Only salvation can be said to cure.
We are either asleep or we are awake. If we are asleep in the dream of separation, then it does not matter what happens in the dream – if our cancer is cured, if we win the lottery, if we marry our true love and live happily ever after. It’s a dream. It doesn’t matter what happens in a dream.
A Course in Miracles is given so that we might wake up from the dream of separation, and remember that our mind is one with God’s Mind in Creation. When we remember this, we are healed. Our mind, which was split between being of God and denying that it was of God, is unified.
In the context of A Course in Miracles, only this can be said to be healing.
This is, or can be – no pun intended – a big pill to swallow. And so in order to help us, the Holy Spirit induces “happy dreams” – forgiveness-based dreams which are “heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind” (W-pI.140.3:2). These are dreams within the larger dream in which we are dissociated from Creation, but they do not double down on that larger dreaming. On the contrary, they loosen its stranglehold on our mind.
They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity (W-pI.140.3:4-5).
Thus, Atonement is not a “cure” for sickness. It is not about the body at all. Rather, it removes the cause of guilt from the mind which believes in guilt, which in turn makes sickness of any kind impossible. It removes the cause of guilt by showing with absolute clarity that sin and God cannot coexist, and that there is no place that God is not. Therefore, sin is homeless and we remain as innocent as in the first instant of Creation (forever extending itself).
This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever (W-pI.140.6:4-5).
Our work, then, is to bring illusions to truth (e.g., W-pI.140.7:4). In doing so, we demonstrate our willingness to learn that sickness is a decision the mind makes to forget what it is in truth.
What does this look like in practice?
It looks like willingness. It looks calm and patient. It does not rush to judge. It is not so invested in wordly outcomes. It seeks to remember the cause for joy (which is our guiltlessness). Even if we don’t accept the underlying metaphysical premise of A Course in Miracles, and the promise of healing it makes to us, we can still try to understand them and bring them into application. We can remind ourselves over and over that the world is not real and we are not bodies.
In other words, we leave behind the world of form – with its endless variations, all begetting this or that form of conflict – and focus instead on the Love of God, which appears to us as Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the holy relationships they guide us toward in order to teach us that the separation is not real.
We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing, from which nothing is exampt. We will succeed to the extent which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue (W-pI.140.9:2-3).
This world is all the same. The cancer, the war, the poverty, the hunger . . . all of it reflects the mind’s decision to be alien unto its Creator. At home in love, we make a dream of hate and give to it all our attention.
There is – as brother Thetford reminds us – a better way.
This lesson calls us to intentional stillness. It does not ask us to lean on form – tarot cards, aspirin, rosary beads, naikan therapy. It doesn’t say we can’t use these things later. It just asks us in this moment to give attention to the still small voice within which speaks only of God and of God’s Love. No more than this, but not less either.
We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but this can cure. Today we hear a single Voice which speaks to us of truth, where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God (W-pI.140.10:2-4).
Our willingness to pray this way – for it is a prayer – opens up a space in which we naturally remember that salvation is the only cure, and that only God’s Voice is the word of salvation. So we become still and quiet, listening only for that word, setting aside everything that word is not. That is our calling, and it is met by an ancient promise:
This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are (W-pI.140.12:7-8).
