The NCR Plea: would God plead NCR for an administration of worldly injustice?

1. My name is Rene Helmerichs. I am writing this from a mental ward, a lockdown maximum security mental ward in the brand new Atrium building of "Waypoint Centre For Mental Health Care" (because the mind is inherently ill and any concept for mental health itself needs care?) in Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada.

2. When I arrived at Waypoint from lockdown detention of psychiatrist Gunter Lorberg at the Central North Correctional Centre, CNCC, on 5 Jan 2015, I was specifically told "This is a hospital, it's not a jail." I'm unsure who said the statement because there were several people teaming around me, none of which introduced themselves much less gave me a card. I do recall being walked to an elevator, told to sand in a corner, and taken for an admission "assessment".

3. A dickhole for a doc, psychiatrist Robert "Boo Bob" Dickey, conducted the admission assessment. I told him point blank that I was going to need a different assessor because he'd lied about me on 1 Feb 2014, or thereabouts, to sign a document stating a mental assessment to have occurred for the Superior Court hearing of 3 Feb 2014, for file C-13-205 at Barrie.

4. No mental assessment occurred. At least none qualifying The Operating Mind Test criteria for section 7 of our Constitution. I'd complained about it already on 3 Feb 2014. Mr. Dickey defended his position with "I've never seen you before in my life" before then pompously exclaiming his desire to not have charge over me after telling me that it really didn't matter what I said because he could just write whatever he wanted about me anyway.

5. So, I'm at Waypoint as a mental patient. Clearly there is something wrong with me or none should consider me a patient in need of psychiatric help, right?

6. The nurses are pretty understanding, in honesty they haven't a choice. They're slaves to management just like everyone else. None seems to bother imploring common sense that a mental patient in a Centre advocating "Advancing understanding. Improving lives." should really ensure that a patient is proficient in desire to self-maintain, inclusive of a shower at least every other week or so, before that future social re-offender is let back into public grocery stores such as The Pit Stop general store right here in Hotel Waypoint. Pool privileges only after proficient showering demonstration ought to go without saying, but if management demanded nurses to keep logs of the actual practical stuff, who'd be left to dispense the magical potions and pills keeping the chaotic system for witchcraft lubricated?

7. Would you believe that none have bothered to ask me why I believe I'm here? In honesty, I haven't given them a choice. I've told every one of them exactly way I'm here.

8. None has taken the time to hear that every criminal charge currently against me now needing a Criminal Responsibility assessment, because of the yet unexplained psychosis from which I allegedly suffer (the "brain disease" Gunter Wolfgang Lorberg repeatedly asserted following forced injections Anjana Chawla ordered in 2012), is a direct result of a conviction in the Superior Court of Canada because judge Mr. Mulligan, also the trial judge, decided, in his expert opinion, that psychiatric evidence was NOT relevant.

9. If even one person in our government honestly defended for me, there would be commotion in parliament long ago because no official report requesting investigation into my allegations should lawfully go unheard. Of course, that's all just theory and theory and practice, we've all heard, are two entirely different things. In the real world, not only are we guilty until released but completely at the whim of whomever has the most money, since that person can afford the best lawyers and lawyers are the only people understanding how to increase a practice not adhering to any common intent whatsoever.

10. Mr. Mulligan ruled on 2 May 2014 that I was not permitted to submit psychiatric evidence for my defense at the June 2014 Superior Court for file C-13-205 at Barrie.

11. Crown attorney Kathryn Hull supported the ruling.

12. At trial the arresting officer Lori McIlravey testified that I had been sending Natalie Yewchyn criminally harassing email since 2012. I was self-represented and able to cross-examine Ms. McIlravey myself.

13. I asked how Mr. McIlravey came to know about the 2012 emails that I hadn't received as part of the crown disclosure but then Ms. Hull had also denied me all the rest of the police reports, reference to The Barrie C.A. Scene 7-headed Beast my wife posted the blog she kept while I sat in solitary under psychiatric watch to be also denied bail for 16 MONTHS: www.luciferchristforworldpeace.blogspot.tw

14. Ms. McIllravey replied that they were referenced in the report of detective Brian Read, the report dated 4 Sept 2012. I jumped at the chance to ask if the jury could receive a copy of that report.

15. Mr. Mulligan consented to my direct statement desiring to submit the 4 Sept 2012 report of the Barrie police detective to the jury. Mr. Mulligan then dismissed the jury and explained that the report couldn't be submitted. We argued about it into the next day and to spite also a redacted version of the creative police writing. The report declared both that I was the suspect of a bomb threat and that I had been previously arrested for, in part, the same allegations of C-13-205, and committed to a psychiatric ward in Barrie, otherwise revealing the court to willfully have committed the offenses of perjury and Constitutional Double Jeopardy.

16. Farce justice doesn't work for "talk days" where the mental ill are actually able to explain how utterly bullying and imposing psychiatrists are. Psychiatrists, you see, believe the brain thinks. The very idea actually opposes not only every major religion in the world, but also common sense since they derive their profession on the assumption that they alone are keepers of the secrets of an otherwise publicly-tending mind.

17. The Superior Court trial judge and prosecutor sought directly to avoid my ability to interrogate psychiatrists Anjana Chawla and Liaqat Ali who stripped me of my right to refuse medication that they could then inject me because of course I was not aware of my "illness" and needed the injections "to think straight". Yet there was never fair hearing offered nor discussion of criminal offenses allegedly committed and certainly not a trial given for the allegations of criminal offenses for which Mr. Read writes that I was dropped off at Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie on 3 Sept 2012.

18. IT IS AN OXYMORON FOR A COMMISSION DESIGNED TO STUDY MENTAL HEALTH TO PROVIDE A REPORT ABOUT MENTAL WELLNESS SINCE THE COMMISSION DIRECTLY SERVES THE GOVERNMENT MAINTAINING THE COURTS RELYING ON BULLYING.

19. Needless to say, the jury found me guilty and a probation order was made. I challenged the conviction with written statement on 27 June 2014 but the same judge and crown decided that Mr. Mulligan was just the man to dismiss my grounds for his mistrial.

20. So here I am, quite clearly a mental retard sitting in a mental ward typing words into a machine that, quite possibly, THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD WILL ONE DAY READ BECAUSE I FULLY INTEND TO RUN IN THE NEXT NATIONAL ELECTION AS INDEPENDANT PRIME MINISTER FOR CANADA if only to fire the other mental retards wasting tax-payer funds in the nonsense that passes for law at Barrie. All of them taking up believed employment in room 502 at the Barrie courthouse, with exception perhaps of Ms. Hull if she decides to partner after all (payment requirement for funding of ME and the campaign of a lifetime).

21. More history and the 4 Sept 2012 report available in the links of the auto-reply email with your support to talk2dream.me@gmail.com . Of course, I can't check the email while in the mental ward since I'm legally in custody and the role of custody is directly to cut off all ability to communicate or a great many of the other inmates also sucking up the tax-payer funds in the ever-increasing budgeting for mental health would need to be released.

22. Anyway, do support my plea for Not Criminally Responsible WITH FULL DISCHARGE FROM THE MENTAL WARD EXPIDIOUSLY DIRECTLY FROM THE COURT NEEDING TO BE ASKED IN A PSYCHIATRIC REPORT:

Just what is the point of a psychiatric assessment for a guy convicted specifically because the court and lawyers were afraid of letting him raise the issue of psychiatric evidence, after writing The Department Of Justice For Canada that the trial would very much be a mistrial because, of course In Miracles, Natalie Yewchyn is the actual individual left at large while suffering the unrecognizable psychosis of "I'm always right, you're a retard to be feared", to paraphrase her psychotic ongoing Criminal Code offense of section 180, being a common nuisance for psychiatrists contravening section 365 pretending to practice witchcraft, at the June 2014 trial.

C. Establishing NEW Canada-wide plea Not Criminally Responsible, the NCR plea (para 23-34)

23. Flippant chaos is founded with altruistic nature. Fundamentally, each is firstly in possession of that identified as the considering self. Nothing can be done to an individual that is not of benefit to both the human person and its society as a whole. This raises only the question of what, precisely, it is that has been done to be construed not beneficial for if all are of one same source, argument over that source must permissibly be allowed to peacefully continue for all infinity. The Choice for interpretation of flippant is either for frivolous or flipping of awareness into previously unrecognized awareness, but always for increase to unrecognized awareness of source with ever-begging science.

