T-7.V Healing and the Changelessness of Mind
1. The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for. ²That is a decision. ³The effects of the ego’s decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit’s decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. ⁴The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.
2. Only minds communicate. ²Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. ³The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. ⁴Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. ⁵To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. ⁶An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. ⁷If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.
3. Healing is the one ability everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. ²Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication in this world, and the only one He accepts. ³He recognizes no other, because He does not accept the ego’s confusion of mind and body. ⁴Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. ⁵The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. ⁶This situation, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic always involves the belief that healing is harmful. ⁷This belief is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.
4. Healing only strengthens. ²Magic always tries to weaken. ³Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. ⁴Magic always sees something “special” in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. ⁵He may believe that the gift comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack.
5. The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. ²Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. ³Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. ⁴By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. ⁵He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict. ⁶Can anything of God not be for all and for always? ⁷Love is incapable of any exceptions. ⁸Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. ⁹Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. ¹⁰The “fearful healer” is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful.
6. Fear does not gladden. ²Healing does. ³Fear always makes exceptions. ⁴Healing never does. ⁵Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation. ⁶Healing always produces harmony, because it proceeds from integration. ⁷It is predictable because it can be counted on. ⁸Everything that is of God can be counted on, because everything of God is wholly real. ⁹Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by His Voice, and is in accord with His laws. ¹⁰Yet if healing is consistent it cannot be inconsistently understood. ¹¹Understanding means consistency because God means consistency. ¹²Since that is His meaning, it is also yours. ¹³Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His, because your whole meaning and your only meaning comes from His and is like His. ¹⁴God cannot be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. ¹⁵You cannot separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His Being with you.
7. The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful to them. ²That is because he thinks he is giving something to them, and is not receiving something equally desirable in return. ³His teaching is limited because he is learning so little. ⁴His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. ⁵True learning is constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. ⁶That is because, by changing his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change. ⁷This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. ⁸This places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seems contradictory: you must learn to change your mind about your mind. ⁹Only by this can you learn that it is changeless.
8. When you heal, that is exactly what you are learning. ²You are recognising the changeless mind in your brother by realising that he could not have changed his mind. ³That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. ⁴It is only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His Mind. ⁵He himself may think he can, or he would not perceive himself as sick. ⁶He therefore does not know what his Self is. ⁷If you see only the changeless in him you have not really changed him. ⁸By changing your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him.
9. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. ²One way shows you an image, or an idol that you may worship out of fear, but will never love. ³The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will understand it. ⁴Understanding is appreciation, because what you understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have accepted it with love. ⁵That is how God Himself created you; in understanding, in appreciation and in love. ⁶The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does not understand what it makes, does not appreciate it and does not love it. ⁷It incorporates to take away. ⁸It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something, it has increased. ⁹I have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by your creations, which can only be created as you were. ¹⁰The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. ¹¹Do you not want to give it?
10. You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. ²To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. ³Our brothers are forgetful. ⁴That is why they need your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. ⁵Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. ⁶Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. ⁷I do not want to share my body in communion because this is to share nothing. ⁸Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father? ⁹Yet I do want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. ¹⁰See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is everywhere and in everything. ¹¹It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. ¹²Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true.
11. Come therefore unto me, and learn of the truth in you. ²The mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly they will be healed. ³Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them. ⁴This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship, because this is your proper gift to God. ⁵He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. ⁶This is true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. ⁷You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. ⁸This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought.