When a participant went into spontaneous cardiac arrest during one of our Workshop Retreats, we were gifted with a real life classroom of miracles. Ron (not his real name) was dead for almost half an hour…before we witnessed his miraculous return. “There is no order of difficulty in miracles.”

Here is the story of what can happen when we choose to look upon devastation together with our inner Teacher of Love, rather than with fear. The outcome is always miraculous. In this long excerpt from my book trilogy, The End of Death, I reveal some astonishing insights into Jesus’ deeper teachings within A Course in Miracles. This excerpt is around 15 pages long; you might want to print it out. Enjoy…

                                     Excerpt from The End of Death – Copyright 2013 Nouk Sanchez

During one of our four-day retreats,  a participant’s heart stopped suddenly; a phenomenon known as spontaneous cardiac arrest which means that his heart stopped but there was no known cause. His was clinically dead for 25 minutes before his heart began again. It happened on the third day together as a group, so we were willing to look at this particularly distressing event differently. We were given a firsthand opportunity to bring our seemingly real fears to Truth via following the Atonement/forgiveness process (for the Forgiveness/Atonement process click here).  Our eyes witnessed a seemingly dead body lying on the floor yet Spirit gently but firmly summoned us to look beyond the ego’s appearances; to question our belief in death. A miracle took place in an instant of fearlessness (forgiveness) which arose from our choice to look beyond the body and ask only for healed perception. 

Time appeared to stand still in this seeming instance of death. We all had a choice to make. We could either believe and respond to this emergency from the ego’s belief system of fear or we could stay present and centered. We could look upon our own fears with Spirit, while choosing to exchange them for the miracle. Many of us remembered to choose the one true healing. These two approaches to healing, one arising from fear and the other from Love, as I was to re-learn soon after, are completely irreconcilable. Jesus tells us, “…the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement (undoing of fear) for himself.” M-7.3:2 And that is exactly what we did.

When Ron (not his real name) went into cardiac arrest, two participants began CPR immediately and continued until the paramedics arrived and took over. However these two participants took instant action while remaining present and Right-Minded. They held the awareness of wholeness yet they both felt directed to work on resuscitating Ron’s body. We all joined in accepting Atonement and in remembering there is just one Power, God’s endless Love and Life despite appearances to the contrary. 

All healing is of the mind. Of itself, the body cannot heal nor make itself sick. The body, like everything in the dream, is completely neutral. Only the mind decides to use the body for healing or for attack. We give the body all the meaning it has for us. And there is no hierarchy of illusions either. A headache or the throes of death are the same mistake. Pain, sickness and death are not God’s Will, so when they trigger fear in us, it’s always because we are mindlessly “wishing with the ego’s will” which means that we are not mindfully “willing with God’s Will.” We are either wishing from fear or willing with Love, no matter which emergencies we seem to face, these are our only two choices. When we react from fear we use the body to teach by demonstration that we are victims of the ego’s laws; that we are separate from all-encompassing Love with no opposite.

“The body cannot heal, because it cannot make itself sick. It [needs] no healing. Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it for. It is obvious that a segment of the mind can see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs the body becomes its weapon, used against this Purpose, to demonstrate the “fact” that separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion, acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what truth has never said and behaving insanely, being imprisoned [by] insanity.” T-19.I.3.

I see now that in true healing we don’t do anything! Instead we willingly surrender our own personal version of the ego’s hallucination (fear caused by what the body’s eyes see) in exchange for the miracle as God’s Will, which is always perfect healing of both mind and body. Perfect healing is our natural state. It’s not something that requires gradual unfolding in time. Only the ego’s refusal to accept the miracle makes it appear as if healing takes time to accomplish. The truth is that the state of perfect healing already abides simultaneously alongside the ego’s hallucination within our mind. Therefore the miracle is not something we need to wait for unless we lack trust in our own perfect guiltlessness which is God’s Love.

“The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years.” T-1.II.6:1-7

Remember that cause and effect (mind and the body/world) can never be separate in our mind. That is what Jesus means when he says, “ideas leave not their source”. Change the cause and the effect must fall into alignment. Only our own doubt can possibly delay the full transfer of healing from cause in the mind, to manifest effect.  Recall too that there is no cause in the world that can have an effect in the world independently apart from our mind. All cause is in our mind. And all effects while seemingly outside us, are in our mind as well.

” Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.” T-26.VII.4:7-9

Either we choose to perceive the ego’s hallucination or we choose to heal through God’s infinite Love. True healing occurs the instant that we desire our mistaken perception of suffering to be healed, more than we want a physical healing. This means that we must first have established some level of trust in God’s Will in order to join fully with it. Note: There is a helpful article and exercise on how to recognize and release our unconscious fear of God. It is titled, Exposing Our Unconscious Fear of God (Love). (Click on this link for the article)

The idea that we could be sick, that we could experience conflict or suffering in any form, is the belief that sin is real. If sin is real then so is guilt. And while this remains true for us then we will live out from guilt and fear, and not from Love. This is the ego’s unconscious belief that we have sinned in the past and because of our un-relinquished guilt we believe that we  deserve punishment. The result is that we unknowingly manifest our own deluded punishment and then blame others, the world and God for it; keeping the ego cycle of sin, guilt, fear, suffering and death intact. While we believe that sin is real then we cannot know the true nature and Will of God which is all-encompassing Love with no opposite. If God’s Love is real; if God’s Love is all there is, then sin, guilt, fear, suffering and death are not.

If sin was real then some forms of sickness and suffering would seem forever past the hope of healing. And if this were true then God would have an opposite as real as He is. God would be split in two and the world would be governed by two opposing powers. All sickness and suffering begins with the unhealed belief that sin is real. And while we still cling to belief in sin, sickness, suffering and death then we will fear God because secretly, we will believe that they come from God.  Jesus makes a statement about sin below:

“Yet the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever past the hope of healing, and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it. Then would God’s Will be split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of two opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Himself.” T-26.VII.7:2-4

Jesus tells us that a major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. This means that both the cause in the mind and its effects in the body/world will be healed. If the cause (guilt and fear) in the mind were genuinely healed and the effects were not then this would signify that the separation was real. It would also demonstrate the impossible, that ideas have indeed left their source (mind) and that God has a real opponent in the ego.

“A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels” T-2.IV.2:1.

Earlier I mentioned that there are only two approaches to healing, one from Love and one from fear. And these are irreconcilable. During the 25 minutes that our group joined and prayed for our seemingly dead companion, I thought that I was wholly united in only God’s Will and not with the ego’s.  Yet afterward I realized how unconsciously, I had attempted to reconcile the two. A short time later when I was talking to a friend, I heard the Teacher within correct me gently. At the time of the emergency I had a few mistaken beliefs. And I did not recognize then that they were from the ego.

 Ron took a very long time to respond to the paramedics comprehensive resuscitation attempts to revive his heart. We all had plenty of time to face our own deeper fears while believing some unquestioned interpretations of what was actually happening, me included. One of these mistaken ego beliefs was that Ron required this extra “time” to make his decision about whether to stay in the body or to leave it through death. Spirit clearly corrected me on this, telling me that Ron required no time to make a decision. His choice was already made instantaneously. It was me (and the group) who needed time to decide to accept the miracle. Ron was in the eternal now moment. Whereas the focus of my own perception then was in time.

There is always just one mind to heal regardless of the person or circumstances involved. Consequently there is no one out there to heal, ever. If I am upset by what I see then it’s my own mind that requires healing. To the extent that I was triggered by Ron’s condition showed me the degree of my own unconscious guilt (self-attack). This was my fear of God’s Love as my Holy Self and it indicated the level of my own unconscious and therefore un-relinquished attraction to death. Unknowingly at the time, to some degree, I had attempted to reconcile two completely opposed thought systems. This confusion that we all suffer from is well documented in A Course in Miracles. Here is a perfect lesson on this subject below from Jesus in the Course, lesson 76 – “I am under no laws but God’s.”

“Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.” W-76.3.

“It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the “laws” of medicine, of economics and of health. Protect the body, and you will be saved.” W-76.4.     

“These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers just in order that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body’s suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your “laws” would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body.” W-76.5.              

