Healing
is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it
to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have
been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar, because it is
very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. The Holy
Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by
letting it go. Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although
you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by
transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle itself is a
reflection of this union of will between Father and Son.
The
Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the
minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling
until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood
the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the
means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.
The
principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made,
God placed in the mind the call to joy. This call is so strong that the ego always
dissolves at its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you.
One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who
asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is
the Voice That calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible
even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great
willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal
as learners as they are as sons.
You
are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness
enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must
let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away,
and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. Before the separation you did not
need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now.
God
does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative,
because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the
other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit
is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you
chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer share
His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had
made another voice.
The
Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of
opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make.
In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is
meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application
is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing.
God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice
they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.
The
Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does
not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not
attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you of.
It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil
you may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks of peace. Peace is
stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from
strife. What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you
listen to the wrong voice you have lost sight of your soul. You
cannot lose it, but you can not know it. It is therefore “lost” to you until you
choose right.
The
Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is in the part of your mind that always speaks
for the right choice, because He speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with
God, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy. The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's
Will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and earth are in you, because the
call of both is in your mind. The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These
altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now. Your divided
devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to
serve. The call you answer now is an evaluation because it is a decision. The decision is
very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.
My
mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision
that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the
same decision. This decision is the choice to share it, because the decision itself is
the decision to share. It is made by giving, and is therefore the one choice that
resembles true creation. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God I showed you
that this decision can be made, and that you can make it.
I
have assured you that the Mind that decided for me is also in you, and that you can let it
change you just as it changed me. This Mind is unequivocal, because it hears only one
Voice and answers in only one way. You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not
come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken and be glad. The
world is very tired, because it is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of
waking it to the Call for God. Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the
Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom
than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole? Hear only this
through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching
you.
When
you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my
decision and making it stronger. As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract
the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the oneness in which it was created. Remember
that “yoke” means “join together,” and “burden” means
“message.” Let us restate “My yoke is easy and my burden light” in
this way; “Let us join together, for my message is Light.”
I
have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must respond to the same Mind to do this.
This Mind is the Holy Spirit, Whose Will is for God always. He teaches you how to keep me
as the model for your thought, and to behave like me as a result. The power of our joint
motivation is beyond belief, but not beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish
together has no limits, because the Call for God is the call to the unlimited. Child of
God, my message is for you, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within
you.
A Course in Miracles
Chapter 5
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