If we wait for the
world’s per mission to shine, we will never r eceive it. The
ego doesn’t give that per mission. Only God does, and He
has alr eady done so . He has sent you her e as His personal
representative and is asking you to channel His love into the
world. Ar e you waiting for a mor e important job? Ther e isn’t
one. There is a plan for each of us, and each of us is pr ecious. As we open our hearts mor e and mor e, we’r e moved in the
directions in which we’r e supposed to go . Our gif ts well up
inside of us and e xtend of their own accor d. We accomplish
eﬀortlessly . How could L eonar do da V inci not have painted? How
could Shak espear e not have written? In Letters to a Y oung
Poet, Rilk e tells a young writer to write only if he has to. We
are to do what ther e is a deep psychological and emotional
imperative for us to do . That’s our point of power, the
source of our brilliance. Our power is not rationally or
willfully called forth. It’s a divine dispensation, an act of
grace. 4. MONEY
“Joy has no cost .”
Do what you love. Do what mak es your heart sing. And
never do it for the money . Don’t go to work to mak e money;
go to work to spr ead joy . Seek ye ﬁrst the kingdom ofHeaven, and the Masaratti will get her e when it’s supposed
to. God doesn’t have a poverty consciousness. He doesn’t
want you to have a boring life or a boring car eer. He doesn’t
have anything against the things of this world. ‘Money isn’t
evil; it’s just nothing.’ Lik e anything else, it can be used for
holy or unholy purposes. I once had a small bookstor e. A man came in one day
and told me that he was going to teach me how to mak e
money . “Every person that walks in that door,” he said, “is a
potential sale. And that’s what you should silently say to
yourself whenever a customer walks into the stor e: Potential
sale, potential sale.”
His advice sounded e xploitative to me. He was advising
me to view other people as pawns in my own scheme. I
prayed and r eceived these wor ds: “Y our stor e is a chur ch.”
Church, esoterically, means the gathering of souls. It’s not
an outer plane but rather an inner plane phenomenon. People don’t come into your place of business so that you
can get anything. They’r e sent so that you can give them
love. After I said the prayer and got the feeling that my stor e
was a chur ch, I understood that my only job was to love the
people who came ther e. I actually did that: every time I saw
a customer walk in, I would silently bless them in some way
or another . Not everyone bought a book every time they
came in, but people began to consider me their bookseller . Customers wer e attracted to a peaceful feeling in the air . People might not know wher e it comes fr om, but they can
feel it when love is being sent in their dir ection.I’m amazed when I walk into stor es and the sales people
are rude, as if they’r e doing you some kind of favor letting
you be ther e. A rude attitude is destructive to the emotional
fabric of the world. Wher e I gr ew up, we lef t a stor e with
that kind of ener gy because it doesn’t feel good to be ther e.
When our goal is making money, cr eativity becomes
distorted. If I saw money as the ultimate goal of my
teaching car eer, then I would have to think mor e about what
people wanted to hear and less about what I feel it’s
important to say . My ener gy would become tainted with
eﬀorts to get people to come back, to sell them on my
lectur es, to get them to bring their friends. But if the
purpose of my car eer is to channel God’s love, then I’m only
there to open my heart, open my brain and open my mouth. When we’r e working solely for money, our motivation is
getting rather than giving. The miraculous transfor mation
here is a shif t from a sales mentality to a service mentality . Until we mak e this switch, we’r e operating fr om ego and
concentrating on the things of this world rather than on
love. This idolatry casts us into alien emotional ter ritory,
wher e we ar e always afraid. W e’re afraid of either failur e or
success. If we’r e closer to success, we’ll fear success. If
we’re closer to failur e, we’ll fear failur e. The issue isn’t
success or failur e. The issue is the pr esence of fear, and its
inevitability wher ever love is absent. Like everything else, money is either holy or unholy,
depending on the purposes ascribed to it by the mind. W e
tend to do with money what we do with se x: we desir e it but
we judge the desir e. It is the judgment that then distorts the
desir e, tur ning it into an ugly e xpression. Because we ar e
ashamed to admit that we want these things, we have
insidious ways of pr etending that we don’t—such as
condemning our desir es even as we act them out. The lossof purity is in us, then—not in money or in se x. They ar e
both just canvasses onto which we pr oject our guilt. Just as the fearful mind is the sour ce of pr omiscuity and
sex is mer ely the vehicle thr ough which it is e xpressed, so
money is not the sour ce of gr eed. The mind is the sour ce of
greed, and money is one of the places wher e it e xpresses
itself. Both money and se x can be used for holy as well as
unholy purposes. Lik e nuclear ener gy, the pr oblem isn’t the
energy, but how it is applied. Our judgment of wealth is actually an ego ploy to mak e
sure we never have any . I was once driving ar ound a very
wealthy neighbor hood in Houston and I thought, “These
people work for huge multi-national corporations that
oppress people thr oughout the Thir d World.” Then I stopped
myself : How do I know what all those people do for a living,
and how do I know what they do with their money? My
judgmental attitude, masquerading as political
consciousness, was actually my ego’s way of trying to mak e
sure that I would never have any money . What we mentally
refuse to per mit others, we r efuse ourselves. What we bless
in others, we draw to us. When I was younger, I cherished the belief that, by being
poor, I was somehow showing my camaraderie with the
impoverished. Behind that thought, I see now, was my fear
that I would fail if I tried to mak e money . I ultimately r ealized
that poor people didn’t need my sympathy so much as they
needed cash. Ther e’s nothing pur e or spiritual about
poverty . We often see impoverished people who ar e very
holy, but it isn’t the poverty that cr eates the holiness. I’ve
known some e xtremely spiritual wealthy people, and I’ve
known some poor people who wer e anything but.The Bible says it’s har der for a rich man to get into
Heaven than it is for a camel to walk thr ough the eye of a
needle. That’s because the attachment  to money is a huge
temptation to deviate fr om love. But the moral imperative is
not to block the r eception of money into our lives. The
challenge is to spiritualize our r elationship to it, by seeing
that its only purpose is to heal the world. In an enlightened
society, rich people will not necessarily have less money . Poor people, however, will have much mor e. The pr oblem,
contrary to the ego’s per ception, is not just the distribution
of wealth, but the consciousness ar ound it. Money is not
scarce. It is not a ﬁnite r esour ce. W e are not poor because
the rich ar e rich. W e are poor because we do not work with
love. It behooves us to r emember that our money is God’s
money, and we want to have whatever He wants us to have
in order to do with it whatever He wants us to do . God wants
us to have whatever material support contributes to our
greatest happiness. The ego tries to convince us that God
demands sacriﬁce, and that the life of service would be a
life of poverty . This is not the case. ‘Our purpose on this
earth is to be happy,’ and it is the Holy Spirit’s function to
help us achieve that. He leads us to whatever material
abundance supports us in standing forth joyously within the
world, without binding us further to it. There’s much work to be done for the healing of the
world, and some of it costs money . Often the Holy Spirit
sends us money so that we can perfor m tasks He wants
accomplished on His behalf . A responsible attitude towar ds
money is one in which we’r e open to whatever comes, and
trusting that it always will. In asking for miracles, we ask the Holy Spirit to r emove
the obstacles to our r eception of money . These obstaclestake the for m of thoughts, such as: money is impur e, or
having money means we’r e greedy; rich people ar e bad, or I
shouldn’t mak e mor e money than my par ents did. Having
money means that we have mor e money with which to
employ other people and heal the world. Ther e’s nothing
beautiful about what happens to a society when money
stops cir culating. One of the principles to r emember about money is how
important it is to pay for services r ender ed. If we begrudge
someone else the right to mak e a living, we ar e begrudging
ourselves the same. What we give, we will r eceive, and
what we withhold will be withheld fr om us. And the universe
doesn’t r egister the diﬀer ence between stealing fr om a huge
corporation, or stealing fr om a nice little old lady . The universe will always support our integrity . Sometimes
our debts ar e so big or confusing, that even though we have
the best of intentions, the bur den and the guilt may be so
overwhelming, that we just go on automatic, push the bills
to the back of the drawer and try to for get them. Or change
our phone number . The universe will not support that. A big
person is not someone who never falls down. A big person is
someone who, when they fall, does what it tak es to get up
again. As always, the issue is to ask for a miracle. Ther e’s
no debtor’s prison in this country . Once again, accor ding to
the Course, “Miracles ar e everyone’s right but puriﬁcation is
necessary ﬁrst.” P urity of heart cr eates br eakthr oughs. If
you owe back bills, no matter how much, write a letter to
the company or individual, own the issue, apologize if
appropriate, and let them know that you ar e setting up a
payment plan, eﬀective immediately . Send them something
with the letter . Don’t set yourself up for failur e. If you can’t
aﬀord to send ﬁf teen dollars a month, that’s ok ay. Send ﬁve
dollars, if that’s all you can. But mak e sur e you send it and
send it r egularly and on time. It doesn’t matter if the bill isﬁfty thousand dollars. The Course says “ther e is no or der of
diﬃculty in miracles.” No matter what the shape of a
problem, its for m or its size, a miracle can handle it. Miracles mean that at any moment we can begin again. No
matter what the pr oblem, as long as we r eturn our minds to
a graceful position now, the universe will always help us
clean up the mess and start over . To repent means to think
again. In every ar ea, the universe will support us to the
extent that we support it. Most of us have a lot “ on” money—anything fr om an
inappr opriate need for it to an inappr opriate judgment of it. Many of us r eceived str ong messages about money during
our childhoods. W e wer e taught, verbally or nonverbally,
that it is overly important, or unspiritual, or har d to get, or
the root of all evil. Many of us ar e afraid that people won’t
like us if we don’t mak e money, or afraid that they won’t lik e
us if we do . Money is an ar ea wher e we need, individually
and collectively, a radical healing of our mental habits. We pray . Dear God, “I sur render to you all my thoughts
about money, I sur render to you my debts, I sur render to
you my wealth. Open my mind to r eceive abundantly . Channel your abundance thr ough me in a way that serves
the world. Amen.”