24. The supreme law for Canada under One God is subsection 52(1) of The Constitution Act (1982), The Canada Act, C.A., and reminds the law is to remain ever consistent such that any enactment or convention not consistent with the spirit of the law, the phrase cited twice in The Lawyer Rules of The Upper Canada Law Society, to be "of no force or effect to the extent of the inconsistency" of local policy directive.

25. C.A. section 33(1) does permit legislative assemblies for Canada to provide specific exceptions to the spirit of the law provided the enactment strives to uphold the C.A. section One guarantee for dignity of the human person, democracy for Canada, and fair administration of social justice. Fair is specifically defined on page 1822 in the annotations to C.A. section 7 of the judicial edition Canada Law Book, Martin's Criminal Code 2014: "The constitutional norm for a fair hearing is procedural fairness. Notice and participation may or may not be required--what is fair depends entirely on context."

26. Context for any order in any court of law in Canada is specifically revealed with understanding of the spirit of the law. The law cannot be consistent unless the convention for consistency applies also to itself, revealing any spirit for law to be one and same and furthering the living active unrecognized awareness intrinsically sustaining any and every changing environment. Specifically, The Law is always speaking such that it can never be fully formed, nor written, and establishes an exception to every rule to exist, including also an exception to any exception for the original requirement for consistency.

27. Context is thus revealed to be a trumping, with direct analogy elucidating understanding made to the common card games Euchre and Bridge except with contextual intent not for competition but for peacefully harmless absolve of competitive tendency: one can fully collapse any perceived argument, bedeviling momentarily construed criminal stress (any stress is arguably a criminal offense in some way), into an ever-larger Argument until The Choice Amdist The Argument becomes all-inclusive so as to dispel every concept for stress with revelation of Christ. Christ therein appears to arrive as a criminal, not unlike a thief in the darkest hour of night within the mind not aware of its own struggle for flippant understanding.

28. Flippant understanding rephrased is The Argument as a pissing contest between colossal God-complexes, literally the attempt to objectify the ever-undefined Spirit for plural application: ignorance of law sustains the appearance of semantics while actual understanding establishes itself with harmless action (born of unrecognized motion) in a way ensuring action to be forever of greater trumping order than any word imaginable speaking to action.

29. The Constitution begins "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God" and blog post The Barrie Courthouse Circuit Videogame Endgame of 19 Jan 2015 at www.renehelmerichs3.blogspot.ca contains an advanced physical proof establishing the universe itself to be in motion such that GOD is forever undefined, originating the motion, but very much Real.

30. Because God exists, a wholey spirit, The Holy Spirit, for law exists. The Holy Spirit is clearly an unseen influence at any moment anyone denies any other any harmless request for if the denier understood self to be a projection of some unconscious of the other, and the other a projection of some aspect of self, both selves equally unaware of the collective unconscious being both unconscious to it, the denier would also recognize that to deny anyone a harmless request is directly to increase personal stress, ultimately a criminal offence.

31. This directly reveals every interaction, including every psychiatric "session", to be an argument of personally unrecognized God-complexes present in both individuals in a very multiple way. A fair judge in courts of law for Canada recognizes precisely this, and recognizes that neither GOD of The Constitution nor mind of the Criminal Code section 2 definition for mental disorder as "a disease of mind" to be at all definable for in its defining does one declare the author of the definition, and by direct extension every advocate thereof, to BE God. The problem plaguing all psychiatry in its never-ending ever-increasing categorizing of diseases is revealed to be fully antagonistic to the fundamental principle that law itself is of one source.

32. The 22 and 25 July 2013 court hearings at Barrie become Superior Court file C-13-205 on 8 Nov 2013 establish the usurped human birthright to be currently bestowed local physicians operating under government licenses for forensic psychiatry, aka The Art Of Mentally Bullying, with intentionally judicially overlooked Criminal Code section 299 defamatory libel.

33. As understanding dispels illusion in much the same way light dispels darkness, no lawyer operating under Upper Canada Law Society license can review this document and not agree its author is directly refuting the legitimacy of the whole of premise mistakenly believing a brain to originate the spirit for thinking.

34. The NCR plea is legal under both caselaw and the desire of society for gradual change, for if one were to revoke all psychiatric licenses at the same time, social anarchy would surely ensure. Since the plea itself is new, and therewith not anywhere recognizably defined, its first use does establish its author squarely as the constitutionally established GOD, really not God but just The Christ, really not The Christ, but with the spirit of law for being able to pull worlds of letters together into flippant confusion for its own absolve AS the alpha and omega mental demonstration (to win the heart of My Love Born On Christmas, the flippantly impoverished Natalie Yewchyn).

D. The NCR Plea (para 35-50)

35. Marketing a book titled The Choice Amidst The Argument In The Business of Being Happy: A Course In Miracles And Ode To My Love Born On Christmas, for The New Goal Day Charity Talk To Dream, then Georgian College teacher Rene Helmerichs realized the law for consistency in a dynamic way to apply to each individual for every wish that individual can ever make: "with God all things are possible because All Is, except fully simultaneously possible only when every wish is not exclusive of any other."

36. An outlined brief history begun in 2012 is found in Affidavit Number Five posted 27 Dec 2014 to www.renehelmerichs3.blogspot.ca .

37. As of 19 Jan 2015, The Ministry Of The Attorney General, MAG, of Ontario for Canada, through Its provincial court of justice, has ordered The Ministry Of Health And Long-Term Care, MHLTC, to determine criminal responsibility at the time The Ministry Of Community Safety And Correctional Services, MCSCS, alleges criminal offenses against Rene Helmerichs on 11 July, 18 Nov, 2 Dec., 6 Dec. and 7 Dec. 2014. Responsibility Assessments not yet ordered are a judicial oversight of court on19 Jan 2015 following common sense hearing that psychiatrists do require a separate order for each individual charge.

38. The requirements of Mens Rae in the annotations to section 7 of The Constitution Act of Canada (1982), The Canada Act, C.A, in the judicial edition of Martin's Criminal Code 2014, Martin's 2014, provide caselaw supporting The Operating Mind Test to obligate evidence of a real-time functioning mind with awareness for outcome of action, including the effect upon self and society, at the time of the alleged offences.

39. Writing is inherently PAST TENSE and cannot construe a real-time assessment for current dysfunction UNLESS the individual is mute or writing in response to oral questions.

40. The Operating Mind Test at the time of the criminal allegations is sanctified with acknowledgement that text of Mr. Helmerichs posted to the internet is intended for public dissemination exclusively to further The Spirit Of Law, and his lack thereafter of appearances in court to repeat the contents of written statements to have been intentional on grounds eliciting the Criminal Code section 16(3) defense of mental disorder: voicemail to MCSCS officer Tamara Williamson on 18 Nov 2014 is copied in the last 10 minutes of the 2 Dec 2014 video defense statement emailed attorneygeneral@ontario.ca on 2 Dec and posted to the YouTube channel for Rene Helmerichs titled Talk To Dream One World Peace, or the like. In the copied 18 Nov 2014 oral message played to slides of court documents related to this overall case for illness begun at Royal Victoria Hospital, RVH, in Barrie in 2012, Mr. Helmerichs is heard informing Ms. Williamson to instruct MAG that he is 'mentally ill and, being ill, cannot therefore be expected to appear in court (for safety of all concerned).

41. The annotations to C.A. section 11 establish 'charged with an offence' to include quasi-criminal offenses for which detention, defined in section 9 for sections 10 and 11, is incurred as a result of actions to the larger public, such as invoicing The Jehovah Witnesses for Criminal Code subsection 215(1)(c)(iii) sanctioned 'necessaries of life' under convention of their book of law, Deuteronomy 15:8 and the consistency requirement for law in C.A. subsection 52(1), The Spirit Of The Law in The Upper Canada Law Society Rules For Professional Conduct.

42. Psychiatrists Liaqat Ali, Anjana Chawla, and five witch-doctors thereafter, have each claimed Rene Helmerichs to have "no insight" into his purported mental illness at law.

43. For over two years Mr. Helmerichs has requested and not received the definition of diagnoses psychiatrists Liar Liaqat Ali, the liar for grounds stated in section Explanation Of Terms, and The Inept Chief Witch-doctor Anjana Chawla, the witch contravening Criminal Code section 365 pretending to practice witchcraft, have divined.

44. Mr. Helmerichs did not receive a trial for the 3 Sept 2012 quasi-criminal conviction stated in the 4 Sept 2012 report of MCSCS Barrie police detective Brian Read.

