LESSON 140 Only salvation can be said to cure.

1. 1“Cure” is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. 2What the world perceives as thera­peutic is but what will make the body “better.” 3When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. 4Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. 5One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.

2. 1He is not healed. 2He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. 3Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains ex­actly as it was before. 4He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. 5What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? 6One either sleeps or wakens. 7There is nothing in between.

3. 1The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. 2The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. 3His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. 4They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. 5And thus they cure for all eternity.

4. 1Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. 2For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. 3Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. 4Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. 5It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. 6And that is cure indeed. 7For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

5. 1Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. 2For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. 3God abides in holy temples. 4He is barred where sin has entered. 5Yet there is no place where He is not. 6And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. 7There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

6. 1This is the thought that cures. 2It does not make distinctions among unrealities. 3Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. 4This is no magic. 5It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. 6It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. 7It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.

7. 1Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. 2Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick, so that it can be cured. 3There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. 4The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. 5There is no change but this. 6For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and noth­ing that is truly different?

8. 1Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. 2We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. 3It is not farther from us than ourselves. 4It is as near to us as our own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. 5We need but seek it and it must be found.

9. 1We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. 2We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing, from which nothing is exempt. 3We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. 4Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. 5All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.

10. 1So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. 2We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. 3No voice but this can cure. 4Today 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.

11. 1We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five min­utes more before we go to sleep. 2Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. 3They are the same. 4We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. 5We hear Him now. 6We come to Him today.

12. 1With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:

2Only salvation can be said to cure.

3Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.

4And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. 5This will we learn today. 6And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes, to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. 7This is the day when healing comes to us. 8This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.