5. MINISTR Y
“And that one V oice appoints your function and
relays it to you, giving you the str ength to
understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed
in everything you do that is r elated to it .”
There’s no mor e potent way to thank God for your gif ts, or
to incr ease them, than by sharing them. Y ou will be given asmuch power in the world as you ar e willing to use on His
behalf . Think of your car eer as your ministry . Mak e your work an
expression of love, in service to mankind. W ithin the worldly
illusion, we all have diﬀer ent jobs. Some of us ar e artists,
some of us ar e business people, some of us ar e scientists. But in the r eal world that lies beyond all this, we all have the
same job: to minister to human hearts. All of us ar e her e as
ministers of God. A few years ago I went back to Houston for a special
reunion of my high school drama department. Our teacher
was r etiring, and e xstudents of his fr om all over the country
came to pay their r espects. A t the dinner, a lot of attention
was given to the fact that many of Mr . Pickett’s students had
gone on to become successful actors. But many of his
students had gone on to become successful people, period. By teaching us the truth about acting, he taught us the truth
about life. Once you know; 1. L eave your personal pr oblems
at the stage door; 2. T reat the material with honesty, dignity
and without embellishment; 3. Show up fully no matter how
many people ar e in the audience, then you know everything
you need to know in or der to have a powerful pr ofessional
career. To know the r eal truth about anything is to know the
truth about everything. In lear ning the principles of ministry,
we lear n the principles of success, r egardless of what for m
our ministry tak es. One of the things I’ve r ealized is that I’ve r eally only had
one car eer. I’ve had many jobs, but they all had one basic
element in common: me. The for m of my work had mainly to
do with wher e I was at that time in my life, and every for m
taught me something essential to my “car eer development.As ministers of God, we let our car eers be an e xpression
of our own depth, of what r eally matters  to us. Knowing that
we ar e acting on behalf of a higher purpose than our own
self-aggrandizement gives us the joy we’r e all seeking. Whatever we do, whatever our job, it can be a vessel
through which we teach the message of salvation: that the
Son of God is innocent, and we ar e all Sons of God. Kindness
to Him transfor ms the world. W e don’t necessarily teach this
verbally, but rather non- verbally . The pr oblem most people
have is that they’r e mor e concer ned with the mode of their
expression than with what they’r e seeking to e xpress. That’s
because they don’t know  what they want to e xpress. This
generation, this cultur e, is full of people who want
desperately to write a story, but for all the wr ong r easons. I
meet people who want to be in the spotlight, but have no
idea what they would say if it was pointed at them. This is a
fraudulent postur e. It means we want the r ecord contract
more than the satisfaction of making music. The highest
prize we can r eceive for cr eative work is the joy of being
creative. Cr eative eﬀort spent for any other r eason than the
joy of being in that light-ﬁlled place, love, God, whatever we
want to call it, is lacking in integrity . It diminishes us. It
reduces inspiration to mer e sales. A few years ago I visited K auai. My friend and I took a
ride on a boat along the Napali coastline. The boat was one
of a ﬂeet owned by a man known as Captain Zodiac. Zodiac
is the wor d for the incr edible land for mations that meet the
sea ther e. This man loved the coastline so passionately that
he took the wor d for his own name. One day someone said
to him, “Y ou know a lot about this coastline and its history . A
lot of people would love to see what you see her e, and know
what you know . Why don’t you tak e people out on your boat
and give them a tour?”Captain Zodiac’s rides ar e a gr eat service to tourists on
Kauai. They spr ead joy . They lif t the cultural vibration. And
the boat rides became quite a business. Captain Zodiac now
has lots of boats, and he’s very successful. His business
formed ar ound his love. The issue is whether we’r e working for money, or
working for love. What we need to investigate is which one
is the mor e abundant attitude. As with Captain Zodiac, and
contrary to the ego’s ar guments, love is actually good
business. Any job can become a ministry, as long as it is dedicated
to love. Y our car eer can be an empty canvas for God to write
on. Whatever your talents or abilities, He can use them. Our
ministry becomes a joyous e xperience for ourselves and
others as we let a mysterious for ce dir ect us. W e simply
follow instructions. W e are allowing God’s spirit to move
through us, using our gif ts and r esour ces however He sees
ﬁt, to do His work in the world. This is the k ey to a
successful car eer. Success is not unnatural; it is the most natural thing in
the world because it is the natural r esult of man’s
cocreation with God. In A Movable F east, Hemingway writes
about writing. He describes the diﬀer ence between his
writing a story, and a story writing itself . When he ﬁnds
himself writing the story, he knows it’s time to stop for the
day. Our life is meant to be a story that mysteriously writes
itself, and our work is the cr eative fruit of our lives. “God, please use me” is the most powerful aﬃr mation
we can say for an abundant car eer. It is the miracle work er’s
prayer . Everybody wants a gr eat job. A ccept that it’s alr eady
been given to you. The fact that you’r e alive means a
function has been assigned to you: open your heart toeveryone and everything. That way you’r e a vessel of God. Don’t wor ry about what to say or what to do . He’ll let you
know . I used to think I was lazy . I was always tir ed. A ctually, I
was just block ed until I discover ed the purpose of my life. When our ener gy is applied in the dir ection of co -creating
with God, of a willingness to supply love wher e ther e was
none befor e, new ener gy bursts forth fr om deep inside us. The world never gives you per mission to shine. Only love
does that. I r emember being a cocktail waitr ess and walking
into work one night thinking, “ Oh, I get it! They think this is
a bar!” As A Course in Miracles  student, I now saw it
diﬀer ently. “This isn’t a bar, and I’m not a waitr ess. That’s
just an illusion. Every busi ness is a fr ont for a chur ch, and
I’m her e to purif y the thought for ms, to minister to the
childr en of God.” W e can tak e our own lives seriously,
regardless of whether or not anyone else does. No job r eally
has any mor e potential impact on the planet than any other . We’re always impacting the world in which we live, thr ough
our pr esence, our ener gy, our interactions with others. The
question is, what kind of impact ar e we having? I once knew a woman who wanted to be an actr ess, but
wasn’t getting work. In the meantime, she was working as a
personal assistant to a pr ofessional writer . He ador ed her
work and wanted her to travel with him all ar ound the
country, doing book tours, setting up lectur es and helping
him in various ways. Although she told me that she found
working with him very e xhilarating, she didn’t want to leave
Los Angeles because she felt she needed to be available in
case ther e wer e acting jobs her e that she might audition for . “Nothing would be better for your acting car eer,” I told
my friend, “than that you would start star ring in your ownlife.” The r eason many people want to be actors is not
because they ar e truly called to the art, but rather because
they want so desperately to cr eate something beautiful in
their own lives. Show up! Be enthusiastic! P ut some ener gy
into the life you’r e living now! How will anyone ever be
impressed by your starlik e quality if you’r e waiting to
cultivate that quality until you become a star? How would a miracle work er decide whether to go on the
trip or stay in L os Angeles? W e mak e decisions by asking
that the ‘Holy Spirit decide for us.’ Ther e are always so
many factors in life that we can’t know . ‘We mak e no
decisions by ourselves,’ but ask how we might be most
helpful in car rying out His plan. The moral authority that this
attitude gives us cr eates a starlik e quality . It is our humility,
our desir e to be of service, that mak es us stars. Not our
arrogance. An ego thought that tempts a lot of people is the
insistence that “I don’t do windows.” Ther e’s an old Zen
tradition of disciples spending years dusting the altars of
their masters as part of their pr eparation and training. The
apprentice lear ns from being in the pr esence of the master,
from serving him, and in time will surpass him. As the I
Ching says, the universe ﬁlls up the modest and cuts down
the pr oud. In modesty, we allow things to blossom. W e’re
not ashamed to admit we’r e still in pr ocess. The ego
emphasizes the goal rather than the pr ocess by which we
achieve it. This is actually the ego’s way of sabotaging us. We become pr oud and har dened, and ther eby less
attractive. Ther e is nothing lik able about false pride. It
doesn’t help us get work, or to get mor e successful. Our job is to tend to our own gr owth as people, our grace
and integrity and humility . We need no other goal. The cor e
of our being then gr ows into a substantial power, e xternallyas well as inter nally. Our ministry becomes a dir ect line of
creation, fr om God thr ough us to all mankind. 6. NEW HEAR TS, NEW JOBS
“Child of God, you wer e created to cr eate the
good, the beautiful and the holy . Do not for get
this.”