45. Mr. Helmerichs fully confirms his 31 Aug 2012 email statement to Natalie "if you contact me again, this mind-fuck will only continue and lead to the physical" to be fully with intent to protect Natalie under C.A. section 11 against her ongoing Criminal Code offenses founded upon section 181 spreading false news escalated to the hate crime of section 319 and 132 perjury at the Barrie courthouse trial for C-13-205 suffered under condition of a MAG Double Jeopardy contravening C.A. section 7 in June of 2014.

46. Protection is only offered if Natalie Yewchyn admits the whole of the argument about GOD to have been a colossal misunderstanding and that she happily accepts the matrimonial hand of Mr. Helmerichs because, of course in miracles, no spouse can be compelled to testify against another and not marriage is sanctified without actual fucking. Mr. Helmerichs claims to have married The Province Of Ontario on 17 July 2013, preventing all officers for the province from also testifying against Natalie Yewchyn.

47. Of course in Miracles, all government retards are in line to be fully absolved of their legal inconsistencies with 10% financial tithe to The Mormon Community Of Christ at Barrie, the church for whom Natalie Yewchyn was treasure, and pardon granted of The Office Of Sun's The Disappearance Of The Universe Lost Teachings Of Atlantis A Course In Miracles ONE Church Of Christ headed by Rene Helmerichs and his two witnesses Gary and Cindy Lora-Renard in his absence.

48. The claim that Mr. Helmerichs has no insight into his illness to establish grounds for the clinical psychosis also not explained nor defined, without being at least provided a legally functioning definition of mind inclusive of The Holy Spirit, does preclude the otherwise advertised right to a trial for allegations of criminal offence in Canada in C.A. section 11, for The Circus Act.

49. The lying psychiatrist Liaqat Ali and inept chief witch-doctor had Mr. Helmerichs forcibly injected on allegations of criminal offence (for which Mr. Helmerichs has notoriously no sight) to not be afforded the Criminal Code section 16(3) caselaw otherwise obligating false psychologists and witch-doctors to stand trial in defense of their defame at the direct challenge Mr. Helmerichs publically herein asserts.

50. Logic is founded of-and-for Common Intent to reveal dispute, ultimately, to have been a misunderstanding. Logic is not without emotion but with emotion not understood while dispute for common as partial, special, and not exclusive exists. Rene Helmerichs claims ownership of text written

E. THE PUBLIC CHALLENGE TO EXPERTISE OF ANY PSYCHIATRIST

51. Jon Peniel is often quoted as having said, "I happens to be one of the few remaining words one can still be challenged for on this still free planet." Accordingly, I, as Rene Helmerichs born 2 March 1977, claim to be THE AUTHOR OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES officially available from The Foundation For Inner Peace at www.acim.org written by Me for Me before my physical birth. Specifically:

HOW MANY TEACHERS OF GOD ARE NEEDED TO SAVE THE WORLD?

The answer to this question is one. One wholey perfect teacher, whose learning is complete, suffices. This one, sanctified and redeemed, becomes the Self Who is the Son of God. He who was always wholey spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore he is limitless. And being limitless, his thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever. His perception of himself is based upon God's Judgment, not his own. Thus does he share God's Will, and bring His Thoughts to still deluded minds. He is forever one, because he is as God created him. He has accepted Christ, and he is saved.

This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: (1) Nothing real can be threatened; and (2) Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.

"No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it. This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater.

The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary.

There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence.

I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle to any of my brothers, you do it to yourself and me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. My part in the Atonement is the cancelling out of all errors that you could not otherwise correct.

The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.

Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.

The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different and can be told apart.

The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it.

The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying are the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause.

Thus are you not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real.

How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do? Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first. No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. We can remember this, if we but look directly at their cause. And we will see the grounds for laughter, not a cause for fear.

Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time.

It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing" was made. This is the function you have given your body's eyes. It is not seeing. It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.

This introductory idea to the process of image making that you call seeing will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come quickly when this has occurred.

As we go along, you may have many "light episodes." They may take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are signs that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not persist, because they merely symbolize true perception, and they are not related to knowledge. These exercises will not reveal knowledge to you. But they will prepare the way to it.

This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are not alone. No one who calls on Him can call in vain. Whatever troubles you, be certain that He has the answer, and will gladly give it to you, if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him. He will not withhold all answers that you need for anything that seems to trouble you. He knows the way to solve all problems, and resolve all doubts. His certainty is yours. You need but ask it of Him, and it will be given you.

You are as certain of arriving home as is the pathway of the sun laid down before it rises, after it has set, and in the half-lit hours in between. Indeed, your pathway is more certain still. For it can not be possible to change the course of those whom God has called to Him. Therefore obey your will, and follow Him Whom you accepted as your voice, to speak of what you really want and really need. His is the Voice for God and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth.

No more specific lessons are assigned, for there is no more need of them. Henceforth, hear but the Voice for God and for your Self when you retire from the world, to seek reality instead. He will direct your efforts, telling you exactly what to do, how to direct your mind, and when to come to Him in silence, asking for His sure direction and His certain Word. His is the Word that God has given you. His is the Word you chose to be your own.

And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful follower, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue. Now you walk with Him, as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed; as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.

The end is certain, and the means as well. To this we say "Amen." You will be told exactly what God wills for you each time there is a choice to make. And He will speak for God and for your Self, thus making sure that hell will claim you not, and that each choice you make brings Heaven nearer to your reach. And so we walk with Him from this time on, and turn to Him for guidance and for peace and sure direction. Joy attends our way. For we go homeward to an open door which God has held unclosed to welcome us.

We trust our ways to Him and say "Amen." In peace we will continue in His way, and trust all things to Him. In confidence we wait His answers, as we ask His Will in everything we do. He loves God's Son as we would love him. And He teaches us how to behold him through His eyes, and love him as He does. You do not walk alone. God's angels hover near and all about. His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure; that I will never leave you comfortless.

Psychotherapy is the only form of therapy there is. Since only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be healed. Only the mind is in need of healing. This does not appear to be the case, for the manifestations of this world seem real indeed. Psychotherapy is necessary so that an individual can begin to question their reality. Sometimes he is able to start to open his mind without formal help, but even then it is always some change in his perception of interpersonal relationships that enables him to do so. Sometimes he needs a more structured, extended relationship with an "official" therapist. Either way, the task is the same; the patient must be helped to change his mind about the "reality" of illusions.

PSYCHOTHERAPY: Purpose, Process and Practice

Psychotherapy is the only form of therapy there is. 2 Since only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be healed. 3 Only the mind is in need of healing. 4 This does not appear to be the case, for the manifestations of this world seem real indeed. 5 Psychotherapy is necessary so that an individual can begin to question their reality. 6 Sometimes he is able to start to open his mind without formal help, but even then it is always some change in his perception of interpersonal relationships that enables him to do so. 7 Sometimes he needs a more structured, extended relationship with an "official" therapist. 8 Either way, the task is the same; the patient must be helped to change his mind about the "reality" of illusions.

1. THE PURPOSE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

P-1.in.1. Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth. 2 Its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests. 3 No one in this world escapes fear, but everyone can reconsider its causes and learn to evaluate them correctly. 4 God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide. 5 Yet there are times and situations in which an earthly patient-therapist relationship becomes the means through which He offers His greater gifts to both.

P-1.in.2. What better purpose could any relationship have than to invite the Holy Spirit to enter into it and give it His Own great gift of rejoicing? 2 What higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? 3 And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the way, the truth and the life, and to remember God? 4 To help in this is the proper purpose of psychotherapy. 5 Could anything be holier? 6 For psychotherapy, correctly understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it. 7 And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him.

P-1.in.3. Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress, is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence. 2 These tendencies are often described as "self-destructive," and the patient often regards them in that way himself. 3 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. 4 Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even willing to "sacrifice" his "life" on its behalf. 5 For he regards it as himself. 6 This self he sees as being acted on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless midst the power of the world.

P-1.in.4. Psychotherapy, then, must restore to his awareness the ability to make his own decisions. 2 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. 3 The world he sees does therefore not exist. 4 Until this is at least in part accepted, the patient cannot see himself as really capable of making decisions. 5 And he will fight against his freedom because he thinks that it is slavery.

