 We continue today with the Manual for Teachers starting off with How is Healing Accomplished? Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for. Healing is impossible without this. Number one, the perceived purpose of sickness. 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 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, quote, 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. Two, the shift in perception. 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 misrecognize 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 as 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, responsibility is 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 that they seem to cause. Cause and effect, but replicate creation seen in their proper perspective, without distortion and without fear, they reestablish heaven. 3. The function of the teacher of God 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 open-minded 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 in 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 also 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. Is healing certain? Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the atonement for himself he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life believing healing is the way to death? When this is so a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for he may ask for death. Healing must wait for his protection. Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given it will be received. And what is time before the gifts of God? We have referred many times in the text to the storehouse of treasures laid up equally for the giver and the receiver of God's gifts. Not one is lost for they can but increase. No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain that it has been received and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse. It is not the function of God's teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely the their function to give them. Once they have done that they have also given the outcome for that is part of the gift. No one can give if he is concerned with the result of giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. Trust is an essential part of giving. In fact it is the part that makes sharing possible. The part that guarantees the giver will not lose but only gain. Who gives a gift and then remains with it to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate. Such is not giving but imprisoning. It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given and it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit and the patient's mind is seeking for him and it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God's treasure house can never be empty and if one gift is missing it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God? What concern then can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God, to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything? Should healing be repeated? This question really answers itself. Healing cannot be repeated. If the patient is healed what remains to heal him from? And if the healing is certain as we have already said it is, what is there to repeat? For a teacher of God to remain concerned about the result of healing is to limit the healing. It is now the teacher of God himself whose mind needs to be healed and it is this he must facilitate. He is now the patient and he must so regard himself. He has made a mistake and must be willing to change his mind about it. He lacked the trust that makes forgiving truly and so he has not received the benefit of his gift. Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded. Should he be tempted to doubt this he should not repeat his previous effort. That was already maximal because the Holy Spirit so accepted it and so used it. Now the teacher of God has only one course to follow. He must use his reason to tell himself that he has given the problem to one who cannot fail and must recognize that his own uncertainty is not love but fear and therefore hate. His position has thus become untenable for he is offering hate to one to whom he offered love. This is impossible. Having offered love only love can be received. It is in this that the teacher of God must trust. This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement for himself. The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts he has received yet he must first accept them. He need do no more nor is there more that he could do. By accepting healing he can give it. If he doubts this let him remember who gave the gift and who received it. Thus is his doubt corrected. He thought the gifts of God could be withdrawn. That was a mistake but hardly one to stay with. And so the teacher of God can only recognize it for what it is and let it be corrected for him. One of the most difficult temptations to recognize is that to doubt a healing because of the appearance of continuing symptoms is a mistake in the form of lack of trust. As such it is an attack. Usually it seems to be just the opposite. It does appear unreasonable at first to be told that continued concern is attack. It has all the appearances of love. Yet love without trust is impossible and doubt and trust cannot coexist. And hate must be the opposite of love regardless of the form it takes. Doubt not the gift and it is impossible to doubt its result. This is the certainty that gives God's teachers the power to be miracle workers for they have put their trust in him. The real basis for doubt about the outcome of any problem that has been given to God's teacher for resolution is always self-doubt. And that necessarily implies that trust has been placed in an illusory self for only such a self can be doubted. This illusion can take many forms. Perhaps there is a fear of weakness and vulnerability. Perhaps there is a fear of failure and shame associated with a sense of inadequacy. Perhaps there is a guilty embarrassment stemming from false humility. The form of the mistake is not important. What is important is only the recognition of a mistake as a mistake. The mistake is always some form of concern with the self to the exclusion of the patient. It is a failure to recognize him as part of the self and thus represents a confusion in identity. Conflict about what you are has entered your mind and you have become deceived about yourself and you are deceived about yourself because you have denied the source of your creation. If you are offering only healing, you cannot doubt. If you really want the problem solved, you cannot doubt. If you are certain what the problem is, you cannot doubt. Doubt is a result of conflicting wishes. Be sure of what you want and doubt becomes impossible.