The ego says, “Y our value is based on your cr edentials. Y ou
need a Ph.D. or its equivalent befor e you can get a good
job.” But some of the best and brightest of our generation
were educated mor e by life than by school. Ther e’s a mass
of talent in our society who have been everywher e and done
everything, but have few cr edentials to show for it. Our
achievements have been mainly inter nal. Our ministries—our new car eers—will r eﬂect these
internal achievements. They will e xpress a new integration
of mind and heart. They will e xpress the consciousness of
people contributing their individual r esour ces to a general
healing tide. These car eers will be cr eated as individual
reﬂections of our unique talents. W e will not “ﬁnd” these
jobs; we will cr eate them. Ther e are no ads in the “ Help
Wanted” section of newspapers for world saviors or miracle-
work ers. New for ms of employment ar e emer ging in
response to new ener gies. Carl Jung advised people to look closely into whatever
fairy tales or myths particularly attracted them as childr en. When I was a child, I was enchanted by a fairy tale called
“The Girl in the P atchwork Dr ess.” In this story, the cr own
prince of a kingdom is going ar ound the country looking for
a bride. In one town, a huge ball is being held so that the
Prince can have a chance to meet all the young ladies wholive ther e. One girl wanted very much to go to the ball but
she didn’t have enough money to buy the material she
would need in or der to mak e a beautiful ball gown. So she
did what she could. She pick ed up scraps of material fr om
other girls’ worktables, and put together a patchwork dr ess. On the night of the ball, she enter ed the party and gr ew
embar rassed when she saw how beautiful all the other girls’
dresses wer e. Feeling ashamed, she hid in a closet. The
prince came to the party, danced with all the girls ther e,
and at a certain point, he had had enough. He was bor ed
and he was going home. But as he was leaving, he noticed a
piece of cloth sticking out of a closet door . He or dered his
guards to open the door, wher e they discover ed the girl in
the patchwork dr ess. The prince danced with her, found her
more inter esting than any of the other girls, and he mar ried
her. When I thought of that story as an adult, I knew why it
had meant so much to me as a child. It r evealed a
signiﬁcant ar chetype in my own life. I would ultimately taste
a little bit of just about everything life had to oﬀer . This
would never ear n me a degr ee in anything, but it would ear n
me a kind of overview . That vision of things would become
the basis for my car eer. A lot of people among us ar e like
the girl in the patchwork dr ess. W e have a little bit of this,
and a little bit of that. But you can’t get a Ph.D. in having
been every wher e and done everything. P ut it all together,
and we don’t have a degr ee, but we’r e inter esting people
with inter esting stories to tell. The patchwork dr ess
symbolizes the consciousness of a generalist, one who
synthesizes, while the other beautiful gowns symbolize the
consciousness of a specialist. Both the generalist and the
specialist ar e important viewpoints in the functioning of a
healthy society .Ultimately, it is not our cr edentials but our commitment
to a higher purpose that cr eates our eﬀectiveness in the
world. Our r esumes ar e important only if we think they ar e. I
was eating dinner one night with a girlfriend of mine who is
an excellent writer and a published author . I mentioned to
another friend at the table, a man in publishing, that I
thought Barbara should write a monthly column in one of
the major women’s magazines, called “The Healing
Perspective” or “News fr om the Heartland” or something
like that. Every month she could write some inter esting
piece about how an emotional br eakthr ough fr om fear to
love had a healing impact in some personal or societal
condition. I felt the column would give people hope. But our friend in publishing took a diﬀer ent perspective. “Barbara couldn’t do that,” he said. “No magazine would
publish it. She’s not a Ph.D. She’s not an authority . They
won’t see her as an established voice.”
I wanted to tur n to Barbara and place an invisible shield
of cotton over her ears. I didn’t want her to listen to his
words. I didn’t want her to believe his limited thinking. I
didn’t want her to close her mind to miracles. I remember years ago, drinking a cup of coﬀee late one
night as I had done many times befor e. “How can you do
that?” a friend ask ed. “W on’t that k eep you up all night?” As
of that night, coﬀee k ept me up all night. I had never befor e,
ever, made the conscious connection between coﬀee and
caﬀeine and sleeplessness, and so, in my e xperience, ther e
had never been one. Neither need ther e be an automatic
connection between a lack of cr edentials and a lack of
opportunity . The desir e to serve God cr eates the means by which we
do so . Our power doesn’t lie in our r esume or ourconnections. Our power doesn’t lie in what we’ve done or
even in what we’r e doing. Our power lies in our clarity about
why we’r e on the earth. W e’ll be important players if we
think that way . And the important players of the coming
years will be the people who see themselves as her e to
contribute to the healing of the world. Everything else is
trivial in comparison. Wher e you went to school is no big
deal, or even whether you went to school at all. God can use
the ﬂimsiest r esume. He can use the smallest gif ts. Whatever our gif t is to God, however humble it may seem,
He can tur n it into a mighty work on His behalf . Our gr eatest
gift to Him is our devotion. F rom that point of power, doors
open. Car eers blossom. W e heal, and the world ar ound us
heals. 7. GO ALS
“God is the only goal I have today .”
Goal-setting has become very popular in r ecent years. It is a
process of focusing the mind on a desir ed result. This is
actually just another way of trying to get the world to do
what we want it to do . It is not spiritual sur render . A Course in Miracles  discusses a diﬀer ence between
“magic and miracles.” Magic is when we focus the mind on
a desir ed manifestation, giving our shopping list to God and
telling Him what we want Him to do for us. Miracles ar e
when we ask God what we can do for Him. Miracles shif t us fr om a “get” to a “give” mentality . The
desir e to get something r eﬂects a cor e belief that we don’t
have enough alr eady. As long as we believe ther e is scar city
inside us, we’ll continue to manufactur e scar city ar ound usbecause that is our basic thought. No matter what we get, it
will never be enough. When our desir e is to give instead of get, our cor e belief
is that we have so much abundance, we can aﬀor d to give it
away . The subconscious mind tak es its clue fr om our cor e
beliefs, and brilliantly manufactur es situations that r eﬂect
them. Our willingness to give dir ects the universe to give to
us. The miracle work er’s goal in every cir cumstance is peace
of mind. A Course in Miracles  tells us that ‘we don’t know
what would mak e us happy; we just think we do .’ All of us
have gotten things we thought would mak e us happy and
they didn’t. If we write aﬃr mations for a br own Mer cedes
Benz, the power of the subconscious mind is such that we
will pr obably get it. The point is, we won’t necessarily be
happy once we do . The miracle-minded per ception would be
to mak e happiness itself our goal and to r elinquish the
thought that we know what that would look lik e. We never
know what’s going to happen in a month, or a year fr om
now. If we got what we wanted now, then per haps we would
be worse oﬀ for it later on. Let’s say you’r e going in for a job interview . You want the
job very much, and someone might have suggested to you
that you should aﬃr m you’ll be getting the job, making that
your goal. But a miracle work er mak es peace our only goal. What that does is to dir ect the mind to focus on all the
factors that contribute to our peace, and leave everything
else out of our conscious consideration. The mind, lik e the
physical eye, is inundated with so many impr essions at one
time, that a built-in censor mechanism brings focus to our
perception. It chooses what we’ll notice and what we won’t.Making our goal anything other than peace is emotionally
self-destructive. If our goal is to get the job, then that’s ﬁne
if we do, but if we don’t get the job, we’ll feel depr essed. If
we mak e peace our goal, then if we get the job, that’s gr eat,
but if we don’t, we’r e still peaceful. The Course tells us it’s important to set a goal at the
beginning of a situation, or it will seem to unfold chaotically . If our goal is peace, we’r e programmed for emotional
stability no matter what happens. The mind will have been
directed to see the situation fr om a peaceful perspective. If
we didn’t get the job we wanted, it won’t matter so much. We will truly understand that ther e’s something better
coming up soon, or that this wasn’t r eally the perfect job for
us anyway . We will have faith in God. The miracle is that we
will really feel our faith. It won’t just be positive goo thr own
over our pain. Our emotions ﬂow fr om our thoughts, and not
the other way ar ound. Another pr oblem with setting speciﬁc goals is that they
can be limiting. P erhaps we’r e asking for something good,
when God’s will was that we be given something gr eat. Our
looking over God’s shoulder only interfer es with His capacity
to mak e us happy . Once we truly understand that God’s will
is that we be happy, we no longer feel the need to ask for
anything other than that God’s will be done. Once when I was lecturing in New Y ork, a young man
stood up and ask ed me about aﬃr mations. A t that time,
“Hill Str eet Blues” was a popular T .V. show . He said, “I’ve
been writing down ﬁf ty times befor e I go to sleep at night, ‘I
have a r egular part on Hill Str eet Blues, I have a r egular part
on Hill Str eet Blues.’ Ar e you telling me I shouldn’t do that?”
I said, “Y ou can write those aﬃr mations ﬁf ty times befor e
you go to bed at night, and chances ar e good you’ll pull in apart on Hill Str eet Blues because the mind is very powerful. But for all you know, a year will pass, an important dir ector
will be wanting you for the lead in a major featur e ﬁlm, but
they won’t be able to get you because you’r e under contract
for a little part in Hill Str eet Blues!”
The issue underlying our need to tell God what to do is
our lack of trust. W e’re afraid to leave things in God’s hands
because we don’t know what He’ll do with them. W e’re
afraid He’ll lose our ﬁle. If we’r e going to set any goal, let us
set the goal of being healed of the belief that God is fear
instead of love. L et us r emember fr om the Course that “ our
happiness and our function ar e one.” If God is our goal,
that’s the same thing as saying that happiness is our goal. There’s no need to believe that God can’t ﬁgur e out the
details or pr ovide the ways to mak e it happen. 8. GOD’S PLAN
“Only God’s plan for salvation will work .”
Sometimes we car ry an attitude at work because we think
the job is beneath us, or we r esent the fact that other
people ar e the boss and we’r e not. W e’re in a hur ry to get to
the top of the heap. W e don’t r ealize that, as we spr ead
love, we climb naturally . Maybe not most quickly, but
remember the story of the tortoise and the har e. The
tortoise, although he walk ed slowly and steadily, r eached
the goal befor e the quick-footed har e.
“May God’s will be done” is the same thing as saying,
“May I become the best that I’m capable of being.” As we
grow in personal statur e, we gr ow into a mor e responsible
energy. People will want  to hir e us, to work with us. Our
progress will occur easily . Our success will be an eﬀortlessaccomplishment. Things will just happen . You can have a
great resume, but if you have a r otten personality, the going
will get r ough for you somewher e down the line. A good
resume can get you an important interview, but you won’t
get the job unless they lik e you. Much of today’s psychological orientation is brittle. It’s
brittle because everyone is trying so har d, and we’r e all
trying so har d because we think we have to . The way of
surrender is lik e letting God be the sculptor, and letting
ourselves be the clay . In the sculpting classes I took in high
school, we had to spray the clay with water each day or it
would get too dry to work with. That’s how we have to be for
God: malleable, lik e moist clay . If we’r e rigidly attached to
getting something, including getting things to work out the
way we think they should work out, we ar e not r elaxed. W e
then have very little r oom for spontaneous insights. We never r eally know why we’r e going someplace. I have
made what I thought wer e professional contacts that tur ned
out to be personal contacts, and vice versa. In God’s world,
there’s only one work going on, and that’s the pr eparation
of His teachers, those who demonstrate love. A ccording to
the Course, the Holy Spirit uses any situation given to Him
as a lesson in love for everyone involved. But we have to be
willing to give up our attachment to a particular outcome in
a given situation. W e might see a certain pr oject as a
vehicle for making money, for instance, and then feel
disappointed if it doesn’t. W e feel confused because we
thought we wer e following the Holy Spirit’s guidance in
making the eﬀort. But it could be that the r eal purpose of
that particular pr oject was not to mak e money at all. W e do
not always know at the time why the Holy Spirit dir ects us
as He does. The miracle work er’s function is mer ely to follow
instructions in a desir e to serve God. Our compensation,materially and emotionally, will ar rive in God’s own time and
way. One of the r easons we’r e always trying to contr ol the
results in life is because we think the universe, when lef t to
its own devices, is chaotic. But God is the ultimate or der. He
is the principle of constantly e xpanding love in action, in all
dimensions, for all life. His power is thor oughly impersonal. He doesn’t lik e some people mor e than others. He works lik e
a computer . Trusting God is lik e trusting gravity . These ar e important points to r emember :
1. God’s plan works. 2. Yours doesn’t. As stated by the Course, “I need add nothing to His plan. But to r eceive it, I must be willing not to sub stitute my own
in place of it. And that is all. A dd mor e, and you will mer ely
take away the little that is ask ed.” It’s not our job to ﬁgur e
out how to accomplish God’s purposes on earth. That’s not
help; it’s interfer ence. It is mer ely our job to so deeply align
our hearts and minds with His spirit within us, that our lives
then become involuntary instruments of His will. Insights
occur . Situations shif t gear . Our eﬀorts to consciously contr ol
the unfolding of good does not pr oduce good so much as it
brings forth a slightly less tainted brand of human
wilfullness. I have hear d it said that living out of our vision is mor e
powerful than living out of our cir cumstance. Holding on to a
vision invok es the cir cumstances by which the vision is
achieved. V ision is content; material cir cumstances mer e
form. I have a friend who is running for political oﬃce. Having been in politics for many years, his tendency is tothink that his political success depends on his being a good
politician. But part of the decay of our social or der has come
about because we ar e gover ned by so many people who ar e
politicians rather than leaders. L yndon Johnson was a gr eat
politician but not much of a leader . John K ennedy was a
great leader but not much of a politician. The str ength of a
positive vision for America, thr ough its inspirational eﬀects
on all the people who want desperately to see our nation
healed, will do mor e to get someone elected than any
amount of conventional politicking. It will touch our hearts. I told my friend that the k ey to a successful campaign
would be to sur render the campaign to the Holy Spirit and
ask that it be used as an instrument of His peace. My friend
said that sounded gr eat, but he needed to ﬁgur e out how to
do that. I told him he didn’t have to ﬁgur e out anything. “ All
you have to do is to be willing,” I told him, “and the Holy
Spirit will enter wher e He is invited. Y ou’ll be brilliant. Y ou’ll
be charismatic. Don’t try to ﬁgur e out your message; just
ask God what He would have you say . Step back and let Him
lead the way .”
A silent prayer befor e every speech and every political
appearance would help bring his ener gies in line with truth. Once I accompanied him to a political rally, and in the car
on the way, he shar ed with me some understandable
judgments of certain people who would be ther e. “Pray that
your per ceptions be healed,” I said to him as we walk ed into
the building. “Y our goal is to lead us into a compassionate
society, but you can’t give what you don’t have. Start by
being compassionate towar ds the people at this rally . As
your mind is healed, its eﬀect on others will be automatic. You won’t even have to think about what to say . The perfect
words will come right out, because love will guide your
mind.” That’s what it would mean to let God run his
campaign.And so it is with any business. Befor e the meeting, or the
interview or the session, or whatever, try saying this prayer :
“Dear God, I sur render this situation to you. May it be
used for your purposes. I ask only that my heart be open to
give love and to r eceive love. May all the r esults unfold
accor ding to your will. Amen.” Whatever you do, do it for
God. We are strong enough to do any job He asks us to do . Don’t be concer ned about your own r eadiness, says the
Course, but be consistently awar e of His. It is not you doing
the work, but the spirit who is within you. F orgetting this
causes fear . A Course in Miracles  says that the pr esence of
fear is a sur e sign we’r e trusting in our own str ength. “If you
are trusting in your own str ength, you have every r eason to
be appr ehensive, anxious and fearful.” Of ourselves, none of
us have the capacity to work miracles. W ith ‘the power that
is in us but not of us,’ however, ther e is nothing we can not
do. 9. SALES TO SERVICE
“Love would always give incr ease.”
When we ar e motivated by the desir e to sell, we ar e only
looking out for ourselves. When we ar e motivated by the
desir e to serve, we ar e looking out for others. Miracles shif t
us from a sales to a service mentality . Since in the r ealm of
consciousness we only get to k eep what we give away, a
service mentality is a far mor e abundant attitude.”
