Chapter 11 - God's Plan For Salvation

The Mechanism of Miracles

Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If when you perceive it in others you learn to supply the loss, the basic cause of fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist in you, for you have in yourself the means for removing it, and have demonstrated this by giving it.

Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false for it was made out of denial, and denial depends on the real belief in what is denied for its own existence.

By interpreting fear correctly as a positive affirmation of the underlying belief it masks, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which do not work at all are automatically discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to clear-cut, unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The mask which you have drawn across the face of love has disappeared.

If you would look upon love, which is the world’s reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense against it, the underlying appeal for it? And how could you better learn of its reality than by answering the appeal for it by giviing it? The Holy Spirit’s interpretation of fear does dispel it, for the awareness of truth cannot be denied. Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love and translate error into truth. And thus will you learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity. For the separation is only the denial of union, and correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true.

Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth.

If to love oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are denying to themselves. If they knew the truth about themselves they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth. The sick must heal themselves, for the truth is in them. Yet, having obscured it, the light in another mind must shine into theirs because that light is theirs.

The light in them shines as brightly regardless of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light it has none, for it has power only because the Son of God gave power to it. He must himself withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. You can remember this for all the sonship.

Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is yours. But your remembering is his, for God cannot be remembered alone. This is what you have forgotten. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers with Him, and God’s answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.

Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he really wants is to offer it unto yourself, for your Father wills you to know your brother as yourself. Answer his call for love and yours is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father and for Himself.

Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it their fears vanish, but if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not know what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do know.

Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening.

Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal. The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your preference.

You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish it because it is His Will. Awake and remember your purpose, for it is your will to do so. What has been accomplished for you must be yours. Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for nothing can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father’s Love for Him.

You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded, but you who choose to banish fear will succeed. The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created.

Would you not exchange this awareness for the awareness of your fear? When we have overcome fear, not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, not by denying its full import in any way, this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacle to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside means to judge against. If you will look the Holy Spirit will judge, and will judge truly. He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him, and He cannot take it from you.

We are therefore embarking on an organized, well-structured and carefully planned program aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything you do not want. He knows what to do with it. You do not know how to use what He knows. Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God is gone. Yet you must reveal it to yourself in perfect willingness, for otherwise His knowledge remains useless to you. Surely He will not fail to help you, since help is His only purpose.

Do you not have greater reason for fearing the world as you perceive it than for looking at the cause of fear, and letting it go forever?