A gentleman
appear ed to me and said, “Ex cuse me, Miss W illiamson, but
we thought we should tell you: In the cosmic r oll call, you
are consider ed a hawk, not a dove.”
I was incensed. “No way,” I said indignantly . “I’m totally
for peace. I’m a dove all the way .”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I’m looking on our charts, and
it says very clearly right her e: Marianne W illiamson,
warmonger . You’re at war with R onald R eagan, Caspar
Weinber ger, the CIA, in fact the entir e American defense
establishment. No, I’m sor ry. You’re deﬁnitely a hawk.”
I saw, of course, that he was right. I had just as many
missiles in my head as R onald R eagan had in his. I thought it
was wr ong for him to judge communists, but I thought it was
okay for me to judge him. Why? Because I was right, of
course! I spent years as an angry lef t-winger befor e I realized
that an angry generation can’t bring peace. Everything wedo is infused with the ener gy with which we do it. As Gandhi
said, “W e must be the change.” What the ego doesn’t want
us to see is that the guns we need to get rid of ﬁrst ar e the
guns in our own heads. 4. THE CHOICE TO L OVE
“The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit
the choice for guiltlessness .”
The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wr ong. The Holy Spirit always emphasizes what they’ve done right. The Course lik ens the ego to a scavenger dog that seeks out
every scrap of evidence for our br other’s guilt and lays it at
its master’s feet. The Holy Spirit, similarly, sends out its own
messengers to seek evidence of our br other’s innocence. The important thing is that we decide what we want to see
befor e we see it. W e receive what we r equest. “ Projection
makes per ception.” W e can ﬁnd—and in fact, we will ﬁnd—
whatever it is we’r e looking for in life. The Course says that
we think we will understand a person enough to know
whether or not they ar e lovable, but that unless we love
them, we can never understand them. The spiritual path
involves taking conscious r esponsibility for what we choose
to per ceive—our br other’s guilt or innocence. W e see a
brother’s innocence when it’s all we want  to see. P eople ar e
not perfect—that is, they do not yet e xpress e xternally their
internal perfection. Whether we choose to focus on the guilt
in their personality, or the innocence in their soul, is up to
us. What we think of as people’s guilt is their fear . All
negativity derives fr om fear . When someone is angry, they
are afraid. When someone is rude, they ar e afraid. When
someone is manipulative, they ar e afraid. When someone iscruel, they ar e afraid. Ther e is no fear that love does not
dissolve. Ther e is no negativity that for giveness does not
transfor m.
Darkness is mer ely the absence of light, and fear is
merely the absence of love. W e can’t get rid of darkness by
hitting it with a baseball bat, because ther e is nothing to hit. If we want to be rid of darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot ﬁght it but
must r eplace it with love. The choice to love is not always easy . The ego puts up
terrible r esistance to giving up fear -laden r esponses. This is
wher e the Holy Spirit comes in. It’s not our job to change
our own per ceptions, but to r emember to ask Him to change
them for us. Let’s say your husband has lef t you for another woman. You can’t change other people, and you can’t ask God to
change them, either . You can, however, ask to see this
situation diﬀer ently. You can ask for peace. Y ou can ask the
Holy Spirit to change your per ceptions. The miracle is that,
as you r elease judgment of your husband and the other
woman, the pain in your gut begins to subside. The ego might say in that situation that you’ll never be
at peace until your husband comes back. But peace isn’t
deter mined by cir cumstances outside us. P eace stems fr om
forgiveness. P ain doesn’t stem fr om the love we’r e denied
by others, but rather fr om the love that we deny them. In a
case lik e that, it feels as though we’r e hurt by what
someone else did. But what r eally has occur red is that
someone else’s closed heart has tempted us to close our
own, and it is our own denial of love that hurts us. That’s
why the miracle is a shif t in our own thinking: thewillingness to k eep our own heart open, r egardless of what’s
going on outside us. A miracle is always available in any situation, because no
one can decide for us how to interpr et our own e xperience. ‘Ther e are only two emotions: love and fear .’ We can
interpr et fear as a call for love. Miracle work ers, says the
Course, ar e gener ous out of self -inter est. W e give someone
a break so we can stay in peace ourselves. The ego says that we can pr oject our anger onto another
person and not feel it ourselves, but since all minds ar e
continuous, whatever we pr oject onto another we continue
to feel. Getting angry at someone else might mak e us feel
better for a while, but ultimately all the fear and guilt comes
back at us. If we judge another person, then they’ll judge us
back—and even if they don’t, we’ll feel lik e they did ! Living in this world has taught us to instinctively r espond
from an unnatural space, always jumping to anger, or
paranoia, or defensiveness, or some other for m of fear . Unnatural thinking feels natural to us, and natural thinking
feels unnatural. A Course in Miracles  is not about pouring pink paint over
our anger and pr etending it doesn’t e xist. What is
psychologically unsound is spiritually unsound. Denial or
suppr ession of emotions is unsound. Y ou don’t say, “I’m not
angry, r eally I’m not. I’m on of A Course in Miracles  and I
don’t get angry anymor e,” when inside you’r e seething. The
Holy Spirit tells us, “ Don’t try to purif y yourself befor e
coming to me. I am the puriﬁer .” I was once on my way to
giving a lectur e on the Course, and I thought about a
woman I knew who I was feeling annoyed at. V ery quickly, I
tried to hide the thought, as though it wasn’t holy enough
for me to be thinking at such a time. Then it seemed asthough a voice in my head said, “ Hey, I’m your friend. Remember?” The Holy Spirit wasn’t judging me for my
anger; He was ther e to help me move past it. We mustn’t for get what the Holy Spirit is for . We don’t
deny we’r e upset, but at the same time we own up to the
fact that all our feelings stem fr om our own loveless
thinking, and we’r e willing to have that lovelessness healed. Growth is never about focusing on someone else’s lessons,
but only on our own. W e aren’t victims of the world outside
us. As har d as it is to believe sometimes, we’r e always
responsible for how we see things. Ther e would be no savior
if ther e wer e no need for one. Of course things happen in
this world that mak e it almost impossible to love—cruel,
horrible things—but the Holy Spirit is within us to do the
impossible. He does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He will lend us His str ength, and when His mind is joined
with ours, ego thinking is cast out. But we must be awar e of our ego feelings in or der to
release them. “ He cannot shine away what you k eep hidden,
for you have not oﬀer ed it to Him and he cannot tak e it fr om
you.” It would be violating our fr ee will for the Holy Spirit to
change our mental patter ns unask ed. But when we ask Him
to change them, He will. When we’r e angry, or upset for any
reason, we’r e ask ed to say, “I’m angry but I’m willing not to
be. I’m willing to see this situation diﬀer ently.” We ask the
Holy Spirit to enter into the situation and show it to us fr om
a diﬀer ent perspective. Once I was having por celain ﬁnger nails applied, and my
manicurist’s friend came into the r oom. I couldn’t tolerate
her personality . From the moment this woman opened her
mouth, I felt lik e someone was running ﬁnger nails over a
blackboar d. Since my hands wer en’t fr ee, I couldn’t leave
the room, and since the manicurist was someone who cameto my lectur es, I felt ashamed of my own r eaction. I prayed
and ask ed God for help. His r esponse was dramatic. W ithin
moments, the “ obno xious” woman began talking about her
childhood, and particularly her r elationship with her father . As she began to describe her upbringing, it became
perfectly clear to me how she would have gr own up with
little self -esteem, and an inor dinate need to develop
grandiose personality characteristics, which in her mind
would denote str ength. Her defenses didn’t work, of course. Coming fr om fear, they mer ely put people oﬀ. Suddenly, the
same behavior that had so ir ritated me ﬁve minutes befor e,
now elicited in me a deep compassion. The Holy Spirit had
pointed me to the infor mation that would melt my heart. Now I saw her diﬀer ently. That was the miracle: Her
behavior hadn’t changed, but I had. 5. LEVELS OF TEACHING
“Therefore, the plan includes very speciﬁc
contacts to be made for every teacher of God .”
Relationships ar e assignments. They ar e part of a vast plan
for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which
each individual soul is led to gr eater awar eness and
expanded love. R elationships ar e the Holy Spirit’s
laboratories in which He brings together people who have
the maximal opportunity for mutual gr owth. He appraises
who can lear n most fr om whom at any given time, and then
assigns them to each other . Like a giant universal computer,
He knows e xactly what combination of ener gies, in e xactly
what conte xt, would do the most to further God’s plan for
salvation. No meetings ar e accidental. “Those who ar e to
meet will meet, because together they have the potential
for a holy r elationship.”The Course says that ther e are ‘thr ee levels of teaching’
in relationship. The ﬁrst level is what we think of as a casual
encounter, such as two strangers meeting in an elevator or
students who “happen ” to walk home fr om school together . The second level is a “mor e sustained r elationship, in which,
for a time, two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-
learning situation and then appear to separate.” The thir d
level of teaching is a r elationship which, once for med, lasts
all our lives. A t this level, “each person is given a chosen
learning partner who pr esents him with unlimited
opportunities for lear ning.”
Even at the ﬁrst level of teaching, the people in the
elevator might smile at one another or the students might
become friends. It is mostly in casual encounters that we
are given a chance to practice the ﬁne art of chiseling away
the har d edges of our personalities. Whatever personal
weaknesses ar e evident in our casual interactions will
inevitably appear magniﬁed in mor e intense r elationships. If
we’re crabby with the bank teller, it will be har der to be
gentle with the people we love the most. At the second level of teaching, people ar e brought
together for mor e intense work. During their time together,
they will go thr ough whatever e xperiences pr ovide them
with their ne xt lessons to be lear ned. When physical
proximity no longer supports the highest level of teaching
and lear ning between them, the assignment will call for
physical separation. What then appears to be the end of the
relationship however, is not r eally an end. R elationships ar e
eternal. They ar e of the mind, not the body, since people
are ener gy, not physical substance. Bodies joining may or
may not denote r eal joining, since joining is of the mind. People who have slept in the same bed for twenty -ﬁve years
may not be truly joined, and people who ar e many miles
apart may not be separate at all.Often we see a couple who has separated or divor ced
and look with sadness at the “ failur e” of their r elationship. But if both people lear ned what they wer e meant to lear n,
then that r elationship was a success. Now it may be time for
physical separation so that mor e can be lear ned in other
ways. That not only means lear ning elsewher e, from other
people; it also means lear ning the lessons of pur e love that
come fr om having to r elease the for m of an e xisting
relationship. Third-level, life-long r elationships ar e generally few
because “their e xistence implies that those involved have
reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-
learning balance is actually perfect.” That doesn’t mean,
however, that we necessarily r ecognize our thir d-level
assignments; in fact, generally we don’t. W e may even feel
hostility towar d these particular people. Someone with
whom we have a lifetime’s worth of lessons to lear n is
someone whose pr esence in our lives for ces us to gr ow. Sometimes it r epresents someone with whom we participate
lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it r epresents someone
who we e xperience as a thor n in our side for years, or even
forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us, doesn’t
mean we lik e them. P eople who have the most to teach us
are often the ones who r eﬂect back to us the limits to our
own capacity to love, those who consciously or
unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us
our walls. Our walls ar e our wounds—the places wher e we
feel we can’t love any mor e, can’t connect any mor e deeply,
can’t for give past a certain point. W e are in each other’s
lives in or der to help us see wher e we most need healing,
and in or der to help us heal. 6. THE SPECIAL RELA TIONSHIP“The special love r elationship is the ego’s chief
weapon for k eeping you fr om Heaven .”
We can all r elate to the desir e to ﬁnd Mr . or Ms. Right. It’s
almost a cultural obsession. But accor ding to A Course in
Miracles , the sear ch for the perfect person to “ﬁx” us is one
of our biggest psychic wounds, and one of the ego’s most
powerful delusions. It r epresents a notion that A Course in
Miracles  calls the “special r elationship.” Although the wor d
“special” nor mally implies something wonderful, fr om a
Course perspective, special means diﬀer ent, ther efore
separate, which is characteristic of ego rather than spirit. A
special r elationship is a r elationship based on fear . ‘God cr eated only one begotten Son’ and He loves all of
us as one. T o Him, no one is diﬀer ent or special because no
one is actually separate fr om anyone else. Since our peace
lies in loving as God loves, we must strive to love everyone. Our desir e to ﬁnd one “special person,” one part of the
Sonship who will complete us, is hurtful because it is
delusional. It means we’r e seeking salvation in separation
rather than in oneness. The only love that completes us is
the love of God, and the love of God is the love of everyone. That doesn’t mean that the for m of our r elationships is the
same with everyone, but it means that we ar e seeking the
same content in every r elationship: a quality of br otherly
love and friendship that goes beyond the changes of for m
and bodies. Just as the ‘Holy Spirit was God’s answer to the
separation, the special r elationship was then the ego’s
answer to the cr eation of the Holy Spirit.’ A fter the
separation, we began to feel a huge gaping hole within us,
and most of us still feel it. The only antidote for this is the
Atonement, or r eturn to God, because the pain we feel is
actually our own denial of love. The ego, however, tells usdiﬀer ently. It ar gues that the love we need must come fr om
someone else, and that ther e’s one special person out ther e
who can ﬁll up that hole. Since the desir e for that person
actually stems fr om our belief that we’r e separate fr om God,
then the desir e itself symbolizes the separation and the guilt
we feel because of it. Our sear ch then car ries the ener gy of
the separation. It becomes about guilt. This is why so much
anger is of ten ar oused in our closest r elationships. W e’re
projecting onto someone else the rage we feel against
ourselves for cutting oﬀ our own love. Often when we think we ar e “in love” with a person, as A
Course in Miracles  indicates, we’r e actually anything but. The special r elationship is based not on love but on guilt. The special r elationship is the ego’s seductive pull away
from God. It is a major for m of idolatry, or temptation to
think that something other than God can complete us and
give us peace. The ego tells us that ther e is some special
person out ther e who will mak e all the pain go away . We
don’t r eally believe that, of course, but then on the other
hand we r eally do . Our cultur e has br ed the idea into us,
through books, songs, movies, advertising, and mor e
importantly, the conspiracy of other egos. It is the job of the
Holy Spirit to transfor m the ener gy of special love fr om
treachery to holiness. The special r elationship mak es other people—their
behavior, their choices, their opinions of us—too important. It mak es us think we need another person, when in fact we
are complete and whole as we ar e. Special love is a “blind”
love, seeking to heal the wr ong wound. It addr esses the gap
between ourselves and God, which doesn’t actually e xist but
which we think does. By addr essing this gap as r eal, and
displacing its sour ce onto other people, we actually
manufactur e the e xperience we seek to r ectify.Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we come together to
share joy. Under the ego’s dir ection, we come together to
share desperation. Negativity, however, cannot r eally be
shared because it is an illusion. “ A special r elationship is a
kind of union fr om which union is e xcluded.”
A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of
two emotional invalids. The purpose of a r elationship is not
for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two
complete people to join together for the gr eater glory of
God. The special r elationship is a device by which the ego
separates rather than joins us. Based on a belief in inter nal
emptiness, it is always asking, “What can I get?”, wher eas
the Holy Spirit asks, “What can I give?” The ego seeks to
use other people to fulﬁll our needs as we deﬁne them. Certain voices go on endlessly these days about whether or
not “ our needs ar e being met” in a r elationship. But when
we try to use a r elationship to serve our own purposes, we
falter because we ar e reinfor cing our illusion of need. Under
the ego’s guidance we’r e always looking for something, yet
always sabotaging what we’ve found. One of my girlfriends called me one day and said she had
had a date with someone she r eally lik ed. The ne xt week,
she called and said he had br oken a date with her in or der
to go out of town. She didn’t lik e him af ter all. “I won’t tak e
that fr om anyone,” she told me. “I’m r eady for a
relationship .”
“No you’r e not r eady for a r elationship,” I told her . “Not if
another person isn’t allowed to mak e a mistak e, you’r e not.”
The ego had told her to r eject the man because she was
ready for a r elationship, but what it was r eally doing was tomake sur e she wouldn’t have one. The ego isn’t looking for
someone to love; it’s looking for someone to attack. Its
dictate in love is “Seek, and do not ﬁnd.” It looks for a
reﬂection of itself, another mask that hides the face of
Christ. In the special r elationship, I’m afraid to show you the
real truth about myself—my fears, my weaknesses—
because I’m afraid that if you see them, you’ll leave. I’m
assuming you’r e as judgmental as I am. And I’m also not
really jumping up and down wanting to see your weak spots
either because it mak es me nervous to think I’m involved
with someone who has them. The whole setup mitigates
against authenticity and ther efore against r eal gr owth. A
special r elationship perpetuates the self -punishing
masquerade in which we all seek desperately to attract love
through being someone we’r e not. Although we’r e seeking
love, we’r e actually fostering our own self -hatr ed and lack of
self-esteem. What’s our miracle her e? It’s a shif t from thoughts of
specialness to thoughts of holiness. Our mental patter ns in
regard to r elationships ar e so fraught with fear—attack and
defensiveness, guilt and selﬁshness, however pr ettily
disguised—that many times we ar e brought to our knees. As
always, that’s a good place to be. W e pray for God to guide
our thoughts and feelings. ‘Y ou can place any r elationship
under the Holy Spirit’s car e and be sur e that it will not r esult
in pain.’
7. THE HOL Y RELA TIONSHIP
“The holy r elationship is the old unholy
relationship transfor med and seen anew .”
If the special r elationship is the ego’s r esponse to the
creation of the Holy Spirit, the holy r elationship is the HolySpirit’s r esponse back. The ‘holy r elationship is the old,
special r elationship transfor med.’ In the special r elationship,
the ego guides our thinking and we meet in fear, mask to
mask. In the holy r elationship, the Holy Spirit has changed
our minds about the purpose of love and we meet heart to
heart. A Course in Miracles  describes the diﬀer ence between an
unholy and a holy alliance:
“For an unholy r elationship is based on
diﬀer ences, wher e each one thinks the other has
what he has not. They come together, each to
complete himself and r ob the other . They stay
until they think that ther e is nothing lef t to steal,
and then move on. And so they wander thr ough
a world of strangers, unlik e themselves, living
with their bodies per haps under a common r oof
that shelters neither; in the same r oom and yet
a world apart . A holy r elationship starts fr om a diﬀer ent
premise. Each one has look ed within and seen
no lack. A ccepting his completion, he would
extend it by joining with another, whole as
himself .”
The purpose of a special r elationship is to teach us to
hate ourselves, while the purpose of a holy r elationship is to
heal us of our self -loathing. In the special r elationship, we
are always trying to hide our weaknesses. In the holy
relationship, it’s understood that we all have unhealed
places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with
another person. W e don’t try to hide our weaknesses, but
rather we understand that the r elationship is a conte xt for
healing thr ough mutual for giveness. A dam and Eve wer enaked in the gar den of Eden but not embar rassed. That
doesn’t mean they wer e physically nak ed. It means they
were emotionally nak ed, totally r eal and honest, yet they
were not embar rassed because they felt accepted
completely for who they wer e.
The Course pr esents an image of the special r elationship
as a pictur e set in a frame. The ego is mor e inter ested in the
frame—the idea of the perfect person who will “ﬁx”
everything—than we ar e in the pictur e, which is the person
himself . The frame is bar oque, and decorated with rubies
and diamonds. But the Course says the rubies ar e our blood
and the diamonds ar e our tears. That is the essence of
specialness. It is not love but e xploitation. What we call love
is often hate or at best, r obbery . Although we may not know
it consciously, our sear ch is of ten for someone who has
what we think we don’t have, and once we get it fr om them
we’ll be r eady to move on. In a holy r elationship, we’r e
interested in the pictur e itself . All we want by way of a
frame is a light support that does just enough to k eep the
pictur e in place. W e’re not inter ested in our br other for what
he can do for us. W e’re inter ested in our br other, period. The holy r elationship is, above all else, a friendship
between two br others. W e are not put her e to audition one
another, put someone on trial, or use other people to gratif y
our own ego needs. W e are not her e to ﬁx, change or belittle
another person. W e are her e to support, for give and heal
one another . I was once counsel ing a couple who wer e in the
process of messily completing their r elationship. The man
had moved on to date someone else and the woman was
angry . During our session she said to him about the new
girlfriend, “Y ou only lik e her because she tells you how
wonderful  you ar e all the time!” He look ed at her very
seriously and quietly said, “Y eah, I think that has something
to do with it.”How do we ﬁnd a holy r elationship? Not by asking God to
change our partners, but by asking God to change our
minds. W e don’t run away fr om someone we’r e attracted to
because we’r e afraid of specialness. Anytime ther e’s a
potential for love, ther e’s a potential for specialness. I of ten
ask audiences, “What’s the ﬁrst thing we should do when
we’re attracted to someone?” and they r eply in pep-rally
fashion, “ pray! ” The prayer goes something lik e this: “ Dear
God, you know, and I know, that I have mor e potential for
neurosis in this ar ea than in any other . Please tak e my
attraction, my thoughts and feelings about this person and
use them for your purposes. L et this r elationship unfold
accor ding to your will, Amen.”
Spiritual pr ogress is lik e a deto xiﬁcation. Things have to
come up in or der to be r eleased. Once we have ask ed to be
healed, then our unhealed places ar e forced to the surface. A relationship that is used by the Holy Spirit becomes a
place wher e our blocks to love ar e not suppr essed or
denied, but rather br ought into our conscious awar eness. We never get crazy lik e we do ar ound the people we’r e
really attracted to . Then we can see our dysfunctions
clearly, and when we’r e ready, ask God to show us another
way. As temples of healing, r elationships ar e like a trip to the
divine physician’s oﬃce. How can a doctor help us unless
we show him our wounds? Our fearful places have to be
revealed befor e they can be healed. A Course in Miracles
teaches that ‘darkness is to be br ought to light, and not the
other way ar ound.’ If a r elationship allows us to mer ely
avoid our unhealed places, then we’r e hiding ther e, not
growing. The universe will not support that. The ego thinks of a perfect r elationship as one in which
everybody shows a perfect face. But this is not necessarilyso, because a show of str ength is not always honest. It is
not always a genuine e xpression of who we ar e. If I pr etend
to have it together in some ar ea wher e I really don’t, I am
fostering an illusion about myself . I would only be doing this
out of fear—fear that if you saw the truth about me, I would
be rejected. God’s idea of a “good r elationship” and the ego’s idea of
one ar e completely diﬀer ent. T o the ego, a good r elationship
is one in which another person basically behaves the way
we want them to and never pr esses our buttons, never
violates our comfort zones. But if a r elationship e xists to
support our gr owth, then in many ways it e xists to do just
those things; for ce us out of our limited tolerance and
inability to love unconditionally . We’re not aligned with the
Holy Spirit until people can behave in any way they choose
to, and our own inner peace isn’t shak en. Ther e have been
times in my life wher e my thought about a r elationship was,
“This is ter rible,” but upon further r eﬂection I r ealized God
would pr obably be saying, “ Oh, this is good.” Marianne gets
to see, in other wor ds, her own neur oses mor e clearly . A girlfriend once told me she had br oken up with her
boyfriend. “Why?” I ask ed. “Because he didn’t call me for ﬁve days.”
I didn’t say anything. “He knows I need verbal r eassurance on a daily basis,”
she continued. “So I set my limits. Don’t you think that’s
good?”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s childish.” I paused. “ Have you
consider ed accepting him as he is?”“Well, thanks for the support,” she said. I responded, “Y ou’re welcome.”
I knew she thought of support as agr eement fr om others
that her boyfriend was guilty . Support for the belief in guilt
is extremely easy to ﬁnd. But r eal support is when we help
one another see beyond someone’s er rors, to dr op our
judgments and see the love that lies beyond. Our neur oses in r elationships usually stem fr om our
having an agenda for another person, or for the r elationship
itself. It’s not our job to try to mak e a relationship into
something we think it should be. If someone doesn’t behave
like a gr eat romantic partner, then per haps they’r e not
meant to be that for us. That doesn’t mak e them wr ong. Not
every r elationship is meant to be the ultimate r omance: if
the train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s not your train. The
ego seeks to use a r elationship to ﬁll our needs as we deﬁne
them; the Holy Spirit asks that the r elationship be used by
God to serve His purposes. And His purpose is always that
we might lear n how to love others mor e pur ely. We love
purely when we r elease other people to be who they ar e.
The ego seeks intimacy thr ough contr ol and guilt. The Holy
Spirit seeks intimacy thr ough acceptance and r elease. In the holy r elationship, we don’t seek to change
someone, but rather to see how beautiful they alr eady ar e.
Our prayer becomes “ Dear God, tak e the scales fr om in
front of my eyes. Help me to see my br other’s beauty .” It is
our failur e to accept people e xactly as they ar e that gives us
pain in a r elationship. Our ego is mer ely our fear . We all have egos, that doesn’t
make us bad people. Our egos ar e not wher e we ar e bad but
wher e we ar e wounded. The Course says that we ar e ‘allafraid on some level that if people saw who we r eally ar e,
they would r ecoil in hor ror.’ That is why we invent the mask,
to hide our true selves. But the true self—the Christ within
us—is that which is most beautiful. W e must r eveal
ourselves at the deepest level in or der to ﬁnd out how
lovable we r eally ar e. When we dig deeply enough into our
real natur e, we do not ﬁnd darkness. W e ﬁnd endless light. That is what the ego doesn’t want us to see; that our safety
actually lies in letting down  our mask. But we cannot do this
when we’r e constantly afraid of being judged. The holy
relationship is a conte xt wher e we feel safe enough to be
ourselves, knowing that our darkness will not be judged but
forgiven. In this way we ar e healed, and fr eed to move on
into the light of our true being. W e are motivated to gr ow. A
holy r elationship is this: “a common state of mind, wher e
both give er rors gladly to cor rection, that both may happily
be healed as one.”
8. ROMANTIC L OVE
“There is no love but God’s .”
‘Ther e are no diﬀer ent categories of love. Ther e isn’t one
kind of love between a mother and a child, another between
lovers, and another between friends. The love that is r eal is
the love that lies at the heart of all r elationships. That is the
love of God and it doesn’t change with for m or
circumstance.’
A girlfriend of mine r emark ed to me r ecently, “Y our
relationship with your baby must be showing you a whole
new kind of love.” “No, it’s not,” I r eplied. “ But it’s showing
me a new depth of tender ness, which is teaching me mor e
about what love is.”People ask, “Why can’t I ﬁnd a deep, intimate r omance?”
The question is understandable, because people ar e lonely . An intimate r omantic love, however, is lik e taking graduate
work towar d a Ph.D. in the ways of love, and many of us ar e
hardly out of elementary school. When we’r e not in a
relationship, the ego mak es it seem as though all the pain
would go away if we wer e. If the r elationship lasts, however,
it will actually bring much of our e xistential pain to the
surface. That’s part of its purpose. It will demand all of our
skills at compassion, acceptance, r elease, for giveness, and
selﬂessness. W e might tend to for get the challenges
involved in a r elationship when we’r e not in one, but we
remember them clearly enough once we ar e.
Relationships don’t necessarily tak e the pain away . The
only thing that “tak es the pain away” is a healing of the
things that cause the pain. It isn’t the absence of other
people in our lives that causes us the pain, but rather what
we do with them when they’r e ther e. Pure love asks for
nothing but peace for a br other, knowing that only in that
way can we be at peace ourselves. How many times have I
had to ask myself, “ Do I want him to be at peace, or do I
want him to call?” P ure love of another person is the
restoration of our heartline. The ego, ther efore, is marshaled
against it. It will do everything it can to block the e xperience
of love in any for m. When two people come together in God,
the walls that appear to separate us disappear . The beloved
doesn’t seem to be a mer e mortal. They seem for a while to
be something else, something mor e. The truth is, they are
something mor e. No one is anything less than the per fect
Son of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant
when we see the total truth about someone. They are
perfect. That’s not just our imagination. But the craziness sets in quickly . As soon as the light
appears, the ego begins its powerful drive to shut it out. Allof a sudden, the perfection we glanced on the spiritual
planes becomes pr ojected onto the physical. Instead of
realizing that spiritual perfection and physical, material
imperfection e xist simultaneously, we start looking for
material, physical perfection. W e think someone’s spiritual
perfection isn’t enough. They have to have perfect clothes
as well. They have to be hip. They have to dazzle. And so no
one gets to be a human being anymor e. We idealize one
another, and when someone doesn’t live up to the ideal,
we’re disappointed. Rejecting another human being simply because they ar e
human, has become a collective neur osis. P eople ask,
“When will my soul mate get her e?” But praying for the
right person is useless if we’r e not r eady to r eceive him. Our
soul mates ar e human beings, just lik e we ar e, going
through the nor mal pr ocesses of gr owth. No one is ever
“ﬁnished.” The top of one mountain is always the bottom of
another, and even if someone meets us when we feel “ on
top” of things, the chances ar e good that very soon we’ll be
going thr ough something that challenges us. It is our
commitment to gr owth that mak es this inevitable. But the
ego doesn’t lik e the look of people when they’r e “going
through things.” It’s unattractive. As in every other ar ea, the
problem in r elationships is rar ely that we haven’t had
wonderful opportunities or met wonderful people. The
problem is, we haven’t known how to tak e the gr eatest
advantage of the opportunities we’ve had. Sometimes we
didn’t r ecognize at the time how wonderful those people
were. Love is all ar ound us. The ego is the block to our
awar eness of love’s pr esence. The idea that ther e is a
perfect person who just hasn’t ar rived yet is a major block. Our vulnerability to the myth of “Mr . Right” stems fr om
our gloriﬁcation of r omantic love. The ego uses r omantic
love for its “special” purposes, leading us to jeopar dize ourrelationships by overvaluing their r omantic content. The
diﬀer ence between a friendship and a r omance can be
illustrated with the image of a long-stemmed r ose. The stem
is the friendship; the blossom the r omance. Because the ego
is sensation- oriented, our focus automatically goes to the
blossom. But all the nourishment that the blossom needs in
order to live, r eaches it thr ough the stem. The stem might
look boring in comparison, but if you tak e the blossom oﬀ
the stem it will not last for long. I shar ed that image in a
lectur e once, and a woman then added a lovely thought: A
long-ter m romance is lik e a rose bush. In any given season,
a blossom might fall oﬀ. But if the plant is well nourished,
then the season will come ar ound again, and new blossoms
appear . The disappearance of r omantic fervor doesn’t
necessarily spell the end of a wonderful relationship, e xcept
to the ego . The Spirit can see the seeds of r ebirth in any
patter n of decline. A Course in Miracles  says it is ‘not our job to seek for
love, but to seek for all the bar riers we hold against its
coming.’ Thinking that ther e is some special person out
there who is going to save us is a bar rier to pur e love. It is a
large gun in the ego’s arsenal. It is a way the ego tries to
keep us away fr om love, although it doesn’t want us to see
that. W e seek desperately for love, but it is that same
desperation that leads us to destr oy it once it gets her e.
Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts
us to load an awful lot of emotional pr essur e on whoever
comes along that we think might ﬁt the bill. We don’t have to r emind God that we’d lik e wonderful
relationships. He’s alr eady clear about that. A Course in
Miracles  teaches us that a desir e is a prayer . The most
enlightened prayer isn’t “ Dear God, send me someone
wonderful,” but, “ Dear God, help me r ealize that I am
someone wonderful.” Y ears ago I would pray for a wonderfulman to come and tak e my desperation away . Ultimately I
said to myself, “Why don’t you try to deal with that befor e
he gets her e?” I can’t imagine any man saying to a friend,
“Gee, I met a fabulous desperate woman last night!”
Looking for Mr . Right leads to desperation because ther e is
no Mr . Right. Ther e is no Mr . Right because ther e is no Mr . Wrong. Ther e is whoever is in fr ont of us, and the perfect
lessons to be lear ned fr om that person. If your heart’s desir e is for an intimate partner, the Holy
Spirit might send someone who isn’t the ultimate intimate
partner for you, but rather something better : someone with
whom you ar e given the opportunity to work thr ough the
places in yourself that need to be healed befor e you’r e
ready  for the deepest intimacy . The belief in special love
leads us to discount anything we don’t see as “ultimate
relationship” material. I’ve overlook ed some diamonds that
way, failing to tak e advantage of situations that would have
only served to speed up my gr owth. W e sometimes fail to
work on ourselves in the r elationships that ar e right in fr ont
of us, thinking that “ real life” begins when they get her e.