The thought system that dominates our cultur e is laced
with selﬁsh values, and r elinquishing those values is a lot
easier said than done. The jour ney to a pur e heart can behighly disorienting. F or years we may have work ed for
power, money and pr estige. Now all of a sudden we’ve
learned that those ar e just the values of a dying world. W e
don’t know wher e to sear ch for motivation anymor e. If we’r e
not working in or der to get rich, then why ar e we working at
all? What ar e we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and
watch TV? Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many
people go thr ough—when the values of the old world no
longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t
yet grab your soul. They will. Ther e comes a time, not too
long into the jour ney to God, when the r ealization that the
world could work beautifully if we would give it the chance,
begins to e xcite us. It becomes our new motivation. The
news isn’t how bad things ar e. The news is how good they
could be. And our own activity could be part of the unfolding
of Heaven on earth. Ther e is no mor e powerful motivation
than to feel we’r e being used in the cr eation of a world
wher e love has healed all wounds. We are no longer ambitious for ourselves, but ar e rather
inspir ed by the vision of a healed world. Inspiration
rearranges our ener gies. It sour ces within us a new power
and dir ection. W e no longer feel lik e we’r e trying to car ry a
football to the ﬁnish line, clutching it to our chest and
surrounded by hostile for ces. W e feel instead as though
angels ar e pushing us fr om behind and making straight our
path as we go . Purity of heart will not mak e us poor . The e xaltation of
poverty as a spiritual virtue is of the ego, not the spirit. A
person acting fr om a motivation of contribution and service
rises to such a level of moral authority, that worldly success
is a natural r esult.Give all your gif ts away in service to the world. If you
want to paint, don’t wait for a grant. P aint a wall in your
town that looks drab and uninviting. Y ou never know who’s
going to see that wall. Whatever it is you want to do, give it
away in service to your community . At my lectur es in L os
Angeles, I gr ew so tir ed of hearing actors moan about not
getting jobs. “ Go to hospitals, to r etirement homes, to
mental institutions,” I said. “Ther e was acting befor e ther e
were acting jobs. If you want to act, act.” Some people who
heard me for med a gr oup called the Miracle Players, and
they did just that. “I don’t want to do it because I can’t mak e a living doing
it,” is a very weak beam to send into the universe. I lectur ed
on A Course in Miracles  for at least two years befor e it
became the sour ce of my income. When I started lecturing, I
had no idea it would become my pr ofession. Some things
you do for no other r eason than because they’r e the right
thing to do . “I’ll do this because it serves, even if I’m not
paid,” is a very high beam. It says to the universe that you
must be very serious. And when you get serious about the
universe, the universe gets serious about you. I never felt the need to advertise much for my lectur es. I
ﬁgured if they wer e of genuine inter est to people, then
people would hear about them. That’s not to say that
advertising is bad, as long as the motivation for advertising
is to infor m people as opposed to manipulating them. Ar nold
Patent wr ote that if you genuinely have something to say,
there is someone who genuinely needs to hear it. W e don’t
have to invent an audience so much as we have to hone the
message we plan to give them once they get her e. Serving
three people is as important as serving thr ee hundr ed. Once
we’re clear about how to deal with a small following, a lar ge
following will develop automatically, if that would serve the
world. Our power lies in our clarity about the r ole our workcan play in the cr eation of a mor e beautiful world. The
miracle is to think of our car eer as our contribution, however
small, to the healing of the universe. The ego’s world is based on ﬁnite r esour ces, but God’s
world is not. In God’s world, which is the r eal world, the
more we give, the mor e we have. Our having a piece of the
world’s pie doesn’t mean ther e’s less for anyone else, and
someone else having a piece of the pie doesn’t mean
there’s less for us. So we needn’t compete, in business or
anywher e else. Our gener osity towar ds others is k ey to our
positive e xperience of the world. Ther e’s enough r oom for
everyone to be beautiful. Ther e’s enough r oom for everyone
to be successful. Ther e’s enough r oom for everyone to be
rich. It is only our thinking that blocks that possibility fr om
happening. The people who have achieved mor e than you, in any
area, ar e only a half step ahead of you in time. Bless them
and praise their gif ts, and bless and praise your own. The
world would be less rich without their contributions, and it
would be less rich without yours. Ther e’s mor e than r oom
for everyone; in fact, ther e’s a need for everyone. As we ar e healed, the world is healed. Doing anything for
a purpose other than love means r eliving the split fr om God,
perpetuating and maintaining that split. Every person is a
cell in the body of human consciousness. A t the moment, it
is as though the body of Christ is suﬀering fr om cancer . In
cancer, a nor mal working cell decides that it no longer
wants to function in contribution to the whole. Instead of
being part of the support system of the blood or the liver,
the cell goes oﬀ and builds its own kingdom. That’s a
malignancy, which thr eatens to destr oy the or ganism.So it is with the body of humanity . Everyone’s gone oﬀ to
do their own thing: my career, my store, my money . We’ve
lost sight of our essential inter relatedness, and this
forgetfulness thr eatens to destr oy us. The “my” mentality is
the ego . It is the belief in separation. It is the cosmic
disease. T aking what we have and devoting it to the
restoration of the whole is our salvation and the salvation of
the world. Our devotion then becomes our work, and our
work becomes our devotion. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 8
The Body
“The body was not made by love. Y et love does
not condemn it and can use it lovingly,
respecting what the Son of God has made and
using it to save him fr om illusions .”
 
1. THE BOD Y’S PURPOSE
“Let the body have healing as its purpose .”
In the world of bodies, we ar e all separate. In the world of
spirit, we ar e all one. Citing the Course, we heal the
separation between the two by shif ting our awar eness fr om
‘body identiﬁcation’ to ‘spirit identiﬁcation.’ This heals the
body as well as the mind. We think we’r e separate because we have bodies, when
in truth, we have bodies because we think we’r e separate. The Course says that the body is “a tiny fence ar ound a little
part of a glorious and complete idea.” But that doesn’t
mean the body is bad. Lik e everything else within the world
of for m, the mind ascribes to it either fearful or loving
purposes. The ego’s use of the body is to maintain theillusion of separation: ‘The ego uses the body for attack,
pleasur e and pride.’ The Holy Spirit’s use of the body is to
heal that illusion: “In this sense, the body does become a
temple to God; His voice abides in it by dir ecting the use to
which it is put.”
The body’s holiness lies in its potential for
communication. When given to the Holy Spirit, the body
becomes “a beautiful lesson in communion which has value
until communion is.” The ‘Holy Spirit asks us to give Him our
hands, our feet, our voices, in or der that He might use them
as instruments for saving the world.’ T o see the body as a
means by which the world is transfor med, and not an end in
itself, is a healthy per ception of the body . To see the body as
an end instead of a means, to ascribe to it selﬁsh or
unloving purposes, is to put a bur den on the body that the
body was never meant to car ry. This is sick thinking, which
produces sickness in the body . Living on this earth, we have lear ned to see ourselves as
bodies. An individual body is physically small and vulnerable
in relation to the r est of the universe, and so, since we think
we ar e bodies, we e xperience ourselves as small and
vulnerable. Living within the r ealization that we ar e much
more than bodies, that we ar e spirits within the mind of
God, e xpands the level of our awar eness and places us
outside the limitations of or dinary physical law . This
correction of our per ception, this A tonement, is our healing. It is not the body that gets sick, but the mind. As shown in
the Course, health or sickness of the body “depends entir ely
on how the mind per ceives it, and the purpose that the
mind would use it for .” It is not the body but the mind that is
in need of healing, and the only healing is a r eturn to love. Our bodies ar e mer ely blank canvases onto which we
project our thoughts. Disease is loveless thinkingmaterialized. This doesn’t mean that people who have
contracted a disease thought lovelessly, while the r est of us
didn’t. Gr eat saints have contracted ter minal illnesses. The
lovelessness that manufactur es disease is systemic; it is
laced thr oughout racial consciousness. Which soul manifests
illness is based on many factors. Let’s say an innocent child dies of envir onmentally -based
cancer . How was lovelessness the pr oblem her e? The
loveless thinking was not necessarily in the child, but in
many of us who, over the years, lived without r everence for
the envir onment, allowing it to be polluted by to xic
chemicals. The child’s physical sickness r esulted, indir ectly,
from the sickness in someone else’s mind. Our loving
thoughts aﬀect people and situations we never even dr eam
of, and so do our mistak es. Since our minds do not stop at
our brain casings—since ther e is no place wher e one mind
stops and another starts—then our love touches everyone,
and so does our fear . A healthy per ception of our bodies is one in which we
surrender them to the Holy Spirit and ask that they be used
as instruments thr ough which love is e xpressed into the
world. The Course states, “The body is mer ely part of your
experience in the physical world…. [It] is nothing mor e than
a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart
from what they ar e used for .” A Course in Miracles  says that
“health is the r esult of relinquishing all attempts to use the
body lovelessly .” The use of the body for any other purpose
than the e xtension of love is diseased thinking. It is at odds
with our natural knowingness and the conﬂict it engenders
is reﬂected in our physical as well as our mental states. 2. HEAL TH AND HEALING“The body is not the sour ce of its own health .”
A friend of mine told me that we’r e not punished for our
sins, but by our sins. Sickness is not a sign of God’s
judgment on us, but of our judgment on ourselves. If we
were to think that God cr eated our sickness, how could we
turn to Him for healing? As we’ve alr eady established, God
is all that is good. He cr eates only love, ther efore he did not
create sickness. Sickness is an illusion and does not actually
exist. It is part of our worldly dr eam, our self -created
nightmar e. Our prayer to God is that He awak en us fr om the
dream. When any of us awak en, the entir e world is br ought
closer to Heaven. In asking for healing, we ar e not just
asking for our own health, but rather we ar e asking that the
idea of sickness be r emoved fr om the mind of God’s Son. As
shown in A Course in Miracles , “If the mind can heal the
body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind
must be str onger than the body .” Forgiveness is the ultimate
preventative medicine as well as the gr eatest healer . We
heal the body by r emembering that it is not who we r eally
are. We are spirits and not bodies, we ar e eter nally healthy
and we ar e incapable of sickness. These ar e mer ely
statements of the truth about ourselves, and it is always
truth that sets us fr ee. Illness is a sign of separation fr om God, and healing is a
sign that we have r eturned to Him. The r eturn to God is
merely the r eturn to love. In his book Quantum Healing , Dr.
