IV. Healing as Release from Fear

T-2.IV.1. Our emphasis is now on healing. ² The miracle is the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. ³ To speak of "a miracle of healing" is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately. ⁴ Healing is not a miracle. ⁵ The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a remedy and any type of healing is a result. ⁶ The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant. ⁷ All healing is essentially the release from fear. ⁸ To undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself. ⁹ You do not understand healing because of your own fear.

T-2.IV.2. A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. ² Sickness 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. ³ We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur. ⁴ Only the mind is capable of error. ⁵ The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. ⁶ The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. ⁷ Physical illness represents a belief in magic. ⁸ The whole distortion that made magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control. ⁹ This 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. ¹⁰ When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.

T-2.IV.3. Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device for the mind. ² Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. ³ Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. ⁴ The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. ⁵ It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. ⁶ The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application. ⁷ This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. ⁸ The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. ⁹ Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. ¹⁰ However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. ¹¹ Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. ¹² The term "unworthy" here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. ¹³ If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind's power, one is also denying the power itself.

T-2.IV.4. All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatements of magic principles. ² This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness. ³ It is a second misstep to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. ⁴ It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for corrective purposes is evil. ⁵ Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonement. ⁶ In 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. ⁷ This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. ⁸ They are already in a fear-weakened state. ⁹ If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. ¹⁰ This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.

T-2.IV.5. The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. ² In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. ³ This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. ⁴ This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. ⁵ It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable now. ⁶ The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear.