Principle 23: Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels. (T-1.I.23)

COURSE REFERENCES

Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual. (T-1.I.12.1-3)

Miracles transcend the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from the bodily level. And that is why they heal. (T-1.I.17.1-3) You do not heal on the bodily level.  The cause (thought in the mind) has to be healed (changed) first, then the effect (the bodily ailment) disappears. By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment. This places spirit at the center, where it can communicate directly. (T-1.I.30.1-2)

A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs (spirit, mind and body). As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict. (T-1.VI.2:1-5)

The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels. However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up. This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as “up” and “down” are meaningful. Both are merely beliefs.

The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief. You can never control the effects of fear yourself because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them. Belief produces the acceptance of existence. That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true. It’s true for you because it was made by you. (T-1.VI.4:1-6)

All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

Perfect love casts out fear.

If fear exists,

Then there is not perfect love.

BUT:

Only perfect love exists.

If there is fear,

It produces a state that does not exist

Believe this and you will be free. Faith in this solution is God’s gift to you. (T-1.VI.5:1-9)

Your only responsibility is to accept the Atonement (undoing of error/fear) for yourself. The acceptance of the Atonement by all is only a matter of time. This may appear to contradict free will because of the inevitability of the final decision, but this is not so. You can temporize, and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator Who set the limits on your ability to miscreate. A will imprisoned by ego engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be A Better Way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning-point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. Continually alternating between spiritual vision and physical sight is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute. But the outcome is as certain as God. (T-2.III.3:1-10)

A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. Sickness or “not-right-mindedness” is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another (spirit affects mind affects body affects mind affects spirit). 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 rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. There is not. (T-2.IV.2:1-1-8)

Fear cannot be controlled by Jesus, but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents Jesus from giving his control to you. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind. This removes them from the control of Jesus and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels. (T-2.VI.1:4-8) His control can take over everything that does not matter (Jesus said to “give all your minutia to me”), while his guidance can direct everything that does matter if you so choose. Therefore, Jesus can remove the causes of fear, but not the effects. However, without a cause there is no effect; and fear has to disappear.

Jesus does not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it. You would not excuse insane behavior on your part by saying you could not help it, would you? You know that you can "help it." So why should you condone insane thinking? This is a confusion you would do well to look at clearly. (T-2.VI.1:1-4) You may even believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. Does action speak louder than words or thoughts? Or are they the same?

The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate yourself from the truth by “giving” autonomy to behavior. Your behavior is controlled by Jesus automatically as soon as you place what you think under his guidance. Whenever you are afraid or in error, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and you have not allowed Jesus to guide it. (T-2.VI.1:5-10) The correction is simple. Give your thoughts to Jesus.

It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it; that is why you experience guilt. Therefore, you must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the level of mind, because correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change at the symptom level does not work. (T-2.VI.3:1-7) When you truly change your mind, your behavior will change accordingly.

The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not a cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause. Thus, the body is healed by miracles because they show that the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be the victim, or effect, of what it made. The mind can just as easily “unmake” sickness and the body will then miraculously “heal.” (T-28.II.11:1-4) There cannot be a simpler solution to the idea of sickness than THIS -- or simpler still, the mind can never make up the idea of sickness in the first place! What is the point, after all?

Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn only that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is that the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick: projecting its guilt caused nothing and had no effects. (T-28.II.11:5-7) It was all a giant waste of time.

Let us, therefore, look at the mind for a minute. Jesus assured you that the Mind that decided for him is also in you, and that you can let it change you just as it changed him. (T-5.II.10:1) His mind will always be like yours, because you were created as equals. It was only his decision that gave him all power in Heaven and earth. His only gift to you is to help you make the same decision. By deciding for God, Jesus showed you that this decision can be made, and that you can make it.  Wow!

You are the light of the world with Jesus. Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the Call to awaken and be glad. The world is very tired because it is the idea of weariness. Your task is the joyous one of waking the world to the Call for God, which is A Better Way!  What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole? Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you and teach your brothers to listen as Jesus is teaching you. When you or they are tempted by the wrong voice, simply call on Jesus to remind you how to heal by again sharing his decision to decide for God, making it stronger. Be good to yourself. Decide for God, as only GOD IS.