P-1.in.5. The patient need not think of truth as God in order to make progress in salvation. 2 But he must begin to separate truth from illusion, recognizing that they are not the same, and becoming increasingly willing to see illusions as false and to accept the truth as true. 3 His Teacher will take him on from there, as far as he is ready to go. 4 Psychotherapy can only save him time. 5 The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong. 6 Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses to save time, and to prepare additional teachers for His work. 7 There is no end to the help that He begins and He directs. 8 By whatever routes He chooses, all psychotherapy leads to God in the end. 9 But that is up to Him. 10 We are all His psychotherapists, for He would have us all be healed in Him.

2. THE PROCESS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

P-2.in.1. Psychotherapy is a process that changes the view of the self. 2 At best this "new" self is a more beneficent self-concept, but psychotherapy can hardly be expected to establish reality. 3 That is not its function. 4 If it can make way for reality, it has achieved its ultimate success. 5 Its whole function, in the end, is to help the patient deal with one fundamental error; the belief that anger brings him something he really wants, and that by justifying attack he is protecting himself. 6 To whatever extent he comes to realize that this is an error, to that extent is he truly saved.

P-2.in.2. Patients do not enter the therapeutic relationship with this goal in mind. 2 On the contrary, such concepts mean little to them, or they would not need help. 3 Their aim is to be able to retain their self-concept exactly as it is, but without the suffering that it entails. 4 Their whole equilibrium rests on the insane belief that this is possible. 5 And because to the sane mind it is so clearly impossible, what they seek is magic. 6 In illusions the impossible is easily accomplished, but only at the cost of making illusions true. 7 The patient has already paid this price. 8 Now he wants a "better" illusion.

P-2.in.3. At the beginning, then, the patient's goal and the therapist's are at variance. 2 The therapist as well as the patient may cherish false self-concepts, but their respective perceptions of "improvement" still must differ. 3 The patient hopes to learn how to get the changes he wants without changing his self-concept to any significant extent. 4 He hopes, in fact, to stabilize it sufficiently to include within it the magical powers he seeks in psychotherapy. 5 He wants to make the vulnerable invulnerable and the finite limitless. 6 The self he sees is his god, and he seeks only to serve it better.

P-2.in.4. Regardless of how sincere the therapist himself may be, he must want to change the patient's self-concept in some way that he believes is real. 2 The task of therapy is one of reconciling these differences. 3 Hopefully, both will learn to give up their original goals, for it is only in relationships that salvation can be found. 4 At the beginning, it is inevitable that patients and therapists alike accept unrealistic goals not completely free of magical overtones. 5 They are finally given up in the minds of both.

I. The Limits on Psychotherapy

P-2.I.1. Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. 2 Therapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who already believe this. 3 It may be they will not get much further, for no one learns beyond his own readiness. 4 Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. 5 Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. 6 Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. 7 Be assured of this; each will progress. 8 Retrogression is temporary. 9 The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.

P-2.I.2. Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. 2 This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. 3 When we speak of "the saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense. 4 "Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of progress and growth. 5 These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. 6 The changes the ego seeks to make are not really changes. 7 They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. 8 Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. 9 Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.

P-2.I.3. Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist as well as of a patient. 2 Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts its aims. 3 Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions of the ego on the therapeutic process. 4 But He will wait, and His patience is infinite. 5 His goal is wholey undivided always. 6 Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely reconciled as one until they join with His. 7 Only then is all conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.

P-2.I.4. Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. 2 And this will one day come to pass for every "patient" on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? 3 The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized teacher of God. 4 He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. 5 But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. 6 They cannot take more than he can give for now. 7 Yet both will find sanity at last.

II. The Place of Religion in Psychotherapy

P-2.II.1. To be a teacher of God, it is not necessary to be religious or even to believe in God to any recognizable extent. 2 It is necessary, however, to teach forgiveness rather than condemnation. 3 Even in this, complete consistency is not required, for one who had achieved that point could teach salvation completely, within an instant and without a word. 4 Yet he who has learned all things does not need a teacher, and the healed have no need for a therapist. 5 Relationships are still the temple of the Holy Spirit, and they will be made perfect in time and restored to eternity.

P-2.II.2. Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real place in religion. 2 In this world, there is an astonishing tendency to join contradictory words into one term without perceiving the contradiction at all. 3 The attempt to formalize religion is so obviously an ego attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable that it hardly requires elaboration here. 4 Religion is experience; psychotherapy is experience. 5 At the highest levels they become one. 6 Neither is truth itself, but both can lead to truth. 7 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. 2 Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. 3 All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. 4 This is never apparent to the patient, and only rarely so to the therapist. 5 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.

P-2.II.4. Yet it is not the awareness of God that constitutes a reasonable goal for psychotherapy. 2 This will come when psychotherapy is complete, for where there is forgiveness truth must come. 3 It would be unfair indeed if belief in God were necessary to psychotherapeutic success. 4 Nor is belief in God a really meaningful concept, for God can be but known. 5 Belief implies that unbelief is possible, but knowledge of God has no true opposite. 6 Not to know God is to have no knowledge, and it is to this that all unforgiveness leads. 7 And without knowledge one can have only belief.

P-2.II.5. Different teaching aids appeal to different people. 2 Some forms of religion have nothing to do with God, and some forms of psychotherapy have nothing to do with healing. 3 Yet if pupil and teacher join in sharing one goal, God will enter into their relationship because He has been invited to come in. 4 In the same way, a union of purpose between patient and therapist restores the place of God to ascendance, first through Christ's vision and then through the memory of God Himself. 5 The process of psychotherapy is the return to sanity. 6 Teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, are all insane or they would not be here. 7 Together they can find a pathway out, for no one will find sanity alone.

P-2.II.6. If healing is an invitation to God to enter into His Kingdom, what difference does it make how the invitation is written? 2 Does the paper matter, or the ink, or the pen? 3 Or is it he who writes that gives the invitation? 4 God comes to those who would restore His world, for they have found the way to call to Him. 5 If any two are joined, He must be there. 6 It does not matter what their purpose is, but they must share it wholey to succeed. 7 It is impossible to share a goal not blessed by Christ, for what is unseen through His eyes is too fragmented to be meaningful.

P-2.II.7. As true religion heals, so must true psychotherapy be religious. 2 But both have many forms, because no good teacher uses one approach to every pupil. 3 On the contrary, he listens patiently to each one, and lets him formulate his own curriculum; not the curriculum's goal, but how he can best reach the aim it sets for him. 4 Perhaps the teacher does not think of God as part of teaching. 5 Perhaps the psychotherapist does not understand that healing comes from God. 6 They can succeed where many who believe they have found God will fail.

P-2.II.8. What must the teacher do to ensure learning? 2 What must the therapist do to bring healing about? 3 Only one thing; the same requirement salvation asks of everyone. 4 Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. 5 Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self. 6 Only by doing this can teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, you and I, accept Atonement and learn to give it as it was received.

P-2.II.9. Communion is impossible alone. 2 No one who stands apart can receive Christ's vision. 3 It is held out to him, but he cannot hold out his hand to receive it. 4 Let him be still and recognize his brother's need is his own. 5 And let him then meet his brother's need as his and see that they are met as one, for such they are. 6 What is religion but an aid in helping him to see that this is so? 7 And what is psychotherapy except a help in just this same direction? 8 It is the goal that makes these processes the same, for they are one in purpose and must thus be one in means.

III. The Role of the Psychotherapist

P-2.III.1. The psychotherapist is a leader in the sense that he walks slightly ahead of the patient, and helps him to avoid a few of the pitfalls along the road by seeing them first. 2 Ideally, he is also a follower, for One should walk ahead of him to give him light to see. 3 Without this One, both will merely stumble blindly on to nowhere. 4 It is, however, impossible that this One be wholey absent if the goal is healing. 5 He may, however, not be recognized. 6 And so the little light that can be then accepted is all there is to light the way to truth.

P-2.III.2. Healing is limited by the limitations of the psychotherapist, as it is limited by those of the patient. 2 The aim of the process, therefore, is to transcend these limits. 3 Neither can do this alone, but when they join, the potentiality for transcending all limitations has been given them. 4 Now the extent of their success depends on how much of this potentiality they are willing to use. 5 The willingness may come from either one at the beginning, and as the other shares it, it will grow. 6 Progress becomes a matter of decision; it can reach almost to Heaven or go no further than a step or two from hell.