This is just a ploy of the ego once again, making sur e that
we’ll seek but not ﬁnd. The pr oblem with not taking
relationships seriously if they don’t feel lik e “Mr . Right” is
this: Every once in a while, Mr . Right gets her e—he
sometimes even appears as Mr . Wrong transfor med—but we
blow it because we’r e not in practice. He’s her e, but we’r e
not ready. We haven’t been working on ourselves. W e wer e
waiting for Mr . Right. A Course in Miracles  says that one day we will r ealize
that nothing occurs outside our minds. How a person seems
to show up for us is intimately connected to how we choose
to show up for them. I have lear ned that my most
productive r esponses in r elationships come not fr om my
focus on the particulars about another person, but ratherfrom my commitment to playing my own r ole in the
relationship on as high a level as I’m capable. L ove is a
participatory emotion. In a holy r elationship, we tak e an
active r ole in cr eating the conte xt in which the interaction
can unfold most constructively . We actively cr eate the
conditions of inter est, rather than passively waiting ar ound
to see whether or not we’r e inter ested. No one is always gor geous. No one is always se xy. But
love is a decision. W aiting to see whether someone is good
enough is childish, and it is bound to mak e the other person
feel on some level as though they’r e auditioning for the
part. In that space, we feel nervous, and when we’r e
nervous, we’r e not at our best. The ego is looking for
someone attractive enough to support. The matur e and
miracle-minded among us support people in being
attractive. P art of working on ourselves, in or der to be r eady
for a pr ofound r elationship, is lear ning how to support
another person in being the best that they can be. P artners
are meant to have a priestly r ole in each other’s lives. They
are meant to help each other access the highest parts
within themselves. I’ve been with men who never seemed to think I was
good enough. I’ve also been with men who wer e smart
enough to say, “Y ou look beautiful tonight” of ten enough for
it to bolster my self -esteem and help me show up for life in
a mor e beautiful way . None of us ar e really objectively
attractive or unattractive. Ther e is no such thing. Ther e are
people who manifest the potential for sparkle that we all
share, and those who don’t. Those who do ar e usually
people who some wher e along the line, either fr om par ents
or lovers, wer e told verbally or nonverbally, “Y ou’re
wonderful and beautiful.” L ove is to people what water is to
plants.Examining the past can help clarif y many of our
problems, but healing doesn’t occur in the past. It occurs in
the pr esent. Ther e is practically a mania these days for
blaming the events of our childhood for our cur rent despair . What the ego doesn’t want us to see is that our pain doesn’t
come fr om the love we wer en’t given in the past, but fr om
the love we ourselves ar en’t giving in the pr esent. Salvation
is only found in the pr esent. Every moment we have a
chance to change our past and our futur e by r eprogramming
the pr esent. Such a view is blasphemy to the ego and we
are judged harshly for espousing it. Although we might have
learned the ways of lovelessness fr om our par ents,
perpetuating their patter ns by denying them love now is
hardly the way out of the pr oblem. W e don’t get to the light
through endless investigation of the darkness. A fter a
certain point, the discussion always becomes cir cular . The
only way to the light is thr ough entering the light. “My par ents didn’t tell me I was beautiful. P oor me.” is
not a miracle-minded thought. R ather, it supports a feeling
of victimization. The miracle-minded attitude her e would be,
“My par ents didn’t tell me I was beautiful. The value of
knowing this is that now I’m clear er about why I don’t have
an easy time letting anyone else tell me that, and I
understand why I haven’t developed the habit of saying it to
others. I can develop the habit now . The choice to give what
I haven’t r eceived is always an available option.” A man
mentioned to me r ecently that when he was a child, his
father never gave him pr esents. I suggested that a healing
would come fr om his sending his father lots of pr esents now . I used to wor ry too much about whether or not I was
supported, and not enough about whether or not I was
actively supporting others. R omantically, I r ealized that I
needed to help a man feel mor e like a man, rather than
spend my time wor rying about whether or not he wasenough of a man. W e help another person access their
highest by accessing our own. Gr owth comes fr om focus on
our own lessons, not on someone else’s. A Course in
Miracles  teaches that “ only what you have not given can be
lacking in any situation.” I spent years waiting for a man to
make me “ feel lik e a real woman.” Only when I r ealized that
my feminine ener gy was not a man’s gif t to me, but rather
my gif t to myself and to him, did the men ar ound me start
to demonstrate the mor e masculine ener gy I craved. The fairy tale called “The F rog Prince” r eveals the deep
psychological connection between our attitudes towar d
people and their capacity for transfor mation. In the story, a
princess kisses a fr og and he becomes a prince. What this
signiﬁes is the miraculous power of love to cr eate a conte xt
in which people naturally blos som into their highest
potential. Neither nagging, trying to get people to change,
criticizing, or ﬁxing can do that. The Course says we think
we’re going to understand people in or der to ﬁgur e out
whether or not they’r e worthy of our love, but that actually,
until we love them, we can never understand them. What is
not loved is not understood. W e hold ourselves separate
from people and wait for them to ear n our love. But people
deserve our love because of what God cr eated them to be. As long as we’r e waiting for them to be anything better, we
will constantly be disappointed. When we choose to join
with them, thr ough appr oval and unconditional love, the
miracle kicks in for both parties. This is the primary k ey, the
ultimate miracle, in r elationships. 9. RELINQUISHING FEAR
“Perfect love casts out fear .”A good r elationship isn’t always crystals and rainbows. It’s a
birth pr ocess, of ten painful, of ten messy . When my daughter
was ﬁrst bor n, she was cover ed with blood and everything
else. Ther e was a lot to go thr ough befor e the Gerber baby
ﬁnally appear ed. A “spiritual r elationship” isn’t necessarily one in which
two people ar e smiling all the time. Spiritual means to me,
above all else, authentic. A t my New Y ear’s Eve service last
year, I said that we wer e together not for mindless but for
mindful celebration. That would include some grief and
acknowledgement of disappointments in the past year,
which would have to be pr ocessed and for given befor e we
could honestly celebrate the str oke of midnight and the
mark of a new beginning. And so it is that, in r elationships as well, we’r e brought
together for r eal work. R eal work can only occur in the
presence of rigor ous honesty . We all long for that, but we
are afraid of honestly communicating with another person
because we think they’ll leave us if they see who we r eally
are. A couple fr om my lectur es once came to me for
counseling. Earlier that day, the man had told the woman he
was br eaking oﬀ their r elationship. She was shock ed and
hurt and ask ed him if he would come with her to see me in
order to help her work thr ough the loss. As the two of them
sat acr oss fr om me on my couch, I assur ed Bob that I wasn’t
there to try to get them back together, but to join with them
in asking for peace. I remember ed a similar situation I had been in myself
once, and how brilliantly my therapist had handled it. I said
exactly the things that she had said. I said to him, “ Bob,
why ar e you so angry at Deborah?”“I’m not angry at her,” he said. “Well, you sur e sound angry,” I told him. “I know that it’s not my job to ﬁx Deborah,” he said. “I
don’t want to change her; I just want out.”
“Oh, I bet you think that’s so spiritual,” I said. He look ed surprised. I think he thought he’d been a good
A Course in Miracles  student. “You haven’t suspended judgment of Deborah,” I said. “You’ve withheld vital infor mation fr om her, data without
which she couldn’t function eﬀectively within the
relationship. Why don’t you tell her why you’r e so angry?”
Once again he r epeated, “I’m not angry .”
“Well,” I said. “Y ou’re an actor . Just pr etend you ar e. Go
on Bob, we’r e safe her e. Let her have it.”
And boy, once he got started, did he let it out. He told
her that she had no concept of how to live with another
person. She just did everything however she wanted to do
it, and if he wanted to come along, well that was just gr eat. I
don’t r emember e xactly what else he had to say, but ther e
was a lot of communication that came gushing out once he
allowed it to . When he was ﬁnished, Deborah, obviously
moved, said quietly and sincer ely, “I never knew that. Thank
you for telling me.”
They lef t my oﬃce and did not br eak up. Their
relationship, they later told me, was r eborn in that session. The anger that Bob was feeling was pent up ener gy that
came fr om the fact that he had felt it “unspiritual” to shar e
his honest feelings with Deborah as they went along.It’s far better to communicate than to suppr ess our
feelings. Anger is of ten a r esult of a series of
uncommunicated feelings building up inside of us and
ultimately exploding. In a holy r elationship, we consider it
part of our commitment to stay cur rent in the honest
expression of our feelings, and to support our partner in
doing the same. So much is then communicated as we go
along that the chances of anger building up inside either of
us is lessened. Until then, we must deal with what’s r eal. If anger comes
up, it must be accepted. If we think our partner won’t love
us if we get angry, then we stop being honest and the
relationship is doomed for sur e. I’ve suggested to couples
that they agr ee not to br eak up a r elationship because of a
ﬁght. It’s very important to have a safe space for ﬁghting. I
say that because ﬁghting isn’t always ﬁghting. Once I was
having a “dramatic discussion ” with a friend. A mutual
friend of ours spok e up and said, “I can’t stand the way you
guys ar e always ﬁghting.” “W e’re not ﬁghting,” I said. “We’re Jewish.” He thought we wer e ﬁghting; we thought we
were having a passionate conversation. Anger is a hot topic for spiritual seek ers. Many people,
for instance, have an issue with Jesus’s anger with the
money -changers. If Jesus was so pur e, they ask, then how
could he have gotten angry? But no Jew or Italian would
have a pr oblem with that scene. The r emoval of ego is not
the removal of personality . What we call Jesus’s anger was
energy. An outburst of emotion doesn’t have to be so
quickly labeled anger . It’s a r elease of ener gy and doesn’t
have to be thought of as a negative or “unspiritual”
emotion. Just because someone isn’t e xpressing their rage, by the
way, doesn’t mean they don’t have any . Rage tur nedoutwar d is called rage. R age tur ned inwar d is called ulcers
and cancer and things lik e that. The unhealthiest thing you
can do with anger is to deny you have it. The miraculous
perspective is not to pr etend you’r e not angry, but rather to
say, “I’m angry but I’m willing not to be. Dear God, please
show me what it is I’m not seeing.” Ther e is a way of
sharing our anger with people, without e xpressing it as an
attack. Instead of saying, for instance, “Y ou made me feel
this or that,” you say, “This is how I’m feeling. I’m not
saying you made me feel  this way, or that you’r e to blame. I’m simply sharing this as part of my healing, in or der to
release this feeling and move beyond it.” In this way, you’r e
taking r esponsibility for your feelings, and what could have
been seen as an ar gument—or even avoided as unpleasant
—can become an important part of the healing power of
relationships. W e’re then not adversaries in the
conversation, but partners. R eal relationships demand
honest communication, and no matter how painful, no
matter how frightening. A Course in Miracles  says that
miracles arise fr om total communication given and r eceived. When you ask God to heal your life, He shines a very
bright light on everything you need to look at. Y ou end up
seeing things about yourself that maybe you’d rather not
see. W e have a lot of ar mor that has accumulated in fr ont of
our hearts—a lot of fear self -righteously masquerading as
something else. As anyone who has ever been in serious
psychotherapy is well awar e, the pr ocess of personal gr owth
isn’t always easy . We must face our own ugliness. W e often
must become painfully awar e of the unwork ability of a
patter n befor e we’r e willing to give it up. It of ten seems, in
fact, that our lives get worse rather than better when we
begin to work deeply on ourselves. Life doesn’t actually get
worse; it’s just that we feel our own transgr essions mor e
because we’r e no longer anesthetized by unconsciousness. We’re no longer distanced, thr ough denial or dissociation,from our own e xperience. W e’re starting to see the truth
about the games we play . This pr ocess can be so painful that we ar e tempted to go
backwar ds. It tak es courage—this is of ten called the path of
the spiritual war rior—to endur e the sharp pains of self -
discovery rather than choose to tak e the dull pain of
unconsciousness that would last the r est of our lives. I laugh
whenever anyone suggests that A Course in Miracles  has us
taking an easy way out. It’s a lot of things, but it’s not easy . We have to look the ego straight in the eye befor e we have
the power to r elinquish it. The ego isn’t a monster . It’s just the idea of a monster . We all have demons and dragons within us, but we also
have the dashing prince. I’ve never r ead a fairy tale wher e
the dragons triumphed over the prince. And I’ve never r eally
tried to outgr ow a patter n and not had the e xperience of
God’s grace given me when I sincer ely and humbly ask ed. “You tak e the good with the bad,” my father used to tell us
when we wer e childr en. The mor e we lear n about the light
within us, the easier it ultimately becomes to for give
ourselves for the fact that we’r e not perfect yet. If we wer e
perfect, we wouldn’t have been bor n. It’s our mission to
become perfect, however, and looking at wher e we’r e not is
an important part of the pr ocess. W e become perfected
personalities by accepting the spiritual perfection which
already e xsists within us. There is a story about L eonar do da V inci that has always
moved me. Early in his car eer, he was painting a pictur e of
Christ and found a pr ofoundly beautiful young male to
model for his portrait of Jesus. Many years later, L eonar do
was painting a pictur e that included Judas. He walk ed
through the str eets of Flor ence looking for the perfect
person to play the gr eat betrayer . Finally he found someonedark-looking enough, evil-seeming enough to do the job. He
went up to the man to appr oach him to do the modeling. The man look ed at him and said, “Y ou don’t r emember me,
but I know you. Y ears ago, I was the model for your pictur e
of Jesus.”
