1. Our emphasis is now on healing. 2The miracle is the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. 3To speak of “a miracle of healing” is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately. 4Healing is not a miracle. 5The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a remedy and any type of healing is a result. 6The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant. 7All healing is essentially the release from fear. 8To undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself. 9You do not understand healing because of your own fear.
2. A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. 2Sickness or “not-right-mindedness” is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another. 3We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. 4Only the mind is capable of error. 5The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. 6The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. 7Physical illness represents a belief in magic. 8The whole distortion that made magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. 9This 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. 10When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.
3. Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device for the mind. 2Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. 3Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. 4The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. 5It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. 6The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application. 7This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. 8The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. 9Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. 10However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. 11Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. 12The term “unworthy” here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. 13If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind’s power, one is also denying the power itself.
4. All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatements of magic principles. 2This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness. 3It is a second misstep to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. 4It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for corrective purposes is evil. 5Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonement. 6In 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. 7This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. 8They are already in a fear-weakened state. 9If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. 10This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.
5. The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. 2In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. 3This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. 4This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. 5It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable now. 6The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear.