If I swallow a piece of aluminum foil, my body will
regurgitate until the oﬀending object is e xpelled. If I’m being
asked to swallow an idea that doesn’t “agr ee” with me, then
my psychological system will go thr ough the same pr ocess
of regurgitation in or der to e xpel the oﬀending material.If I’m convinced that I’m not good enough, I will have a
diﬃcult time accepting someone into my life who thinks I
am. It’s the Gr oucho Mar x syndr ome of not wanting to lik e
anyone who would want me in their club. The only way that
I can accept someone’s ﬁnding me wonderful, is if I ﬁnd
myself wonderful. But to the ego, self -acceptance is death. This is why we’r e attracted to people who don’t want us. We know they’r e not into it fr om the gate. W e pretend to be
surprised later when we ﬁnd ourselves betrayed and they
leave af ter an intense but fairly short stay . They ﬁt perfectly
into our ego’s plan: I will not be loved. The r eason that nice,
available people seem boring to us is because they bust us. The ego equates emotional danger with e xcitement, and
claims that the nice, available person isn’t danger ous
enough. The ir ony is that the opposite is true: available
people ar e the ones who are danger ous, because they
confr ont us with the possibility of r eal intimacy . They might
actually hang ar ound long enough to get to know us. They
could melt our defenses, not thr ough violence but thr ough
love. This is what the ego doesn’t want us to see. A vailable
people ar e frightening. They thr eaten the ego’s citadel. The
reason we’r e not attracted to them is because we’r e not
available ourselves. 12. HEALING OUR WOUNDS
“Healing is the way in which separation is
overcome .”
Our bar riers to love ar e rarely consciously chosen. They ar e
our eﬀorts to pr otect the places wher e the heart is bruised. Somewher e, sometime, we felt as though an open heart
caused us pain or humiliation. W e loved with the openness
of a child, and someone didn’t car e, or laughed, or evenpunished us for the eﬀort. In a quick moment, per haps a
fraction of a second, we made a decision to pr otect
ourselves fr om ever feeling that pain again. W e would never
again allow ourselves to be so vulnerable. W e built
emotional defenses. W e tried to build a fortr ess acr oss our
heart, to pr otect us fr om any cold assault. The only pr oblem
is, accor ding to the Course, that we cr eate what we defend
against. There was a time in my life when I felt I should stop
opening up so much to people who didn’t honor my heart as
I wished it to be honor ed. I was angry at people who I felt
had hurt me, but I denied the anger instead of getting in
touch with it and r eleasing it to God. This is a common trap
for Course students. If anger isn’t br ought up into conscious
awar eness, it has no place to go . It either tur ns into an
attack on self or an inappr opriate unconscious attack on
others. So not r ecognizing the full e xtent of my anger, and
thinking that the lesson to be lear ned was mer ely that I
shouldn’t r eveal so much of my honest feelings, I then went
into r elationships with two strik es against me: I was closed—
read that as cold—and ar med with hidden emotional knives
coming fr om my unconscious anger . Contrary to whatever
front I might have been able to lead with, that’s not e xactly
a delightful pack age. Between the coldness and the anger, I
could tur n oﬀ the saintliest men. This, of course, only
increased my anger and distrust. I was once talking to a very wise therapist. I made some
comment lik e, “W ell, a lot of women my age ar e ﬁnding it
very har d to ﬁnd r eally loving, committable, available men.”
Her answer rang thr ough my head lik e chur ch bells. “When
a woman says that to me,” she said, “ what we usually ﬁnd
when we look closely enough is a contempt for men.”Contempt for men. Contempt for men. The wor ds
resounded thr ough my sk ull. I don’t know if that was the
issue for every woman she spok e to, but I knew she had hit
the nail on the head in my case. I had of ten thought about
the idea in the Course that we think we ar e angry at what
our br other did to us, but that r eally we ar e angry because
of what we’ve done to him. I had vaguely known that that
was true, but it took a lot of uncovering to see what it was I
was doing  to these guys who I just knew  were doing all
these hor rible things to me! The Course speaks of “shadow
ﬁgures” we bring with us fr om our past. It tells us that we
tend to see no one as they ar e now . We keep blaming
someone in the pr esent for something someone else did in
the past. Some poor man would tell me, “ Darling, I’m not
able to come back Sunday night lik e I’d planned. I’ve got to
keep working on this pr oject. I might not be back until
Tuesday .” Well, he might as well have just told me that my
cat was dead and the dog was dying. The pr oblem wasn’t
that the man wasn’t coming home for a few days mor e. The
problem was how it made me feel inside to hear him say
that. Such a dark despair would run acr oss my heart, I can’t
begin to tell you. I wasn’t r elating to that man, or this
circumstance. I was r emembering all the times I had ever
felt as though I didn’t matter, I wasn’t attractive, Daddy
didn’t want to hold me, or someone else didn’t want to have
sex anymor e.
From a Course perspective, this situation was coming up
now in or der for me to feel that feeling, and know that it had
nothing to do with the pr esent. I ask ed for a miracle: ‘I am
willing to see this diﬀer ently. I am willing to r emember who I
am.’ God’s answer to my pain was not going to be—contrary
to what my ego k ept insisting was the only way out of this
grief—a man who was going to tell me sixty times a day,
“You’re fabulous, you’r e wonderful, I love you, I want you,”
and then show me just how desirable I r eally was, maybetwice, pr eferably thr ee times a day . The healing, in fact, was
bound to come ultimately fr om men who would not—
because no one can, r eally—tolerate my neediness, or the
guilt I would try to pr oject onto them in or der to get my
needs met. Or what I thought my needs wer e. My r eal need,
of course, was to r ealize that I didn’t need a man to ﬁll what
only felt lik e these insatiable emotional needs. The needs
themselves wer e not r eal, but mer ely a r eﬂection of the fact
that I thought of myself as less than perfect. Salvation
would only come thr ough my r elinquishing the thought that
I wasn’t good enough. By defending myself against being
abandoned, I continued to r ecreate the conditions in which
it was bound to occur . Why can’t men commit? I can only answer for some of
them that I’ve known, but in those cases, and in the cases
of many women I’ve observed, men haven’t committed
because the women have been ar mored against it. Our
armor is our darkness—the dark of the heart, the dark of the
pain, the dark of the moment when we mak e that wick ed
comment or that unfair r equest. Our defenses r eﬂect our wounds. But no person can heal
those wounds. They can give us love, innocently and
sincer ely, but if we’r e already convinced that people can’t
be trusted—if that’s the decision we’ve alr eady made—then
our mind will construe whatever someone’s behavior is, as
evidence that our pr eviously drawn conclusion was cor rect. The Course tells us we decide what we want to see befor e
we see it. If we want to focus on someone’s lack of r espect
for our feelings, we can certainly ﬁnd it, given the fact that I
don’t know of many enlightened masters available for
dating in the major cities of America today . But a lot of
people ar e making gr eater eﬀorts than we give them cr edit
for, and ar e working against some for midable odds when
our egos have convinced us that men or women ar e jerks, ordon’t lik e us, or always leave, or that ther e just ar en’t any
good ones out ther e.
13. CHANGING OUR MIND
“The fundamental change will occur with the
change of mind in the think er.”
The goal of spiritual practice is full r ecovery, and the only
thing you need to r ecover fr om is a fractur ed sense of self . If
you don’t alr eady believe it yourself, another person cannot
convince you you’r e okay. If they act as though you ar e, you
will either not believe them, or become so dependent on
their r einfor cement that you pr oceed thr ough your
dependency to change their mind. Either way, you stay
convinced that you’r e not ok ay. The only e xercise in the
Workbook of A Course in Miracles  that is r epeated several
times is “I am as God cr eated me.” As I have mentioned
earlier, the Course says that your only r eal pr oblem is that
you have for gotten who you ar e.
You awak en to your own perfection thr ough your desir e
to see the perfection in someone else. Sometimes this is not
easy. When I feel the old familiar darkness starting to
descend ar ound me, when a man, for instance, mak es a
comment that I know intellectually is pr obably innocent
enough, but which mak es me feel that I am abandoned or
uncar ed for or r ejected, I’ve been thr ough enough in my life
to know that the evil does not lie in what he just said. He is
not the enemy . The enemy is this feeling, which in the past
has led me to attack or defend enough to mak e him feel
exactly what I’m feeling he’s feeling but he r eally isn’t. I can
choose to see this diﬀer ently. This is my wall. This is wher e
we must be very conscious and call on God. Ask for a
miracle: “ Dear God, please help me. This is it. Right her e.There is wher e the swor d enters my heart. This is wher e I
blow it every time.”
The moment when the pain is gr eatest is a wonderful
opportunity . The ego would pr efer that we never look too
directly into the pain. When in crisis, ther e’s a good
opportunity we might have a slip and ask Heaven for help. The ego would pr efer that we not go into crisis. The ego
prefers that a mild river of misery run thr ough the
backgr ound of our lives, never bad enough to mak e us
question whether our own choices ar e creating the pain. When the pain is her e, that is when we have a chance to
“rout Satan and r emove him for ever.” A man once said to
me, “Y ou know, Marianne, you can work on this stuﬀ with
your therapist, A Course in Miracles , your editor, the
relationships lectur er, and all of your girlfriends, but none of
them pr ovide you with the opportunity that you have by
working it out with me.” What he meant of course, is with
them I could describe the pain, but with him I could feel it. And in that moment, if I didn’t tak e the childish, nar cissistic
copout and leave, but r emained to face the fear and move
through it, then the purpose of the r elationship could be
fulﬁlled. When our darkness is br ought to light and for given,
then we can move on. We heal thr ough noticing, and prayer . Awareness alone
does not heal us. If analysis by itself could heal our wounds,
we would all be healed by now . Our neur oses have become
deeply embedded into our psyches, lik e a tumor that wraps
itself ar ound a vital or gan. The pr ocess of miraculous change is twofold:
1. I see my er ror or dysfunctional patter n.
2. I ask God to tak e it fr om me.The ﬁrst principle without the second is impotent. As
they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “ your best thinking got
you her e.” You’re the pr oblem but you’r e not the answer . The second principle isn’t enough to change us, either . The Holy Spirit can’t tak e from us what we won’t r elease to
Him. He won’t work without our consent. He cannot r emove
our character defects without our willingness, because that
would be violating our fr ee will. W e chose those patter ns,
however mistak enly, and He will not for ce us to give them
up. In asking God to heal you, you ar e committing to the
choice to be healed. This means the choice to change. The
ego’s r esistance to this is intense. It wants us to think that
an old dog doesn’t change. “I’m angry because I’m an
alcoholic,” for instance, might describe your anger, but it
doesn’t justif y it. The only advantage of knowing that you’r e
angry, is so that you can mak e a choice to be otherwise. Y ou
can spend years in therapy, but until the choice is made to
do it diﬀer ently , you just k eep going ar ound in cir cles. Of
course it feels unnatural to be gentle when you’ve been
harsh for many years, but that’s no e xcuse for not trying. A Course in Miracles  says that the most eﬀective way to
teach a child is not by saying ‘Don’t do that,’ but ‘Do this.’
We don’t r each the light thr ough endless analysis of the
dark. W e reach the light by choosing the light. Light means
understanding. Thr ough understanding, we ar e healed. If the purpose of a r elationship is for people to be healed,
and healing can only occur when our wounds ar e revealed,
then the ego confr onts us with a ter rible Catch-22. If I don’t
show myself, ther e can be no gr owth. W ithout gr owth, ther e
will ultimately be bor edom, which is death for therelationship. But if I do r eveal myself honestly, then I might
appear unattractive and my partner will leave. The ego’s nar cissism has us waiting for the perfect
person to appear . The Holy Spirit knows that the sear ch for
perfection in another is just a smok escreen that hides our
need to develop the perfect within ourselves. And if ther e is
a perfect person out ther e—which ther e isn’t—would they
date you? When we give up the childish obsession with
scanning the planet for Mr . or Ms. Right, we can begin to
develop the skills of compassionate r elationship. W e stop
judging people and start relating to them instead. W e
recognize, ﬁrst and for emost, that we’r e not in a r elationship
to focus on how well the other person is lear ning their
lessons, but rather to focus on lear ning our own. The ego defends against love, not fear . Pain in
relationships can be a perversely comfortable pain, in that it
is one we know . We’re used to it. I once hear d a tape by
Ram Dass, an American spiritual teacher, in which he told of
seeing a newspaper article about an abused baby being
taken away fr om his mother . As a police matr on tried to tak e
the baby, he k ept struggling to r emain in his mother’s ar ms. Although his mother was the one who beat him, she was the
one he knew . He was used to her . He wanted to r emain in
familiar ter ritory . This story illustrates our r elationship to our own egos. The ego is our pain, but it is what we know, and we r esist
moving out of it. The eﬀort it tak es to gr ow out of painful
patter ns of ten feels mor e uncomfortable than r emaining
within them. P ersonal gr owth can be painful, because it can
make us feel ashamed and humiliated to face our own
darkness. But the goal of personal gr owth is the jour ney out
of dark emotional patter ns that cause us pain, to those that
create peace. Psychotherapy : Purpose, P rocess and P racticesays that at their peak, r eligion and psychotherapy become
one. They both r epresent the r elationship between thought
and e xperience, and ar e used by the Holy Spirit to celebrate
one of the most glorious human potentials: our capacity to
change. There is a tendency these days to analyze our neur oses
ad inﬁnitum, yet use the analysis itself to justif y rather than
heal the wound. A fter a certain point, having seen why a
patter n developed (“My father was emotionally
unavailable,” or “My mother abused me”) and the eﬀect it
has had on our personalities (“I don’t know how to let a man
get close to me,” or “I now have a har d time trusting any
authority ﬁgur e”), actual change occurs because of a
decision on our part: the decision to heal, the decision to
change. It ultimately doesn’t matter so much why I become
angry or defensive. What matters is that I decide I want to
be healed, and I ask God to help me. Like an actor r eading lines fr om a script, I can choose a
new r esponse to life, a new r eading. Some people at this
point would yell, “ Denial!” But what we ar e denying is the
impostor within us. Just because we have an honest feeling,
that doesn’t mean it’s who we honestly ar e. My angry self is
not the r eal me. Does it have to be acknowledged? Y es, but
only in or der to go beyond it. Once I’ve seen my anger, I’m
ready, as they say in A A, to “act as if” I can do it diﬀer ently. Because I can. Our ego has made up a ﬁctional character
that we now think of as our personality . But we ar e
constantly cr eating that personality, and if we choose, we
are constantly r ecreating it. I was once talking to a friend and he made some
comment about how he was afraid that, if we got closely
involved, one of us might get hurt. “Which one of us ar e you
concer ned for?” I ask ed. He answer ed, “Y ou.”I felt an anticipatory r ejection. I was angry and I told him
so. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Y ou obviously tak e things
so personally that I don’t think I could stand it for long.”
I knew that this was a moment I had r epeated in various
ways with various people, and I had ask ed for healing many
times. I was open. I ask ed him, “T ell me honestly : How could
I have done it diﬀer ently? What else could I have said?”
“You could have just smiled and said, ‘Don’t ﬂatter
yourself .’”
I was so e xcited. I was lik e an eager actr ess working with
a great dir ector . “Oh that’s so gr eat,” I said. “ Let’s go back
and do that scene one mor e time. Say what you said again.”
“You know, Marianne, I just have this awful feeling that if
we really got together, one of us would get hurt.”
“Which one of us ar e you afraid for?” I ask ed. “You.”
I look ed at him and smiled. “ Don’t ﬂatter yourself .”
He laughed and I howled with e xcitement. This had been
no small awak ening. It was a genuine empower ment, a
reprogramming of my emotional computer in an ar ea wher e
I had unconsciously gone for an unwork able r esponse
patter n every time. I now established a new gr oove, a new
set of possibilities. Initially I had chosen the way of anger . Now I chose the way of love. I did not have to be the
wounded animal. I could choose to identif y with my own
strength, which was in fact the mor e natural r ole for me to
play. I could choose to see others thr ough a gener ous,trusting natur e. My br other was not her e to attack me. He
was her e to love me. It was completely up to me whether to
trust that, and love him back. In accepting the A tonement, the cor rection of our
perceptions, we ar e returned to who we r eally ar e. Our true,
purely loving self can never be uncr eated. All illusions will
be undone. Although e xperiences such as childhood trauma
can lead us to deviate fr om our true natur e, the truth itself
is held in trust for us by the Holy Spirit until we choose to
return. 14. PRACTICING FORGIVENES S
“Forgiveness is the only sane r esponse .”
To the ego, love is a crime. It seeks to convince us that
forgiveness is a danger ous position that entails an unfair
sacriﬁce on our part. The ego claims that for giveness can
lead us into situations wher e we become someone’s
doormat. ‘T o the ego, love is weakness. T o the Holy Spirit,
love is str ength.’
I was dating someone several years ago when the
Olympic games wer e playing in L os Angeles. The opening
ceremonies wer e a marvelous theatrical pr esentation and it
was very diﬃcult to get tick ets. Because he was involved in
the media, Mik e was given, at the last minute, one pass that
would enable him to go . I was very e xcited for him. Everyone in town knew it was
going to be a wonderful event. W e decided that I would
watch the cer emonies on T .V. and we would meet
afterwar ds. A t the conclusion of the br oadcast, I started
getting dr essed and ﬁgur ed that it might be an hour or sobefor e I hear d from him, since the traﬃc ar ound the stadium
was bound to be hor rendous. An hour passed and then another . Well, he’s in T .V., I
thought, so maybe something came up. Another hour and
then another . Midnight came and went. I took oﬀ my clothes
and mak e-up. It was 2 A.M., then 3. A t times I fell asleep, at
times I lay in the dark and star ed at the ceiling, at times I
was livid, and at other times I was scar ed he was lying in a
ditch somewher e. I started calling his house. No answer . I’d
call again. No answer . Finally, har dly having slept at all, I
called at ar ound 6 A.M. and he answer ed the phone. “Hello,” he said. “Mike?” I said. “This is Marianne.”
“Oh, hi.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“We had a date yester day. Did you for get?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “I had a kind of late night.”