P-2.III.3. It is quite possible for psychotherapy to seem to fail. 2 It is even possible for the result to look like retrogression. 3 But in the end there must be some success. 4 One asks for help; another hears and tries to answer in the form of help. 5 This is the formula for salvation, and must heal. 6 Divided goals alone can interfere with perfect healing. 7 One wholey egoless therapist could heal the world without a word, merely by being there. 8 No one need see him or talk to him or even know of his existence. 9 His simple Presence is enough to heal.

P-2.III.4. The ideal therapist is one with Christ. 2 But healing is a process, not a fact. 3 The therapist cannot progress without the patient, and the patient cannot be ready to receive the Christ or he could not be sick. 4 In a sense, the egoless psychotherapist is an abstraction that stands at the end of the process of healing, too advanced to believe in sickness and too near to God to keep his feet on earth. 5 Now he can help through those in need of help, for thus he carries out the plan established for salvation. 6 The psychotherapist becomes his patient, working through other patients to express his thoughts as he receives them from the Mind of Christ.

IV. The Process of Illness

P-2.IV.1. As all therapy is psychotherapy, so all illness is mental illness. 2 It is a judgment on the Son of God, and judgment is a mental activity. 3 Judgment is a decision, made again and again, against creation and its Creator. 4 It is a decision to perceive the universe as you would have created it. 5 It is a decision that truth can lie and must be lies. 6 What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? 7 And who could weep but for his innocence?

P-2.IV.2. Once God's Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. 2 It has been asked for and will be received. 3 And all who ask for illness have now condemned themselves to seek for remedies that cannot help, because their faith is in the illness and not in salvation. 4 There can be nothing that a change of mind cannot effect, for all external things are only shadows of a decision already made. 5 Change the decision, and how can its shadow be unchanged? 6 Illness can be but guilt's shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. 7 If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?

P-2.IV.3. The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. 2 Sickness and death and misery now stalk the earth in unrelenting waves, sometimes together and sometimes in grim succession. 3 Yet all these things, however real they seem, are but illusions. 4 Who could have faith in them once this is realized? 5 And who could not have faith in them until he realizes this? 6 Healing is therapy or correction, and we have said already and will say again, all therapy is psychotherapy. 7 To heal the sick is but to bring this realization to them.

P-2.IV.4. The word "cure" has come into disrepute among the more "respectable" therapists of the world, and justly so. 2 For not one of them can cure, and not one of them understands healing. 3 At worst, they but make the body real in their own minds, and having done so, seek for magic by which to heal the ills with which their minds endow it. 4 How could such a process cure? 5 It is ridiculous from start to finish. 6 Yet having started, it must finish thus. 7 It is as if God were the devil and must be found in evil. 8 How could love be there? 9 And how could sickness cure? 10 Are not these both one question?

P-2.IV.5. At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the "healers" of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. 2 But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself. 3 This has some merit in a world where "degrees of error" is a meaningful concept. 4 Yet must their cures remain temporary, or another illness rise instead, for death has not been overcome until the meaning of love is understood. 5 And who can understand this without the Word of God, given by Him to the Holy Spirit as His gift to you?

P-2.IV.6. Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. 2 Yet if such were really the self, defense would be impossible. 3 Therefore, the defenses sought for must be magical. 4 They must overcome all limits perceived in the self, at the same time making a new self-concept into which the old one cannot return. 5 In a word, error is accepted as real and dealt with by illusions. 6 Truth being brought to illusions, reality now becomes a threat and is perceived as evil. 7 Love becomes feared because reality is love. 8 Thus is the circle closed against the "inroads" of salvation.

P-2.IV.7. Illness is therefore a mistake and needs correction. 2 And as we have already emphasized, correction cannot be achieved by first establishing the "rightness" of the mistake and then overlooking it. 3 If illness is real it cannot be overlooked in truth, for to overlook reality is insanity. 4 Yet that is magic's purpose; to make illusions true through false perception. 5 This cannot heal, for it opposes truth. 6 Perhaps an illusion of health is substituted for a little while, but not for long. 7 Fear cannot long be hidden by illusions, for it is part of them. 8 It will escape and take another form, being the source of all illusions.

P-2.IV.8. Sickness is insanity because all sickness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees. 2 One of the illusions by which sickness is perceived as real is the belief that illness varies in intensity; that the degree of threat differs according to the form it takes. 3 Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. 4 This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. 5 But the insane believe it because they are insane.

P-2.IV.9. A madman will defend his own illusions because in them he sees his own salvation. 2 Thus, he will attack the one who tries to save him from them, believing that he is attacking him. 3 This curious circle of attack-defense is one of the most difficult problems with which the psychotherapist must deal. 4 In fact, this is his central task; the core of psychotherapy. 5 The therapist is seen as one who is attacking the patient's most cherished possession; his picture of himself. 6 And since this picture has become the patient's security as he perceives it, the therapist cannot but be seen as a real source of danger, to be attacked and even killed.

P-2.IV.10. The psychotherapist, then, has a tremendous responsibility. 2 He must meet attack without attack, and therefore without defense. 3 It is his task to demonstrate that defenses are not necessary, and that defenselessness is strength. 4 This must be his teaching, if his lesson is to be that sanity is safe. 5 It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the insane believe that sanity is threat. 6 This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. 7 It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. 8 But neither is it safe. 9 And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal.

P-2.IV.11. Salvation's single doctrine is the goal of all therapy. 2 Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily, and healing is accomplished. 3 The body is not cured. 4 It is merely recognized as what it is. 5 Seen rightly, its purpose can be understood. 6 What is the need for sickness then? 7 Given this single shift, all else will follow. 8 There is no need for complicated change. 9 There is no need for long analyses and wearying discussion and pursuits. 10 The truth is simple, being one for all.

V. The Process of Healing

P-2.V.1. While truth is simple, it must still be taught to those who have already lost their way in endless mazes of complexity. 2 This is the great illusion. 3 In its wake comes the inevitable belief that, to be safe, one must control the unknown. 4 This strange belief relies on certain steps which never reach to consciousness. 5 First, it is ushered in by the belief that there are forces to be overcome to be alive at all. 6 And next, it seems as if these forces can be held at bay only by an inflated sense of self that holds in darkness what is truly felt, and seeks to raise illusions to the light.

P-2.V.2. Let us remember that the ones who come to us for help are bitterly afraid. 2 What they believe will help can only harm; what they believe will harm alone can help. 3 Progress becomes impossible until the patient is persuaded to reverse his twisted way of looking at the world; his twisted way of looking at himself. 4 The truth is simple. 5 Yet it must be taught to those who think it will endanger them. 6 It must be taught to those who will attack because they feel endangered, and to those who need the lesson of defenselessness above all else, to show them what is strength.

P-2.V.3. If this world were ideal, there could perhaps be ideal therapy. 2 And yet it would be useless in an ideal state. 3 We speak of ideal teaching in a world in which the perfect teacher could not long remain; the perfect psychotherapist is but a glimmer of a thought not yet conceived. 4 But still we speak of what can yet be done in helping the insane within the bounds of the attainable. 5 While they are sick, they can and must be helped. 6 No more than that is asked of psychotherapy; no less than all he has to give is worthy of the therapist. 7 For God Himself holds out his brother as his savior from the world.

P-2.V.4. Healing is holy. 2 Nothing in the world is holier than helping one who asks for help. 3 And two come very close to God in this attempt, however limited, however lacking in sincerity. 4 Where two have joined for healing, God is there. 5 And He has guaranteed that He will hear and answer them in truth. 6 They can be sure that healing is a process He directs, because it is according to His Will. 7 We have His Word to guide us, as we try to help our brothers. 8 Let us not forget that we are helpless of ourselves, and lean upon a strength beyond our little scope for what to teach as well as what to learn.

P-2.V.5. A brother seeking aid can bring us gifts beyond the heights perceived in any dream. 2 He offers us salvation, for he comes to us as Christ and Savior. 3 What he asks is asked by God through him. 4 And what we do for him becomes the gift we give to God. 5 The sacred calling of God's holy Son for help in his perceived distress can be but answered by his Father. 6 Yet He needs a voice through which to speak His holy Word; a hand to reach His Son and touch his heart. 7 In such a process, who could not be healed? 8 This holy interaction is the plan of God Himself, by which His Son is saved.