Deepak Chopra tells a powerful story about the connection
between love and physical healing:
An Ohio University study of heart disease in the
1970s was conducted by feeding quite to xic,
high-cholester ol diets to rabbits in or der to blocktheir arteries, duplicating the eﬀect that such a
diet has on human arteries. Consistent r esults
began to appear in all the rabbit gr oups e xcept
for one, which strangely displayed 60 per cent
fewer symptoms. Nothing in the rabbits’
physiology could account for their high tolerance
to the diet, until it was discover ed by accident
that the student who was in char ge of feeding
these particular rabbits lik ed to fondle and pet
them. He would hold each rabbit lovingly for a
few minutes befor e feeding it; astonishingly, this
alone seemed to enable the animals to
overcome the to xic diet. R epeat e xperiments, in
which one gr oup of rabbits was tr eated neutrally
while the others wer e loved, came up with
similar r esults. Once again, the mechanism that
causes such immunity is quite unknown—it is
baﬄing to think that evolution has built into the
rabbit mind an immune r esponse that needs to
be trigger ed by human cuddling . Studies have shown that cancer patients who attend
support gr oups live, on the average, twice as long af ter
diagnosis as those who don’t. What is this “psycho -
immunological factor ” which, by now, science knows e xists,
but doesn’t know how to identif y? That factor is love, or
God. God is of no practical value if we per ceive Him mer ely as
a free-ﬂoating concept, divor ced fr om the power of physical
expression. It is only when He is e xpressed on the earth, His
love channeled thr ough human beings as in the case of the
student cuddling the rabbits, or support gr oups wher e the
space is cr eated for incr eased compassion and
understanding, that He is allowed to penetrate the veil of
human darkness.Over the last several years I have counseled many
people diagnosed with cancer, AIDS and other life-
challenging illnesses. In 1987, I ask ed my friend L ouise Hay
if she would help me start a nonpr oﬁt or ganization
dedicated to helping people in physical crisis, to be called
The L os Angeles Center for Living. In 1989, The Manhattan
Center for Living opened in New Y ork City . The Centers’
mission statement is that we pr ovide fr ee nonmedical
support services to people dealing with life- challenging
illness and grief . On both coasts, we have seen the miracles
that occur when people invok e the power of love in the
midst of disease and grief . “Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to
the God of love,” says the Course, “ for healing is the
acknowledgement of Him.” In the traditional W ester n
medical model, a healer’s job is to attack disease. But if the
consciousness of attack is the ultimate pr oblem, how could
it be the ultimate answer? A miracle work er’s job is not to
attack illness, but rather to stimulate the natural for ces of
healing. W e turn our eyes away fr om sickness to the love
that lies beyond it. No sickness can diminish our capacity to
love. Does that mean that it is a mistak e to tak e medicine? Absolutely not. A Course in Miracles  reminds us that the
Holy Spirit enters into our lives at our pr esent level of
consciousness. Many of us believe that the doctor in the
white coat can heal us with that pill he’s giving us. Therefore, says the Course, we should tak e the pill. But the
healing doesn’t come fr om the pill. It comes fr om our belief . Cancer studies have shown that rates of r ecovery in
patients choosing traditional medical tr eatment, versus
those taking a mor e holistic r oute, ar e roughly equal. This
makes perfect sense, because in neither case is therecovery a r esult of the for m of cur e. It is the patient’s
mental and emotional interaction with his tr eatment that
activates its healing power . I have led support gr oups for people dealing with life-
challenging illness, wher e during the entir e session, disease
was mentioned only in passing. W e attend gr oups not to
grow closer to our disease, but rather to gr ow closer to the
power for healing which lies within us. Many of the issues
that confr ont us when we ar e ill ar e the same issues that
confr onted us in one way or another when we wer e still
healthy, but we didn’t deal with them until now . Life goes on
when we ar e ill. It is mer ely intensiﬁed. W e tend to handle
illness basically the way we handle everything else in life. We must avoid the temptation to see illness as a block to
our capacity to ﬁnd God, and instead use it as a springboar d
from which we soar into His ar ms.
3. HEAL THY THINKING
“Healing, then, is a way of appr oaching
knowledge by thinking in accor dance with the
laws of God .”
There is a healing for ce within each of us, a kind of divine
physician seated within our minds and in communication
with every cell of our being. This for ce is the intelligence
that drives the immune system. Its pr esence is obvious to
us whenever we cut a ﬁnger or br eak a leg. What is this “divine intelligence” and how is it activated? ‘The A tonement r eleases the mind to its full cr eative power .’
“Jesus saves” means “love heals the mind.” How did Jesus
heal the leper? By for giving him. He stood in the midst of
illusion and yet saw only the truth as God cr eated it. Hehealed thr ough cor rected per ception. When he stood in fr ont
of a leper, he didn’t see lepr osy. He e xtended his per ception
beyond what the physical senses r evealed, to r eality as
seen thr ough the vision of the Holy Spirit. W ithin the leper is
the Son of God, perfect, unalterable, changeless. The spirit
is eter nally healthy . The spirit cannot get sick and the spirit
cannot die. Jesus sees only as God sees. He accepted the A tonement
for himself . Jesus did not believe  in lepr osy. Since all minds
are connected, in his pr esence the leper no longer believed
in it either . And so the leper was healed. In A Course in Miracles , Jesus, who is the personal symbol
of the Holy Spirit, says, “Y our mind and mine can unite in
shining your ego away .” Asking the Holy Spirit to heal us
when we ar e sick means asking him to heal the thoughts
within us which give rise to sickness. Several years ago, when I had just begun lecturing on A
Course in Miracles , I had a series of thr ee car accidents in
which I was r ear-ended on the fr eeway . In every case, I had
surrender ed the e xperience immediately, r emembering that
I was not subject to the eﬀect of worldly danger, and was
not har med or hurt in any way . A week or so af ter the last accident, I developed a cold
and a serious sor e throat. On a F riday af ternoon, with a
lectur e to give about the Course the ne xt mor ning, I was
feeling ter rible. I had a date for drinks af ter work with my
girlfriend Sarah. Since I felt so bad I wanted to cancel the
date and go home to bed, but when I called Sarah’s oﬃce I
was told that she had alr eady lef t for the day . I had no
choice but to go to the café, and on my way driving ther e, I
turned my attention to healing my thr oat. I wished
desperately for access to a doctor, because I knew that anantibiotic called Erythr omycin had always healed this thr oat
problem for me in the past. Since I was new in L os Angeles, I
didn’t know any doctors yet. I tur ned to the Course. How did
this happen, I ask ed myself . Wher e did my thinking deviate
from truth? Wher e was my wr ong-minded per ception? I
received the answer as soon as I ask ed, and it struck me lik e
a bolt of lightning. Although I had applied principle in
relation to the accident itself, I had “given into temptation ”
right af terwar ds. In what way? A fter thr ee accidents,
everyone I knew had come up to ask me if I was all right. They put their hands on me, rubbed my neck and back
gently, inquir ed as to whether I’d seen a doctor, and oozed
gentleness all over me. The attention felt good. Being sick
made people love me mor e. Instead of r esponding with a full
tilt, “I’m ﬁne,” the “I’m ﬁne” came out a little mor e timidly,
lest they’d stop rubbing my neck. I had bought into—
enter ed into agr eement with—the idea of my physical
vulnerability in or der to r eceive the payoﬀ of love and
attention. I paid a high price for my “sin,” i.e. loveless per ception. My per ception was wr ong-minded in the sense that I saw
myself as a body rather than a spirit, which is a loveless
rather than loving self -identiﬁcation. Choosing to believe I
was vulnerable, even for an instant, made me so . Thus my
sore throat. Great, I thought. I got it! “ God,” I said. “I totally
understand how this happened. I r eturn my mind to the
point of my er ror, and I atone. I go back. I ask that my
perception be healed, and I ask to be r eleased fr om the
eﬀects of my wr ong-minded thinking. Amen.” I closed my
eyes at a r ed light while I said the prayer, and fully e xpected
to be fr ee of my sor e throat when I opened them again.The prayer over, I opened my eyes. My thr oat still hurt. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Now mor e depr essed than
ever, I went into the cafe wher e I was to meet my friend and
took a seat at the bar . I noticed as I enter ed that ther e was a
man at the other end of the bar, looking at me in a
ﬂirtatious kind of way . He was anything but my type. I
looked at him as though to say, “ One mor e look my
direction, buddy, and you’r e dead.”
“Can I help you?” ask ed the bartender . “Yes,” I whisper ed hoarsely . “I want some brandy, some
honey and some milk.”
The man at the other end of the bar watched as the
bartender r eturned with the items I’d r equested. “What ar e
you trying to do?” he ask ed. I did not want to speak to this man. I wanted him to go
away . But once the Course has gotten into your system, you
never again have guilt-fr ee bitchy thoughts. “ He’s your
brother, Marianne,” I said to myself . “He’s an innocent child
of God. Be nice .”
I softened. “I’m trying to mak e a hot toddy,” I said. “I
have a very bad sor e throat.”
