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

by Helen Schucman

5Every brother God loves as He loves you; neither less nor more. 6He needs them all equally, and so do you. 7In time, you have been told to offer miracles as Christ directs, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you.28

5With love in you, you have no need except to extend it. 6In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs, for there is only one. 7For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God. 8And it is only there that love has meaning, and only there can it be understood.

4Perfect faith in each one for its ability to satisfy you completely arises only from perfect faith in yourself. 5And this you cannot have while guilt remains. 6And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother what he is not, because you would have him so.

You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. 2And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. 3I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts.

6The holy instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind, experiencing not loss but completion.

Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and always obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. 2There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there is no other love.

6This is not the basis for any love relationship in which the ego enters, for every relationship on which the ego embarks is special. 7The ego establishes relationships only to get something. 8And it would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt.

3For the ego really believes that it can get and keep by making guilty. 4This is its one attraction, an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all except that no one recognizes it. 5For the ego always seems to attract through love, and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt.

The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. 2For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. 3No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. 4Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is, and have judged it as valuable completely in the dark. 5As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. 6You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed at this, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. 7The host of God can have no real investment here.

2For it is the ego’s fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped.

5And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief: that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become.

2The “sacrifice,” which it regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. 3For it would much prefer to attack directly and avoid delaying what it really wants. 4Yet the ego acknowledges “reality” as it sees it,33 and recognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. 5Yet to make guilty is direct attack, but does not seem to be. 6For the guilty expect attack, and having asked for it, they are attracted to it.

In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do. 2For each one thinks that he has sacrificed something to the other, and hates him for it. 3Yet this is what he thinks he wants.

Yet they only seem to be together. 2For relationships to the ego mean only that bodies are together. 3It is always physical closeness that the ego demands, and it does not object where the mind goes or what it thinks, for this seems unimportant. 4For as long as the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. 5To the ego the mind is private, and only the body can be shared. 6Ideas are basically of no concern except as they draw the body of another closer or let it move farther away. 7And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as “good” or “bad.” 8What makes another guilty and holds him through guilt is “good.” 9What releases him from guilt is “bad,” because he would no longer believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be “gone.”

3In their angry alliances, born of fear of loneliness and yet dedicated to the continuance of loneliness, they seek relief from guilt by increasing it in the other. 4For they believe that this decreases it in them. 5The other seems always to be attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps “unconsciously,” yet never without demand of sacrifice. 6The fury of those joined at the ego’s altar far exceeds your awareness of it.

Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship which the ego has “blessed,” for anger is its blessing. 2Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. 3All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty. 4And this attempt is the only basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. 5Guilt is the only need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remain attractive to you.

4And how can He communicate with you while you believe that to communicate is to make yourself alone? 5It is clearly insane to believe that by communicating you will be abandoned, and yet you do believe it.36 6For you think that your mind must be kept private or you will lose it, yet if bodies are together your mind remains your own.37

5As long as you believe that to be with a body is companionship, you will be compelled to attempt to keep your brother in his body, held there by guilt.

7For the ego will always teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the cause of loneliness. 8And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, you have learned it.

Hear Him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. 2You but seek in them what you have thrown away. 3And through them you will never learn the value of what you have cast aside but what you still desire with all your heart.

Our task is but to continue, as fast as possible, the necessary process of looking straight at all that interferes and seeing it exactly as it is.

3The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. 4And both are nothing more than attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it impossible.

2In the holy instant, where the great rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you. 3But to see this, it is necessary to give up every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose you would share with it.

Yet you have surely recognized that the ego, whose goals are altogether unattainable, will strive for them with all its might, and will do so with strength that you have given it.

5Limit your vision of a brother to his body, which you will do as long as you would not release him from it, and you have denied his gift to you. 6His body cannot give it. 7And seek it not through yours. 8But your minds are already continuous, and their union need only be accepted and the loneliness in Heaven is gone.

6You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception, and no idea of all the loveliness that you could see.

When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no value on it as a means of getting anything, then there will be no interference in communication, and your thoughts will be as free as God’s.

4As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away, whatever you think, and purchase peace.

3And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, but the Other to be destroyed.

3You will have to choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. 4You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision that must be made.

3Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships in which you think you see some scraps of safety. 4Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the thought that has been given you. 5When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.

7Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome and live within himself in peace?

5It is what you preferred to keep that has no meaning, while all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe together in its meaning.

5I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself. 6I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. 7In the name of my freedom, I will your release, because I recognize that we will be released together.

To give the holy instant to your brothers is to give them the message (to paraphrase a line from the previous section) that nothing can reach them out of the past, that here in the present they are completely absolved, completely free, and wholly uncondemned.

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Christians, of course, have seen this as a prophecy foretelling the birth of Jesus.

7He does not join in pain, knowing that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the delusion.

5I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.2 6I have invited Him, and He is here. 7I need do nothing except not to interfere.

2Humility is strength in this sense only: To recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize and accept the fact that He does know.

4Only the Holy Spirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. 5And He will teach you how to meet both without losing either.

4No needs will long be left unmet if you leave them all to Him Whose function is to meet them. 5This is His function and not yours. 6He will not meet them secretly, for He would share everything you give through Him. 7And that is why He gives it. 8What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, not for part of it. 9Leave Him His function, for He will fulfill it if you but ask Him to enter your relationships and bless them for you.

This year, determine not to deny what has been given you by God to use for Him. 2He has Himself reminded you of Him. 3Awake and share it,11 for that is the only reason He has called to you. 4His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard, because you have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster you have made. 5Today, let us resolve together to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real, and that reality is not disaster.12 6Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything. 7There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad.13 8For love asks only that you be happy, and will give you everything that makes for happiness.

2You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful.

8Think what you have really seen and heard, and recognize it.

You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching.

3For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching.

This is a course in how to know yourself.

This year you will begin to learn, and make learning commensurate with teaching. 2You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach.

Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here.

3For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of love is lost, is undertaken solely to offset this, but not to let it go.