“There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to God’s Will. Your magic has no meaning. What it is meant to save does not exist. Only what it is meant to hide will save you.” W-76.6:1-5

I could see without self-judgment, how my faith and trust in only God’s Laws (His Will) was not yet fully developed. I still had a foot in each canoe, the ego’s and God’s. I saw that I was going through the transfer process, from trust in ego’s laws to God’s consistent healing.

Before I go on let me make this clear. It is perfectly okay to employ both means of healing; being here the ego’s magic remedies and true healing which is accepting Atonement. While our trust in God is still weak we will naturally turn to the ego’s magic for the time being. We do this because unconsciously, we still fear the miracle and instead we prefer to trust the ego’s remedies. This is not important. What is important is to recognize our trust in God is weak and as we accept Atonement, ask for our trust to be increased and transferred to God’s Laws. We are under no laws but God’s. In our willingness to trust this, God’s Love is no longer blocked; it is freed to extend and God’s one Power (miracle) is then invoked. Jesus speaks about magic and fear in the following passage,

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

Real Faith ~ One Power, Not Two

Faithlessness, as Jesus tells us, occurs when we see another (or our self) as a body. While we believe ourselves or another to be a body we unconsciously assign it power over the mind; the ego over God. And we will continue to consult the ego for guidance and remedies instead of Spirit within. Pain and illness are vicious illusions in which the ego deviously manages to convince us to see another as a body. While we see them as a body, while we believe in the appearance of pain or sickness, more than we trust in God’s Love then we cannot see him/her, nor can we see our Self. In believing what our body’s eyes see, that the problem is real (pain, sickness, etc.), it cannot be forgiven so we deny true healing. We might choose to implement medical or holistic treatment etc., however the important point is that we take our own fear, doubt and need to control to Spirit in order for it to be forgiven. This is the source of real healing; healing of the one cause of all suffering.

We are literally witnessing an illusion when we choose to place ourselves under the hypnotic ego’s spell of the body. Recall the ego’s strategy to escalate pain and sickness in an attempt to prove to us that the body is more real and powerful than the mind. And in this world, we separate the body from the mind (God), and split cause from effect when we mistakenly believe that a body is sick due to a cause either in the body, in the past or in the world. Yet Jesus tells us that sickness is not what the body is for.

“A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for.” (T-8.VIII.5:5-6) “Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for [its] guidance.” T-8.VIII.6:1-3

” If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God.” W-190.3:3

Sickness and pain are never out there in another’s body (or our own). To the degree I feel triggered by sickness or pain, shows the extent of my own mind’s need for healing. It cannot be repeated often enough that there is only one mind to heal regardless of the hierarchy of illusions that may appear to present themselves. To accept the undoing of fear for ourselves (Atonement/forgiveness/miracle) is the healing both for our self and another. This is real faith. And here is what Jesus says about real faith:

“Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God. And he is healed [because] you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him. (Nouk: we make fearful demands of him when we believe he is sick). Thus do you see him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since He shares it He has given it, and so He heals through you. It is this joining Him in a united purpose that makes this purpose real, because you make it whole. And this [is] healing. The body is healed because you came without it, and joined the Mind in which all healing rests.” T-19.I.2.

Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal you both. He, being the one who believes he is sick or in pain, is healed because you offered him real faith. You gave your perception of him as a sick body to Spirit to be healed. You asked to see only Truth beneath the body’s appearance of pain or sickness. You chose to release your fear in exchange for the miracle. This is accepting Atonement for yourself; your faith in only one Power (God) and not two (ego). Atonement and healing are identical. You released him from every demand your ego would make of him. Now you see him as free. In this instant you join consciously to invoke God’s Loving Will.

“Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven are inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?” M-22.1.

