The Present Memory. The miracle adds nothing, it merely takes away, and what it takes away is long since gone. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and desired them for awhile. The miracle shows that the past is gone, and what has Truly gone has no effects.
Why would I cling to a memory if I did not desire its effects? A memory is a perception of the past as if it were occurring now. Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by me to take the place of Heaven. Like all things I made, it can be used to serve another purpose. It can be used to heal and not to hurt. With Heaven it is my desire....my wish....my choice....to make it so.
Heaven can make use of memory for God Himself is there. I am accustomed to believing that memory holds only the past, so it is hard for me to realize it is a skill that can remember now ~ the things of Heaven I have hidden from my Awareness. God's use of memory is quite apart from time. He does not use it to retain the past, but as a way to let the past go. Like the body, memory has no purpose in and of itself. If it seems to treasure ancient hate and give pictures of saved injustice and hurts, this is what I asked its message be....and so it is. Committed to its vaults, the history of all the body's past is hidden in my memory. All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive (and the present dead) are stored in it, waiting my command that they be brought to me and lived over again. Their effects appear to increase with time. Yet "time" is another phase of what does nothing in and of itself. Time works hand in hand with all the other attributes I choose, to hide the Truth about myself, reinforcing my seeming separation from God. I make strange use of time in which the past seems to cause the present.
Remember nothing I have taught myself; I was badly taught. Do not keep a senseless lesson in my mind when I can learn a better one. When ancient memories of hate/fear/sadness/despair appear, remember that their cause (my sick mind) is gone, so I can no longer understand them. Be glad the past is gone. See instead, the new effects of a cause (a healed mind). It will surprise me with its Loveliness. The ancient new ideas it brings will be the happy consequence of a Cause so Ancient that it exceeds the span of my memory.
Truth has remembered the Ultimate Cause (God) for me. The miracle reminds me of a Cause Forever Present, Changeless and Perfect. I am Its effect, as Changeless and Perfect as Itself.
There was no time in which God's Son could be condemned. My Innocence has not been lost. I need no healing to be healed. Allow Cause (God) to have Its Own effects (me/His Son) and do nothing that would interfere.
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. It reaches gently from the mind it healed, in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. All will join in doing nothing to prevent its Radiant extension back into the Mind Which Caused all minds to be.
In the Quiet, Holy Instant my Memory of God is allowed to offer all its Treasures to His Son. How instantly the Memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear/hate/sadness/impatience/grief/misery (everything not Love is fear!) to keep His Memory away! The Trumpets of Eternity resound throughout the Stillness without disturbing It. The Cause of All That Is, is remembered.
The world of illusion does not exist. Everything done in the world of illusion was not done at all! It has no cause (because God did not Create it), therefore has no effects. The Son has done nothing which could ever upset the Father.
What better way to close the little gap between illusion and Reality, than to allow the Memory of God to flow gently across it, bridging the gap for an instant, while the Father carries His Son Home. The Father never abandoned His Son. He created a bridge the instant the Son seemed to sail to another shore.
Reversing Effect and Cause. Without cause there are no effects, without effects, there is no cause. The cause is made by its effects. The Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. The Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator. Because I am God's Son, I must also be a father, who creates as God created me. The Circle of Creation has no end. In Itself It holds the Universe of All Creation without beginning and without end.
Fatherhood is Creation. Love must be extended. My healing will come about when my mind recognizes that it is not contained within a body because there is no body. In the world of separation has the Son attempted to make himself his own cause (I have seemingly created a world apart from God). A mind within a body within a world of other bodies, each with separate minds.....these are my mis-creations and as their "father" I must be like them. In other words, I have created a world seemingly separated from God having attributes unlike God, therefore "I" would be unlike myself as His Son ("ego").
Nothing at all has really happened. Only that I have put myself to sleep. I dreamed a dream in which I was something other than the Son of God. The miracle does not Awaken me, it only reminds me that I am the dreamer. It teaches me that while I sleep I can dream a different dream ~ a happy dream ~ a dream of healing....not sickness and death. A dream is like a memory in that it shows me pictures of what I want to see (a world without God).
I have caused the dream. I can accept a different dream as well, but I must realize that I am the dreamer. In dreams of murder and attack, I am the victim in a dying body; but I am also the attacker. If I choose a forgiving dream, no one has to be victim and no one has to be attacker. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for my fearful dreams.
Why must I dream a happy dream, instead of just waking to Heaven? I have taught myself to be in a world without God and being His Son, I have all the Power of God. Having all the Power of God in my miscreation, yet being a dream or fantasy, I blind myself to my Sonship. Like a good father, God would never shake me suddenly from a nightmare "wake up! wake up!". He would know I am dreaming and would not frighten me. He would not oppose the dream (being my free will), yet neither would He abandon me to fear and misery. I can be miserable if I want to, yet He makes me Aware that I have options.
I caused the dream but it can never give me Real effects because it is unlike Heaven and "apart from" the Father. Only Heaven/Peace/Joy/Happiness/Wholenss can be Real. The dreamer of the dream is not Awake, yet I do not know that I sleep. I see illusions of myself as sick or well, depressed or Happy, but without a stable cause or guaranteed effects.
