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

by Helen Schucman

5You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. 6When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you.

2Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not true? 3You have had many instances of how what you want can distort what you see and hear.

5Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.

2All forms of sickness, even unto death,45 are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. 3They are attempts to reinforce unconsciousness out of fear of consciousness.

John 5:19 (KJV): “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” The Course says we should rejoice about this, because we are not of ourselves, we are of God, and He has willed power and glory for us.

Either basic type of insane decision will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. 2Both really fear both abandonment and retaliation, but the former is more reactive against abandonment and the latter against retaliation. 3The atheist maintains that God has left him but he does not care. 4He will, however, become very fearful, and hence very angry, if anyone suggests that God has not left him. 5The martyr, on the other hand, is more aware of guilt, and believing that punishment is inevitable, attempts to teach himself to like it.

When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He cannot answer, because nothing can hurt you and so you are asking for nothing. 2Any desire which stems from the ego is a desire for nothing, and to ask for it is not a request. 3It is merely a denial in the form of a request.

Attempts of any kind to deny what is are fearful, and if they are strong they will induce panic.

4But you must remember that the course does state, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape from fear.5

Let us suppose, then, that what you request of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but that you are still afraid of it. 2Should this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer be what you want, even if it is. 3This accounts for why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, even though the state of healing is. 4It frequently happens that an individual asks for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. 5However, at the same time, if he were healed physically, the threat to his thought system would be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. 6In this case, he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom which he has selected. 7This request is, therefore, not for healing at all.

2The very fact that one has asked the Holy Spirit for anything will ensure a response. 3But it is equally certain that no response given by the Holy Spirit will ever be one which would increase fear. 4It is possible that His answer will not be heard at all.

Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his mind which does know. 2This light can shine into yours, making his words true and your mind able to hear them. 3His words are the Holy Spirit’s answer to you. 4Is your faith in him strong enough to let you listen and hear?

6Hear of your brother what you would have me hear of you, for you would not want me to be deceived.

7You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. 8Do not listen to anything else, or you will not hear truth. 9Believe in your brothers because I believe in you, and you will learn that my belief in you is justified.

When you react at all to errors, you are not listening to the Holy Spirit. 2He has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them, you are not hearing Him. 3If you do not hear Him, you are listening to your ego and making as little sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. 4This cannot be correction. 5But it is more than merely lack of correction for him. 6It is the giving up of correction in yourself.

3But you can see him truly, because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. 4It is not up to you to change him, but merely to accept him as he is.

The ego has a plan of forgiveness, because you are asking for one, but not of the right teacher. 2The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. 3By following it, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. 4Its plan is to have you see error clearly first and then overlook it. 5But how can you overlook what you have made real? 6By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it.

All unhealed healers follow the ego’s plan in one form or another. 2If they are theologians, they are likely to condemn themselves, teach condemnation, and advocate a very fearful solution. 3Projecting condemnation onto God, they make Him retaliative and fear His retribution. 4What they have done is merely to identify with the ego, and by perceiving clearly what it does, condemn themselves because of this profound confusion.

4According to the newer forms of the plan, the therapist interprets the ego’s symbols in the nightmare, and uses them to prove the nightmare is real. 5Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the importance of the dreamer. 5 This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were properly identified as unreal. 2But if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind’s corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied.21 3It is noteworthy that this is a contradiction even in the ego’s own terms, and one which it usually does note, even in its confusion. 4If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the fearer, how can this build up ego strength?22 5These perfectly self-evident inconsistencies account for why, except for certain stylized verbal accounts, nobody can explain what happens in psychotherapy. 6Nothing real does.

3The human therapist can only let Him fulfill His function. 4He needs no help in this. 5He will tell you exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help, and will speak to him through you, if you do not interfere.

With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and lament your littleness.

Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. 2It is without hope, because it is not real. 3It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real. 4Without this belief, grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly want it. 5The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it always involves attack. 6It is a delusional attempt to outdo, but not to undo. 7We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness.35 8It remains suspicious as long as you despair of yourself. 9It shifts to viciousness whenever you will not tolerate self-debasement, and seek relief. 10Then it offers you the delusion of attack as a solution.

3It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity, simply because love is returned, but pride is not.

This seems to be a variation on the saying “There are no atheists in foxholes.” In other words, there are no atheists in the presence of truth, nor are there martyrs.

