A Course in Miracles

by Helen Schucman

You will judge against yourself, but He will judge for you.

You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and rejoice that it is not so.

Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.

The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. Possession for its own sake is the ego’s fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches it builds to itself. And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.

For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you.

Content yourself with what you will as surely keep, and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.

The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and only this: He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not. Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn. And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me.

Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in all its forms.

In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the Holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you.

Reflect the peace of Heaven here, and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it they leave all reflections behind.

The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone. There is no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help.

I do not know what anything, including this, means. And so I do not know how to respond to it. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.

The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself.

At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now.

Truth follows faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. Yet truth will stay forever.

You can enslave a body, but an idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is its jailer or its liberator, according to which it chooses as its purpose for itself.

And in Him it is possible that our communion, where we are joined already, will be the focus of the new perception that will bring light to all the world, contained in you.

The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity.

You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill.

What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?

seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.

I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

The world you see is but the idle witness that you were right. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. You did this to yourself.

It is as needful that you recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize that you did not create yourself. They are the same mistake.

Behold the great projection, but look on it with the decision that it must be healed, and not with fear.

Those who believe that peace can be defended, and that attack is justified on its behalf, cannot perceive it lies within them.

And God Himself, Who knows that death is not your will, must say, “Thy will be done” because you think it is.

what is yours will come to you when you are ready.

Perception seems to teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught.

Yet what God has created needs no frame, for what He has created He supports and frames within Himself. His masterpiece He offers you to see. And would you rather see the frame instead of this? And see the picture not at all?

If you could realize nothing is changeless but the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you. For it is this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing else you could believe, if you but looked at what it really is.

Forgiveness thus becomes the means by which he learns he has done nothing to forgive. Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it, until he sees himself as needing it no more.

You but choose whether to go toward Heaven, or away to nowhere. There is nothing else to choose.

Anything in this world that you believe is good and valuable and worth striving for can hurt you, and will do so.

To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural.

The gift of God to you is limitless. There is no circumstance it cannot answer, and no problem which is not resolved within its gracious light.

The body is released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead.

Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.

Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone because it is equal in its power to save anyone.

Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear.

you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself.

The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go.

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace.