A Course in Miracles

by Helen Schucman

FORGIVENESS–THE FACE OF CHRIST

Forgiveness is for God and toward God but not of Him. It is impossible to think of anything He created that could need forgiveness.

Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit’s, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not towards it.

Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction;

The face of Christ has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the face of Christ involves perception. No one can look on knowledge. But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness.

It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world.

Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is po...

Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. A...

And so the unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven. C-3.6. God’s Will is all there is. We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven. Is this a journey? No, not in truth, for truth goes nowhere. But illusions shift from place to place; from time to time.

There are no wishes now for wishes change.

How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there.

4. TRUE PERCEPTION–KNOWLEDGE

For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one.

Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came.

A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies.

But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals.

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear.

What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful.

O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love.

JESUS – CHRIST

There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality.

God does not help because He knows no need. But He creates all Helpers of His Son while he believes his fantasies are true. Thank God for them for they will lead you home.

The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God.

He offered you a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God’s Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death.

Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God.

Is he God’s only Helper? No, indeed. For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized. But Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ’s single message of the Love of God. You need no other. It is possible to read his words and benefit from them without accepting him into your life. Yet he would help you yet a little more if you will share your pains and joys with him, and leave them both to find the peace of God. Yet still it is his lesson most of all that he would have you learn, and it is this:

There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God’s Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind.

He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with Both. And therefore it is He Who proves Them One. He seems to be a Voice, for in that form He speaks God’s Word to you. He seems to be a Guide through a far country, for you need that form of help.

He seems to be whatever meets the needs you think you have. But He is not deceived when you perceive your self entrapped in needs you do not have. It is from these He would deliver ...

You are His manifestation in this world. Your

Forget not once this journey is begun the end is certain. Doubt along the way will come and go and go to come again. Yet is the ending sure. No one can fail to do what God appointed him to do. When you forget, remember that you walk with Him and with His Word upon your heart. Who could despair when hope like this is his?

Ask but my help to roll the stone away, and it is done according to His Will.

beginning has the certainty the journey lacked till now.

The Son is still, and in the quiet God has given him enters his home and is at peace at last.

Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth.

What he does not realize and needs to learn is that this “self,” which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made up.

Psychotherapy, then, must restore to his awareness the ability to make his own decisions. He must become willing to reverse his thinking, and to understand that what he thought projected its effects on him were made by his projections on the world. The world he sees does therefore not exist. Until this is at least in part accepted, the patient cannot see himself as really capable of making decisions. And he will fight against his freedom because he thinks that it is slavery.

Their aim is to be able to retain their self-concept exactly as it is, but without the suffering that it entails. Their whole equilibrium rests on the insane belief that this is possible. And because to the sane mind it is so clearly impossible, what they seek is magic.

The patient hopes to learn how to get the changes he wants without changing his self-concept to any significant extent. He hopes, in fact, to stabilize it sufficiently to include within it the magical powers he seeks in psychotherapy.

The self he sees is his god, and he seeks only to serve it better.

no one learns beyond his own readiness.

These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. The changes the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.

II. The Place of Religion in Psychotherapy

To be a teacher of God, it is not necessary to be religious or even to believe in God to any recognizable extent.

It is necessary, however, to teach forgiveness rather than condemnation.

Even in this, complete consistency is not required, for one who had achieved that point could teach salvation completely, wi...

P-2.II.2. Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real place in religion. In this world, there is an astonishing tendency to join contradictory words into one term without perceiving the contradiction at all. The attempt to formalize religion is so obviously an ego attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable that it hardly requires elaboration here. Religion is experience; psychotherapy is experience. At the highest levels they become one. Neither is truth itself, but both can lead to truth. What can be necessary to find truth, which remains perfectly obvious, but to remove the seeming obstacles to true awareness?

P-2.II.3. No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. This is never apparent to the patient, and only rarely so to the therapist. The world has marshalled all its forces against this one awareness, for in it lies the ending of the world and all it stands for.

Another summation of acim