When we fall under the ego’s spell of belief in sickness we make the body real. And once we’ve made the body real we have also denied the one Power of God’s Love by our belief and trust in a second illusory power, suffering. While it takes precedence in our perception over the Holy Self, the ego’s delusion eclipses the truth of what is really there. Recall earlier that the Real World, or God’s Loving Reality is all there is. It takes place simultaneously in our mind beside the illusory suffering we choose to perceive. However in any one instant only one reality can be perceived. This will either be the ego’s paradigm of fear or God’s Paradigm of Love. Seeing one eliminates the other. And we will see what we unconsciously choose to value. For many this is the ego’s pain paradigm. We are faithless while we choose to believe that another (or our self) is sick. Once we make the body real by believing in sickness, forgiveness cannot take place and we cannot unite with him or God’s Will which is healing. This is a very important principle that many Course students overlook.

“It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears.” W-130.5:1-2

Seeing sickness as real confirms the ego’s insanity. Thus while we believe in sickness we must believe in the body’s reality over the Holy Self. Yet only one is real. They cannot both be real. When we are triggered by sickness or suffering, we’re perceiving only the body and the consequence is separation. Whenever we look upon another as a body, no matter how well-meaning, we have effectively separated from him, our Self and God. Can you see how the ego believes the opposite; that if we remain concerned for the body of another that we are “joining” with them?

“Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions. For faithlessness is the perception of a brother as a body, and the body cannot be used for purposes of union. If, then, you see your brother as a body, you have established a condition in which uniting with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you from him, and kept you both apart from being healed. Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the body, to stand between you. And the body will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an “enemy” of healing and the opposite of truth.” T-19.I.4.

Seeing Ron’s body lying lifeless on the floor, triggered a flip-flop between illusion and Truth. I observed how my perception vacillated between believing what my body’s eyes saw (the body) and believing Truth beyond the body. When I perceived the body’s state I was immediately sucked into the belief that it was magic, the physical practice of CPR and later on, the paramedics who brought life back into his body; and not the miracle of Atonement. Looking at this wavering of commitment with Spirit, I was told that both cannot be true! But see how we try almost endlessly to reconcile these two diametrically opposed realities? However at our stage in the development of trust I recognize that in this case it was necessary and a blessing to have the paramedics work on Ron’s body. 

In the midst of an emergency situation where time stood still and silent, a deeper shift of perception took place. “What is the body?” The body is no more than a “now moment” projection; an effigy that responds only to the thoughts of its projector. Contrary to the ego’s beliefs, the body has no past nor future. Its existence is purely in our mind within the present moment. In this perception, the body has no history. If it has no history then it cannot possibly suffer from an ailment from the past; not even from  its condition of one minute prior. It is literally under no laws but God’s when our trust in them is completely undivided. This is how Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. Of course! While we assign the body to the ego’s laws in our mind it will appear to respond to those laws. Equally, when we give the body over to God’s Purpose and Laws, it will respond only to these. That is why healing is certain in God.

“There is one thing that you have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body. It has perhaps faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards you will see the body again, but never quite the same.” T-18.VII.2:1-4

“At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just [now.] Only its past and future make it seem real.” T-18.VII.3:1-3

Only Ever Two Choices

During that 25 minutes of joining with Ron, while I flip-flopped between two diametrically opposed realities in my mind, another mistaken belief of mine floated to conscious awareness. As I shared earlier, I had presumed that Ron needed “time” to make his decision to stay or to pass on and I finally saw that this was the ego again. Along with that belief was another, and one that was just as misleading. I noticed as the paramedics made multiple attempts to revive Ron’s body, that at one point, I was consciously maintaining an impartiality. I did not want to influence his decision to stay or to leave. After all, that was his decision was it not? Spirit corrected me on this. “If there are only ever two choices and only one of them is real…then which choice would you want to make on behalf of another and yourself in every instance? Would you join them in the ego’s desire for separation through sickness and death? Or would you heal this separation by wholeheartedly accepting the miracle, the Atonement on behalf of both of you?”

“The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him. A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick. It is your function to recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple. Atonement is received and offered. Having been received, it must be accepted. It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies. All else must follow from this single purpose.” M-22.6.

