 We continue in chapter 2 with the function of the miracle worker. Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world, it is essential that they fully understand the fear of release. Otherwise, they may unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a belief that is already very prevalent. This misperception arises in turn from the belief that harm can be limited to the body. That is because of the underlying fear that the mind can hurt itself. None of these errors is meaningful because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist. This recognition is far better protective device than any form of level confusion because it introduces correction at the level of the error. It is essential to remember that only the mind can create and that correction belongs at the thought level. To amplify an earlier statement, spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction. The body does not exist except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not subject to errors of its own because it cannot create. It is obvious then that inducing the mind to give up its miscreations is the only application of creative ability that is truly meaningful. Magic is the mindless or the miscreative use of mind. Physical medications are forms of spells, but if you are afraid to use the mind to heal, you should not attempt to do so. The very fact that you are afraid makes your mind vulnerable to miscreation. You are therefore likely to misunderstand any healing that might occur. And because ego, centricity and fear usually occur together, you may be unable to accept the real source of the healing. Under these conditions it is safer for you to rely temporarily on physical healing devices because you cannot misperceive them as your own creations. As long as your sense of vulnerability persists, you should not attempt to perform miracles. I have already said that miracles are expressions of miracle-mindedness and miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness. The right-minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle receiver. However, as a correction, the miracle need not awaits the right-mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him to his right mind. It is essential, however, that the miracle worker be in his right mind, however briefly, or he will be unable to re-establish right-mindedness in someone else. The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding. You are perfectly safe as long as you are completely unconcerned about your readiness but maintain a consistent trust in mind. If your miracle-working inclinations are not functioning properly, it is always because fear has intruded on your right-mindedness and has turned it upside down. All forms of not right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the atonement for yourself. If you do accept it, you are in a position to recognize that those who need healing are simply those who have not realized that right-mindedness is healing. The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement for himself. This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level and that its errors are healed by the atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only heal. By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others. The message you then give to them is the truth that their minds are similarly constructive and their miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, you release the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device and restore the mind to its true position as the learner. It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates. As a learning device, it merely follows the learner. But if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. Spirit is already illuminated and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner and is therefore unaminable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with the mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light. Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. This often entails fear because you are afraid of what your spiritual sight will show you. I said before that the Holy Spirit cannot see error and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of atonement. There is no doubt that this may produce discomfort, yet the discomfort is not the final outcome of the perception. When the Holy Spirit is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, he also looks immediately toward the atonement. Nothing he perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from spiritual awareness is merely channelized toward correction. This comfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction into awareness. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequivocally that healing is necessary. What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can error be corrected by any device that can be seen physically. As long as you believe in what your physical sight tells you, your attempts at correction will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured because you cannot endure to see your own defiled altar. But since the altar has been defiled, your state becomes doubly dangerous unless it is perceived. Healing is an ability that developed after the separation, before which it was unnecessary. Like all aspects of the belief in space and time, it is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing is needed as a means of protection. This is because healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another, even if you cannot perceive it in yourself. Most of the loftier concepts of which you are capable now are time dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more powerful love accomplishment that is far beyond any form of charity you can conceive of as yet. Charity is essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which it can now be attained. Charity is a way of looking at another as if he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishments in time. Since his own thinking is faulty, he cannot see the atonement for himself, or he would have no need of charity. The charity that is accorded to him is both an acknowledgement that he needs help, and a recognition that he will accept it. Both of these perceptions clearly imply their dependence on time, making it apparent that charity still lies within the limitations of this world. I said before that only revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an expression of charity, can only shorten it. It must be understood, however, that whenever you offer a miracle to another, you are shortening the suffering of both of you. This corrects retroactively as well as progressively. And from the workbook, Lesson 11. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world. This is the first idea we have had that is related to a major phase of the correction process, the reversal of the thinking of the world. It seems as if the world determines what you perceive. Today's idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see. Be glad indeed to practice the idea in its initial form. For in this idea is your release made sure. The key to forgiveness lies in it. The practice periods for today's idea are to be undertaken somewhat differently from the previous ones. Begin with your eyes closed and repeat the idea slowly to yourself. Then open your eyes and look about near and far up and down anywhere. During the minute or so to be spent in using the idea merely repeated to yourself. Being sure to do so without haste and with no sense of urgency or effort. To do these exercises for maximum benefit the eyes should move from one thing to another fairly rapidly. Since they should not linger on anything in particular. The words however should be used in an unhurried even leisurely fashion. The introduction to this idea in particular should be practiced as casually as possible. It contains the foundation for the peace relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve. On concluding the exercises close your eyes and repeats the idea once more slowly to yourself. Three practice periods today will probably be sufficient. However if there is little or no uneasiness and an inclination to do more as many as five may be undertaken. More than this is not recommended. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world. And so today we begin this major phase of the correction process. As we reverse the thinking of the world entirely. As a sleeping mind we have looked at the world in a very strange way. Seeing people places events situations actions as causative and resulting outcomes as effects of these false causes. It has touched everything in our false perception. Science the empirical method the scientific method believing that you can experiment with a world of images of energy of forces. Strange ideas that are believed to be the truth such as for every action there is a reaction. Strange sciences we have called Newtonian physics based on testing what seems to be an external world. And drawing conclusions based on these experiments yet thoughts are causative. Because thoughts are at the level of mind. And so we draw upon our readings from the text that only mind is causative. That miscreations can seem to be projected to form but they are impossible. And the transfer value of this lesson is enormous. It takes the body which is just a learning device off the hook off the hook of blame. What does that mean? It means that bodies are not creative. Bodies do not cause anything. Nobody harms any other body. Nobody is ever sick or made sick. Nobody causes anything. Bodies coming together are as meaningless as bodies going apart. Now we begin to see the meaning of projection makes perception that you did not come to a pre-existing world. But egoic thoughts, judgments, grievances, attack thoughts produce the hallucination of a world that seems to be outside but is not. We start to realize that the body is simply neutral. A learning device that the Holy Spirit can use to heal the mind, to bring the mind back to right-mindedness. And all of this foolishness about level confusions as if there are different levels in form. When actually right-mindedness shows the wholeness of mind and shows the impossibility of levels. This is what healing is. And it's so simple. So we'll try to defend against this simplicity with all kinds of intellectual schemes and analysis, hierarchies, systems. But the truth is so simple. In this idea today, my meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world puts causation in true perspective. You think you think the thoughts and then you think you see the thoughts. And if you release these thoughts, you will no longer see these thoughts in terms of perception. It's the first step in showing a mirroring that seems to be occurring while you still believe these thoughts are real. Your brother is the mirror in which you see the perception of yourself as long as the perception lasts. Until the light of revelation, the great rays of light and truth are seen to be reality. In this world of brothers and sisters this seem to be nothing but false perception. Never true. Not true for an instant. So today's idea is a big step in opening to an actual experience of the real world of true perception of the unified field that quantum physicists talk about. In which everything is completely connected. Everything is whole. Everything is one in awareness. This beautiful holistic perception in which there is no doer because there is no personality. God is no respecter of persons. The Bible teaches us how true. God creates in spirit. And spirit is one forever. Now in order to approach this idea it means you have to let go of everything in the linear world of perception. Because the linear world of perception is nothing but false cause-effect relationships. Spurious cause-effect relationships that have no meaning whatsoever. It means you have to see the impossibility of the idea that anybody hurts anybody. Anybody hurts anybody's feelings. Let go of all people pleasing. People can't please people. People were made by the ego. Images endowed with the false sense of a private mind and private thoughts. And it means letting go of the self-concept. Whatever you think yourself to be, whatever you believe yourself to be. A man, a woman, a person, a doctor, lawyer, mother, father, sister, brother. As you go deeper into the idea for the day you go past student concepts, teacher concepts. You sink inward deeper and deeper and deeper into the vastness of mind. And you lay aside these silly egoic self-concept goals that were made to try to offer you a substitute reality, a substitute sense of worth, and a substitute sense of love. These are just thoughts and they seem to be producing a very, very meaningless world. And so today, this instant, very leisurely, in a very relaxed way, we practice with this idea for today. And we rejoice that this is the beginning of the reversal of the thinking of the world. No longer are we bound to believe that the world causes how we feel, that the world causes us to do things. We are free of the belief that this is a world of scarcity and lack and hostility. As we rise up in the abundant experience of mind, opening to the awareness of divine mind, a mind that could never miscreate, a mind that could never misuse the power of God to make something other than God's love. Today we forgive the belief in the misuse of the power of mind by seeing my meaningless thoughts or showing me a meaningless world.