P-2.V.6. For two have joined. 2 And now God's promises are kept by Him. 3 The limits laid on both the patient and the therapist will count as nothing, for the healing has begun. 4 What they must start their Father will complete. 5 For He has never asked for more than just the smallest willingness, the least advance, the tiniest of whispers of His Name. 6 To ask for help, whatever form it takes, is but to call on Him. 7 And He will send His Answer through the therapist who best can serve His Son in all his present needs. 8 Perhaps the answer does not seem to be a gift from Heaven. 9 It may even seem to be a worsening and not a help. 10 Yet let the outcome not be judged by us.

P-2.V.7. Somewhere all gifts of God must be received. 2 In time no effort can be made in vain. 3 It is not our perfection that is asked in our attempts to heal. 4 We are deceived already, if we think there is a need of healing. 5 And the truth will come to us only through one who seems to share our dream of sickness. 6 Let us help him to forgive himself for all the trespasses with which he would condemn himself without a cause. 7 His healing is our own. 8 And as we see the sinlessness in him come shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God, we will behold in him the face of Christ, and understand that it is but our own.

P-2.V.8. Let us stand silently before God's Will, and do what it has chosen that we do. 2 There is one way alone by which we come to where all dreams began. 3 And it is there that we will lay them down, to come away in peace forever. 4 Hear a brother call for help and answer him. 5 It will be God to Whom you answer, for you called on Him. 6 There is no other way to hear His Voice. 7 There is no other way to seek His Son. 8 There is no other way to find your Self. 9 Holy is healing, for the Son of God returns to Heaven through its kind embrace. 10 For healing tells him, in the Voice for God, that all his sins have been forgiven him.

VI. The Definition of Healing

P-2.VI.1. The process of psychotherapy, then, can be defined simply as forgiveness, for no healing can be anything else. 2 The unforgiving are sick, believing they are unforgiven. 3 The hanging-on to guilt, its hugging-close and sheltering, its loving protection and alert defense,–all this is but the grim refusal to forgive. 4 "God may not enter here" the sick repeat, over and over, while they mourn their loss and yet rejoice in it. 5 Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity. 6 Until he hears it, he cannot understand that it is he who sings it to himself. 7 To hear it is the first step in recovery. 8 To question it must then become his choice.

P-2.VI.2. There is a tendency, and it is very strong, to hear this song of death only an instant, and then dismiss it uncorrected. 2 These fleeting awarenesses represent the many opportunities given us literally "to change our tune." 3 The sound of healing can be heard instead. 4 But first the willingness to question the "truth" of the song of condemnation must arise. 5 The strange distortions woven inextricably into the self-concept, itself but a pseudo-creation, make this ugly sound seem truly beautiful. 6 "The rhythm of the universe," "the herald angel's song," all these and more are heard instead of loud discordant shrieks.

P-2.VI.3. The ear translates; it does not hear. 2 The eye reproduces; it does not see. 3 Their task is to make agreeable whatever is called on, however disagreeable it may be. 4 They answer the decisions of the mind, reproducing its desires and translating them into acceptable and pleasant forms. 5 Sometimes the thought behind the form breaks through, but only very briefly, and the mind grows fearful and begins to doubt its sanity. 6 Yet it will not permit its slaves to change the forms they look upon; the sounds they hear. 7 These are its "remedies"; its "safeguards" from insanity.

P-2.VI.4. These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is. 2 Seen undisguised it is intolerable. 3 Without protection it could not endure. 4 Here is all sickness cherished, but without the recognition that this is so. 5 For when an unforgiveness is not recognized, the form it takes seems to be something else. 6 And now it is the "something else" that seems to terrify. 7 But it is not the "something else" that can be healed. 8 It is not sick, and needs no remedy. 9 To concentrate your healing efforts here is but futility. 10 Who can cure what cannot be sick and make it well?

P-2.VI.5. Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. 2 The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion. 3 So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents. 4 Yet seeing this will not effect a cure. 5 That is achieved by only one recognition; that only forgiveness heals an unforgiveness, and only an unforgiveness can possibly give rise to sickness of any kind.

P-2.VI.6. This realization is the final goal of psychotherapy. 2 How is it reached? 3 The therapist sees in the patient all that he has not forgiven in himself, and is thus given another chance to look at it, open it to re-evaluation and forgive it. 4 When this occurs, he sees his sins as gone into a past that is no longer here. 5 Until he does this, he must think of evil as besetting him here and now. 6 The patient is his screen for the projection of his sins, enabling him to let them go. 7 Let him retain one spot of sin in what he looks upon, and his release is partial and will not be sure.

P-2.VI.7. No one is healed alone. 2 This is the joyous song salvation sings to all who hear its Voice. 3 This statement cannot be too often remembered by all who see themselves as therapists. 4 Their patients can but be seen as the bringers of forgiveness, for it is they who come to demonstrate their sinlessness to eyes that still believe that sin is there to look upon. 5 Yet will the proof of sinlessness, seen in the patient and accepted in the therapist, offer the mind of both a covenant in which they meet and join and are as one.

VII. The Ideal Patient-Therapist Relationship

P-2.VII.1. Who, then, is the therapist, and who is the patient? 2 In the end, everyone is both. 3 He who needs healing must heal. 4 Physician, heal thyself. 5 Who else is there to heal? 6 And who else is in need of healing? 7 Each patient who comes to a therapist offers him a chance to heal himself. 8 He is therefore his therapist. 9 And every therapist must learn to heal from each patient who comes to him. 10 He thus becomes his patient. 11 God does not know of separation. 12 What He knows is only that He has one Son. 13 His knowledge is reflected in the ideal patient-therapist relationship. 14 God comes to him who calls, and in Him he recognizes Himself.

P-2.VII.2. Think carefully, teacher and therapist, for whom you pray, and who is in need of healing. 2 For therapy is prayer, and healing is its aim and its result. 3 What is prayer except the joining of minds in a relationship which Christ can enter? 4 This is His home, into which psychotherapy invites Him. 5 What is symptom cure, when another is always there to choose? 6 But once Christ enters in, what choice is there except to have Him stay? 7 There is no need for more than this, for it is everything. 8 Healing is here, and happiness and peace. 9 These are the "symptoms" of the ideal patient-therapist relationship, replacing those with which the patient came to ask for help.

P-2.VII.3. The process that takes place in this relationship is actually one in which the therapist in his heart tells the patient that all his sins have been forgiven him, along with his own. 2 What could be the difference between healing and forgiveness? 3 Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. 4 His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. 5 Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed. 6 This, however, needs the help of a very advanced therapist, capable of joining with the patient in a holy relationship in which all sense of separation finally is overcome.

P-2.VII.4. For this, one thing and one thing only is required: The therapist in no way confuses himself with God. 2 All "unhealed healers" make this fundamental confusion in one form or another, because they must regard themselves as self-created rather than God-created. 3 This confusion is rarely if ever in awareness, or the unhealed healer would instantly become a teacher of God, devoting his life to the function of true healing. 4 Before he reached this point, he thought he was in charge of the therapeutic process and was therefore responsible for its outcome. 5 His patient's errors thus became his own failures, and guilt became the cover, dark and strong, for what should be the Holiness of Christ. 6 Guilt is inevitable in those who use their judgment in making their decisions. 7 Guilt is impossible in those through whom the Holy Spirit speaks.

P-2.VII.5. The passing of guilt is the true aim of therapy and the obvious aim of forgiveness. 2 In this their oneness can be clearly seen. 3 Yet who could experience the end of guilt who feels responsible for his brother in the role of guide for him? 4 Such a function presupposes a knowledge that no one here can have; a certainty of past, present and future, and of all the effects that may occur in them. 5 Only from this omniscient point of view would such a role be possible. 6 Yet no perception is omniscient, nor is the tiny self of one alone against the universe able to assume he has such wisdom except in madness. 7 That many therapists are mad is obvious. 8 No unhealed healer can be wholey sane.

P-2.VII.6. Yet it is as insane not to accept a function God has given you as to invent one He has not. 2 The advanced therapist in no way can ever doubt the power that is in him. 3 Nor does he doubt its Source. 4 He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is. 5 And he is this because of his Creator, Whose Love is in him and Who cannot fail. 6 Think what this means; he has the gifts of God Himself to give away. 7 His patients are God's saints, who call upon his sanctity to make it theirs. 8 And as he gives it to them, they behold Christ's shining face as it looks back at them.