 Our only responsibility in every emergency is to accept the Atonement fully regardless of whether someone appears to desire healing or not. If we sense another is reluctant to accept healing that is okay. However their ego’s resistance should never deter us from accepting healing on behalf of both of us. No words are necessary unless Spirit so inspires them. This is largely a silent exchange of wrong-minded perception for Right-Minded perception. When we accept healing on behalf of another who does not appear to be ready as yet to receive it, they will most certainly receive it. Healing in God is certain. But it’s not up to us to say when in time, that they will accept the healing that has already been given them. As their fear of the miracle diminishes they are better able to receive the full transfer of healing from cause to effect or from mind to body/world.

“To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements they share, can transfer easily to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole, and therefore in need. If you, too, see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.” T-7.II.1.

“To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness in your mind.” T-7.II.2:1-2

What Saved His Life?

It’s been 23 years since I asked to understand the meaning of Jesus’ teaching which states that I am under no laws but God’s (lesson 76). When I first read this it seemed so familiar. Recently though, I felt the emergence of an inner longing to embody this knowing; to know it, to live out from this conviction. I desired to embrace this principle with absolute certainty. Almost instantaneously, upon making my request with Spirit, I began to feel a significant shift in my perception, again. With ever increasing clarity I recognized that complete conviction in only God’s Laws as being real, meant that all beliefs other than this must fall away.

Part of this accelerated un-learning involved looking deeper into identifying where I had misplaced the real cause of healing. And Ron’s cardiac arrest was the perfect classroom for this. So Spirit asked me, “What was the cause of Ron’s recovery? What do you believe saved his life? Was it the persistence of the CPR that was given him? Or was it the miracle; the effect of your group accepting Atonement?” Up until recently I would have said both the medical assistance and the miracle. But I see now that this is a divided belief, a vote for  each of these two mutually exclusive realities; that the cause of healing is in the mind and in the world (paramedics). But Jesus tells us that …

“Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth. Partial dedication is impossible. Truth is the absence of illusion; illusion the absence of truth. Both cannot be together, nor perceived in the same place. To dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain, for part of it is sought through the body, thought of as a means for seeking out reality through attack. The other part would heal, and therefore calls upon the mind and not the body. T-19.I.5:6-11 The inevitable compromise is the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind.” T-19.I.6:1

Witnessing my divided belief was huge for me. I have asked Spirit to look at this with me so my fear of healing exclusively through the miracle (mind) can be healed. We are much more comfortable trusting the ego’s magic medicines and remedies than we are in trusting the miracle to heal the one cause of all suffering. Eventually, as our faith in the miracle develops further we will attain a highly advanced and undivided state of miracle-mindedness; just as Jesus did and as he presently teaches us in A Course in Miracles. One advanced teacher whose trust in God is unequivocal, will collapse the fear that makes healing appear to take time. Remember the miracle collapses time. The gravitational pull of one completely healed mind inspires an irresistible desire in other minds to release their own guilt and fear.

The powerful quote below speaks of this advanced state. It’s from a supplement to A Course in Miracles titled, Psychotherapy, Purpose, Process and Practice. Jesus calls us all “therapists” so don’t be put off by the title; it is still relevant to everyone dedicated to true healing.

“Divided goals alone can interfere with perfect healing. One wholly egoless therapist could heal the world without a word, merely by being there. No one need see him or talk to him or even know of his existence. His simple Presence is enough to heal.” P-2.III.3:6-9

Fear of the Miracle Translating to the Body/World

Jesus’ teaching is totally uncompromising. Another insight I received is that the degree of my level of fear of the miracle translating to form, reveals the extent to which I will require the following illusory beliefs in order to heal. They are,  1) time and 2) magic (the ego’s substitutes for trusting exclusively in God’s Love as the Atonement). In an instant I saw that we don’t need either time or magic to heal. They are purely placebo’s that we implement for healing by assigning them special meaning and powers. And we use magic because we are too fearful as yet to trust completely in the one Power of the Christ within.

While saying all this, there was no error in Ron’s healing taking both time and magic. I feel called now to, finally see and acknowledge that I’ve been fearing the full transfer of the miracle from healed perception to healed manifestation in the body and world. I have had, to some degree, a foot in both the ego’s canoe and in Spirit’s canoe. I now feel I cannot maintain this literal split for much longer.