In the movie Star W ars, Darth V ader tur ns out to have
been a nice guy af ter all, a long time ago . And L ucifer was
the most beautiful angel in Heaven befor e he fell. The ego is
simply wher e a glitch occur red, wher e the wir es got cr ossed,
wher e love became block ed. As many times as I’ve
expressed negativity instead of love in my life, ther e’s one
thing I’m very sure of: I would have done better if I had
known how . I would have e xpressed with love if I had felt at
that moment that I could have, and still had my needs met. Until we fully appr eciate that the ego is the impostor
within us, we of ten feel embar rassed to admit to ourselves,
not to mention anyone else, the games we play . Instead of
feeling compassion for ourselves, and r emembering that our
neuroses ar e our wounds, we tend to be too ashamed to
look at them. W e think we’r e bad. ‘W e think that if we, or
anyone else God forbid, wer e to see the r eal truth about us,
we would all r ecoil in hor ror.’ The truth, rather, is that if we,
or anyone else, wer e to see the r eal truth about us, we
would all be dazzled by the light. In looking deeply into
ourselves, however, we ﬁrst have to face what A Course in
Miracles  calls the ‘ring of fear .’ Befor e the P rince can save
the damsel in distr ess, he has to slay the dragons that
surround her castle. So do we all. Those dragons ar e our
demons, our wounds, our egos, our brilliant ways of denying
love to ourselves and others. The ego’s patter ns have to be
rooted out, deto xed from our system, befor e the pur e love
within us can have a chance to come forth.A spiritual teacher fr om India once pointed out that ther e
is no such thing as a gray sk y. The sk y is always blue. Sometimes, however, gray clouds come and cover the blue
sky. We then think the sk y is gray . It is the same with our
minds. W e’re always perfect. W e can’t not be. Our fearful
patter ns, our dysfunctional habits, take hold within our
minds and cover our perfection. T emporarily . That is all. W e
are still perfect sons of God. Ther e has never been a stor m
that hasn’t passed. Gray clouds never last for ever. The blue
sky does. So what ar e we to do with our fear, our anger, the clouds
that cover the love inside us? R elinquish them to the Holy
Spirit. He transfor ms them thr ough love, and never thr ough
an attack on another person. It is attack, not the anger
itself, which is destructive. Y elling into pillows has become
popular in certain cir cles, and for good r eason. Getting the
energy up and out is of ten a good way to shed the physical
tension that mak es it so diﬃcult to pray when you need it
most. Our anger stands in fr ont of our love. L etting it out is
part of the pr ocess of r elinquishing it. The last thing you
want to do—ever—is to buy into the insidious delusion that
spiritual lives and spiritual r elationships ar e always quiet, or
always blissful. 10. WORKING ON OURSEL VES
“Only what you have not given can be lacking in
any situation .”
Relationships ar e meaningful because they ar e opportunities
to expand our hearts and become mor e deeply loving. The
Holy Spirit is the medium of miracles, a guide to a diﬀer ent
way of viewing ourselves in r elation to other people. I watch
my baby as she e xtends her love to everyone she meets.She hasn’t lear ned yet that anyone is unsafe. Nothing
stands between her natural impulse to love and her
expression of that love. She smiles with the tender ness of
her true feelings. One day I will have to teach her that not
every e xpression of love is appr opriate. But locking your
door is vastly diﬀer ent fr om locking your heart. The gr eatest
challenge of par enthood will be to support her in k eeping an
open heart while living in such a fearful world. We can’t r eally give to our childr en what we don’t have
ourselves. In that sense, my gr eatest gif t to my daughter is
that I continue to work on myself . Childr en lear n mor e
through imitation than thr ough any other for m of
instruction. Our gr eatest opportunity to positively aﬀect
another person’s life is to accept God’s love into our own. That is one of the primary principles of miracles in
relationships: W e are to look to ourselves—our own lessons,
thoughts and behavior—in or der to ﬁnd peace with another
person. “The sole r esponsibility of the miraclework er is to
accept the A tonement for himself .” The ego will always
tempt us to think that the br eakdown of a r elationship has
to do with what they did wr ong, or what they’r e not seeing,
or what they need to lear n. The focus must r emain on
ourselves. W e’re aﬀected by other peoples’ lovelessness
only to the e xtent to which we judge them for it. Otherwise
we ar e invulnerable to the ego, as the Son of God is meant
to be. Sometimes people will say to me, “ But Marianne, I think
ninety per cent of this is their stuﬀ.” “ Fine,” I say . “Then we
have ten per cent to investigate and lear n from.” That ten
percent that is “ your” part is what you need to look at and
learn from. It is what you will car ry with you into the ne xt
scenario . The ego knows this, which is why it tries to put the
focus on the other person. The ego’s purpose is to mak e uscontinually self -destruct without knowing that we’r e doing it. It’s har d enough cleaning up your own act. T rying to clean
up someone else’s is just an ego trick to k eep you fr om
applying yourself to your own lessons. In or der to lear n the
most fr om relationships, you have to focus on your own
issues. These days it’s very common to hear people complain
that their issue is that they choose the “ wrong” people. The
ego is very sly her e. It’s trying to convince us that we’r e
taking r esponsibility for the pr oblem, when in fact we’r e only
doing that to a very small degr ee. Because our description
of the pr oblem still mak es someone guilty, it can only lead
into further darkness, not light. “I continue to choose people
who can’t commit” is not a miracle-minded per ception. A
more enlightened question might be, “ How committable am
I, really? How pr epared am I in the deepest r ecesses of my
being to give and r eceive love in an intimate, committed
way?” Or, “ How can I for give those who could not go past a
certain wall of fear when dealing with me? How can I for give
myself for the ways in which I contributed to or participated
in their fear?”
Sometimes it seems as though you’r e hook ed: You feel
obsessed or compulsive about another person. When this is
the case, it’s a pr etty good bet that on some level you’r e not
letting them oﬀ the hook. In spite of the temptation to look
outside yourself for the sour ce as well as the answer to a
problem, you hold to miracle-minded thought by looking
inside yourself for both. The price you pay for not taking
responsibility for your own pain is the failur e to r ealize that
you can change your conditions by changing your thoughts. Regardless of who initiated a painful interaction, or how
much of the er ror still lies in someone else’s thinking, the
Holy Spirit always pr ovides you with complete escape fr om
pain thr ough for giveness on your part. The other persondoesn’t have to consciously join you in the change. ‘Whoever is saner at the time,’ says A Course in Miracles , ‘is
to invite the Holy Spirit into a situation.’ It doesn’t matter
whether or not another person shar es our willingness to let
God enter . Everything you need in life alr eady e xists inside
your head. I once had a crush on a gay man. It might have been
unreasonable, but I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I ask ed
for a miracle, and the following thoughts occur red to me:
“You know, Marianne, you’r e obsessed, you’r e so unr eleased
about this because you’r e not r eleasing him. Accept him as
he is. R elease him to be wher e he wants to be, doing
whatever he wants to do with whomever he wants to do it. It’s what you’r e not giving that is lacking her e. It’s what
you’r e doing to him that’s causing you pain. Emotionally,
your ego is trying to contr ol him, which is why you’r e feeling
contr olled by your emotions.” I got it. I r eleased him in my
mind, and then I felt r eleased. 11. CL OSED HEAR TS
“No one can doubt the ego’s skill in building up
false cases .”
I once knew a man who came on very str ong at the
beginning of r elationships, but couldn’t seem to help closing
his heart as soon as a woman had opened hers. I have
heard that kind of behavior r eferred to as an “addiction to
the attraction phase” in r elationships. This man did not
maliciously go ar ound hurting women. He sincer ely wanted
to be in a genuine, committed r elationship. What he lack ed
were the spiritual skills that would enable him to settle
down in one place long enough to build anything solid with
an equal partner . As soon as he saw human faults andweaknesses in a woman, he would run. The nar cissistic
personality is looking for perfection, which is a way of
making sur e that love never has a chance to blossom. The
initial high can be so heady, so tantalizing, that the r eal
work of gr owth which needs to follow the initial attraction
phase can seem too dull, too har d to commit to . As soon as
the other person is seen to be a r eal human being, the ego
is repelled and wants to ﬁnd somewher e else to play . At the end of a r elationship with someone lik e this, we
feel as though we’ve tak en cocaine. W e had a fast and very
exciting ride, and it felt at the time lik e something
meaningful was happening. Then we crashed and r ealized
that nothing meaningful had happened at all. It was all
made up. Now all we have is a headache, and we can see
that this kind of thing isn’t good, isn’t healthy, and we don’t
want to do it again. But ther e’s a r eason why we’r e attracted to r elationships
such as this. W e wer e drawn to the illusion of meaning. Sometimes someone who has nothing to oﬀer in a r eal
relationship can come on lik e they’r e oﬀering the world. They ar e so dissociated fr om their own feelings that they
have become highly skilled perfor mers, unconsciously
playing whatever part our fantasies pr escribe. But the
responsibility for our pain still r emains our own. If we hadn’t
been looking for a cheap thrill, we wouldn’t have been
vulnerable to the lie. How could we have been so stupid? That’s the question
we always ask ourselves at the end of these e xperiences. But once we’ve had enough of them, we admit to ourselves
that we wer en’t r eally stupid at all. W e suspected this was a
drug. The pr oblem was, we wanted it. W e saw e xactly what
the game was with this person, usually within the ﬁrst
ﬁfteen minutes, yet we wer e so attracted to the high, wewere willing to pr etend we didn’t see it, for just a night, or a
week, or however long it lasted. The fact that someone said
to us, “Y ou ar e so fabulous. Y ou’re such a wonderful woman. This is such a gr eat date. How luck y a guy is to get to date
you,” when he’s only known you for an hour, is a blinking
red light to any thinking woman. The pr oblem is, the depth
of our wounds can be so gr eat—we can be so hungry to
hear those wor ds, because deep down we suspect that
they’r e untrue—that hearing them can cause us to put aside
all rational considerations. When we’r e starved, we’r e
desperate. Women say to me sometimes, “Marianne, why do I
always meet emotionally abusive men?” My answer is
usually the following: “The pr oblem is not that you met him
—the pr oblem is that you gave him your number .” The
problem, in other wor ds, is not that we attract a certain kind
of person, but rather that we ar e attracted to a certain kind
of person. Someone who is distant emotionally might
remind us, for instance, of one or both of our par ents. “ His
energy is distant and subtly disappr oving—I must be home.”