“Well ﬁrst of all, that’s not the way to mak e a hot toddy,”
he said, “and secondly, that’s not what you want anyway . You pr obably need some penicillin.”
“That’s true, I do,” I said, “Erythr omycin would cur e this
but I just moved to L.A . and I don’t know any doctors who
would pr escribe it to me.”
The man got up and walk ed over to wher e I was sitting. He put a cr edit car d on the bar and beck oned the bartender .“Come on, let’s go ne xt door,” he said to me. “I can get you
some Erythr omycin.”
I look ed at him lik e he was crazy, but I also noticed that
the cr edit car d said “ Dr.” on it. “What’s ne xt door?” I ask ed. “A Thrif ty drugstor e.”
And so it was. W e walk ed ne xt door to Thrif ty and my
new friend the doctor pr escribed the medicine I wanted. After thr owing one pill into my mouth, I became ecstatic. “You don’t understand,” I said to him, practically jumping
up and down. “ This is a miracle ! I prayed for healing, and I
corrected my thoughts but the Holy Spirit couldn’t give me
an instantaneous healing because I’m not advanced enough
yet to r eceive it—it would be too thr eatening to my belief
system—so He had to enter at the level of my
understanding, and you wer e ther e, but if I hadn’t opened
my heart to you I would never have been able to r eceive the
miracle because I wouldn’t have been open!”
He handed me his business car d. “Young lady, her e’s my
number,” he said. “I’m a psychiatrist and I haven’t
prescribed an antibiotic in twenty -ﬁve years. But trust me,
you should give me a call.”
As I told the good doctor, I ask ed that my misper ceptions
be healed—I accepted the A tonement—but the healing
could still only enter at the level of my r eceptivity . The
Course tells us that the Holy Spirit steps aside in the
presence of fear . Most of us, wer e we to have a br oken leg
healed instantly upon hearing the wor d Jesus, would ﬁnd the
healing mor e depr essing than the wound. That’s because, if
such a thing is possible, the entir e world is something other
than we think it is. Giving up our limited understanding of
the world, which we e xperience as a kind of pseudo -contr ol,is mor e of a thr eat to us than a br oken leg. Some people,
says A Course in Miracles , would rather die than change
their minds. The Holy Spirit ﬁnds ways to e xpress His power
through vehicles we can accept. Medicine is such a vehicle. There is a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous that “Every
problem comes bearing its own solution.” Crisis comes
bearing its solution in that it tak es us to our knees, our most
humble thinking. If we had been ther e to begin with—if we
had placed the power of God befor e our own, putting love
befor e all personal ambitions—then our pr oblems would not
have developed. An epidemic such as AIDS is a collective heartbr eak,
pulling millions of people into its painful vorte x. But this also
means that it brings millions of people to their knees. As
soon as enough of us get ther e, as soon as love r eaches a
critical mass or, as the Course says, enough people become
miracle-minded, ther e will be a sudden br eakthr ough in
consciousness—a raptur e, an instantaneous healing.
_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 we wait for the
world’s per mission to shine, we will never r eceive it. The
ego doesn’t give that per mission. Only God does, and He
has alr eady done so. He has sent you her e as His personal
representative and is asking you to channel His love into the
world. Ar e you waiting for a mor e important job. Ther e isn’t
one. There is a plan for each of us, and each of us is pr ecious. As we open our hearts mor e and mor e, we’r e moved in the
directions in which we’r e supposed to go. Our gif ts well up
inside of us and e xtend of their own accor d. We accomplish
eﬀortlessly. How could L eonar do da V inci not have painted. How
could Shak espear e not have written. In Letters to a Y oung
Poet, Rilk e tells a young writer to write only if he has to. We
are to do what ther e is a deep psychological and emotional
imperative for us to do. That’s our point of power, the
source of our brilliance. Our power is not rationally or
willfully called forth. It’s a divine dispensation, an act of
grace. 4. MONEY
“Joy has no cost. ”
Do what you love. Do what mak es your heart sing. And
never do it for the money. Don’t go to work to mak e money;
go to work to spr ead joy. Seek ye ﬁrst the kingdom ofHeaven, and the Masaratti will get her e when it’s supposed
to. God doesn’t have a poverty consciousness. He doesn’t
want you to have a boring life or a boring car eer. He doesn’t
have anything against the things of this world. ‘Money isn’t
evil; it’s just nothing. ’ Lik e anything else, it can be used for
holy or unholy purposes. I once had a small bookstor e. A man came in one day
and told me that he was going to teach me how to mak e
money. “Every person that walks in that door,” he said, “is a
potential sale. And that’s what you should silently say to
yourself whenever a customer walks into the stor e: Potential
sale, potential sale. ”
His advice sounded e xploitative to me. He was advising
me to view other people as pawns in my own scheme. I
prayed and r eceived these wor ds: “Y our stor e is a chur ch. ”
Church, esoterically, means the gathering of souls. It’s not
an outer plane but rather an inner plane phenomenon. People don’t come into your place of business so that you
can get anything. They’r e sent so that you can give them
love. After I said the prayer and got the feeling that my stor e
was a chur ch, I understood that my only job was to love the
people who came ther e. I actually did that: every time I saw
a customer walk in, I would silently bless them in some way
or another. Not everyone bought a book every time they
came in, but people began to consider me their bookseller. Customers wer e attracted to a peaceful feeling in the air. People might not know wher e it comes fr om, but they can
feel it when love is being sent in their dir ection. I’m amazed when I walk into stor es and the sales people
are rude, as if they’r e doing you some kind of favor letting
you be ther e. A rude attitude is destructive to the emotional
fabric of the world. Wher e I gr ew up, we lef t a stor e with
that kind of ener gy because it doesn’t feel good to be ther e. When our goal is making money, cr eativity becomes
distorted. If I saw money as the ultimate goal of my
teaching car eer, then I would have to think mor e about what
people wanted to hear and less about what I feel it’s
important to say. My ener gy would become tainted with
eﬀorts to get people to come back, to sell them on my
lectur es, to get them to bring their friends. But if the
purpose of my car eer is to channel God’s love, then I’m only
there to open my heart, open my brain and open my mouth. When we’r e working solely for money, our motivation is
getting rather than giving. The miraculous transfor mation
here is a shif t from a sales mentality to a service mentality. Until we mak e this switch, we’r e operating fr om ego and
concentrating on the things of this world rather than on
love. This idolatry casts us into alien emotional ter ritory,
wher e we ar e always afraid. W e’re afraid of either failur e or
success. If we’r e closer to success, we’ll fear success. If
we’re closer to failur e, we’ll fear failur e. The issue isn’t
success or failur e. The issue is the pr esence of fear, and its
inevitability wher ever love is absent. Like everything else, money is either holy or unholy,
depending on the purposes ascribed to it by the mind. W e
tend to do with money what we do with se x: we desir e it but
we judge the desir e. It is the judgment that then distorts the
desir e, tur ning it into an ugly e xpression. Because we ar e
ashamed to admit that we want these things, we have
insidious ways of pr etending that we don’t—such as
condemning our desir es even as we act them out. The lossof purity is in us, then—not in money or in se x. They ar e
both just canvasses onto which we pr oject our guilt. Just as the fearful mind is the sour ce of pr omiscuity and
sex is mer ely the vehicle thr ough which it is e xpressed, so
money is not the sour ce of gr eed. The mind is the sour ce of
greed, and money is one of the places wher e it e xpresses
itself. Both money and se x can be used for holy as well as
unholy purposes. Lik e nuclear ener gy, the pr oblem isn’t the
energy, but how it is applied. Our judgment of wealth is actually an ego ploy to mak e
sure we never have any. I was once driving ar ound a very
wealthy neighbor hood in Houston and I thought, “These
people work for huge multi-national corporations that
oppress people thr oughout the Thir d World. ” Then I stopped
myself : How do I know what all those people do for a living,
and how do I know what they do with their money. My
judgmental attitude, masquerading as political
consciousness, was actually my ego’s way of trying to mak e
sure that I would never have any money. What we mentally
refuse to per mit others, we r efuse ourselves. What we bless
in others, we draw to us. When I was younger, I cherished the belief that, by being
poor, I was somehow showing my camaraderie with the
impoverished. Behind that thought, I see now, was my fear
that I would fail if I tried to mak e money. I ultimately r ealized
that poor people didn’t need my sympathy so much as they
needed cash. Ther e’s nothing pur e or spiritual about
poverty. We often see impoverished people who ar e very
holy, but it isn’t the poverty that cr eates the holiness. I’ve
known some e xtremely spiritual wealthy people, and I’ve
known some poor people who wer e anything but. The Bible says it’s har der for a rich man to get into
Heaven than it is for a camel to walk thr ough the eye of a
needle. That’s because the attachment  to money is a huge
temptation to deviate fr om love. But the moral imperative is
not to block the r eception of money into our lives. The
challenge is to spiritualize our r elationship to it, by seeing
that its only purpose is to heal the world. In an enlightened
society, rich people will not necessarily have less money. Poor people, however, will have much mor e. The pr oblem,
contrary to the ego’s per ception, is not just the distribution
of wealth, but the consciousness ar ound it. Money is not