Developing Trust in the Miracle

Once we allow an instant of true release of fear, which is accepting the Atonement, then we must trust that healing has already happened! Reluctance or resistance to trusting implicitly that true healing has already taken place (despite temptation to believe continuing “appearances” of suffering) arises from the following:

1) Our unconscious fear of Love (God). This is what we secretly believe about God and why we don’t trust in God; why we prefer to place our trust in the ego’s laws instead. This dark distrust of Love is carefully hidden by the ego so we remain unconsciously attracted to death (victims of the body/world) as a defense against awakening to the Power of God within. NOTE: Read this excerpt if you’d like to uncover and release some of your unconscious fear of God: https://nouksanchez.com/archive/?p=1

2) Our deep sense of guilt and unworthiness. This is another aspect of the fear of God. Deep, unhealed guilt and unworthiness is then projected onto the body and world. Because it is unrecognized and un-relinquished, our projections return to us as suffering, confirming the ego’s belief that we are indeed separate from God’s Love.

At all times and in all circumstances there is always only one Power not two. All temptation is the belief in two powers. True healing arises from our single-minded devotion to just one Power; God’s Love and God’s Laws. Accepting the miracle (Atonement) is done but once. God does not vacillate nor does He change His mind. Healing is always consistent in God. However our faith in God’s Will is not. When we fear God we won’t know exclusively that God’s Will is always for healing. We will still confuse the God of Love with the ego’s god of cruelty and in doing so, we will perceive loss and sacrifice. Hence we will lack the trust required for full transfer of true healing of both the cause (mind) and its effect (body/world). But as Jesus tells us over and over again, Love without trust is impossible.

Through the ego we believe that continuing concern is love. It is not. Quite the opposite in fact. When we worry about someone or something, we unknowingly attack them and our self.  

Should Healing be Repeated?

When we genuinely join with Spirit in accepting Atonement for our self or another, then healing is done. There is nothing left to repeat. Once we accept the healing of our mistaken perception it is always healed. God’s healing is certain. I recall during the intense 25 minutes that we were waiting for Ron’s heart to beat again, even after I consciously accepted the Atonement/miracle, there was still some doubt. This is how the ego distracts us. If we don’t see some physical improvement it automatically judges that healing was unsuccessful and that it should be repeated. The ego sends the body’s senses’  out to report back exactly what it wants us to see. Which is separation. And if we believe what we see with our eyes is true, then we slip right back into the ego’s hypnotic trance of doubt and fear. As we lose faith, we then revert back to consulting the ego on how to heal. Therefore a never ending cycle of fear, doubt and delusion follows.

 In true healing we must cultivate the necessary discipline to recognize this pattern and choose to look past the ego’s “appearances.” And we can do this even though we might still choose to use magic (material means to heal). For example, let’s say my child is sick. And that I am in great fear. The first thing is to acknowledge my fear and ask myself sincerely which method of healing do I trust in most at present, if I don’t yet trust in the miracle exclusively? If it’s traditional or holistic medicine then this is what I will implement for my child. And it will usually work to the degree of faith that I invest in it. However if I wish to heal the guilt that is the source of all suffering, then while I might still decide to use magic to assist at the body level, I will take my fears to Spirit and ask sincerely for my perception to healed. And as I accept the Atonement (miracle), I accept it on behalf of my child as well.

Jesus teaches that as our guilt and fear is undone, then our trust in God’s Love is strengthened. This process is usually gradual to the extent that we sincerely desire fear (false beliefs and laws) to fall away. There is no hierarchy of illusions therefore there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This means that there is absolutely nothing in this world seen or unseen that cannot be healed by the miracle. If there was one condition that could not be reversed, including physical death, then that would confirm the reality of one special form of error that had the power to undo creation and destroy the Will of God. This is insanity! Jesus says quite firmly here that there is not one form of sickness in the ego’s dream that cannot be healed through forgiveness. The miracle is free to heal both cause (mind) and effect (body) once we accept it wholeheartedly.