I don’t know what I said to get oﬀ the phone, but I know
how I felt and it wasn’t wonderful. I had been stood up and I
felt the kind of blow to my self -esteem that starts in your
gut and shoots emotional black ink thr ough all your veins. Dazed, I somehow fell asleep. When I wok e up, I had a
whole new tak e on the situation. I just knew that he was
going to wak e up feeling sor ry for how he had acted. He was
going to show up at my door any minute, car rying a dozen
roses and saying, “ Hi, babe, can I tak e you to brunch?” The
scenario in my head called for my being oh-so -gracious: “ Ofcourse you can, darling” would come out of my mouth in a
girlish melody . The pr oblem is, he never came. Not only did
he not come. He never called. I was in a dark zone. Now what would A Course in
Miracles  say about that? I knew I needed a miracle. But all I
could come up with wer e two choices for ways to deal with
this, both of which I had tried befor e in similar situations,
and neither one felt good or got me what I wanted. My ﬁrst choice was to get very angry and let him know it. “Who do you think you ar e to tr eat me lik e that, you son- of-
a-bitch?” The pr oblem with that choice was that it would
completely invalidate my position. “Marianne’s a nice girl,
but her temper just doesn’t cut it. She’s hysterical when she
doesn’t get her way .”
The only other choice I could imagine was to for give him
and let it go . But that didn’t feel good either . “It’s ok ay you
stood me up, Mik e. I don’t car e. It doesn’t matter .”
Unconditional love I could understand, but not unconditional
dating. I didn’t know what to do . I ask ed for a miracle. I
consider ed the possibility of another possibility . I gave the
situation to God and r emember ed that I need do nothing. From a Course perspective, the ﬁrst thing I had to deal
with was my own judgment. As long as I was not at peace,
my behavior would car ry the ener gy of my conﬂict. Conﬂicted behavior cannot bring peace. It can only pr oduce
more conﬂict. F irst I had to deal with my own per ceptions. The r est would follow . So I came up with an e xercise; I would r epeat constantly,
out loud when I could and silently when other people wer e
present: “I for give you Mik e, and I r elease you to the HolySpirit. I for give you Mik e, and I r elease you to the Holy Spirit. I forgive you Mik e, and I r elease you to the Holy Spirit.”
Since Mik e didn’t call the day af ter our early mor ning
phone call or the day af ter, or the day af ter that, I had a lot
of negative feelings to try to dissipate. My for giveness chant
—a kind of mantra, or r epeated aﬃr mation of spiritual
wisdom—work ed lik e a healing balm on my emotional
turmoil. It deter red my temptation to focus on Mik e’s
behavior, and k ept me focused on my own feelings instead. My goal was inner peace, and I knew I couldn’t have that as
long as I per ceived him as guilty . In case you’r e wondering, it took him two weeks to call. The constant r epetition of “I for give you Mik e, and I r elease
you to the Holy Spirit,” this willingness to for give someone,
had work ed on my brain lik e a pleasurable drug. I didn’t
care whether I hear d from him again or not. So one day I’m in my house, the phone rings, and I hear
Mike’s familiar voice. “Marianne?”
Befor e I could even think about it consciously, a r eal
warmth and love ﬁlled up my chest. “Mik e? Hi! It’s so good
to hear fr om you!” And it was. It felt wonderful to hear his
voice. “How ar e you doing? I’ve missed you.” (Can you believe
he said that?!?) I don’t know if I said I’d missed him, too . His line was so
ridiculous, I pr obably didn’t say anything. But I do r emember
this: He said, “W ell, when can I see you?”
I said, “When would you lik e to?”
“How about tonight?”At that moment, wor ds came out of my mouth that
startled me as much as they must have startled him. I said
with a lot of love and kindness, “Mik e, I really car e for you
and that’s not going to change. I’m still your friend no
matter what. But when it comes to dating, we don’t seem to
do the same dance. So if you want to have lunch sometime,
please call. But as far as a date is concer ned, I need to
pass.”
We both mumbled a few mor e pleasantries and then got
oﬀ the phone. I was wor ried that I had r ejected a br other,
but just as that wor ry came into my mind, I saw an inter nal
image of lots of champagne bottles with their corks popping
oﬀ in the middle of Heaven. I hadn’t r ejected a br other . I had
simply accepted myself in a whole new way . He had a win—
a lesson lear ned and a friendship if he wanted it—and I had
a win. F orgiveness hadn’t tur ned me into a door mat. It had
taught me how to own my yes and own my no, without
anger, with dignity and with love. 15. COMMUNICA TING L OVE
“To communicate is to join and to attack is to
separate .”
The Holy Spirit accepts people unconditionally . To the ego,
this is an outrageous thought, because unconditional love is
the death of the ego . How will people gr ow if we all go
around just accepting each other as we ar e all the time? Accepting people as they ar e has the miraculous eﬀect of
helping them impr ove. A cceptance doesn’t pr ohibit gr owth;
rather, it fosters it. People who ar e always telling us what’s wr ong with us
don’t help us so much as they paralyze us with shame andguilt. P eople who accept us help us to feel good about
ourselves, to r elax, to ﬁnd our way . Accepting another
person doesn’t mean we never shar e constructive
suggestions. But lik e everything else, our behavior is not so
much the issue as the ener gy that it car ries. If I’m criticizing
someone in or der to change them, that’s my ego talking. If
I’ve prayed and ask ed God to heal me of my judgment,
however, and then I’m still led to communicate something,
the style of my sharing will be one of love instead of fear . It
won’t car ry the ener gy of attack, but rather of support. Behavioral change is not enough. Covering an attack with
sugary icing, with a sweet tone of voice or therapeutic
jargon, is not a miracle. A miracle is an authentic switch
from fear to love. When we speak fr om the ego, we will call
up the ego in others. When we speak fr om the Holy Spirit,
we will call up their love. A br other who is in er ror, says the
Course, calls for teaching, not attack. The following section in the Course is a powerful guide to
right-minded communication in r elationships. “Errors ar e of the ego, and cor rection of er rors
lies in the r elinquishment of the ego . When you
correct a br other, you ar e telling him that he is
wrong. He may be making no sense at the time,
and it is certain that, if he is speaking fr om the
ego, he will not be making sense. But your task
is still to tell him he is right. Y ou do not tell him
this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly . He needs
correction at another level, because his er ror is
at another level. He is still right, because he is a
Son of God .”
Miracles ar e created in an invisible r ealm. The Holy Spirit
improves our style. He teaches us how to communicate fr om
love instead of attack. Of ten people will say, “W ell, I toldthem . I really communicated!” But communication is a two -
way str eet. It only occurs if one person speaks, and the
other one can hear them. W e’ve all been in conversations
wher e two people spok e and no one hear d a thing. W e’ve
also had conversations wher e no one said anything and
both people understood everything perfectly . In or der to
truly communicate, we must tak e responsibility for the heart
space that e xists between us and another . It is that heart
space, or the absence of it, which will deter mine whether
communication is miraculous or fearful. Sometimes, of
course, that means k eeping our mouths shut. Silence can be
a powerfully loving communication. Ther e have been times
when I was wr ong, and I knew I was wr ong, and I knew they
knew I was wr ong, and I loved them for having the
graciousness not to say anything. It gave me a chance to
recoup with dignity . When we do speak, the k ey to communication is not
what we say, but rather the attitude that lies behind what
we say . Since ther e is only one mind, all of us ar e
telepathically communicating all the time. Every moment,
we ar e choosing to join or to separate, and the person to
whom we’r e speaking feels what we have chosen r egardless
of our wor ds. The choice to join is the k ey to communication
because it is the k ey to communion. The point is not to seek
our goal in a communication, but to ﬁnd a pur e ground of
being fr om which to mount our message. W e don’t seek
joining thr ough our wor ds; we accept the thought that we
are joined with the other person befor e we speak. That
acceptance is itself a miracle. The teacher of God is a ﬁnely -tuned intuitional
instrument. A Course in Miracles  says we’r e to listen to our
brother, ﬁrst and for emost. If we’r e supposed to speak, He’ll
let us know . Jesus once sent His disciples out into the
countryside and told them to teach the gospel. “What shallwe say?” they ask ed Him. His answer was, “I’ll tell you when
you get ther e.” W e’re not to try to ﬁgur e out what to say to
a brother . It is mer ely our job to ask the Holy Spirit to purif y
our per ceptions of the other person. F rom that place within,
and only fr om that place, will we ﬁnd the power of wor ds
and the power of silence, which bring the peace of God. 16. COMMITMENT
“Whom God hath br ought together, the ego
cannot put asunder .”
