A Course in Miracles

Chapter 5 - Healing and Wholeness

Healing as Joining

To heal is to make happy.

I have told you before to think how many opportunities you have to gladden yourselves and how many you have refused. This is exactly the same as telling you that you have refused to heal yourselves. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Depression is often contagious but, although it may affect those who come in contact with it, they do not yield to the influence whole-heartedly. But joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share in it and thus promotes the mind's natural impulse to respond as one.

Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same time and thus deprive others of the joy of responding whole-heartedly. To be whole-hearted, you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, then the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous. To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is done. Every part benefits and benefits equally.

You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return out of gratitude. You do not have to know them individually or they you. The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only God's holy Children are worthy to be channels of His beautiful joy because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is:

Let me know this brother as I know myself.

Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them and lets God Himself go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that the Soul knows no difference between "being" and "having." The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, the Soul holds everything by giving it and thus creates as the Father created.

If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still yours, although all of it has been given away. Further, if the person to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind, and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association which the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.

Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:

Thoughts increase by being given away. The more who believe in them, the stronger they become. Everything is an idea. How, then, is it possible that giving and losing can be meaningfully associated?

This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine.

The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking.

The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something "separate," apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "If I go I will send you another comforter, and He will abide with you." The Holy Spirit is a difficult concept to grasp precisely because it is symbolic and therefore open to many different interpretations. As a man and as one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which is the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for all. I could not have It myself without knowing this.

The word "know" is proper in this context because the Holy Inspiration is so close to knowledge that it calls it forth; or better, allows it to come. We have spoken before of the higher or the "true" perception, which is so close to truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap. Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot oppose. Therefore, you can obstruct it, although you can never lose it.

The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind, which senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception.

It came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no one was comfortless.

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 5 - Healing and Wholeness

Mind of the Atonement

God honored even the miscreations of His Children because they had made them, but He also blessed them with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions until they became so lofty that they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of "carried" over since the last step is taken by God.

The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself.

First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who receives it could ever believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.

Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means that, although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.

[Third, it is an unequivocal call to love. Every other voice is still.]

There is a point at which sufficient quantitative changes produce real qualitative differences. The next point requires real understanding because it is the point at which the shift occurs:

Finally, it points the way beyond the healing which it brings and leads the mind beyond its own integration into the paths of creation.

Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the Children of God were before healing was needed and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar because it is very similar to the shift in time perception which the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness, the will to heal the separation by letting it go. This will is in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep, you cannot obliterate it.

God Himself keeps this will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly His and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion or union of will between Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation because before that it had only being and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit was God's Answer to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating.

The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call to joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again.

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 5 - Healing and Wholeness

Voice For God

It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls.

The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the call to Atonement or the restoration of the integrity of the mind.

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy.

You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own.

Before the separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now.

God does not guide because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative because it implies that there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other.

This is a conflict state. It means that knowledge has been lost because knowledge is sure. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose to leave Him, He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice through another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices which you must make. In the holy state, the will is free in the sense that its creative power is unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.

Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing means divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you because there is also another way. God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the voice of His Will for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is stronger than the call to depart, but it speaks in a different way.

The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand because it does not seek control. It does not overcome because it does not attack. It merely reminds.

It is compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The Voice for God is always quiet because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife.

"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" That means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has lost sight of his Soul. He cannot lose it, but he can not know it. It is therefore lost to him until he chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which always speaks for the right choice because He speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy.

The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's Will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Both Heaven and earth are in you because the call of both is in your will and therefore in your mind. The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you will to serve. The call you answer now is an evaluation because it is a decision. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.

My mind will always be like yours because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision for yourself. The will for this decision is the will to share it because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation. You understand the role of "models" in the learning process and the importance of the models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God, I showed you that this decision can be made and that you can make it.

I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in you and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This mind is unequivocal because it hears only one voice and answers in only one way. You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad. The world is very tired because it is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for God. Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?

Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger. As we share this goal we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship and to bring it back into the Oneness in which it was created. Remember that "yoke" means "join together" and "burden" means "message."

Let us reconsider the Biblical statement, "My yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way: "Let us join together, for my message is light."

I came into your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way or another Voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for how to think. Psychology has become the study of behavior, but no one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to motivation, and motivation is will.

I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. He teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought and to behave like me as a result.

The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief but not beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits because the Call for God is the call to the unlimited. Child of God, my message is for you to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.