The pr oblem, then, is not just that we ar e oﬀer ed pain, but
that we ar e comfortable  with that pain. It’s what we have
always known. The ﬂip side of our danger ous attractions to people who
have nothing to oﬀer us is our tendency to feel bor ed by
people who do . Nothing that is alien to our system can enter
into us and stay ther e for long. This is true whether we’r e
talking about something tak en into our bodies or into our
minds.
_OceanofPDF.com_A_Return_to_Love_-_Marianne_Williamson.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        A gentleman
appear ed to me and said, “Ex cuse me, Miss W illiamson, but
we thought we should tell you: In the cosmic r oll call, you
are consider ed a hawk, not a dove. ”
I was incensed. “No way,” I said indignantly. “I’m totally
for peace. I’m a dove all the way. ”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I’m looking on our charts, and
it says very clearly right her e: Marianne W illiamson,
warmonger. You’re at war with R onald R eagan, Caspar
Weinber ger, the CIA, in fact the entir e American defense
establishment. No, I’m sor ry. You’re deﬁnitely a hawk. ”
I saw, of course, that he was right. I had just as many
missiles in my head as R onald R eagan had in his. I thought it
was wr ong for him to judge communists, but I thought it was
okay for me to judge him. Why. Because I was right, of
course. I spent years as an angry lef t-winger befor e I realized
that an angry generation can’t bring peace. Everything wedo is infused with the ener gy with which we do it. As Gandhi
said, “W e must be the change. ” What the ego doesn’t want
us to see is that the guns we need to get rid of ﬁrst ar e the
guns in our own heads. 4. THE CHOICE TO L OVE
“The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit
the choice for guiltlessness. ”
The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wr ong. The Holy Spirit always emphasizes what they’ve done right. The Course lik ens the ego to a scavenger dog that seeks out
every scrap of evidence for our br other’s guilt and lays it at
its master’s feet. The Holy Spirit, similarly, sends out its own
messengers to seek evidence of our br other’s innocence. The important thing is that we decide what we want to see
befor e we see it. W e receive what we r equest. “ Projection
makes per ception. ” W e can ﬁnd—and in fact, we will ﬁnd—
whatever it is we’r e looking for in life. The Course says that
we think we will understand a person enough to know
whether or not they ar e lovable, but that unless we love
them, we can never understand them. The spiritual path
involves taking conscious r esponsibility for what we choose
to per ceive—our br other’s guilt or innocence. W e see a
brother’s innocence when it’s all we want  to see. P eople ar e
not perfect—that is, they do not yet e xpress e xternally their
internal perfection. Whether we choose to focus on the guilt
in their personality, or the innocence in their soul, is up to
us. What we think of as people’s guilt is their fear. All
negativity derives fr om fear. When someone is angry, they
are afraid. When someone is rude, they ar e afraid. When
someone is manipulative, they ar e afraid. When someone iscruel, they ar e afraid. Ther e is no fear that love does not
dissolve. Ther e is no negativity that for giveness does not
transfor m. Darkness is mer ely the absence of light, and fear is
merely the absence of love. W e can’t get rid of darkness by
hitting it with a baseball bat, because ther e is nothing to hit. If we want to be rid of darkness, we must turn on a light. Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot ﬁght it but
must r eplace it with love. The choice to love is not always easy. The ego puts up
terrible r esistance to giving up fear -laden r esponses. This is
wher e the Holy Spirit comes in. It’s not our job to change
our own per ceptions, but to r emember to ask Him to change
them for us. Let’s say your husband has lef t you for another woman. You can’t change other people, and you can’t ask God to
change them, either. You can, however, ask to see this
situation diﬀer ently. You can ask for peace. Y ou can ask the
Holy Spirit to change your per ceptions. The miracle is that,
as you r elease judgment of your husband and the other
woman, the pain in your gut begins to subside. The ego might say in that situation that you’ll never be
at peace until your husband comes back. But peace isn’t
deter mined by cir cumstances outside us. P eace stems fr om
forgiveness. P ain doesn’t stem fr om the love we’r e denied
by others, but rather fr om the love that we deny them. In a
case lik e that, it feels as though we’r e hurt by what
someone else did. But what r eally has occur red is that
someone else’s closed heart has tempted us to close our
own, and it is our own denial of love that hurts us. That’s
why the miracle is a shif t in our own thinking: thewillingness to k eep our own heart open, r egardless of what’s
going on outside us. A miracle is always available in any situation, because no
one can decide for us how to interpr et our own e xperience. ‘Ther e are only two emotions: love and fear. ’ We can
interpr et fear as a call for love. Miracle work ers, says the
Course, ar e gener ous out of self -inter est. W e give someone
a break so we can stay in peace ourselves. The ego says that we can pr oject our anger onto another
person and not feel it ourselves, but since all minds ar e
continuous, whatever we pr oject onto another we continue
to feel. Getting angry at someone else might mak e us feel
better for a while, but ultimately all the fear and guilt comes
back at us. If we judge another person, then they’ll judge us
back—and even if they don’t, we’ll feel lik e they did. Living in this world has taught us to instinctively r espond
from an unnatural space, always jumping to anger, or
paranoia, or defensiveness, or some other for m of fear. Unnatural thinking feels natural to us, and natural thinking
feels unnatural. A Course in Miracles  is not about pouring pink paint over
our anger and pr etending it doesn’t e xist. What is
psychologically unsound is spiritually unsound. Denial or
suppr ession of emotions is unsound. Y ou don’t say, “I’m not
angry, r eally I’m not. I’m on of A Course in Miracles  and I
don’t get angry anymor e,” when inside you’r e seething. The
Holy Spirit tells us, “ Don’t try to purif y yourself befor e
coming to me. I am the puriﬁer. ” I was once on my way to
giving a lectur e on the Course, and I thought about a
woman I knew who I was feeling annoyed at. V ery quickly, I
tried to hide the thought, as though it wasn’t holy enough
for me to be thinking at such a time. Then it seemed asthough a voice in my head said, “ Hey, I’m your friend. Remember. ” The Holy Spirit wasn’t judging me for my
anger; He was ther e to help me move past it. We mustn’t for get what the Holy Spirit is for. We don’t
deny we’r e upset, but at the same time we own up to the
fact that all our feelings stem fr om our own loveless
thinking, and we’r e willing to have that lovelessness healed. Growth is never about focusing on someone else’s lessons,
but only on our own. W e aren’t victims of the world outside
us. As har d as it is to believe sometimes, we’r e always
responsible for how we see things. Ther e would be no savior
if ther e wer e no need for one. Of course things happen in
this world that mak e it almost impossible to love—cruel,
horrible things—but the Holy Spirit is within us to do the
impossible. He does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He will lend us His str ength, and when His mind is joined
with ours, ego thinking is cast out. But we must be awar e of our ego feelings in or der to
release them. “ He cannot shine away what you k eep hidden,
for you have not oﬀer ed it to Him and he cannot tak e it fr om
you. ” It would be violating our fr ee will for the Holy Spirit to
change our mental patter ns unask ed. But when we ask Him
to change them, He will. When we’r e angry, or upset for any
reason, we’r e ask ed to say, “I’m angry but I’m willing not to
be. I’m willing to see this situation diﬀer ently. ” We ask the
Holy Spirit to enter into the situation and show it to us fr om
a diﬀer ent perspective. Once I was having por celain ﬁnger nails applied, and my
manicurist’s friend came into the r oom. I couldn’t tolerate
her personality. From the moment this woman opened her
mouth, I felt lik e someone was running ﬁnger nails over a
blackboar d. Since my hands wer en’t fr ee, I couldn’t leave
the room, and since the manicurist was someone who cameto my lectur es, I felt ashamed of my own r eaction. I prayed
and ask ed God for help. His r esponse was dramatic. W ithin
moments, the “ obno xious” woman began talking about her
childhood, and particularly her r elationship with her father. As she began to describe her upbringing, it became
perfectly clear to me how she would have gr own up with
little self -esteem, and an inor dinate need to develop
grandiose personality characteristics, which in her mind
would denote str ength. Her defenses didn’t work, of course. Coming fr om fear, they mer ely put people oﬀ. Suddenly, the
same behavior that had so ir ritated me ﬁve minutes befor e,
now elicited in me a deep compassion. The Holy Spirit had
pointed me to the infor mation that would melt my heart. Now I saw her diﬀer ently. That was the miracle: Her
behavior hadn’t changed, but I had. 5. LEVELS OF TEACHING
“Therefore, the plan includes very speciﬁc
contacts to be made for every teacher of God. ”
Relationships ar e assignments. They ar e part of a vast plan
for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which
each individual soul is led to gr eater awar eness and
expanded love. R elationships ar e the Holy Spirit’s
laboratories in which He brings together people who have
the maximal opportunity for mutual gr owth. He appraises
who can lear n most fr om whom at any given time, and then
assigns them to each other. Like a giant universal computer,
He knows e xactly what combination of ener gies, in e xactly
what conte xt, would do the most to further God’s plan for
salvation. No meetings ar e accidental. “Those who ar e to
meet will meet, because together they have the potential
for a holy r elationship. ”The Course says that ther e are ‘thr ee levels of teaching’
in relationship. The ﬁrst level is what we think of as a casual
encounter, such as two strangers meeting in an elevator or
students who “happen ” to walk home fr om school together. The second level is a “mor e sustained r elationship, in which,
for a time, two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-
learning situation and then appear to separate. ” The thir d
level of teaching is a r elationship which, once for med, lasts
all our lives. A t this level, “each person is given a chosen
learning partner who pr esents him with unlimited
opportunities for lear ning. ”
Even at the ﬁrst level of teaching, the people in the
elevator might smile at one another or the students might
become friends. It is mostly in casual encounters that we
are given a chance to practice the ﬁne art of chiseling away
the har d edges of our personalities. Whatever personal
weaknesses ar e evident in our casual interactions will
inevitably appear magniﬁed in mor e intense r elationships. If
we’re crabby with the bank teller, it will be har der to be
gentle with the people we love the most. At the second level of teaching, people ar e brought
together for mor e intense work. During their time together,
they will go thr ough whatever e xperiences pr ovide them
with their ne xt lessons to be lear ned. When physical
proximity no longer supports the highest level of teaching
and lear ning between them, the assignment will call for
physical separation. What then appears to be the end of the
relationship however, is not r eally an end. R elationships ar e
eternal. They ar e of the mind, not the body, since people
are ener gy, not physical substance. Bodies joining may or
may not denote r eal joining, since joining is of the mind. People who have slept in the same bed for twenty -ﬁve years
may not be truly joined, and people who ar e many miles
apart may not be separate at all. Often we see a couple who has separated or divor ced
and look with sadness at the “ failur e” of their r elationship. But if both people lear ned what they wer e meant to lear n,
then that r elationship was a success. Now it may be time for
physical separation so that mor e can be lear ned in other
ways. That not only means lear ning elsewher e, from other
people; it also means lear ning the lessons of pur e love that
come fr om having to r elease the for m of an e xisting
relationship. Third-level, life-long r elationships ar e generally few
because “their e xistence implies that those involved have
reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-