A Course in Miracles  says we ar e to have total commitment
in all of our r elationships, and they will never compete with
one another . Commitment in a r elationship means
commitment to the pr ocess of mutual understanding and
forgiveness—no matter how many conversations it tak es,
nor how uncomfortable those conversations might
sometimes be. When we physically separate fr om someone we’ve been
involved with, that doesn’t mean the r elationship is over . Relationships ar e eter nal. The “separation ” is another
chapter in the r elationship. Of ten, letting go of the old for m
of the r elationship becomes a lesson in pur e love much
deeper than any that would have been lear ned had the
couple stayed together . At the so -called end of r elationships,
I have sometimes felt lik e I was falling in love with the
person mor e deeply than I had been befor e. What I’ve
discover ed for myself is that the Holy Spirit sometimes pulls
out all the stops at that moment, simply because it tak es all
the love we’r e capable of to let a person go . “I love you so
much that I can r elease you to be wher e you need to be, to
go wher e you need to go .” This moment in a r elationship is
not about an ending. It’s about the ultimate fulﬁllment ofthe purpose in any r elationship: that we ﬁnd the meaning of
pure love. Sometimes the lesson to be lear ned in a r elationship is
how to hang in ther e and try to work things out. Other
times, the lesson to be lear ned is how to e xit a situation that
doesn’t serve. No one can deter mine for another person
what principle applies in what cir cumstance. It is ultimately
our connection to the Holy Spirit, our own intuitional
guidance, that alone can lead us to the higher unfoldment
of events thr ough the deepest understanding. I have said in many lectur es, “Never abandon a person
when you’r e leaving.” What does that mean? It means that
it’s important for us to honor the eter nal natur e of
relationships. When r elationships change for m, their content
need not be diminished. The ego says, “ Look, it’s over with
them. It didn’t work out. We’re no longer together . What
was, was. I’m with someone new now .” The “e x” becomes a
second-rate citizen. Of ten the new mate feels justiﬁed in
saying, “Why ar e you talking to them? W e’re together now .”
Woe to the person who doesn’t support the healing between
a man or woman and their e x. Ultimately you discover that
how the person tr eated the last one is e xactly how they’ll
treat you. W e feel jealousy, the need to hold on to what
we’ve got, because in this ar ea, as in every other, the ego
says that ther e’s only so much love to go ar ound, that
another person’s good tak es away fr om our own. The ego is
a belief in ﬁnite r esour ces, but love is inﬁnite. Whenever
love is added to any part of the system, ther e is an incr ease
to every part. L ove only gives rise to mor e love. If my
husband or boyfriend heals with his past r elationships, it
only incr eases his capacity to love me fr om a healed and
whole place. The last woman in his life is not my
competition. She is my sister .A man I once knew came over to my house for dinner . We
had been dating a short time, and I ask ed him what he had
been doing all day . He told me he had been working on a
script with his last girlfriend, who was still his writing
partner . He told me that they had gotten into a pr etty stick y
conversation about their r elationship. She was still hurt,
having a har d time letting go, the same stuﬀ we all know . I
asked him how they had lef t it. He said she was pr etty
upset. I put down the food I was pr eparing, look ed him in
the eye and said, “Go call her .” The thought of that woman
being on the other side of town somewher e, enduring that
horrible anxiety while we sat down to a r omantic dinner,
was har d for me to bear . I had been in her place. How totally
unethical it would have been for me not to support that
woman in her feelings. “You don’t mind?” he said. “Not at all,” I told him. “ Dinner can wait.”
Our needs ar e not separate. If we contribute to another
person’s pain, it will always come back to haunt us. If we do
what we can to help them, someone will always come
around to do the same for us. It’s not enough to sit idly by
while others hurt, using the catchall phrase “It’s not my
responsibility” or “It would be codependent of me to get
involved” as an e xcuse for a selﬁsh stance. A woman once
said to me af ter a situation in which I felt betrayed, “I never
intended to hurt you.” I said, “ But you never intended to
love me, either .” Love is not neutral. It tak es a stand. It is a
commitment to the attainment of the conditions of peace
for everyone involved in a situation. 17. F AITH IN RELA TIONSHIPS“Faith is the acknowledgement of union .”
Often we long for another person because, in an invisible,
intangible r ealm, we’r e still communicating, still connecting,
still seeking r esolution. P eople will say, “You’re being
neurotic. It’s time to let go .” But ther e was a time when
widows wor e weeds for a year; grief was understood,
acknowledged, validated. It’s not neur otic to grieve a
relationship; what’s neur otic is when we don’t. On some
level, no matter how disassociated fr om our feelings we
might be, every r elationship brings hope—hope that this
might be a safe place, a haven, a r est af ter all our battles. When a r elationship doesn’t work out, for whatever
reason, our disappointment is natural. Every intense
encounter r epresents a deep and complicated k armic
connection. An ending r elationship is much lik e a death, and
in many cases the sadness is even gr eater . When someone
has died, ther e has of ten been completion and
understanding that doesn’t occur when both people ar e
alive but have separated without higher awar eness. P erhaps
the one we love is simply on the other side of town now,
sleeping with someone else, yet they ar e really universes
away since the r esolution we so crave has not occur red. There’s no need to pr etend this isn’t a knife to the heart. It
is, and ther e’s nothing to do but cry the tears that gush
forth lik e blood fr om a wound. ‘Now is the time for faith.’ L et us be sof tened by our
tears. When emotional knives hit the heart, walls crumble
that didn’t belong ther e to begin with. W e can lear n then. We can lear n what is illusion and what is r eal. W e can lear n
that idols can never ever be trusted, and we can lear n about
a love that never, ever leaves.There are many conﬂicts in r elationships that try our
faith. One of them is betrayal. Betrayal is a wor d that we
don’t r eally understand until it’s happened to us. Ther e’s an
unparalleled pain when a friend is the one who’s holding the
knife. In the Course, Jesus says that although, accor ding to the
thinking of the world, he was betrayed, he didn’t choose
that per ception for himself . In other wor ds, he knew that he
couldn’t r eally be betrayed, because what isn’t love isn’t
real. So when we ar e attack ed, when the medicine is so
bitter that it tak es all our power not to crumble as we tak e
it, what do we do then? Wher e is our solace? Someone once told me that the way peacock feathers
are made is fr om peacocks eating thor ns. What a beautiful
image, that the harsh things we have to digest can
contribute to our beauty . But not always. Only when we
open up enough to r eally tak e in the hor ror, oddly enough. Resistance and defense only mak e the er ror mor e real, and
increase our pain. If Jesus had yelled fr om the cr oss, “I hate all you guys,” it
would have been a completely diﬀer ent story . Ther e would
have been no r esurrection. What cr eated the space for his
triumph was his defenselessness, his holding to love despite
what others wer e doing to him. The body can be destr oyed,
but truth cannot be. T ruth will always r eassert itself, given a
symbolic thr ee days. Thr ee days r epresents the time it tak es
between the cruciﬁxion and the r esurrection, between an
open-hearted r esponse to hurt and the e xperience of r ebirth
that will always follow . How of ten I’ve said to myself and others, “This is just the
three days. Hold on. Hold on.” When our friends have tur ned
against us, or we have been cheated or lied about, thetemptation is so str ong to defend, attack back. But the
Course says that “in our defenselessness, our safety lies.” It
is one mor e place wher e our power comes fr om saying, “I
will step back and let Him lead the way .” The Christ within
us can handle any assault because it is not aﬀected by
lovelessness. Only our belief that we ar e aﬀected by fear
can mak e it aﬀect us. Defense is a way of agr eeing with the
attack er in the power of his attack, and so making it r eal in
our e xperience. It tak es gr eat courage and personal str ength to hold on
to our center during times of gr eat hurt. It tak es wisdom to
understand that our r eactiveness only fans the ﬂames of
false drama. L ove cr eates a mystical shield ar ound us,
protecting us fr om chaos. When we ar e in the midst of loss,
or betrayal, or crisis of any kind, ther e is power in the wor ds,
“Be still and know I am.” T ruth can never be destr oyed. There is no loss e xcept in time, says the Course, and time
does not e xist. 18. MARRIAGE
“You undertook, together, to invite the Holy
Spirit into your r elationship .”
Marriage, lik e everything else, can be used by either the ego
or the Holy Spirit. Its content is never pr edeter mined. It is a
living or ganism that r eﬂects the continuous choices of the
individuals involved. Very little is sacr ed anymor e in this world, but one thing
must be tr eated with r everence or else the moral fabric of
the world disintegrates: an agr eement between two people. An enlightened mar riage is a commitment to participate inthe pr ocess of mutual gr owth and for giveness, sharing a
common goal of service to God. A man once told me that his r elationship with his e x-wife
work ed beautifully for the ﬁrst year they wer e together . At
that time they wer e both actively involved in an
organization dedicated to personal gr owth. Once they lef t
the or ganization, however, the mar riage fell apart. This
doesn’t indicate that the mar riage had nothing going for it
anyway . Rather, it r eveals the importance of a conte xt
bigger than the personal concer ns of one or even both
parties. Why is mar riage a mor e profound commitment than
other for ms of r elationship, such as a couple who ar e living
together? Because it is an agr eement that, while a whole lot
of shaking and scr eaming might go on, no one’s going to
leave the r oom. W e are both safe to go thr ough whatever
emotion is called forth fr om deep within us—and whenever
we ar e truthful, ther e are times when we ar e upset—but it is
safe to do that her e. No one is leaving. The commitment of mar riage is publicly declar ed. When
guests ar e present at a wedding and the cer emony is a
religious one, a ritual is perfor med in which collective
prayers for m a cir cle of light and pr otection ar ound the
relationship. A mar riage is God’s gif t to a man and woman. It is a gif t
that should then be given back to Him. A man’s wife is
literally God’s gif t to Him. A woman’s husband is God’s gif t
to her . But God only gives gif ts that ar e meant for everyone. So it is that a mar riage is meant to be a blessing on the
world, because it is a conte xt in which two people might
become mor e than they would have been alone. The entir e
world is blessed by the pr esence of healed people. One ofthe Course’s W orkbook e xercises r eads, “When I am healed,
I am not healed alone.”
