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 recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by realizing 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.