It can be believed that the mind can miscreate in the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur. Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device of the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. The worst, a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. The term unworthy here applies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind's power, one is also denying the power itself. All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatements of magic principles. This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness. It is the second misstep to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for corrective purposes is evil. Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the atonement. In this case, it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body in which something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded or sick is an increase in fear. They are already in fear weakened state. If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening. The value of the atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle to attain its full efficacy must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable now. The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear. And from the workbook, lesson number 10. My thoughts do not mean anything. This idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware or become aware in the practice periods. The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts. We have made this distinction before and will do so again. You have no basis for comparison as yet. When you do, you will have no doubt that what you once believed were your thoughts did not mean anything. This is the second time we have used this kind of idea. The form is only slightly different. This time, the idea is introduced with my thoughts instead of these thoughts. And no link is made overtly with the things around you. The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think. This aspect of the correction process began with the idea that thoughts of which you are aware are meaningless, outside rather than within, and then stressed their past rather than their present status. Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these thoughts means you are not thinking. This is merely another way of repeating our earlier statement that your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision. Close your eyes for these exercises and introduce them by repeating the idea for the day quite slowly to yourself. Then add, this idea will help to release me from all that I now believe. The exercises consist, as before, in searching your mind for all the thoughts that are available to you without selection or judgment. Try to avoid classification of any kind. In fact, if you find it helpful to do so, you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little, if any, personal meaning to you. As each one crosses your mind, say, My thought about blank does not mean anything. Today's thought can obviously serve for any thought that distresses you at any time. In addition, five practice periods are recommended, each involving no more than a minute or so of mind searching. It is not recommended that this time period be extended, and it should be reduced to half a minute or less if you experience discomfort. Remember, however, to repeat the idea slowly before applying it, specifically, and also to add, this idea will help to release me from all that I now believe. My thoughts do not mean anything. So today, we work with thoughts. Today, we focus on the mind, and we take a step in truly opening to an experience that this parade of thoughts that seems to be ongoing, the thoughts that arise and roll across and flash across consciousness, are not our real thoughts at all. They're very much a mix. They're a mishmash. They're crossing and weaving and flitting and fluttering. These so-called thoughts have been called a monkey mind, because monkeys jump around seemingly with no pattern, very active, very busy, and whereas we had identified with a body and surroundings, familiar objects and settings, now we focus on just looking at the thoughts. Everything is a thought. And this is important because there are beliefs under these thoughts. We just read that in our text session earlier, that the error can take the form of the belief that the mind can create in the body and that the body can create in mind. That different levels can affect one another. There's these very deep distorted beliefs that are really distortions of creation, distortions of the fact that only mind is creative. So the thoughts that are floating by, the thoughts that I think I think, the thoughts that I seem to think, the thoughts that are crossing my mind, we could say are all coming from false beliefs. They're all floating by because of forgetfulness about creation. When we look at the common thoughts, perhaps you're introducing someone is like my son or my daughter, my mother or my father. You can see that even these simple ordinary thoughts imply that one body can create another body. You see, that's the concept that's necessary, that children come from parents. And the naming of the child and of the parent in those titles and categories is coming from a belief that bodies can create. So what goes for procreation in this world is actually impossible because of one simple fact that the mind does not create beyond itself. Spirit creates spirit. Spirit cannot create beyond itself. It cannot create matter. So these thoughts that seem to be ordinary that are just crossing daily consciousness are unreal because they have no basis. They have no source. They don't come from anything. And you may think, well, they seem to come from the ego, but the ego is nothing. The ego can't be nothing because the ego itself has no creator. The ego being nothing cannot extend, cannot generate, cannot make, cannot multiply because nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Got to be something if you're with a father, God. No, it's just nothingness cannot be real because nothingness was not created. So when I look at the lesson and repeat the lesson for today, my thoughts do not mean anything. What this is saying is the thoughts that are crossing my mind do not have a source. And therefore cannot be real. And then remind yourself with your eyes closed that this idea for the day will help release me from all that I now believe because if these thoughts do not mean anything, then all false, erroneous beliefs that sponsor these meaningless thoughts are untrue as well. It's Mary Baker Eddy who said there is no mind in matter. That's because mind does not create matter. And that is another reminder that my thoughts do not mean anything.