A partner’s support and for giveness enable us to stand
forth mor e magniﬁcently in the world. A Course in Miracles
tells us that love is not meant to be e xclusive, but inclusive. Several years ago ther e was a popular song that included
the refrain, “Y ou and me against the world.” If any man
every said that to me, I’d tell him I was switching sides. W e
don’t get mar ried to escape the world; we get mar ried to
heal it together . Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, a mar ried couple
commit to the cr eation of a conte xt in which their individual
resour ces—material, emotional and spiritual—ar e placed in
each other’s service. As we give, so shall we r eceive. Service does not mean self -sacriﬁce. It means giving the
needs of another person the same priority as our own. The
ego claims that one person wins at the e xpense of another . The Holy Spirit enters into any sit uation bringing a win for
everyone involved. In mar riage we have a wonderful
opportunity to see thr ough the illusion of separate needs. The mar ried couple is not to think only in ter ms of what’s
good for him or her, but rather what is good for them. This is
one of the many ways in which mar riage can be part of the
healing of the Son of God. As with anything else, the k ey to a successful mar riage is
the conscious awar eness of God. The mar riage is
surrender ed to Him to be used for His purposes. The saying
that the family that prays together stays together, is true. The enlightened mar riage includes the pr esence of a
mystical thir d. The Holy Spirit is ask ed to guide per ceptions,
thoughts, feelings and actions in or der that in this, as in all
things, God’s will might be done on earth as it is in Heaven.19. FORGIVING OUR PARENTS, OUR FRIENDS,
OURSEL VES
“The holiest of all spots on earth is wher e an
ancient hatr ed has become a pr esent love .”
There is no coming to consciousness without for giving our
parents. Whether we lik e it or not, our mother is our primary
image of an adult woman, and our father is our primary
image of an adult man. If we hold grievances against our
mother, then if we ar e a man, we will not be able to escape
the pr ojection of guilt onto other adult women who come
into our lives; and if we ar e a woman, we will not be able to
escape self -condemnation as we gr ow into our womanhood. If we hold grievances against our father, then if we ar e a
woman, we will not be able to escape pr ojection of guilt
onto other adult men who come into our lives; and if we ar e
a man, we will not be able to escape self -condemnation as
we gr ow into our manhood. That’s it. A t a certain point, we for give because we
decide  to for give. Healing occurs in the pr esent, not the
past. W e are not held back by the love we didn’t r eceive in
the past, but by the love we’r e not e xtending in the pr esent. Either God has the power to r enew our lives, or He doesn’t. Could God be looking at any of us and saying, “I’d love to
give you a joyful life, but your mother was so ter rible, my
hands ar e tied”? There is a lot of talk today about people gr owing up in
dysfunctional homes. Who didn’t  grow up in a dysfunctional
home! This world is dysfunctional! But ther e is nothing we
have been thr ough, or seen, or done, that cannot be used to
make our lives mor e valuable now . We can gr ow fr om any
experience, and we can transcend any e xperience. This kind
of talk is blasphemy to the ego, which r espects pain,gloriﬁes pain, worships pain, and cr eates pain. P ain is its
centerpiece. It sees for giveness as its enemy . Forgiveness r emains the only path that leads out of hell. Whether we’r e forgiving our par ents, someone else, or
ourselves, the laws of mind r emain the same: As we love,
we shall be r eleased fr om pain, and as we deny love, we
shall r emain in pain. Every moment, we’r e either e xtending
love or pr ojecting fear, and every thought tak es us near er to
Heaven or hell. What will it tak e to mak e us r emember that
‘the ark is enter ed two by two,’ that ther e is no getting into
Heaven without taking someone with you? Practice and commitment ar e the k eys to love. What I’ve
seen for myself, and witnessed others grapple with also, is
not an ar gument with the power of love. I can see the truth
of all these principles. But I have also seen how of ten I
would r esist the e xperience of love, when holding on to a
grievance seems mor e important than letting it go . An entir e
world has been built on fear . Fear’s system will not be
dismantled in a moment. W e can work on ourselves every
moment that we live. The world is healed one loving
thought at a time. Mother Ther esa said that ther e are no
great deeds—just small deeds done with gr eat love. Each of us have diﬀer ent fears, and diﬀer ent
manifestations of fear, but all of us ar e saved by the same
technique: the call to God to save our lives by salvaging our
minds. “ Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us fr om
evil, for L ove is the Kingdom, and L ove is the glory, and
Love is the power, for ever and ever .”
OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 7
Work
“I am only her e to be truly helpful . I am her e to r epresent Him who sent me . I do not have to wor ry about what to say or what
to do, because He Who sent me will dir ect me . I am content to be wher ever He wishes, knowing
He goes ther e with me . I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal .”
 
1. SURRENDERING OUR CAREERS
“Seeing your str engths e xactly as they ar e, and
equally awar e of wher e they can be best applied,
for what, to whom and when, He chooses and
accepts your part for you .”
Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our
talents and abilities wer e used in a way that served others. We’re compensated by grateful looks in people’s eyes,whatever material abundance supports us in perfor ming
joyfully and at high ener gy, and the magniﬁcent feeling that
we did our bit today to save the world. The A tonement means putting love ﬁrst. In everything. In
business as well as everything else. Y ou’re in business to
spread love. Y our scr eenplay should spr ead love. Y our hair
salon should spr ead love. Y our agency should spr ead love. Your life should spr ead love. The k ey to a successful car eer
is realizing that it’s not separate fr om the r est of your life,
but is rather an e xtension of your most basic self . And your
most basic self is love. Knowing who you ar e and why you came her e—that you
are a child of God and that you came her e to heal and be
healed—is mor e important than knowing what you want to
do. What you want to do is not the important question. The
question to ask is, “When I do anything , how should I do it?”
And the answer is, “ Kindly .” People don’t nor mally associate
business with kindness, because business has come to be
regarded as simply a tool for making money . Miracle-
work ers ar e not in business only to mak e money; they’r e in
business to inject love into the world. Each of us has a particular part to play in “ God’s plan for
salvation.” The Holy Spirit’s job is to r eveal to us our
function and to help us perfor m it. ‘The Holy Spirit asks us if
it’s reasonable to assume that He would assign us a task,
and then not pr ovide us with the means of its
accomplishment.’
Once again, we’r e not deciding for ourselves what part to
play in life, but rather asking that it be r evealed to us wher e
He would have us go and what He would have us do . We
surrender our car eers to Him. During W orld W ar II, the Allied
generals oversaw all tr oop activity fr om a centralheadquarters, fr om which they issued or ders. The
commanders on various fr onts didn’t necessarily know how
their movements ﬁt into an overall military scheme: they
just knew they did, because they knew ther e was a general
intelligence behind the issuing of their or ders. So it is with
us. W e might not know how or wher e our talents would best
be put to use, but the Holy Spirit does. A Course in Miracles
teaches us to ‘avoid self -initiated plans, and to instead
surrender our plans to God.’
Some people have said, “ But I’m afraid to sur render my
career to God. I’m a musician—what if He wants me to be
an accountant?” My answer to that is, why would He? Wouldn’t He rather have someone who understands
numbers do that job? If you’r e talented at music, that talent is of God. If
something mak es your heart sing, that’s God’s way of
telling you it’s a contribution He wants you to mak e. Sharing
our gif ts is what mak es us happy . We’re most powerful, and
God’s power is most appar ent on the earth when we’r e
happy . A Course in Miracles  says that the ‘only r eal pleasur e
comes fr om doing God’s will.’ The crux of salvation in any
area is a shif t in our sense of purpose. R elationships,
careers, bodies—all these ar eas of our lives ar e reborn in
spirit when we dedicate them to God’s purposes, asking that
they be used as instruments thr ough which the world is
healed. That shif t is a miracle. As always, we consciously ask for
it. “Dear God, please give my life some sense of purpose. Use me as an instrument of your peace. Use my talents and
abilities to spr ead love. I sur render my job to you. Help meto remember that my r eal job is to love the world back to
health. Thank you very much. Amen.”
2. GOD’S WILL
“Wher e would you have me go ? What would you have me do ? What would you have me say, and to whom ?”
People ask themselves, “ Do I want to serve God, or do I
want to be happy?” Since certain or ganized r eligions have
represented the spiritual life as a life of sacriﬁce and
austerity, it can be har d for some people to imagine that a
life lived close to God is a life full of joy . A Course in Miracles
says the ‘only r eal pleasur e comes fr om doing God’s will.’