P-2.VII.7. The insane, thinking they are God, are not afraid to offer weakness to God's Son. 2 But what they see in him because of this they fear indeed. 3 The unhealed healer cannot but be fearful of his patients, and suspect them of the treachery he sees in him. 4 He tries to heal, and thus at times he may. 5 But he will not succeed except to some extent and for a little while. 6 He does not see the Christ in him who calls. 7 What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him? 8 Behold your God in him, for what you see will be your Answer.

P-2.VII.8. Think what the joining of two brothers really means. 2 And then forget the world and all its little triumphs and its dreams of death. 3 The same are one, and nothing now can be remembered of the world of guilt. 4 The room becomes a temple, and the street a stream of stars that brushes lightly past all sickly dreams. 5 Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?

P-2.VII.9. Be thankful, therapist, that you can see such things as this, if you but understand your proper role. 2 But if you fail in this, you have denied that God created you, and so you will not know you are His Son. 3 Who is your brother now? 4 What saint can come to take you home with him? 5 You lost the way. 6 And can you now expect to see in him an answer that you have refused to give? 7 Heal and be healed. 8 There is no other choice of pathways that can ever lead to peace. 9 O let your patient in, for he has come to you from God. 10 Is not his holiness enough to wake your memory of Him?

3. THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

I. The Selection of Patients

P-3.I.1. Everyone who is sent to you is a patient of yours. 2 This does not mean that you select him, nor that you choose the kind of treatment that is suitable. 3 But it does mean that no one comes to you by mistake. 4 There are no errors in God's plan. 5 It would be an error, however, to assume that you know what to offer everyone who comes. 6 This is not up to you to decide. 7 There is a tendency to assume that you are being called on constantly to make sacrifices of yourself for those who come. 8 This could hardly be true. 9 To demand sacrifice of yourself is to demand a sacrifice of God, and He knows nothing of sacrifice. 10 Who could ask of Perfection that He be imperfect?

P-3.I.2. Who, then, decides what each brother needs? 2 Surely not you, who do not yet recognize who he is who asks. 3 There is Something in him that will tell you, if you listen. 4 And that is the answer; listen. 5 Do not demand, do not decide, do not sacrifice. 6 Listen. 7 What you hear is true. 8 Would God send His Son to you and not be sure you recognize his needs? 9 Think what God is telling you; He needs your voice to speak for Him. 10 Could anything be holier? 11 Or a greater gift to you? 12 Would you rather choose who would be god, or hear the Voice of Him Who is God in you?

P-3.I.3. Your patients need not be physically present for you to serve them in the Name of God. 2 This may be hard to remember, but God will not have His gifts to you limited to the few you actually see. 3 You can see others as well, for seeing is not limited to the body's eyes. 4 Some do not need your physical presence. 5 They need you as much, and perhaps even more, at the instant they are sent. 6 You will recognize them in whatever way can be most helpful to both of you. 7 It does not matter how they come. 8 They will be sent in whatever form is most helpful; a name, a thought, a picture, an idea, or perhaps just a feeling of reaching out to someone somewhere. 9 The joining is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. 10 It cannot fail to be accomplished.

P-3.I.4. A holy therapist, an advanced teacher of God, never forgets one thing; he did not make the curriculum of salvation, nor did he establish his part in it. 2 He understands that his part is necessary to the whole, and that through it he will recognize the whole when his part is complete. 3 Meanwhile he must learn, and his patients are the means sent to him for his learning. 4 What could he be but grateful for them and to them? 5 They come bearing God. 6 Would he refuse this Gift for a pebble, or would he close the door on the savior of the world to let in a ghost? 7 Let him not betray the Son of God. 8 Who calls on him is far beyond his understanding. 9 Yet would he not rejoice that he can answer, when only thus will he be able to hear the call and understand that it is his?

II. Is Psychotherapy a Profession?

P-3.II.1. Strictly speaking the answer is no. 2 How could a separate profession be one in which everyone is engaged? 3 And how could any limits be laid on an interaction in which everyone is both patient and therapist in every relationship in which he enters? 4 Yet practically speaking, it can still be said that there are those who devote themselves primarily to healing of one sort or another as their chief function. 5 And it is to them that a large number of others turn for help. 6 That, in effect, is the practice of therapy. 7 These are therefore "officially" helpers. 8 They are devoted to certain kinds of needs in their professional activities, although they may be far more able teachers outside of them. 9 These people need no special rules, of course, but they may be called upon to use special applications of the general principles of healing.

P-3.II.2. First, the professional therapist is in an excellent position to demonstrate that there is no order of difficulty in healing. 2 For this, however, he needs special training, because the curriculum by which he became a therapist probably taught him little or nothing about the real principles of healing. 3 In fact, it probably taught him how to make healing impossible. 4 Most of the world's teaching follows a curriculum in judgment, with the aim of making the therapist a judge.

P-3.II.3. Even this the Holy Spirit can use, and will use, given the slightest invitation. 2 The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest. 3 He may be uninterested in healing as his major goal. 4 Yet something happened to him, however slight it may have been, when he chose to be a healer, however misguided the direction he may have chosen. 5 That "something" is enough. 6 Sooner or later that something will rise and grow; a patient will touch his heart, and the therapist will silently ask him for help. 7 He has himself found a therapist. 8 He has asked the Holy Spirit to enter the relationship and heal it. 9 He has accepted the Atonement for himself.

P-3.II.4. God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. 2 No, He declared it perfect, and so it was. 3 And since His creations do not change and last forever, so it is now. 4 Yet neither a perfect therapist nor a perfect patient can possibly exist. 5 Both must have denied their perfection, for their very need for each other implies a sense of lack. 6 A one-to-one relationship is not one Relationship. 7 Yet it is the means of return; the way God chose for the return of His Son. 8 In that strange dream a strange correction must enter, for only that is the call to awake. 9 And what else should therapy be? 10 Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. 11 This is the only message that any two should ever give each other.

P-3.II.5. Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. 2 And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship. 3 At that moment the good is returned to them, blessed by the Holy Spirit as a gift from their Creator as a sign of His Love. 4 For the therapeutic relationship must become like the relationship of the Father and the Son. 5 There is no other, for there is nothing else. 6 The therapists of this world do not expect this outcome, and many of their patients would not be able to accept help from them if they did. 7 Yet no therapist really sets the goal for the relationships of which he is a part. 8 His understanding begins with recognizing this, and then goes on from there.

P-3.II.6. It is in the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient that healing occurs. 2 In some relationships this point is never reached, although both patient and therapist may change their dreams in the process. 3 Yet it will not be the same dream for both of them, and so it is not the dream of forgiveness in which both will someday wake. 4 The good is saved; indeed is cherished. 5 But only little time is saved. 6 The new dreams will lose their temporary appeal and turn to dreams of fear, which is the content of all dreams. 7 Yet no patient can accept more than he is ready to receive, and no therapist can offer more than he believes he has. 8 And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use.

P-3.II.7. Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing. 2 This is a necessary understanding for the healed healer. 3 He has learned that it is no harder to wake a brother from one dream than from another. 4 No professional therapist can hold this understanding consistently in his mind, offering it to all who come to him. 5 There are some in this world who have come very close, but they have not accepted the gift entirely in order to stay and let their understanding remain on earth until the closing of time. 6 They could hardly be called professional therapists. 7 They are the Saints of God. 8 They are the Saviors of the world. 9 Their image remains, because they have chosen that it be so. 10 They take the place of other images, and help with kindly dreams.

P-3.II.8. Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless. 2 Yet well before he reaches this in time he can go towards it. 3 Many holy instants can be his along the way. 4 A goal marks the end of a journey, not the beginning, and as each goal is reached another can be dimly seen ahead. 5 Most professional therapists are still at the very start of the beginning stage of the first journey. 6 Even those who have begun to understand what they must do may still oppose the setting-out. 7 Yet all the laws of healing can be theirs in just an instant. 8 The journey is not long except in dreams.

P-3.II.9. The professional therapist has one advantage that can save enormous time if it is properly used. 2 He has chosen a road in which there is great temptation to misuse his role. 3 This enables him to pass by many obstacles to peace quite quickly, if he escapes the temptation to assume a function that has not been given him. 4 To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient. 5 There is no halfway point in this. 6 Either they are equal or not. 7 The attempts of therapists to compromise in this respect are strange indeed. 8 Some utilize the relationship merely to collect bodies to worship at their shrine, and this they regard as healing. 9 Many patients, too, consider this strange procedure as salvation. 10 Yet at each meeting there is One Who says, "My brother, choose again."

