Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is
for. Healing is impossible without this.

1. 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 as
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 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.

2. THE SHIFT IN PERCEPTION

Healing must occur in exact proportion in which the valuelessness of
sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain to me at all
in this,” and he is healed. But to say this one must first recognize
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 we 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 to bring tangible
form to his desires. And it is this 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 we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind.
For with this recognition is responsibility 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 was. 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 nor 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 they seemed to cause. Cause and effect but replicate
creation. Seen in their proper
perspective, without distortion and without fear, they re-establish
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 mind 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.
(Their) His thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has
accepted is 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 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 so deceive himself as to
believe God’s Son can suffer. And they remind him that he has not made
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, and 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.