God does not demand sacriﬁce. The life of sacriﬁce is the
life we live befor e we ﬁnd a higher sense of identity and
purpose: the sacriﬁce of the memory of how magniﬁcent we
really ar e, and what an important job we came her e to do . And that’s a lot to sacriﬁce, because when we can’t
remember why we’r e going somewher e, we have a har d
time acting on full thr ottle once we get ther e. Love gives
energy and dir ection. It’s spiritual fuel. Any car eer, when given to the Holy Spirit, can be used as
part of the plan of the r estoration of the world. No job is too
big or too small for God to use. Y ou have the unlimited
power of the universe within you and so does everyone else. It’s nothing to tak e personal cr edit for, nor anything to feel
guilty about. Our r eal power emanates fr om a for ce that’s in
us but not of us. ‘Be humble befor e God,’ says the Course,
‘yet gr eat in him.’ R emembering this k eeps us connected toour innocence, and as long as we have that, the power will
keep pouring thr ough us. F orget it, and the faucet could be
turned oﬀ at any moment. Stop blessing the universe, and
the universe will seem to stop blessing you. Whatever your
activity, just ask that it be used to bless the world. I remember one day complaining to my girlfriend June
how unhappy I was, and she said, “Marianne, I don’t mean
to be har d on you, but do you ever do anything for anyone
else?” That comment felt lik e a brick to my for ehead,
although I did very little about it at the time. A fter I went
through my period of very deep depr ession several years
later, however, human suﬀering became a much mor e
personally signiﬁcant subject. I thought that if other people
suﬀer ed a fraction as much as I had, then my heart burst for
them and I wanted to be of help. God seemed to say to me
then, “ People suﬀer deeply, and ther e have been people
suﬀering ar ound you all your life. Y ou just didn’t notice. Y ou
were shopping.”
I used to wor ry, as do many people, about what I was
supposed to do with my life. I never seemed to be able to
stick with any one thing very long or mak e money or ﬁnd
any r eal satisfaction in my work. I felt paralyzed. I
remember once asking God to r eveal to me what He wanted
me to know in or der that I might change. I got down on my
knees and work ed myself into a grandiose meditative state. I saw visual images of a glorious sk y and a gr oup of angels
marching thr ough the clouds to bring me His answer . A
couple of cherubs held up a scr oll that they then began to
unfold. My heart started racing as I awaited God’s message,
which I was sur e would be e xtremely important. Slowly the
letters on the scr oll began to for m wor ds: “Marianne, you’r e
a spoiled brat.”The r eason I was paralyzed was because I had lost touch
with the sole memory of why I came to earth. T elling me I
was a spoiled brat was the perfect infor mation, the k ey to
unlock my ener gies. The pr oblem was my selﬁshness. Lik e
actors who have spent so much time lear ning how to act
that they didn’t lear n how to live, and so end up making
lousy actors because they ultimately have nothing authentic
to reveal about life, we sometimes lose our personal power
by for getting why we have it. W e study up on how to run
businesses, not stopping to think about why we’r e in
business e xcept to mak e money . This is not a spiritually
powerful beam, and the universe will tolerate it less and less
as the nineties unfold. 3. PERSONAL POWER
“All power is of God .”
Don’t ask God to send you a brilliant car eer, but rather ask
Him to show you the brilliance within you. It is the
recognition of our brilliance that r eleases it into e xpression. Stable, meaningful e xternal eﬀects don’t occur until we’ve
experienced an inter nal stir ring. Once an inter nal stir ring
has occur red, e xternal eﬀects cannot fail to happen. W e’re
all capable of an inter nal stir ring, and ar e in fact coded for
it. It is our potential for gr eatness. A chievement doesn’t
come fr om what we do, but fr om who we ar e. Our worldly
power r esults fr om our personal power . Our car eer is an
extension of our personality . People who pr ofoundly achieve ar en’t necessarily people
who do so much; they’r e people ar ound whom things get
done. Mahatma Gandhi and P resident K ennedy wer e both
examples of this. Their gr eatest achievements lay in all the
energy they stir red in other people, the invisible for ces thayunleashed ar ound them. By touching their own depths, they
touched the depths within others. That kind of charisma, the power to eﬀect what happens
on the earth fr om an invisible r ealm within, is the natural
right and function of the Son of God. The wor d “charisma”
was originally a r eligious ter m. It means “ of the spirit.” The
new fr ontiers ar e inter nal ones. The r eal str etch is always
within us. Instead of e xpanding our ability or willingness to
go out and get anything, we e xpand our ability to r eceive
what is alr eady her e for us. Personal power emanates fr om someone who tak es life
seriously . The universe tak es us a seriously as we tak e it. There is no gr eater seriousness than the full appreciation of
the power and importance of love. Miracles ﬂow fr om the
recognition that love is the purpose of our car eers. A Course in Miracles  discusses a traditional Christian
concept called “the gif ts of the Holy Spirit.” This idea is that,
when our lives ar e given to the Holy Spirit to use for His
purposes, new talents emer ge within us. W e don’t get our
lives together and then give them to God, but rather we
give our lives to God and then things start coming together . As our hearts open, our talents and gif ts begin to blossom. Many people have told me that once they’r e successful and
have made a lot of money, they will use that success to help
the world. But that’s a delay technique by which the ego
tries to k eep us fr om showing up fully in our own lives. Even
if we don’t yet consider ourselves successful, we can devote
our work now to being used in the service of the healing of
the world. F rom that point of power our car eers will tak e oﬀ. No matter what we do, we can mak e it our ministry . No
matter what for m our job or activity tak es, the content is the
same as everyone else’s: we ar e her e to minister to humanhearts. If we talk to anyone, or see anyone, or even think of
anyone, then we have the opportunity to bring mor e love
into the universe. F rom a waitr ess to the head of a movie
studio, fr om an elevator operator to the pr esident of a
nation, ther e is no one whose job is unimportant to God. When you know this, when you fully live up to the
opportunity to heal, you achieve an ener gy that pushes you
forwar d in worldly endeavors. L ove mak es you mor e
attractive. That means you attract, lik e a magnet. Y ou don’t
just attract people; you attract various cir cumstances that
reﬂect back to you the power of your devotion. Y our
personal power is not something that is going to r eveal itself
at some later date. Y our power is a r esult of your decision to
reveal it. Y ou ar e powerful in whatever moment you choose
to be. The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right
here, right now, is a choice for personal empower ment. A Course in Miracles  tells us that all of the childr en of
God have power—yet no one has “special” power . ‘All of us
are special,’ and yet none of us ar e special. No one has any
more potential than anyone else for spr eading the love and
light of God. Many of our traditional notions of success r ely
on our talking ourselves into the belief that we’r e special
and we have something special to oﬀer . The truth is, none of
us ar e special because special people would be diﬀer ent
and separate fr om others. The oneness of Christ mak es this
impossible. The belief in specialness, ther efore, is delusional
and thus br eeds fear . What a Beethoven, Shak espear e or P icasso has done is
not create something, so much as they have accessed that
place within themselves fr om which they could express that
which has been cr eated by God. Their genius then, is
actually e xpression and not cr eation. That’s why gr eat art
strikes us with the shock of r ecog nition, the wish that wehad said that. The soul thrills at the r eminder of what we all
already know . The Course says that ‘one day, all the gif ts of God will be
shared equally by everyone.’ W e all have the potential for
greatness, but it gets plowed out of us early . Fear enter ed
when someone told us ther e’s a ﬁrst prize, second prize and
third prize, that some eﬀorts deserve an A, and some get a
C. After a while, part of us becomes afraid to even try . The
only thing we have to give to the world is our own grasp on
it. The ego ar gues that this is not enough. It leads us to
cover up our simple truth, to try to invent a better one. But
the ego isn’t pr otecting us her e, although, as always, it
pretends to . It isn’t guar ding against our making fools of
ourselves; it is guar ding against our e xperience of who we
really ar e, the brilliance of e xpressing it, and the joy that the
expression brings to ourselves and others. I love the story of the little girl who showed her teacher a
pictur e she painted of a tr ee. The tr ee was purple. The
teacher said, “Sweetheart, I’ve never seen a purple tr ee,
now have I?”
“Oh?” said the little girl. “That’s too bad.”
We can’t fak e authenticity . We think we need to cr eate
ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we’r e trying to be special rather than r eal. We’re pathetically trying to confor m with all the other
people trying to do the same. A tulip doesn’t strive to impr ess anyone. It doesn’t
struggle to be diﬀer ent than a r ose. It doesn’t have to . It is
diﬀer ent. And ther e’s room in the gar den for every ﬂower . You didn’t have to struggle to mak e your face diﬀer ent than
anyone else’s on earth. It just is. Y ou are unique becauseyou wer e created that way . Look at little childr en in
kinder garten. They’r e all diﬀer ent without trying to be. As
long as they’r e unselfconsciously being themselves, they
can’t help but shine. It’s only later, when childr en ar e taught
to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their
natural light becomes distorted. The natural light of God within us all is what the Course
refers to as our grandeur . The ego’s eﬀorts to embellish our
natural state is what the Course r efers to as grandiosity . “It
is easy to distinguish gandeur fr om grandiosity,” says the
Course, “because love is r eturned and pride is not.” The ego
interfer es with the clear e xpression of our power by trying to
get us to add something to it. This is actually a ploy by
which it thwarts our capacity to e xpress who we r eally ar e,
and accept full r ecognition fr om others in r eturn. Once again, separation is the ego’s goal. I used to always
be on an emotional r oller-coaster ride, feeling I was better
than other people, and then feeling I was worse. “I’m better,
no I’m not as good, I’m better, no I’m not as good.” They’r e
the same mistak e. The truth is, we’r e just lik e everybody
else. Knowing this—that we’r e no better or worse than
anyone else because we’r e all essentially the same—is a
thought lacking in luster only until we fully appr eciate what
kind of club we belong to . Humanity is a gr oup of inﬁnitely
powerful cr eatur es. ‘Our power, however, is in us but not of
us.’ It is God’s spirit inside of us that enlightens and
enlivens our lives. Of ourselves we’r e really no big deal. This thought has helped me in my car eer. I walk onto a
stage and sometimes speak to mor e than a thousand people
at a time. I can’t imagine dealing with the pr essur e of
having to convince myself that I have something special to
oﬀer. I don’t try to . I don’t have to impr ess anyone, and if
I’m not thinking that I have to, ther e’s nothing to do butrelax. I walk out on stage without feeling the need to mak e
people think I’m special, because I know I’m not. I just talk
to friends, casually and with enthusiasm. That’s it. Ther e
isn’t anything else. Everything else is just an illusion. The
Son of God doesn’t have to embellish who he is. We’re tempted to think that we’r e mor e impr essive when
we put on airs. W e’re not, of course; we’r e rather pathetic
when we do that. The Course states, “ Grandiosity is always
a cover for despair .” The light of Christ shines most brightly
within us when we r elax and let it be, allowing it to shine
away our grandiose delusions. But we’r e afraid to let down
our masks. What is r eally happening her e, unconsciously, is
not that we ar e defending against our smallness. The ego is
actually, in those moments, defending against God. As I interpr et the Course, ‘our deepest fear is not that we
are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we ar e powerful
beyond measur e. It is our light, not our dark ness, that most
frightens us.’ W e ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous? A ctually, who ar e you not to
be? Y ou ar e a child of God. Y our playing small doesn’t serve
the world. Ther e’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so
that other people won’t feel insecur e around you. W e are all
meant to shine, as childr en do . We wer e bor n to mak e
manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in
some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light
shine, we unconsciously give other people per mission to do
the same. As we’r e liberated fr om our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others. A miracle work er is an artist of the soul. Ther e’s no
higher art than living a good life. An artist infor ms the world
of what’s available behind the masks we all wear . That’s
what we’r e all her e to do . The r eason so many of us ar e
obsessed with becoming stars is because we’r e not yetstarring in our own lives. The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed
at you; it radiates fr om within  you. I used to feel lik e I was
waiting for someone to discover me, to “pr oduce” me, lik e
Lana T urner at the drugstor e. Ultimately I r ealized that the
person I was waiting for was myself .
_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:

        If I swallow a piece of aluminum foil, my body will
regurgitate until the oﬀending object is e xpelled. If I’m being
asked to swallow an idea that doesn’t “agr ee” with me, then
my psychological system will go thr ough the same pr ocess
of regurgitation in or der to e xpel the oﬀending material. If I’m convinced that I’m not good enough, I will have a
diﬃcult time accepting someone into my life who thinks I
am. It’s the Gr oucho Mar x syndr ome of not wanting to lik e
anyone who would want me in their club. The only way that
I can accept someone’s ﬁnding me wonderful, is if I ﬁnd
myself wonderful. But to the ego, self -acceptance is death. This is why we’r e attracted to people who don’t want us. We know they’r e not into it fr om the gate. W e pretend to be
surprised later when we ﬁnd ourselves betrayed and they
leave af ter an intense but fairly short stay. They ﬁt perfectly
into our ego’s plan: I will not be loved. The r eason that nice,
available people seem boring to us is because they bust us. The ego equates emotional danger with e xcitement, and
claims that the nice, available person isn’t danger ous
enough. The ir ony is that the opposite is true: available
people ar e the ones who are danger ous, because they
confr ont us with the possibility of r eal intimacy. They might
actually hang ar ound long enough to get to know us. They
could melt our defenses, not thr ough violence but thr ough
love. This is what the ego doesn’t want us to see. A vailable
people ar e frightening. They thr eaten the ego’s citadel. The
reason we’r e not attracted to them is because we’r e not
available ourselves. 12. HEALING OUR WOUNDS
“Healing is the way in which separation is
overcome. ”
Our bar riers to love ar e rarely consciously chosen. They ar e
our eﬀorts to pr otect the places wher e the heart is bruised. Somewher e, sometime, we felt as though an open heart
caused us pain or humiliation. W e loved with the openness
of a child, and someone didn’t car e, or laughed, or evenpunished us for the eﬀort. In a quick moment, per haps a
fraction of a second, we made a decision to pr otect
ourselves fr om ever feeling that pain again. W e would never
again allow ourselves to be so vulnerable. W e built
emotional defenses. W e tried to build a fortr ess acr oss our
heart, to pr otect us fr om any cold assault. The only pr oblem
is, accor ding to the Course, that we cr eate what we defend
against. There was a time in my life when I felt I should stop
opening up so much to people who didn’t honor my heart as
I wished it to be honor ed. I was angry at people who I felt
had hurt me, but I denied the anger instead of getting in
touch with it and r eleasing it to God. This is a common trap
for Course students. If anger isn’t br ought up into conscious
awar eness, it has no place to go. It either tur ns into an
attack on self or an inappr opriate unconscious attack on
others. So not r ecognizing the full e xtent of my anger, and
thinking that the lesson to be lear ned was mer ely that I
shouldn’t r eveal so much of my honest feelings, I then went
into r elationships with two strik es against me: I was closed—
read that as cold—and ar med with hidden emotional knives
coming fr om my unconscious anger. Contrary to whatever
front I might have been able to lead with, that’s not e xactly
a delightful pack age. Between the coldness and the anger, I
could tur n oﬀ the saintliest men. This, of course, only
increased my anger and distrust. I was once talking to a very wise therapist. I made some
comment lik e, “W ell, a lot of women my age ar e ﬁnding it
very har d to ﬁnd r eally loving, committable, available men. ”
Her answer rang thr ough my head lik e chur ch bells. “When
a woman says that to me,” she said, “ what we usually ﬁnd
when we look closely enough is a contempt for men. ”Contempt for men. Contempt for men. The wor ds
resounded thr ough my sk ull. I don’t know if that was the
issue for every woman she spok e to, but I knew she had hit
the nail on the head in my case. I had of ten thought about
the idea in the Course that we think we ar e angry at what
our br other did to us, but that r eally we ar e angry because
of what we’ve done to him. I had vaguely known that that
was true, but it took a lot of uncovering to see what it was I
was doing  to these guys who I just knew  were doing all
these hor rible things to me. The Course speaks of “shadow
ﬁgures” we bring with us fr om our past. It tells us that we
tend to see no one as they ar e now. We keep blaming
someone in the pr esent for something someone else did in
the past. Some poor man would tell me, “ Darling, I’m not
able to come back Sunday night lik e I’d planned. I’ve got to
keep working on this pr oject. I might not be back until
Tuesday. ” Well, he might as well have just told me that my
cat was dead and the dog was dying. The pr oblem wasn’t
that the man wasn’t coming home for a few days mor e. The
problem was how it made me feel inside to hear him say
that. Such a dark despair would run acr oss my heart, I can’t
begin to tell you. I wasn’t r elating to that man, or this
circumstance. I was r emembering all the times I had ever
felt as though I didn’t matter, I wasn’t attractive, Daddy
didn’t want to hold me, or someone else didn’t want to have
sex anymor e. From a Course perspective, this situation was coming up
now in or der for me to feel that feeling, and know that it had
nothing to do with the pr esent. I ask ed for a miracle: ‘I am
willing to see this diﬀer ently. I am willing to r emember who I
am. ’ God’s answer to my pain was not going to be—contrary
to what my ego k ept insisting was the only way out of this
grief—a man who was going to tell me sixty times a day,
“You’re fabulous, you’r e wonderful, I love you, I want you,”
and then show me just how desirable I r eally was, maybetwice, pr eferably thr ee times a day. The healing, in fact, was
bound to come ultimately fr om men who would not—
because no one can, r eally—tolerate my neediness, or the
guilt I would try to pr oject onto them in or der to get my
needs met. Or what I thought my needs wer e. My r eal need,
of course, was to r ealize that I didn’t need a man to ﬁll what
only felt lik e these insatiable emotional needs. The needs
themselves wer e not r eal, but mer ely a r eﬂection of the fact
that I thought of myself as less than perfect. Salvation
would only come thr ough my r elinquishing the thought that
I wasn’t good enough. By defending myself against being
abandoned, I continued to r ecreate the conditions in which
it was bound to occur. Why can’t men commit. I can only answer for some of
them that I’ve known, but in those cases, and in the cases
of many women I’ve observed, men haven’t committed
because the women have been ar mored against it. Our
armor is our darkness—the dark of the heart, the dark of the
pain, the dark of the moment when we mak e that wick ed
