Cure is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as
beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will
make the body “better.” When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no
separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of
healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in
sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as
well.
He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the
dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened
from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has
not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What
difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either
sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.
The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreams of
the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams
forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep,
so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds
of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle
waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.
Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind
which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not
deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent
cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not
heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that
makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now
is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For
cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is
cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has
entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can
have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place
where holiness is not, and nowhere sin
and sickness can abide.
This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among
unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where
the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to
truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought
which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything
that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is,
and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness.
Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick
so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can
effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth
is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion
differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no
reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we
seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try
today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our
Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves.
It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to
lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.
We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond
appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is
exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can
never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and
equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does
not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and
can be cured because they are not true.
So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and
bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for
the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness
to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure. Today we hear a single
Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace
returns to the eternal quiet home of God.
We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day
begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more
before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering
thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are
the same. We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the
time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear Him now. We come
to Him today.
With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and
listening minds we pray:
“Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.”
And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace
so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us
that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer
for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the
answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This
is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation
ends, and we remember Who we really are.