” There can be no appearance that can not be overlooked. For if there were, it would be necessary first there be some sin that stands beyond forgiveness. There would be an error that is more than a mistake; a special form of error that remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake that had the power to undo creation, and to make a world that could replace it and destroy the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be some appearances that could withstand the miracle, and not be healed by it.” T-30.VI.5:4-8

“There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness cannot heal. This means that you prefer to keep some idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let all idols go. And thus you think that some appearances are real and not appearances at all. Be not deceived about the meaning of a fixed belief that some appearances are harder to look past than others are. It always means you think forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a limited escape from guilt for you. What can this be except a false forgiveness of yourself, and everyone who seems apart from you?” T-30.VI.6.

“It must be true the miracle can heal all forms of sickness, or it cannot heal. Its purpose cannot be to judge which forms are real, and which appearances are true. If one appearance must remain apart from healing, one illusion must be part of truth. And you could not escape all guilt, but only some of it. You must forgive God’s Son entirely.” T-30.VI.7:1-5

In the Manual for Teachers in ACIM there is a section titled, “Should Healing be Repeated?” It’s a hugely significant teaching in that it starkly exposes the ego’s hidden agenda for attack lurking beneath its interpretation of kindness, concern and care. It reveals that our definition of kindness, care and concern is not helpful but is in fact detrimental to the healing process. The ego has no idea how to be truly Loving and caring and  is often outraged by this radical teaching; one that promises to reverse the thinking of the world! So, can healing be repeated?

“This question really answers itself. Healing cannot be repeated. If the patient is healed, what remains to heal him from? And if the healing is certain, as we have already said it is, what is there to repeat? For a teacher of God to remain concerned about the result of healing is to limit the healing. It is now the teacher of God himself whose mind needs to be healed. And it is this he must facilitate. He is now the patient, and he must so regard himself. He has made a mistake, and must be willing to change his mind about it. He lacked the trust that makes for giving truly, and so he has not received the benefit of his gift.” M-7.1.

If I have accepted the miracle then the miraculous transaction was already completed regardless of whether or not a physical improvement is witnessed. If I still have doubts about healing then I need my own perception healed. In my doubt I am in fear which is really hate and not Love. If I am coming from hate then I cannot heal nor be healed. What do I have to give if I am filled with fear? Will I try to heal by giving fear which is really hate?

“Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded. Should he be tempted to doubt this, he should not repeat his previous effort. That was already maximal, because the Holy Spirit so accepted it and so used it. Now the teacher of God has only one course to follow. He must use his reason to tell himself that he has given the problem to One Who cannot fail, and must recognize that his own uncertainty is not love but fear, and therefore hate. His position has thus become untenable, for he is offering hate to one to whom he offered love. This is impossible. Having offered love, only love can be received.” M-7.2.   

I cannot heal if I am filled with concern, doubt or anxiety. These represent the opposite of Love which is really hate. I can only heal if I know that healing abides within my Holy Self. I can only give what I know I have within. But I cannot give (heal) unless I am certain that I have already received it to give. If I have not genuinely accepted the undoing of fear myself (Atonement), how on Earth can I possibly extend true healing to either myself or another? I must accept this healing in order to give it. Otherwise I am attempting pseudo healing with the ego.

“It is in this that the teacher of God must trust. This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts he has received. Yet he must first accept them. He need do no more, nor is there more that he could do. By accepting healing he can give it. If he doubts this, let him remember Who gave the gift and Who received it. Thus is his doubt corrected. He thought the gifts of God could be withdrawn. That was a mistake, but hardly one to stay with. And so the teacher of God can only recognize it for what it is, and let it be corrected for him.” M-7.3.

If I have already accepted Atonement, yet the physical symptoms of pain or sickness still appear unchanged, I might very well doubt that any healing has occurred. Jesus tells us that to doubt a healing because of continuing symptoms is a mistake in the form of lack of trust. As such it is an attack. A very important part of the forgiveness/Atonement process is to learn to look past “appearances” because appearances are not fact. They are projections from the ego to convince us that appearances (pain, sickness, etc.,) are more powerful than God’s Love as our Holy Self.