comment or that unfair r equest. Our defenses r eﬂect our wounds. But no person can heal
those wounds. They can give us love, innocently and
sincer ely, but if we’r e already convinced that people can’t
be trusted—if that’s the decision we’ve alr eady made—then
our mind will construe whatever someone’s behavior is, as
evidence that our pr eviously drawn conclusion was cor rect. The Course tells us we decide what we want to see befor e
we see it. If we want to focus on someone’s lack of r espect
for our feelings, we can certainly ﬁnd it, given the fact that I
don’t know of many enlightened masters available for
dating in the major cities of America today. But a lot of
people ar e making gr eater eﬀorts than we give them cr edit
for, and ar e working against some for midable odds when
our egos have convinced us that men or women ar e jerks, ordon’t lik e us, or always leave, or that ther e just ar en’t any
good ones out ther e. 13. CHANGING OUR MIND
“The fundamental change will occur with the
change of mind in the think er. ”
The goal of spiritual practice is full r ecovery, and the only
thing you need to r ecover fr om is a fractur ed sense of self. If
you don’t alr eady believe it yourself, another person cannot
convince you you’r e okay. If they act as though you ar e, you
will either not believe them, or become so dependent on
their r einfor cement that you pr oceed thr ough your
dependency to change their mind. Either way, you stay
convinced that you’r e not ok ay. The only e xercise in the
Workbook of A Course in Miracles  that is r epeated several
times is “I am as God cr eated me. ” As I have mentioned
earlier, the Course says that your only r eal pr oblem is that
you have for gotten who you ar e. You awak en to your own perfection thr ough your desir e
to see the perfection in someone else. Sometimes this is not
easy. When I feel the old familiar darkness starting to
descend ar ound me, when a man, for instance, mak es a
comment that I know intellectually is pr obably innocent
enough, but which mak es me feel that I am abandoned or
uncar ed for or r ejected, I’ve been thr ough enough in my life
to know that the evil does not lie in what he just said. He is
not the enemy. The enemy is this feeling, which in the past
has led me to attack or defend enough to mak e him feel
exactly what I’m feeling he’s feeling but he r eally isn’t. I can
choose to see this diﬀer ently. This is my wall. This is wher e
we must be very conscious and call on God. Ask for a
miracle: “ Dear God, please help me. This is it. Right her e. There is wher e the swor d enters my heart. This is wher e I
blow it every time. ”
The moment when the pain is gr eatest is a wonderful
opportunity. The ego would pr efer that we never look too
directly into the pain. When in crisis, ther e’s a good
opportunity we might have a slip and ask Heaven for help. The ego would pr efer that we not go into crisis. The ego
prefers that a mild river of misery run thr ough the
backgr ound of our lives, never bad enough to mak e us
question whether our own choices ar e creating the pain. When the pain is her e, that is when we have a chance to
“rout Satan and r emove him for ever. ” A man once said to
me, “Y ou know, Marianne, you can work on this stuﬀ with
your therapist, A Course in Miracles, your editor, the
relationships lectur er, and all of your girlfriends, but none of
them pr ovide you with the opportunity that you have by
working it out with me. ” What he meant of course, is with
them I could describe the pain, but with him I could feel it. And in that moment, if I didn’t tak e the childish, nar cissistic
copout and leave, but r emained to face the fear and move
through it, then the purpose of the r elationship could be
fulﬁlled. When our darkness is br ought to light and for given,
then we can move on. We heal thr ough noticing, and prayer. Awareness alone
does not heal us. If analysis by itself could heal our wounds,
we would all be healed by now. Our neur oses have become
deeply embedded into our psyches, lik e a tumor that wraps
itself ar ound a vital or gan. The pr ocess of miraculous change is twofold:
1. I see my er ror or dysfunctional patter n. 2. I ask God to tak e it fr om me. The ﬁrst principle without the second is impotent. As
they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “ your best thinking got
you her e. ” You’re the pr oblem but you’r e not the answer. The second principle isn’t enough to change us, either. The Holy Spirit can’t tak e from us what we won’t r elease to
Him. He won’t work without our consent. He cannot r emove
our character defects without our willingness, because that
would be violating our fr ee will. W e chose those patter ns,
however mistak enly, and He will not for ce us to give them
up. In asking God to heal you, you ar e committing to the
choice to be healed. This means the choice to change. The
ego’s r esistance to this is intense. It wants us to think that
an old dog doesn’t change. “I’m angry because I’m an
alcoholic,” for instance, might describe your anger, but it
doesn’t justif y it. The only advantage of knowing that you’r e
angry, is so that you can mak e a choice to be otherwise. Y ou
can spend years in therapy, but until the choice is made to
do it diﬀer ently, you just k eep going ar ound in cir cles. Of
course it feels unnatural to be gentle when you’ve been
harsh for many years, but that’s no e xcuse for not trying. A Course in Miracles  says that the most eﬀective way to
teach a child is not by saying ‘Don’t do that,’ but ‘Do this. ’
We don’t r each the light thr ough endless analysis of the
dark. W e reach the light by choosing the light. Light means
understanding. Thr ough understanding, we ar e healed. If the purpose of a r elationship is for people to be healed,
and healing can only occur when our wounds ar e revealed,
then the ego confr onts us with a ter rible Catch-22. If I don’t
show myself, ther e can be no gr owth. W ithout gr owth, ther e
will ultimately be bor edom, which is death for therelationship. But if I do r eveal myself honestly, then I might
appear unattractive and my partner will leave. The ego’s nar cissism has us waiting for the perfect
person to appear. The Holy Spirit knows that the sear ch for
perfection in another is just a smok escreen that hides our
need to develop the perfect within ourselves. And if ther e is
a perfect person out ther e—which ther e isn’t—would they
date you. When we give up the childish obsession with
scanning the planet for Mr. or Ms. Right, we can begin to
develop the skills of compassionate r elationship. W e stop
judging people and start relating to them instead. W e
recognize, ﬁrst and for emost, that we’r e not in a r elationship
to focus on how well the other person is lear ning their
lessons, but rather to focus on lear ning our own. The ego defends against love, not fear. Pain in
relationships can be a perversely comfortable pain, in that it
is one we know. We’re used to it. I once hear d a tape by
Ram Dass, an American spiritual teacher, in which he told of
seeing a newspaper article about an abused baby being
taken away fr om his mother. As a police matr on tried to tak e
the baby, he k ept struggling to r emain in his mother’s ar ms. Although his mother was the one who beat him, she was the
one he knew. He was used to her. He wanted to r emain in
familiar ter ritory. This story illustrates our r elationship to our own egos. The ego is our pain, but it is what we know, and we r esist
moving out of it. The eﬀort it tak es to gr ow out of painful
patter ns of ten feels mor e uncomfortable than r emaining
within them. P ersonal gr owth can be painful, because it can
make us feel ashamed and humiliated to face our own
darkness. But the goal of personal gr owth is the jour ney out
of dark emotional patter ns that cause us pain, to those that
create peace. Psychotherapy : Purpose, P rocess and P racticesays that at their peak, r eligion and psychotherapy become
one. They both r epresent the r elationship between thought
and e xperience, and ar e used by the Holy Spirit to celebrate
one of the most glorious human potentials: our capacity to
change. There is a tendency these days to analyze our neur oses
ad inﬁnitum, yet use the analysis itself to justif y rather than
heal the wound. A fter a certain point, having seen why a
patter n developed (“My father was emotionally
unavailable,” or “My mother abused me”) and the eﬀect it
has had on our personalities (“I don’t know how to let a man
get close to me,” or “I now have a har d time trusting any
authority ﬁgur e”), actual change occurs because of a
decision on our part: the decision to heal, the decision to
change. It ultimately doesn’t matter so much why I become
angry or defensive. What matters is that I decide I want to
be healed, and I ask God to help me. Like an actor r eading lines fr om a script, I can choose a
new r esponse to life, a new r eading. Some people at this
point would yell, “ Denial. ” But what we ar e denying is the
impostor within us. Just because we have an honest feeling,
that doesn’t mean it’s who we honestly ar e. My angry self is
not the r eal me. Does it have to be acknowledged. Y es, but
only in or der to go beyond it. Once I’ve seen my anger, I’m
ready, as they say in A A, to “act as if” I can do it diﬀer ently. Because I can. Our ego has made up a ﬁctional character
that we now think of as our personality. But we ar e
constantly cr eating that personality, and if we choose, we
are constantly r ecreating it. I was once talking to a friend and he made some
comment about how he was afraid that, if we got closely
involved, one of us might get hurt. “Which one of us ar e you
concer ned for. ” I ask ed. He answer ed, “Y ou. ”I felt an anticipatory r ejection. I was angry and I told him
so. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Y ou obviously tak e things
so personally that I don’t think I could stand it for long. ”
I knew that this was a moment I had r epeated in various
ways with various people, and I had ask ed for healing many
times. I was open. I ask ed him, “T ell me honestly : How could
I have done it diﬀer ently. What else could I have said. ”
“You could have just smiled and said, ‘Don’t ﬂatter
yourself. ’”
I was so e xcited. I was lik e an eager actr ess working with
a great dir ector. “Oh that’s so gr eat,” I said. “ Let’s go back
and do that scene one mor e time. Say what you said again. ”
“You know, Marianne, I just have this awful feeling that if
we really got together, one of us would get hurt. ”
“Which one of us ar e you afraid for.
Because we are not accepting ourselves.
What does the author say is the reason we are not attracted to people who accept us?
To ask for guidance and surrender to the Holy Spirit, rather than trying to control the situation.
What is the key to successful communication in relationships, according to the author?
The author believes that we need to change ourselves, not our partners, in order to be happy. We need to recognize and release our own wounds and judgments, and then ask for guidance and healing.
What is the author's perspective on the idea that we need to change our partners in order to be happy?
The author argues that success and abundance come from recognizing and surrendering to our true nature, rather than trying to achieve them through external means.
What is the author's stance on the idea that we need to make a lot of money in order to be happy?
The author suggests that we are already special and powerful because we are children of God, and we don't need to try to impress anyone or be someone we're not.
What is the author's perspective on the idea that we need to be special and impressive in order to be loved?