P-3.II.10. Do not forget that any form of specialness must be defended, and will be. 2 The defenseless therapist has the strength of God with him, but the defensive therapist has lost sight of the Source of his salvation. 3 He does not see and he does not hear. 4 How, then, can he teach? 5 Because it is the Will of God that he take his place in the plan for salvation. 6 Because it is the Will of God that his patient be helped to join with him there. 7 Because his inability to see and hear does not limit the Holy Spirit in any way. 8 Except in time. 9 In time there can be a great lag between the offering and the acceptance of healing. 10 This is the veil across the face of Christ. 11 Yet it can be but an illusion, because time does not exist and the Will of God has always been exactly as it is.

III. The Question of Payment

P-3.III.1. No one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing. 2 It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan. 3 Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is here. 4 Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help him better serve the plan. 5 Money is not evil. 6 It is nothing. 7 But no one here can live with no illusions, for he must yet strive to have the last illusion be accepted by everyone everywhere. 8 He has a mighty part in this one purpose, for which he came. 9 He stays here but for this. 10 And while he stays he will be given what he needs to stay.

P-3.III.2. Only an unhealed healer would try to heal for money, and he will not succeed to the extent to which he values it. 2 Nor will he find his healing in the process. 3 There will be those of whom the Holy Spirit asks some payment for His purpose. 4 There will be those from whom He does not ask. 5 It should not be the therapist who makes these decisions. 6 There is a difference between payment and cost. 7 To give money where God's plan allots it has no cost. 8 To withhold it from where it rightfully belongs has enormous cost. 9 The therapist who would do this loses the name of healer, for he could never understand what healing is. 10 He cannot give it, and so he does not have it.

P-3.III.3. The therapists of this world are indeed useless to the world's salvation. 2 They make demands, and so they cannot give. 3 Patients can pay only for the exchange of illusions. 4 This, indeed, must demand payment, and the cost is great. 5 A "bought" relationship cannot offer the only gift whereby all healing is accomplished. 6 Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit's only dream, must have no cost. 7 For if it does, it merely crucifies God's Son again. 8 Can this be how he is forgiven? 9 Can this be how the dream of sin will end?

P-3.III.4. The right to live is something no one need fight for. 2 It is promised him, and guaranteed by God. 3 Therefore it is a right the therapist and patient share alike. 4 If their relationship is to be holy, whatever one needs is given by the other; whatever one lacks the other supplies. 5 Herein is the relationship made holy, for herein both are healed. 6 The therapist repays the patient in gratitude, as does the patient repay him. 7 There is no cost to either. 8 But thanks are due to both, for the release from long imprisonment and doubt. 9 Who would not be grateful for such a gift? 10 Yet who could possibly imagine that it could be bought?

P-3.III.5. It has well been said that to him who hath shall be given. 2 Because he has, he can give. 3 And because he gives, he shall be given. 4 This is the law of God, and not of the world. 5 So it is with God's healers. 6 They give because they have heard His Word and understood it. 7 All that they need will thus be given them. 8 But they will lose this understanding unless they remember that all they have comes only from God. 9 If they believe they need anything from a brother, they will recognize him as a brother no longer. 10 And if they do this, a light goes out even in Heaven. 11 Where God's Son turns against himself, he can look only upon darkness. 12 He has himself denied the light, and cannot see.

P-3.III.6. One rule should always be observed: No one should be turned away because he cannot pay. 2 No one is sent by accident to anyone. 3 Relationships are always purposeful. 4 Whatever their purpose may have been before the Holy Spirit entered them, they are always His potential temple; the resting place of Christ and home of God Himself. 5 Whoever comes has been sent. 6 Perhaps he was sent to give his brother the money he needed. 7 Both will be blessed thereby. 8 Perhaps he was sent to teach the therapist how much he needs forgiveness, and how valueless is money in comparison. 9 Again will both be blessed. 10 Only in terms of cost could one have more. 11 In sharing, everyone must gain a blessing without cost.

P-3.III.7. This view of payment may well seem impractical, and in the eyes of the world it would be so. 2 Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. 3 How much is gained by striving for illusions? 4 How much is lost by throwing God away? 5 And is it possible to do so? 6 Surely it is impractical to strive for nothing, and to attempt to do what is impossible. 7 Then stop a while, long enough to think of this: You have perhaps been seeking for salvation without recognizing where to look. 8 Whoever asks your help can show you where. 9 What greater gift than this could you be given? 10 What greater gift is there that you would give?

P-3.III.8. Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. 2 Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. 3 The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. 4 He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. 5 He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. 6 Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend. 7 Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well. 8 Deny him entrance, and you have denied the Christ in you. 9 Remember the sorrowful story of the world, and the glad tidings of salvation. 10 Remember the plan of God for the restoration of joy and peace. 11 And do not forget how very simple are the ways of God:

12 You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light.

13 And then God sent His Son to give it to you.

True Prayer excerpt from The Song Of Prayer: Prayer, Forgiveness, Healing

1. PRAYER

S-1.in.1. Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. 2 It was then what it is to become; the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son. 3 Endless the harmony, and endless, too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other. 4 And in this, creation is extended. 5 God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. 6 His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father's Name. 7 The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. 8 For such it was before time seemed to be.

S-1.in.2. To you who are in time a little while, prayer takes the form that best will suit your need. 2 You have but one. 3 What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God. 4 Prayer now must be the means by which God's Son leaves separate goals and separate interests by, and turns in holy gladness to the truth of union in his Father and himself.

S-1.in.3. Lay down your dreams, you holy Son of God, and rising up as God created you, dispense with idols and remember Him. 2 Prayer will sustain you now, and bless you as you lift your heart to Him in rising song that reaches higher and then higher still, until both high and low have disappeared. 3 Faith in your goal will grow and hold you up as you ascend the shining stairway to the lawns of Heaven and the gate of peace. 4 For this is prayer, and here salvation is. 5 This is the way. 6 It is God's gift to you.

I. True Prayer

S-1.I.1. Prayer is a way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God. 2 It is not merely a question or an entreaty. 3 It cannot succeed until you realize that it asks for nothing. 4 How else could it serve its purpose? 5 It is impossible to pray for idols and hope to reach God. 6 True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. 7 Ask, rather, to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there.

S-1.I.2. You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. 2 You have also been told that there is only one problem and one answer. 3 In prayer this is not contradictory. 4 There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. 5 You cannot be asked to accept answers which are beyond the level of need that you can recognize. 6 Therefore, it is not the form of the question that matters, nor how it is asked. 7 The form of the answer, if given by God, will suit your need as you see it. 8 This is merely an echo of the reply of His Voice. 9 The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and of Love.

S-1.I.3. You cannot, then, ask for the echo. 2 It is the song that is the gift. 3 Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary. 4 In true prayer you hear only the song. 5 All the rest is merely added. 6 You have sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you.

S-1.I.4. The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. 2 To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it. 3 Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God's Hands. 4 There they become your gifts to Him, for they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no Love but His. 5 What could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? 6 Can this be traded for a bit of trifling advice about a problem of an instant's duration? 7 God answers only for eternity. 8 But still all little answers are contained in this.

S-1.I.5. Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. 2 It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness. 3 Why should holiness entreat, being fully entitled to everything Love has to offer? 4 And it is to Love you go in prayer. 5 Prayer is an offering; a giving up of yourself to be at one with Love. 6 There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want. 7 That nothingness becomes the altar of God. 8 It disappears in Him.

S-1.I.6. This is not a level of prayer that everyone can attain as yet. 2 Those who have not reached it still need your help in prayer because their asking is not yet based upon acceptance. 3 Help in prayer does not mean that another mediates between you and God. 4 But it does mean that another stands beside you and helps to raise you up to Him. 5 One who has realized the goodness of God prays without fear. 6 And one who prays without fear cannot but reach Him. 7 He can therefore also reach His Son, wherever he may be and whatever form he may seem to take.

S-1.I.7. Praying to Christ in anyone is true prayer because it is a gift of thanks to His Father. 2 To ask that Christ be but Himself is not an entreaty. 3 It is a song of thanksgiving for what you are. 4 Herein lies the power of prayer. 5 It asks nothing and receives everything. 6 This prayer can be shared because it receives for everyone. 7 To pray with one who knows that this is true is to be answered. 8 Perhaps the specific form of resolution for a specific problem will occur to either of you; it does not matter which. 9 Perhaps it will reach both, if you are genuinely attuned to one another. 10 It will come because you have realized that Christ is in both of you. 11 That is its only truth.