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foundation”2 of the
“Love him steadily, whatever he does, whatever he says, and he will see the miracle of God and you will learn of salvation. If this seems hard to do, remember it is what you want of me.”
2Nothing real can be threatened. 3Nothing unreal exists. 4Herein lies the peace of God.
Prayer is the medium of miracles. 2Prayer is the natural communication between the created and the Creator. 3Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
5And we believe in what we make or create.
“Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today.”
have forgiven you and that means all hurt and hate you have ever expressed is canceled.
8Help the children because you love them and love God.
A miracle is a service. 2It is the maximal service one person can render another. 3It is thus a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.13
On sexuality: Homosexuality is lacking in love only to the extent it is based on the principle of exclusion.
4If you have not had children, do not interpret this in terms of guilt. 5Many children who are already here need spiritual parents.
2Through miracles, you affirm your acceptance of God’s forgiveness by extending it to others.
You have to remember to ask me to take charge of all minutiae, and they will be taken care of so well and so quickly that you cannot get bogged down in them.
“Lord heal me” is the only legitimate prayer.45 2This also means “Lord atone for me,” because the only thing you should pray for is forgiveness. 3You have everything else.
The answer is to never perform a miracle without asking me if you should.
Possession really means “not under Christ-control,” thus making the mind vulnerable to projection. 2The idea of earthbound entities entering into bodies really refers to being “taken over” by your own “earthbound” thoughts. 3This is demon possession.
5Sex is often utilized on behalf of very similar errors. 6Hostility, triumph, vengeance, self-debasement, and all sorts of expressions of the lack of love are often very clearly seen in the accompanying fantasies. 7But it is a profound error to imagine that because these fantasies are so frequent (or occur so reliably), this implies validity. 8You can be wholly reliable and entirely wrong.
The confusion of miracle impulse with sexual impulse is a major source of perceptual distortion, because it induces rather than straightens out the basic level confusion which underlies all those who seek happiness with the instruments of the world.115 2A desert is a desert is a desert.116 3You can do anything you want in it, but you cannot change it from what it is. 4It still lacks water, which is why it is a desert. 5The thing to do with a desert is to leave.
The choice of sex partners often involves a lack of love, and this, whatever happens, must be atoned for.156 2They are frequently selected precisely because they are not suited to gratify your fantasies. 3This is not because you want to abandon or give up the fantasies, but because you are afraid of them. 4You see in a partner a means of protecting against the fear, but you then continue to look around for chances to indulge the fantasies. 5The dream of the “perfect partner” is an attempt to find external integration while retaining conflicting needs in the self. 6Some abandon the hope in a
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The lack of love (or faulty need-orientation) which leads to a particular person (not object) choice can often be corrected within the existing framework.157 2The situation is questionable largely because of its inherent vulnerability to fantasy-gratification. 3Doing the best you can within this limitation is often the best correction measure. 4Any relationship you have undertaken for whatever reasons becomes a responsibility.
3Know first that this is an expression of fear. 4Your love toward each other is not perfect and this is why the fear arose. 2. 5Turn immediately to me by denying the power of the fear, and ask me to help you replace it with love. 6This shifts the sexual impulse immediately to the miracle impulse and places it at my disposal. 3. 7Then acknowledge the true creative worth of both yourself and the other one. 8This places strength where it belongs.
Note that sexual fantasies are always destructive (or depleting), in that they perceive another in an inappropriate creative role. 2Both people are perceived essentially as “objects” fulfilling their own pleasure drives. 3This dehumanized view is the source of the depleting use of sex.
5Note also that Freud’s notion of sex was as a device for inducing relaxation, which he confused with peace.
Inappropriate sex relaxes only in the sense that it may induce physical sleep. 2The miracle, on the other hand, is an energizer. 3It always strengthens, and never depletes.
A need implies lack by definition. 2It involves the recognition, conscious or unconscious (and at times, fortunately, superconscious), that you would be better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.
You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you have made fear and believe in what you make.
Only perfect love really exists. 7Therefore, if there is fear, it produces a state which does not exist.
2The tendency to maintain the illusion that only the physical is real. 3This produces depression.
One translation of the fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy and worthy of note, is that “a deep sleep fell upon Adam.”43 2While the Bible seems to regard this sleep as a kind of anesthetic utilized for the protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up.
God offers only mercy. 2Your own words should always reflect only mercy, because that is what you have received and that is what you should give.
The means are easier to clarify after the true worth of the goal itself is firmly established. 2Everyone defends his own treasure. 3You do not have to tell him to do this, because he will do so automatically. 4The real question still remains, What do you treasure and how much do you treasure it? 5Once you learn to consider these two points and bring them into all your actions as the true criteria for behavior, I will have little difficulty in clarifying the means.
3Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way.
Only the mind is capable of error. 2The body can act erroneously, but this is only because it has responded to misthought. 3The body cannot create, and to believe that it can, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms.
2It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness.
4It does not follow, however, that the application of these very weak corrective devices is evil. 5Sometimes the illness has sufficiently great a hold over an individual’s mind to render him inaccessible to Atonement. 6In this case, one may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief.
spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction. 4The body does not really exist, except as a learning device for the mind. 5This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it was made but does not make.94 6It should be obvious, then, that correcting the maker (or inducing it to give up miscreation) is the only application of creative power which is inherently meaningful at all.
6But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his right mind, or he will be unable to reestablish right-mindedness in someone else.
The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. 2This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. 3Once he accepts this, his mind can only heal. 4By denying his mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. 5The message which he then gives to others is the truth that their minds are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them.
9Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need to correct forcibly into awareness.
because its presence shows that you have raised the unimportant to a higher level than it warrants.
2Why should you tolerate insane thinking? 3There is a fallacy here you would do well to look at clearly. 4You believe that you are responsible for what you do but not for what you think. 5The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. 6What you do comes from what you think. 7You cannot separate the two by giving autonomy to your behavior. 8Behavior is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under my guidance.
Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate; that is, you have not allowed me to guide it. 2It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in real healing. 3When you are fearful, you have willed wrongly. 4This is why you feel you are responsible for it. 5You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of will. 6You do not need guidance except at the mind level. 7Correction belongs only at the level where causation is possible. 8The term does not really mean anything at the symptom level, where it
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3You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions which have brought the fear about. 4This always entails a willingness on the part of your separated mind. 5At this level, you can help it. 6You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, thus tacitly condoning your mind’s miscreations. 7The particular result never matters, but this fundamental error does. 8The fundamental correction is always the same. 9Before you will to do anything, ask me if your will is in accord with mine. 10If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.
Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the will to do conflicts with what you do.
1. 3Know first this is fear. 2. 4Fear arises from lack of love. 3. 5The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love. 4. 6Perfect love is the Atonement.
It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement because you have done something loveless, having willed without love.
4Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they do kill spiritually.118 5All destructive thinking is dangerous.
The truth is that there are no “idle thoughts.” 2All thinking produces form at some level.
One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magic-miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself.
We began this section with an attempt to correct the fundamental human error that fear can be mastered. 2The correction was that only love can be mastered. 3Even if you are ready for revelation, though, that does not mean that you have in any way mastered that form of communication. 4Mastery of love necessarily involves a much more complete confidence in the ability than you have as yet attained. 5Readiness, however, is at least an indication that you believe this is possible. 6This is only the beginning of confidence. 7In case this be misunderstood as a statement that an enormous amount of
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