learning balance is actually perfect. ” That doesn’t mean,
however, that we necessarily r ecognize our thir d-level
assignments; in fact, generally we don’t. W e may even feel
hostility towar d these particular people. Someone with
whom we have a lifetime’s worth of lessons to lear n is
someone whose pr esence in our lives for ces us to gr ow. Sometimes it r epresents someone with whom we participate
lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it r epresents someone
who we e xperience as a thor n in our side for years, or even
forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us, doesn’t
mean we lik e them. P eople who have the most to teach us
are often the ones who r eﬂect back to us the limits to our
own capacity to love, those who consciously or
unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us
our walls. Our walls ar e our wounds—the places wher e we
feel we can’t love any mor e, can’t connect any mor e deeply,
can’t for give past a certain point. W e are in each other’s
lives in or der to help us see wher e we most need healing,
and in or der to help us heal. 6. THE SPECIAL RELA TIONSHIP“The special love r elationship is the ego’s chief
weapon for k eeping you fr om Heaven. ”
We can all r elate to the desir e to ﬁnd Mr. or Ms. Right. It’s
almost a cultural obsession. But accor ding to A Course in
Miracles, the sear ch for the perfect person to “ﬁx” us is one
of our biggest psychic wounds, and one of the ego’s most
powerful delusions. It r epresents a notion that A Course in
Miracles  calls the “special r elationship. ” Although the wor d
“special” nor mally implies something wonderful, fr om a
Course perspective, special means diﬀer ent, ther efore
separate, which is characteristic of ego rather than spirit. A
special r elationship is a r elationship based on fear. ‘God cr eated only one begotten Son’ and He loves all of
us as one. T o Him, no one is diﬀer ent or special because no
one is actually separate fr om anyone else. Since our peace
lies in loving as God loves, we must strive to love everyone. Our desir e to ﬁnd one “special person,” one part of the
Sonship who will complete us, is hurtful because it is
delusional. It means we’r e seeking salvation in separation
rather than in oneness. The only love that completes us is
the love of God, and the love of God is the love of everyone. That doesn’t mean that the for m of our r elationships is the
same with everyone, but it means that we ar e seeking the
same content in every r elationship: a quality of br otherly
love and friendship that goes beyond the changes of for m
and bodies. Just as the ‘Holy Spirit was God’s answer to the
separation, the special r elationship was then the ego’s
answer to the cr eation of the Holy Spirit. ’ A fter the
separation, we began to feel a huge gaping hole within us,
and most of us still feel it. The only antidote for this is the
Atonement, or r eturn to God, because the pain we feel is
actually our own denial of love. The ego, however, tells usdiﬀer ently. It ar gues that the love we need must come fr om
someone else, and that ther e’s one special person out ther e
who can ﬁll up that hole. Since the desir e for that person
actually stems fr om our belief that we’r e separate fr om God,
then the desir e itself symbolizes the separation and the guilt
we feel because of it. Our sear ch then car ries the ener gy of
the separation. It becomes about guilt. This is why so much
anger is of ten ar oused in our closest r elationships. W e’re
projecting onto someone else the rage we feel against
ourselves for cutting oﬀ our own love. Often when we think we ar e “in love” with a person, as A
Course in Miracles  indicates, we’r e actually anything but. The special r elationship is based not on love but on guilt. The special r elationship is the ego’s seductive pull away
from God. It is a major for m of idolatry, or temptation to
think that something other than God can complete us and
give us peace. The ego tells us that ther e is some special
person out ther e who will mak e all the pain go away. We
don’t r eally believe that, of course, but then on the other
hand we r eally do. Our cultur e has br ed the idea into us,
through books, songs, movies, advertising, and mor e
importantly, the conspiracy of other egos. It is the job of the
Holy Spirit to transfor m the ener gy of special love fr om
treachery to holiness. The special r elationship mak es other people—their
behavior, their choices, their opinions of us—too important. It mak es us think we need another person, when in fact we
are complete and whole as we ar e. Special love is a “blind”
love, seeking to heal the wr ong wound. It addr esses the gap
between ourselves and God, which doesn’t actually e xist but
which we think does. By addr essing this gap as r eal, and
displacing its sour ce onto other people, we actually
manufactur e the e xperience we seek to r ectify. Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we come together to
share joy. Under the ego’s dir ection, we come together to
share desperation. Negativity, however, cannot r eally be
shared because it is an illusion. “ A special r elationship is a
kind of union fr om which union is e xcluded. ”
A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of
two emotional invalids. The purpose of a r elationship is not
for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two
complete people to join together for the gr eater glory of
God. The special r elationship is a device by which the ego
separates rather than joins us. Based on a belief in inter nal
emptiness, it is always asking, “What can I get. ”, wher eas
the Holy Spirit asks, “What can I give. ” The ego seeks to
use other people to fulﬁll our needs as we deﬁne them. Certain voices go on endlessly these days about whether or
not “ our needs ar e being met” in a r elationship. But when
we try to use a r elationship to serve our own purposes, we
falter because we ar e reinfor cing our illusion of need. Under
the ego’s guidance we’r e always looking for something, yet
always sabotaging what we’ve found. One of my girlfriends called me one day and said she had
had a date with someone she r eally lik ed. The ne xt week,
she called and said he had br oken a date with her in or der
to go out of town. She didn’t lik e him af ter all. “I won’t tak e
that fr om anyone,” she told me. “I’m r eady for a
relationship. ”
“No you’r e not r eady for a r elationship,” I told her. “Not if
another person isn’t allowed to mak e a mistak e, you’r e not. ”
The ego had told her to r eject the man because she was
ready for a r elationship, but what it was r eally doing was tomake sur e she wouldn’t have one. The ego isn’t looking for
someone to love; it’s looking for someone to attack. Its
dictate in love is “Seek, and do not ﬁnd. ” It looks for a
reﬂection of itself, another mask that hides the face of
Christ. In the special r elationship, I’m afraid to show you the
real truth about myself—my fears, my weaknesses—
because I’m afraid that if you see them, you’ll leave. I’m
assuming you’r e as judgmental as I am. And I’m also not
really jumping up and down wanting to see your weak spots
either because it mak es me nervous to think I’m involved
with someone who has them. The whole setup mitigates
against authenticity and ther efore against r eal gr owth. A
special r elationship perpetuates the self -punishing
masquerade in which we all seek desperately to attract love
through being someone we’r e not. Although we’r e seeking
love, we’r e actually fostering our own self -hatr ed and lack of
self-esteem. What’s our miracle her e. It’s a shif t from thoughts of
specialness to thoughts of holiness. Our mental patter ns in
regard to r elationships ar e so fraught with fear—attack and
defensiveness, guilt and selﬁshness, however pr ettily
disguised—that many times we ar e brought to our knees. As
always, that’s a good place to be. W e pray for God to guide
our thoughts and feelings. ‘Y ou can place any r elationship
under the Holy Spirit’s car e and be sur e that it will not r esult
in pain. ’
7. THE HOL Y RELA TIONSHIP
“The holy r elationship is the old unholy
relationship transfor med and seen anew. ”
If the special r elationship is the ego’s r esponse to the
creation of the Holy Spirit, the holy r elationship is the HolySpirit’s r esponse back. The ‘holy r elationship is the old,
special r elationship transfor med. ’ In the special r elationship,
the ego guides our thinking and we meet in fear, mask to
mask. In the holy r elationship, the Holy Spirit has changed
our minds about the purpose of love and we meet heart to
heart. A Course in Miracles  describes the diﬀer ence between an
unholy and a holy alliance:
“For an unholy r elationship is based on
diﬀer ences, wher e each one thinks the other has
what he has not. They come together, each to
complete himself and r ob the other. They stay
until they think that ther e is nothing lef t to steal,
and then move on. And so they wander thr ough
a world of strangers, unlik e themselves, living
with their bodies per haps under a common r oof
that shelters neither; in the same r oom and yet
a world apart. A holy r elationship starts fr om a diﬀer ent
premise. Each one has look ed within and seen
no lack. A ccepting his completion, he would
extend it by joining with another, whole as
himself. ”
The purpose of a special r elationship is to teach us to
hate ourselves, while the purpose of a holy r elationship is to
heal us of our self -loathing. In the special r elationship, we
are always trying to hide our weaknesses. In the holy
relationship, it’s understood that we all have unhealed
places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with
another person. W e don’t try to hide our weaknesses, but
rather we understand that the r elationship is a conte xt for
healing thr ough mutual for giveness. A dam and Eve wer enaked in the gar den of Eden but not embar rassed. That
doesn’t mean they wer e physically nak ed. It means they
were emotionally nak ed, totally r eal and honest, yet they
were not embar rassed because they felt accepted
completely for who they wer e. The Course pr esents an image of the special r elationship
as a pictur e set in a frame. The ego is mor e inter ested in the
frame—the idea of the perfect person who will “ﬁx”
everything—than we ar e in the pictur e, which is the person
himself. The frame is bar oque, and decorated with rubies
and diamonds. But the Course says the rubies ar e our blood
and the diamonds ar e our tears. That is the essence of
specialness. It is not love but e xploitation. What we call love
is often hate or at best, r obbery. Although we may not know
it consciously, our sear ch is of ten for someone who has
what we think we don’t have, and once we get it fr om them
we’ll be r eady to move on. In a holy r elationship, we’r e
interested in the pictur e itself. All we want by way of a
frame is a light support that does just enough to k eep the
pictur e in place. W e’re not inter ested in our br other for what
he can do for us. W e’re inter ested in our br other, period. The holy r elationship is, above all else, a friendship
between two br others. W e are not put her e to audition one
another, put someone on trial, or use other people to gratif y
our own ego needs. W e are not her e to ﬁx, change or belittle
another person. W e are her e to support, for give and heal
one another. I was once counsel ing a couple who wer e in the
process of messily completing their r elationship. The man
had moved on to date someone else and the woman was
angry. During our session she said to him about the new
girlfriend, “Y ou only lik e her because she tells you how
wonderful  you ar e all the time. ” He look ed at her very
seriously and quietly said, “Y eah, I think that has something
to do with it. ”How do we ﬁnd a holy r elationship. Not by asking God to
change our partners, but by asking God to change our
minds. W e don’t run away fr om someone we’r e attracted to
because we’r e afraid of specialness. Anytime ther e’s a
potential for love, ther e’s a potential for specialness. I of ten
ask audiences, “What’s the ﬁrst thing we should do when
we’re attracted to someone. ” and they r eply in pep-rally
fashion, “ pray. ” The prayer goes something lik e this: “ Dear
God, you know, and I know, that I have mor e potential for
neurosis in this ar ea than in any other. Please tak e my
attraction, my thoughts and feelings about this person and
use them for your purposes. L et this r elationship unfold
accor ding to your will, Amen. ”
Spiritual pr ogress is lik e a deto xiﬁcation. Things have to
come up in or der to be r eleased. Once we have ask ed to be
healed, then our unhealed places ar e forced to the surface. A relationship that is used by the Holy Spirit becomes a
place wher e our blocks to love ar e not suppr essed or
