A Course in Miracles: Based on the Original Handwritten Notes of Helen Schucman—Complete & Annotated Edition

by Helen Schucman

This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself—a

a dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death.

7Christ’s enemy is nowhere. 8He can take no form in which he ever will be real.

merely lifts the veil and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is.

4Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos; and the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while, to suffer pain, and finally to die.

8 The world believes in idols. 2No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain.

9 God has not many Sons, but only one. 2Who can have more and who be given less? 3In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh if idols could intrude upon his peace. 4It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks and tells you idols have no purpose here, for more than Heaven can you never have.

A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. 2And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell and God made enemy unto His Son.

5So must he

judge not, and he will waken.

7Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself.

yourself. 10All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from the dream.

Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible.

6But in the dream of judgment, you attack and are condemned, and wish to be the slave of idols, who are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings.

There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. 2For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you.

4You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with.

A healed mind does not plan.

2It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own.

3It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and the...

proceeds to do it. 4It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. 5It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which ...

4It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill t...

5It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan ...

15 It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. 2They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of truth. 3This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious. 4Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize.

The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings.

2It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions.

3Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. 4This overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has ta...

17 The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. 2What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. 3Its past experience...

The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. 2What it has learned before becomes the...

3Its past experience directs its choice for w...

4And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuit...

5Anticipation plays no part at all, and present confidenc...

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth.

2Their aim is to select what you approve and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. 3Yet what remains is meaningless indeed.