I am not afraid of illusions when I perceive I made them up. I am the author of the dream, not a figure in the dream. I give myself the consequences I dreamed I gave my brother. I fear attack, but I see it done by another. I am both victim and victimizer. I am both actor and director. I am the set-builder and the set. I am the scenery and all the actors in the play.
I thought I hated my Creator and that the figures in the dream have hated and plotted against me. Effect and Cause have first been split off, then reversed, so effects (the happenings in the world) seemed to become cause (they happen to me), and cause (I who seemed to create a world without God) becomes the effect (I seem to be at the mercy of the world and its events). This is the separation's final step. Therefore my salvation starts here, but it goes in the opposite direction.
In forgiving dreams the effects of my world are undone and hated enemies are perceived as friends with merciful intent. I accept the role as maker of their hate and I see that the hate has no effects and has not harmed me in any way. Free myself from being a victim of the world to being the dreamer of the world, and the world becomes a neutral place. The bodies that still seem to move about as separate beings do not need to be feared, they are my brothers .
The miracle returns the cause of fear to I who made it. The mind made sickness and used the body to be victim. Yet I have learned only half the lesson here and render the miracle useless if I value only physical healing. For this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is: the mind is sick. The mind seemingly created a world outside itself, causing the mind to feel guilty...."boy I will really be in trouble when God finds out I created a world without Him"......and this guilt was projected outward, making different scenarios ~ sickness, death, mayhem, explosions, tsunamis, adultery, murder, deformities....all things that could be possible in a world without God. The things going on in my mind are just that: in my mind. Nothing is happening to anyone. There are no effects, no consequences. This is God's Gentle way of Waking me ~ offering words of comfort and asking me to accept Happiness instead.
This world is full of miracles. Miracles are not needed in Heaven, but sorely needed for a sick mind in a sick world. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain, suffering, sin and guilt. Miracles are the alternative to dreams of fear. They are the glad effects of my Awareness as the dreamer. The body is released because the mind acknowledges, "I am doing this to myself."
The mind is now Free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step I made in the descent to separation, until all steps have been retraced, the ladder gone and all the dreaming of the world undone.
The Agreement to Join. What waits in Perfect Certainty beyond salvation (Heaven) is not my concern. I have barely started my first uncertain steps up the ladder. Forgiveness alone is my concern at present. Here is where I must begin. Having started, the way will be made Serene and Simple. When I accept a miracle, the dream of fear fades away without any other help from me, only my acceptance. Healing is the effect of minds that join the Oneness. Sickness comes from minds that separate. The end of dreaming is the end of fear. Love was never present in the world of dreams and the body was never the source of pain. The source of all pain, is the seeming separation from my Father.
God builds a bridge in the space left vacant by the miracle. Give up thoughts of sickness, shame, guilt, hatred, sadness, grief and loneliness. God will never oppose or destroy the thoughts I have created. He waits for me to lay my dreams aside. Leave an empty space in my mind.....and God will fill it.
What is the dream-world except an attempt to tear Eternity apart breaking it into days, months and years? What am I who live within the world except a picture of God's Son in broken pieces?
Let my world be illuminated by miracles. Forgiveness lies within the dream of healing and gently shows me that I never sinned. The door to the feast is open. This is a feast unlike anything the dreaming world has shown. For here, the more anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. No one is deprive or can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son and shares it equally with him. Love has set Its table in the clear, open space forgiveness has left in my mind.
The Greater Joining. Accepting the Atonement (the undoing of the separation through forgiveness) withdraws support for the dream of sickness and death. There is a way of finding Certainty right here and now: refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take. I am the dreamer of the dream; the dream being only an illusion in my mind. I am not yet wholly Sane and cannot tell the difference between what is Real and what is illusion. Like me, my brother thinks he is in the world. Do not share his illusion of himself. My identity depends on his Reality. Think of him only as a mind which is One with me, yet one in which illusions still persist. Between our minds there is no gap. Do not join in his illusions or I will accept them for myself. Be certain if I do my part, he will do his. I need convince my brother of nothing. I need not evangelize or point to his errors. I will just do my part. The Son in him will recognize the Son in me.
Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dream and the dreamer are one. I share this confusion with my brother. No stable self exists in the world of separation. My brother's dreams are mine. My dreams witness a world of separation to him and his dreams witness the same to me. Yet if I see there is no Truth in mine, his dreams will go away. The Son of God in both of us will recognize himself. The apparent gap between our bodies is meaningless, for what is joined in the Father is One.
Heaven's function is to take the broken picture of God's Son and put the pieces back in place. It holds out this Holy and healed picture to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture within itself. To each, Heaven offers this Identity. When a brother sees this picture, he will recognize himself. The forms (bodies) the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. The Whole is in each seemingly separated piece. Every aspect of God's Son is just the same as every other part.