The basic principle here is that the price you set on something is your evaluation of its value and will therefore determine how much you value it. If you see paying as a way of getting, “you will set the price low but demand a high return.” The result will be that “Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it and you will not want it.”

“It is impossible to share opposing thoughts.” T-5.VIII.5:2: “This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance cannot be shared.” A belief of the ego cannot be shared because it makes one statement about the self and another statement about others. The ego, for instance, believes “You are the cause of my pain.” If another then seems to hold that same belief, thinking “You are the cause of my pain,” that is not sharing, but simple disagreement. If, on the other hand, someone else believes “You’re right—I am the cause of your pain,” the two people still aren’t sharing the same belief—in the sense of each holding the same belief about the self—for one sees himself as the innocent victim and the other sees himself as the guilty victimizer. Because the ego sees itself as different from others, it is impossible for any of its beliefs to be truly shared.

2Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. 3You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything that happens to you is caused by factors outside yourself.

7If you further recognize that you are part of God, you will also understand why it is that you always attack yourself first. 5 All attack is self-attack. 2It cannot be anything else. 3

Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack. 2The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. 3Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God, even if he believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the love of God which he has forgotten.

To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. 2God created love, not idolatry. 3All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds who are too divided to know that creation shares power and never usurps it. 4Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that power can be taken from you.

4When a brother is sick, it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore he does not know he has it. 5The acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness is an illusion. 6Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions anywhere in the Kingdom, merely by denying them completely in himself.

God is not jealous of the gods you make,11 but you are. 2You would save them and serve them because you believe that they made you. 3You think they are your father, because you are projecting onto them the fearful fact that you made them to replace God. 4But when they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attempted are nothing.

You will hear the god you listen to. 2You made the god of sickness, and by making him you made yourself able to hear him. 3But you did not create him, because he is not the will of the Father. 4He is therefore not eternal, and will be unmade for you the instant you signify your willingness to accept only the eternal.

8You do not realize how much you listen to your gods, and how vigilant you are on their behalf. 9But they exist only because you honor them.

7Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. 8His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard when you place no other gods before Him.

You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would have to do so if you give him up for yourself. 2For if you see him anywhere you are accepting him, and if you accept him, you will bow down and worship him, because he was made as God’s replacement. 3He is the belief that there is something else. 4He, then, is the cause of your insane belief that you can choose which god is real. 5Although it is perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything to do with reality as you perceive it.

5If you believe you can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him.

5You will not be able to limit the split, because the split is the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God’s will, and this means that it is out of control. 6To be out of control is to be out of reason, and the mind does become unreasonable without reason.

2Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning because it is without God.

4What you have made is so unworthy of you that you can hardly want it if you are willing to see it as it is.

The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. 2It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother can do it. 3It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. 4Because the miracle worker has heard Him, he strengthens His voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share. 5The power of one mind can shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit with the same spark. 6It is everywhere and it is eternal.

The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. 2Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. 3Depression means that you have forsworn God. 4Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know what it means.17 5They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin is death.

5It is the denial of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God.

Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego’s religion. 2The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to his own survival. 3But consider what this means to you. 4Unless you are sick you cannot keep the gods you have made, for only in sickness could you possibly want them. 5Blasphemy, then, is self-destructive, not God-destructive. 6It means that you are willing not to know yourself in order to be sick. 7This is the offering which your god demands, because having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea. 8He has many forms, but though he may seem like many different things, he is but one idea: the denial of God.

Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. 2But this can be corrected, and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. 3You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. 4Your denial therefore means that you love Him and that you know He loves you. 5Remember that what you deny you must have known.22 6And if you could accept denial, you can accept its undoing.

3When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. 4He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His love for His Son. 5If you hear His message, He has answered you, and you will learn what you are of Him if you hear aright. 6The love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. 7Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. 2If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. 3If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. 4All these illusions, and the many other forms which blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is.

The chief god discussed in this chapter is the “god of sickness,” who demands the denial of health, of joy, and of God.

6God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do not want to give, and thus deprive you of what you want. 3 Would God, Who wants only your will, be capable of this? 2Your will is His life, which He has given to you. 3Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. 4What He created can sleep, but it cannot die.

4Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you and abide with you on the way. 5But the dark journey is not the way of God’s Son. 6Walk in light and do not see the dark companions,14 for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created of light and in light. 7The great light always surrounds you and shines out from you. 8How can you see the dark companions in a light such as this? 9If you see them, it is only because you are denying the light. 10But deny them instead, for the light is here and the way is clear.