“One of the most difficult temptations to recognize is that to doubt a healing because of the appearance of continuing symptoms is a mistake in the form of lack of trust. As such it is an attack. Usually it seems to be just the opposite. It does appear unreasonable at first to be told that continued concern is attack. It has all the appearances of love. Yet love without trust is impossible, and doubt and trust cannot coexist. And hate must be the opposite of love, regardless of the form it takes. Doubt not the gift and it is impossible to doubt its result. This is the certainty that gives God’s teachers the power to be miracle workers, for they have put their trust in Him.” M-7.4.

When Prayer Appears Unanswered ~ Do Not be Discouraged

Let’s remember that all beliefs we have are prayers in themselves. And when the bulk of your unconscious fears lies un-relinquished with the ego, then these are the prayers that will manifest. You might consciously desire a physical healing but unconsciously, the “cost” to you is deemed too great. For example if you were instantaneously healed by the miracle, it would probably cost you your whole world view. Your entire belief system would be challenged greatly. And you would have to recognize that your mind is the only cause of everything that happens to you within the body and the world. There is no cause in either your body, the world or the past that has ever hurt you. The world has never been done to you, you were never a victim of it. You’d have to acknowledge the fact that the world was (and always is) being done by you.

If you want a physical healing but you reject the certain deconstruction of your thought system, then your underlying prayer would be answered; which is to keep the ego’s destructive beliefs untouched. In your prayer, all you would be really asking for is for an ego symptom – form of suffering – to be removed; however unconsciously you would prefer to keep the underlying cause of suffering intact which is the ego’s guilt and fear. Hence this is not a call for true healing at all. That is why when you ask for healing of the body (or any form of suffering) you’re not requesting anything. You are asking for the impossible; to eliminate an illusory symptom of the ego. And that is why, regardless of the symptoms, it is only ever your wrong-minded perception that requires healing.

“Let us suppose, then, that what you ask of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer [be] what you want. This is why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, even when the state of healing is. An individual may ask for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, if he were healed physically, the threat to his thought system might be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. In this case he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom that he himself selected. This request is, therefore, not for healing at all.” T-9.II.2.

From Death to Resurrection

Ron was dead for nearly half an hour before the paramedics identified a heartbeat. Many miracles unfolded preceding, during and after this. When he arrived at the hospital they ran tests and found he had broken ribs from the CPR and told us that he would be in a lot of pain when he woke up out of the medically induced coma. Yet, one week later upon repeating the x-rays, the ribs were healed. A week after Ron’s spontaneous cardiac arrest they tested his heart and the results revealed a healthy heart. His brain, the organ they were most concerned about because he was clinically dead for so long, was tested by an MRI. The result was only minor brain injury. Overall Ron has made a miraculous recovery. 

A funny thing happened just a few minutes before Ron’s heart stopped. I was in the midst of teaching about the unreality of death when Ron asked me this, “What is the difference between a metaphoric miracle and a literal miracle?” So I explained that the metaphoric miracle was usually unseen and that the literal miracle is often visible; one that transfers from healed mind to healed body. In that moment he leaned across and said, “Well I want to see a literal miracle!” And around one minute later, his heart stopped. It seemed that Ron had unknowingly chosen to demonstrate to all of us the power of the literal miracle by his physical death and resurrection.

 I cannot help but think of a potent and compelling passage in ACIM, one that speaks about this very lesson. In our hierarchy of illusions, death is the hardest of all to overcome. But Jesus says that everything that is not of God is an illusion, so how on Earth can there be a lesser or greater illusion to heal if every illusion is the same; they are all untrue. As we surrender fear and advance in trust, our own hierarchy of illusions is revealed and released. We become more proficient at accepting the Atonement and because illusions are seen through, we finally open to experience Jesus’ number one miracle principle which is, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.” T-1.I.1.

Jesus speaks here about undoing our unconscious devotion to death. He asks us, “What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest (which is overcoming death) can be accomplished first?” And this is exactly what happened with Ron’s seeming death and resurrection. It was an unequivocal demonstration that there certainly is no order of difficulty in miracles!

 “You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first? The body can but serve your purpose. As you look on it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which is the ego’s goal.” T-19.IV.C.6.

In conclusion here is Jesus’ miracle principle number 24:

“Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. [You] are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.” T-1.I.24.

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