denied, but rather br ought into our conscious awar eness. We never get crazy lik e we do ar ound the people we’r e
really attracted to. Then we can see our dysfunctions
clearly, and when we’r e ready, ask God to show us another
way. As temples of healing, r elationships ar e like a trip to the
divine physician’s oﬃce. How can a doctor help us unless
we show him our wounds. Our fearful places have to be
revealed befor e they can be healed. A Course in Miracles
teaches that ‘darkness is to be br ought to light, and not the
other way ar ound. ’ If a r elationship allows us to mer ely
avoid our unhealed places, then we’r e hiding ther e, not
growing. The universe will not support that. The ego thinks of a perfect r elationship as one in which
everybody shows a perfect face. But this is not necessarilyso, because a show of str ength is not always honest. It is
not always a genuine e xpression of who we ar e. If I pr etend
to have it together in some ar ea wher e I really don’t, I am
fostering an illusion about myself. I would only be doing this
out of fear—fear that if you saw the truth about me, I would
be rejected. God’s idea of a “good r elationship” and the ego’s idea of
one ar e completely diﬀer ent. T o the ego, a good r elationship
is one in which another person basically behaves the way
we want them to and never pr esses our buttons, never
violates our comfort zones. But if a r elationship e xists to
support our gr owth, then in many ways it e xists to do just
those things; for ce us out of our limited tolerance and
inability to love unconditionally. We’re not aligned with the
Holy Spirit until people can behave in any way they choose
to, and our own inner peace isn’t shak en. Ther e have been
times in my life wher e my thought about a r elationship was,
“This is ter rible,” but upon further r eﬂection I r ealized God
would pr obably be saying, “ Oh, this is good. ” Marianne gets
to see, in other wor ds, her own neur oses mor e clearly. A girlfriend once told me she had br oken up with her
boyfriend. “Why. ” I ask ed. “Because he didn’t call me for ﬁve days. ”
I didn’t say anything. “He knows I need verbal r eassurance on a daily basis,”
she continued. “So I set my limits. Don’t you think that’s
good. ”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s childish. ” I paused. “ Have you
consider ed accepting him as he is. ”“Well, thanks for the support,” she said. I responded, “Y ou’re welcome. ”
I knew she thought of support as agr eement fr om others
that her boyfriend was guilty. Support for the belief in guilt
is extremely easy to ﬁnd. But r eal support is when we help
one another see beyond someone’s er rors, to dr op our
judgments and see the love that lies beyond. Our neur oses in r elationships usually stem fr om our
having an agenda for another person, or for the r elationship
itself. It’s not our job to try to mak e a relationship into
something we think it should be. If someone doesn’t behave
like a gr eat romantic partner, then per haps they’r e not
meant to be that for us. That doesn’t mak e them wr ong. Not
every r elationship is meant to be the ultimate r omance: if
the train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s not your train. The
ego seeks to use a r elationship to ﬁll our needs as we deﬁne
them; the Holy Spirit asks that the r elationship be used by
God to serve His purposes. And His purpose is always that
we might lear n how to love others mor e pur ely. We love
purely when we r elease other people to be who they ar e. The ego seeks intimacy thr ough contr ol and guilt. The Holy
Spirit seeks intimacy thr ough acceptance and r elease. In the holy r elationship, we don’t seek to change
someone, but rather to see how beautiful they alr eady ar e. Our prayer becomes “ Dear God, tak e the scales fr om in
front of my eyes. Help me to see my br other’s beauty. ” It is
our failur e to accept people e xactly as they ar e that gives us
pain in a r elationship. Our ego is mer ely our fear. We all have egos, that doesn’t
make us bad people. Our egos ar e not wher e we ar e bad but
wher e we ar e wounded. The Course says that we ar e ‘allafraid on some level that if people saw who we r eally ar e,
they would r ecoil in hor ror. ’ That is why we invent the mask,
to hide our true selves. But the true self—the Christ within
us—is that which is most beautiful. W e must r eveal
ourselves at the deepest level in or der to ﬁnd out how
lovable we r eally ar e. When we dig deeply enough into our
real natur e, we do not ﬁnd darkness. W e ﬁnd endless light. That is what the ego doesn’t want us to see; that our safety
actually lies in letting down  our mask. But we cannot do this
when we’r e constantly afraid of being judged. The holy
relationship is a conte xt wher e we feel safe enough to be
ourselves, knowing that our darkness will not be judged but
forgiven. In this way we ar e healed, and fr eed to move on
into the light of our true being. W e are motivated to gr ow. A
holy r elationship is this: “a common state of mind, wher e
both give er rors gladly to cor rection, that both may happily
be healed as one. ”
8. ROMANTIC L OVE
“There is no love but God’s. ”
‘Ther e are no diﬀer ent categories of love. Ther e isn’t one
kind of love between a mother and a child, another between
lovers, and another between friends. The love that is r eal is
the love that lies at the heart of all r elationships. That is the
love of God and it doesn’t change with for m or
circumstance. ’
A girlfriend of mine r emark ed to me r ecently, “Y our
relationship with your baby must be showing you a whole
new kind of love. ” “No, it’s not,” I r eplied. “ But it’s showing
me a new depth of tender ness, which is teaching me mor e
about what love is. ”People ask, “Why can’t I ﬁnd a deep, intimate r omance. ”
The question is understandable, because people ar e lonely. An intimate r omantic love, however, is lik e taking graduate
work towar d a Ph. D. in the ways of love, and many of us ar e
hardly out of elementary school. When we’r e not in a
relationship, the ego mak es it seem as though all the pain
would go away if we wer e. If the r elationship lasts, however,
it will actually bring much of our e xistential pain to the
surface. That’s part of its purpose. It will demand all of our
skills at compassion, acceptance, r elease, for giveness, and
selﬂessness. W e might tend to for get the challenges
involved in a r elationship when we’r e not in one, but we
remember them clearly enough once we ar e. Relationships don’t necessarily tak e the pain away. The
only thing that “tak es the pain away” is a healing of the
things that cause the pain. It isn’t the absence of other
people in our lives that causes us the pain, but rather what
we do with them when they’r e ther e. Pure love asks for
nothing but peace for a br other, knowing that only in that
way can we be at peace ourselves. How many times have I
had to ask myself, “ Do I want him to be at peace, or do I
want him to call. ” P ure love of another person is the
restoration of our heartline. The ego, ther efore, is marshaled
against it. It will do everything it can to block the e xperience
of love in any for m. When two people come together in God,
the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved
doesn’t seem to be a mer e mortal. They seem for a while to
be something else, something mor e. The truth is, they are
something mor e. No one is anything less than the per fect
Son of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant
when we see the total truth about someone. They are
perfect. That’s not just our imagination. But the craziness sets in quickly. As soon as the light
appears, the ego begins its powerful drive to shut it out. Allof a sudden, the perfection we glanced on the spiritual
planes becomes pr ojected onto the physical. Instead of
realizing that spiritual perfection and physical, material
imperfection e xist simultaneously, we start looking for
material, physical perfection. W e think someone’s spiritual
perfection isn’t enough. They have to have perfect clothes
as well. They have to be hip. They have to dazzle. And so no
one gets to be a human being anymor e. We idealize one
another, and when someone doesn’t live up to the ideal,
we’re disappointed. Rejecting another human being simply because they ar e
human, has become a collective neur osis. P eople ask,
“When will my soul mate get her e. ” But praying for the
right person is useless if we’r e not r eady to r eceive him. Our
soul mates ar e human beings, just lik e we ar e, going
through the nor mal pr ocesses of gr owth. No one is ever
“ﬁnished. ” The top of one mountain is always the bottom of
another, and even if someone meets us when we feel “ on
top” of things, the chances ar e good that very soon we’ll be
going thr ough something that challenges us. It is our
commitment to gr owth that mak es this inevitable. But the
ego doesn’t lik e the look of people when they’r e “going
through things. ” It’s unattractive. As in every other ar ea, the
problem in r elationships is rar ely that we haven’t had
wonderful opportunities or met wonderful people. The
problem is, we haven’t known how to tak e the gr eatest
advantage of the opportunities we’ve had. Sometimes we
didn’t r ecognize at the time how wonderful those people
were. Love is all ar ound us. The ego is the block to our
awar eness of love’s pr esence. The idea that ther e is a
perfect person who just hasn’t ar rived yet is a major block. Our vulnerability to the myth of “Mr. Right” stems fr om
our gloriﬁcation of r omantic love. The ego uses r omantic
love for its “special” purposes, leading us to jeopar dize ourrelationships by overvaluing their r omantic content. The
diﬀer ence between a friendship and a r omance can be
illustrated with the image of a long-stemmed r ose. The stem
is the friendship; the blossom the r omance. Because the ego
is sensation- oriented, our focus automatically goes to the
blossom. But all the nourishment that the blossom needs in
order to live, r eaches it thr ough the stem. The stem might
look boring in comparison, but if you tak e the blossom oﬀ
the stem it will not last for long. I shar ed that image in a
lectur e once, and a woman then added a lovely thought: A
long-ter m romance is lik e a rose bush. In any given season,
a blossom might fall oﬀ. But if the plant is well nourished,
then the season will come ar ound again, and new blossoms
appear. The disappearance of r omantic fervor doesn’t
necessarily spell the end of a wonderful relationship, e xcept
to the ego. The Spirit can see the seeds of r ebirth in any
patter n of decline. A Course in Miracles  says it is ‘not our job to seek for
love, but to seek for all the bar riers we hold against its
coming. ’ Thinking that ther e is some special person out
there who is going to save us is a bar rier to pur e love. It is a
large gun in the ego’s arsenal. It is a way the ego tries to
keep us away fr om love, although it doesn’t want us to see
that. W e seek desperately for love, but it is that same
desperation that leads us to destr oy it once it gets her e. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts
us to load an awful lot of emotional pr essur e on whoever
comes along that we think might ﬁt the bill. We don’t have to r emind God that we’d lik e wonderful
relationships. He’s alr eady clear about that. A Course in
Miracles  teaches us that a desir e is a prayer. The most
enlightened prayer isn’t “ Dear God, send me someone
wonderful,” but, “ Dear God, help me r ealize that I am
someone wonderful. ” Y ears ago I would pray for a wonderfulman to come and tak e my desperation away. Ultimately I
said to myself, “Why don’t you try to deal with that befor e
he gets her e. ” I can’t imagine any man saying to a friend,
“Gee, I met a fabulous desperate woman last night. ”
Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because ther e is
no Mr.
A holy relationship is not about changing or fixing the other person, but about healing and growing together through mutual forgiveness and self-love.
According to Marianne Williamson, what is the purpose of a holy relationship?
The ego seeks to use relationships to fill our needs and hide our own weaknesses, rather than to heal and grow together.
What is the ego's approach to relationships?
The key is not to focus on changing or fixing the other person, but to take responsibility for our own growth and healing.
What is the key to a successful relationship, according to A Course in Miracles?
The Holy Spirit helps us to see things differently and heal our own wounds, rather than trying to change or fix the other person.
What is the role of the Holy Spirit in relationships?
A special relationship is based on fear, guilt, and control, while a holy relationship is based on love, acceptance, and self-love.
What is the main difference between a special relationship and a holy relationship?