Do not join my brother's dreams, but join in Sonship with him. The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is Joy in
separation. I may feel that giving up the world of separation would be a
"sacrifice." How wrong I am. Will I seek for a substitute of Heaven, when I realize Heaven is all around me? What God has given can never be lost. What is not of God has no effects.
Miracles are the result of perceiving no separation. My willingness to let illusions go is all Heaven requires. It will place the seeds of healing in place of the seeds of sickness; "....when it is sown, it grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and
puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under
its shadow.....Mark 4:32."
There will be no loss, but only gain.
The Alternative to the Dreams of Fear. What is sickness except a limitation? Sickness is literally splitting off and separation from, if only in dreams. In sharing with my brother my dreams of fear ~ hate, malice, bitterness, death, sin, suffering, pain and loss ~ it makes dreams "real" for me. Unshared, dreams are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone because I did not lend them support. And where fear has gone there Love must come. Where one appears, the other disappears.
I share no evil dreams if I forgive the dreamer (myself) and perceive that he is not the dream he made. Forgiveness makes fearful dreams disappears, releasing my brother and I. Whatever I think I might be doing in the world, I am only attacking myself. My brother seems to be my enemy and I will attack him because there is no Love in the world of illusion. I am either my Self or I am an illusion; there is no middle ground. The dream-world cannot be Truth.
The world was established for me to be "separate from" God, so it is a world that is not Real and not possible; it is a world that is sick and insane. The body's eyes seem to perceive this world, but if bodies are not real, then the sights and sounds a body perceives are meaningless. The body cannot see or hear. Its eyes are blind and its ears are deaf; it cannot think and it has no effects.
My "eyes" look on a dream; my ears hear only illusion. My eyes and ears were made to look on a world that is not there; to hear voices that can make no sound. Eyes and ears are senses with no sense. It is not they that hear and see, but I who put together the script and make the world witness to what I want.
Yet there are other sounds and other sights that can be seen, heard and understood. Just as in moments of meditation, where I teach myself to empty my mind and quiet the chatter of the world, Heaven asks me to empty my mind of illusion to make a space for Love. Not just 10 or 15 minutes of meditation but a life lived in a meditative state so that the Memory of Heaven can enter.
There are no fearful mysteries, no awesome secrets, no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. The world I see does not exist. There are not many bodies, but One Son.
The Secret Vows. Whoever punishes the body is insane. The body is nothing and does not exist. The body neither sees, nor hears; it does not feel pain. It has no feeling. It is not born and does not die. It behaves only as the mind directs it to. It can only follow aimlessly on the path which the mind set for it. If that path is changed, it walks just as easily another way. In a world of illusion I send the mind forth to seek for signs of separation from God, then I hate it for showing me what I asked. I hate its frailty and littleness. It sees and acts out all of my fantasies of separation, directed only by my mind.
The body represents the gap between the little bit that is "me" and all the rest of my Self. I hate it, yet in my dreams I think it is myself and that without it I would be lost.
This is the secret vow that I have made with every brother who walks apart from me. It is the secret oath that I take again and again, each second, minute, hour and day that I choose illusion over Reality. Choosing illusion is a choice to continue in the world of separation and sickness. It is a promise to my brother that I will attack and hurt him, and he will attack and hurt me.
Sickness is anger taken out on the body, so that the body will suffer pain. It is the effect of the choice made on behalf of the separation. Do not share this promise to be sick. Let my mind be healed and Unified. Illusions are powerless. Only what God Wills is Real.
The Ark of Safety. God asks for nothing. As His Son I need ask for nothing, for God gives me Everything. Only in dreams could I want for anything. If I deny myself the Wholeness of God's Kingdom, I am sick. There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. I accept it entirely or not at all. Either there is a gap between my brother and I, or we are One. There is no "in between." Healing is Complete or not at all.
I have built my home on a foundation of sand and count on it to keep me safe from the tides. The body is a home like this because it lacks foundation in Truth. Do not think of a body as my home, but merely an aid to help my sick mind reach my True Home. With this as its purpose, the body is healed. Do not use the body to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Let it serve to help heal God's Son, for this purpose it cannot be sick. All miracles are based on the choice for healing and they are given me the instant the choice is made. No forms of sickness are immune from this healing, because form does not matter. I am either sick or I am well.
The world is the dream that I can be alone and have private thoughts that affect no one but myself. If I perceive that I am alone, it means I am keeping the promise to be faithful to the separation. This is essentially faithlessness in God and Heaven. God is Wholeness and Health. If I am apart from God, I am sick. The foundation of my faith in the separation is like the house built on sand. If this is what I want to put my faith in, there is no need to secure the door and windows. When the rain comes it will carry my house into oblivion. What is the sense in looking to be safe in what was made for danger and fear? Would I build my house on what will collapse beneath a feather's weight?
My home must be built on my brother's health and well-being. God placed my salvation in my brother and his in me. The winds will blow and the rain will fall with no effect. The dream-world will wash away, yet God's House will stand forever. It is an Ark of Safety resting on God's Promise that His Son is Safe in Him Forever.
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