The emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the
Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. Those who speak
of “a miracle of healing” are combining two orders of reality
inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final
miracle, is a REMEDY, while any type of healing is a result. The KIND of
error to which atonement is applied is irrelevant. Essentially, ALL
healing is the release from fear. To undertake this, you CANNOT be
fearful yourself. You do not understand healing because of your OWN fear.

A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels.
Illness, which is really “not-right-mindedness,” is the result of level
confusion in the sense that it always entails the belief that what is
amiss in one level can adversely affect another. We have constantly
referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, and all
mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. Only the
MIND is capable of error. The body can ACT erroneously, but this is only
because it is responding to mis-thought. The body cannot create, and the
belief that it CAN, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms.

All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion
which created magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability
in matter which the mind cannot control. This error
can take two forms; it can be believed that the mind can miscreate IN
the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. If it is
understood that the mind, which is the ONLY level of creation, cannot
create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.

The reason only the mind can create is more obvious than may be
immediately apparent. The Soul HAS BEEN created. The body is a learning
device for the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves.
Their purpose is merely to facilitate the thinking of the learner. The
most that a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to
facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual
learning errors.

The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the
Atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a
miracle, but because it is not INHERENTLY open to misinterpretation. The
body is merely a fact in human experience. Its abilities can be, and
frequently are, overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny
its existence. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy
form of denial. The term “unworthy” here implies simply that it is not
necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies
this unfortunate aspect of the mind’s power, one is also denying the
power itself.

All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily ills are
merely restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of the
error to believe that the body created its own illness. It is a second
misstep to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not
follow, however, that the use of these very weak corrective devices are
evil. Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently great hold over a mind to
render a person inaccessible to Atonement. In this case it may be wise
to utilize a compromise approach to mind AND body, in which something
from the OUTSIDE is temporarily given healing belief.

This is because the LAST thing that can help the non-right-minded, or
the sick, is an INCREASE in fear. They are already IN a fear-weakened
state. If they are inappropriately exposed to an “undiluted” miracle,
they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to
occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles
are frightening.

The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which
it is expressed. In fact, if it is truly used, it will inevitably BE
expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means
that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, MUST be expressed in a
language which the recipient can understand WITHOUT fear. It does not
follow, by any means, that this is the highest level of communication of
which he is capable. It DOES mean, however, that it is the highest level
of communication of which he is capable NOW. The whole aim of the miracle
is to RAISE the level of communication, not to impose regression in the
improper sense upon it.

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 very prevalent. This misperception arose
from the underlying misbelief that harm can be limited to the body. This
was because of the much greater fear that the mind can hurt itself.
Neither error is really meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind
do not really exist. THIS recognition is a 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. Implicit in
this is the corollary that correction belongs at the THOUGHT level. To
repeat an earlier statement and to extend it somewhat, the Soul is
already perfect, and therefore does not require correction. The body
does not really exist except as a learning device for the mind. This
learning device is NOT subject to errors of its own because it was
created, but is NOT creating. It should be obvious, then, that
correcting the creator, or inducing it to give up its miscreations, is
the only application of creative ability which is truly meaningful.

Magic is essentially mindless, or the miscreative use of the mind.
Physical medications are forms of “spells.”Those who are AFRAID to use
the mind to heal should not attempt to do so. The very fact that they
ARE afraid has made them vulnerable to miscreation. They are therefore
likely to misunderstand any healing they might induce, and, because
egocentricity and fear usually occur together, may be unable to accept
the real Source of the healing. Under these conditions, it is safer for
them to rely TEMPORARILY on physical healing devices, because they
cannot misperceive them as their own
creations. As long as their sense of vulnerability persists, they should
be preserved from even attempting miracles.

We have already said that the miracle is an expression of
miracle-mindedness. Miracle-mindedness merely means right-mindedness in
the sense that we are now using it. The right-minded neither exalt nor
depreciate the mind of the miracle worker OR the miracle receiver.
However, as a creative act, the miracle need not await 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, or he will be unable to reestablish right-mindedness
in someone else.

The healer who relies on his OWN readiness is endangering his
understanding. He is perfectly safe as long as he is completely
unconcerned about HIS readiness, but maintains a consistent trust in
MINE. If your miracle working propensities are not functioning properly,
it is ALWAYS because fear has intruded on your right-mindedness, and has
literally upset it (or turned it upside-down). All forms of
not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement
FOR YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places himself in
a position to recognize that those who need to be healed 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 that he recognizes that mind is the only creative
level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts
this, his mind can ONLY heal. By denying his mind any destructive
potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed
himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others.
The message he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR minds are
similarly constructive, and that THEIR miscreations cannot hurt them. By
affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from overevaluating
its own learning device (the body), and restores 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. The Soul is already illuminated,
and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring ITS
illumination TO the body by recognizing that density is the opposite of
intelligence, and therefore unamenable to independent learning. It is,
however, easily brought into alignment with a mind which has learned to
look beyond density toward light.

Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of the Spiritual
eye, and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. The reason
this so often entails fear is because man is afraid of what his
Spiritual eye will see. We said before that the Spiritual eye cannot see
error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of
Atonement. There is no doubt that the Spiritual eye DOES produce extreme
discomfort by what It sees. Yet what man forgets is that the discomfort
is NOT the final outcome of Its perception. When the Spiritual eye is
permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, it also looks
IMMEDIATELY toward the Atonement.

NOTHING the Spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. EVERYTHING that
results from accurate spiritual awareness is merely channelized toward
correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the NEED for correction
forcibly into awareness. What the physical eye sees is NOT corrective,
nor can it be corrected by ANY device which can be seen physically. As
long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, ALL his
corrective behavior will be misdirected. The REAL vision is obscured
because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the
altar HAS been defiled, his state becomes doubly dangerous unless it IS
perceived.

The fear of healing arises, in the end, from an unwillingness to accept
the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. Man is not willing to
look on what he has done TO HIMSELF. Healing is an ability lent to man
after the separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like
all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary.
However, as long as time persists, healing is needed as a means for
human protection. This is because healing rests on charity, and charity
is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if he cannot
perceive it himself.

Most of the loftier concepts of which man is capable now are
time-dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much
more powerful love-encompassment which is FAR beyond any form of charity
that man can conceive of as yet. Charity is essential to
right-mindedness in the limited sense in which right-mindedness 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 for charity. The charity which is accorded him is both an
acknowledgment that he IS weak and a recognition that he COULD BE
stronger.

The way in which both of these perceptions are stated clearly implies
their dependence on time, making it quite apparent that charity lies
within the human limitations, though toward its higher levels. We said
before that only revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an
expression of true human charity, can only shorten time at most. It must
be understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle to another,
he is shortening the suffering of BOTH. This introduces a correction
into the whole record which corrects retroactively as well as
progressively.