scarce. It is not a ﬁnite r esour ce. W e are not poor because
the rich ar e rich. W e are poor because we do not work with
love. It behooves us to r emember that our money is God’s
money, and we want to have whatever He wants us to have
in order to do with it whatever He wants us to do. God wants
us to have whatever material support contributes to our
greatest happiness. The ego tries to convince us that God
demands sacriﬁce, and that the life of service would be a
life of poverty. This is not the case. ‘Our purpose on this
earth is to be happy,’ and it is the Holy Spirit’s function to
help us achieve that. He leads us to whatever material
abundance supports us in standing forth joyously within the
world, without binding us further to it. There’s much work to be done for the healing of the
world, and some of it costs money. Often the Holy Spirit
sends us money so that we can perfor m tasks He wants
accomplished on His behalf. A responsible attitude towar ds
money is one in which we’r e open to whatever comes, and
trusting that it always will. In asking for miracles, we ask the Holy Spirit to r emove
the obstacles to our r eception of money. These obstaclestake the for m of thoughts, such as: money is impur e, or
having money means we’r e greedy; rich people ar e bad, or I
shouldn’t mak e mor e money than my par ents did. Having
money means that we have mor e money with which to
employ other people and heal the world. Ther e’s nothing
beautiful about what happens to a society when money
stops cir culating. One of the principles to r emember about money is how
important it is to pay for services r ender ed. If we begrudge
someone else the right to mak e a living, we ar e begrudging
ourselves the same. What we give, we will r eceive, and
what we withhold will be withheld fr om us. And the universe
doesn’t r egister the diﬀer ence between stealing fr om a huge
corporation, or stealing fr om a nice little old lady. The universe will always support our integrity. Sometimes
our debts ar e so big or confusing, that even though we have
the best of intentions, the bur den and the guilt may be so
overwhelming, that we just go on automatic, push the bills
to the back of the drawer and try to for get them. Or change
our phone number. The universe will not support that. A big
person is not someone who never falls down. A big person is
someone who, when they fall, does what it tak es to get up
again. As always, the issue is to ask for a miracle. Ther e’s
no debtor’s prison in this country. Once again, accor ding to
the Course, “Miracles ar e everyone’s right but puriﬁcation is
necessary ﬁrst. ” P urity of heart cr eates br eakthr oughs. If
you owe back bills, no matter how much, write a letter to
the company or individual, own the issue, apologize if
appropriate, and let them know that you ar e setting up a
payment plan, eﬀective immediately. Send them something
with the letter. Don’t set yourself up for failur e. If you can’t
aﬀord to send ﬁf teen dollars a month, that’s ok ay. Send ﬁve
dollars, if that’s all you can. But mak e sur e you send it and
send it r egularly and on time. It doesn’t matter if the bill isﬁfty thousand dollars. The Course says “ther e is no or der of
diﬃculty in miracles. ” No matter what the shape of a
problem, its for m or its size, a miracle can handle it. Miracles mean that at any moment we can begin again. No
matter what the pr oblem, as long as we r eturn our minds to
a graceful position now, the universe will always help us
clean up the mess and start over. To repent means to think
again. In every ar ea, the universe will support us to the
extent that we support it. Most of us have a lot “ on” money—anything fr om an
inappr opriate need for it to an inappr opriate judgment of it. Many of us r eceived str ong messages about money during
our childhoods. W e wer e taught, verbally or nonverbally,
that it is overly important, or unspiritual, or har d to get, or
the root of all evil. Many of us ar e afraid that people won’t
like us if we don’t mak e money, or afraid that they won’t lik e
us if we do. Money is an ar ea wher e we need, individually
and collectively, a radical healing of our mental habits. We pray. Dear God, “I sur render to you all my thoughts
about money, I sur render to you my debts, I sur render to
you my wealth. Open my mind to r eceive abundantly. Channel your abundance thr ough me in a way that serves
the world. Amen. ”
5. MINISTR Y
“And that one V oice appoints your function and
relays it to you, giving you the str ength to
understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed
in everything you do that is r elated to it. ”
There’s no mor e potent way to thank God for your gif ts, or
to incr ease them, than by sharing them. Y ou will be given asmuch power in the world as you ar e willing to use on His
behalf. Think of your car eer as your ministry. Mak e your work an
expression of love, in service to mankind. W ithin the worldly
illusion, we all have diﬀer ent jobs. Some of us ar e artists,
some of us ar e business people, some of us ar e scientists. But in the r eal world that lies beyond all this, we all have the
same job: to minister to human hearts. All of us ar e her e as
ministers of God. A few years ago I went back to Houston for a special
reunion of my high school drama department. Our teacher
was r etiring, and e xstudents of his fr om all over the country
came to pay their r espects. A t the dinner, a lot of attention
was given to the fact that many of Mr. Pickett’s students had
gone on to become successful actors. But many of his
students had gone on to become successful people, period. By teaching us the truth about acting, he taught us the truth
about life. Once you know; 1. L eave your personal pr oblems
at the stage door; 2. T reat the material with honesty, dignity
and without embellishment; 3. Show up fully no matter how
many people ar e in the audience, then you know everything
you need to know in or der to have a powerful pr ofessional
career. To know the r eal truth about anything is to know the
truth about everything. In lear ning the principles of ministry,
we lear n the principles of success, r egardless of what for m
our ministry tak es. One of the things I’ve r ealized is that I’ve r eally only had
one car eer. I’ve had many jobs, but they all had one basic
element in common: me. The for m of my work had mainly to
do with wher e I was at that time in my life, and every for m
taught me something essential to my “car eer development. As ministers of God, we let our car eers be an e xpression
of our own depth, of what r eally matters  to us. Knowing that
we ar e acting on behalf of a higher purpose than our own
self-aggrandizement gives us the joy we’r e all seeking. Whatever we do, whatever our job, it can be a vessel
through which we teach the message of salvation: that the
Son of God is innocent, and we ar e all Sons of God. Kindness
to Him transfor ms the world. W e don’t necessarily teach this
verbally, but rather non- verbally. The pr oblem most people
have is that they’r e mor e concer ned with the mode of their
expression than with what they’r e seeking to e xpress. That’s
because they don’t know  what they want to e xpress. This
generation, this cultur e, is full of people who want
desperately to write a story, but for all the wr ong r easons. I
meet people who want to be in the spotlight, but have no
idea what they would say if it was pointed at them. This is a
fraudulent postur e. It means we want the r ecord contract
more than the satisfaction of making music. The highest
prize we can r eceive for cr eative work is the joy of being
creative. Cr eative eﬀort spent for any other r eason than the
joy of being in that light-ﬁlled place, love, God, whatever we
want to call it, is lacking in integrity. It diminishes us. It
reduces inspiration to mer e sales. A few years ago I visited K auai. My friend and I took a
ride on a boat along the Napali coastline. The boat was one
of a ﬂeet owned by a man known as Captain Zodiac. Zodiac
is the wor d for the incr edible land for mations that meet the
sea ther e. This man loved the coastline so passionately that
he took the wor d for his own name. One day someone said
to him, “Y ou know a lot about this coastline and its history. A
lot of people would love to see what you see her e, and know
what you know. Why don’t you tak e people out on your boat
and give them a tour. ”Captain Zodiac’s rides ar e a gr eat service to tourists on
Kauai. They spr ead joy. They lif t the cultural vibration. And
the boat rides became quite a business. Captain Zodiac now
has lots of boats, and he’s very successful. His business
formed ar ound his love. The issue is whether we’r e working for money, or
working for love. What we need to investigate is which one
is the mor e abundant attitude. As with Captain Zodiac, and
contrary to the ego’s ar guments, love is actually good
business. Any job can become a ministry, as long as it is dedicated
to love. Y our car eer can be an empty canvas for God to write
on. Whatever your talents or abilities, He can use them. Our
ministry becomes a joyous e xperience for ourselves and
others as we let a mysterious for ce dir ect us. W e simply
follow instructions. W e are allowing God’s spirit to move
through us, using our gif ts and r esour ces however He sees
ﬁt, to do His work in the world. This is the k ey to a
successful car eer. Success is not unnatural; it is the most natural thing in
the world because it is the natural r esult of man’s
cocreation with God. In A Movable F east, Hemingway writes
about writing. He describes the diﬀer ence between his
writing a story, and a story writing itself. When he ﬁnds
himself writing the story, he knows it’s time to stop for the
day. Our life is meant to be a story that mysteriously writes
itself, and our work is the cr eative fruit of our lives. “God, please use me” is the most powerful aﬃr mation
we can say for an abundant car eer. It is the miracle work er’s
prayer. Everybody wants a gr eat job. A ccept that it’s alr eady
been given to you. The fact that you’r e alive means a
function has been assigned to you: open your heart toeveryone and everything. That way you’r e a vessel of God. Don’t wor ry about what to say or what to do. He’ll let you
know. I used to think I was lazy. I was always tir ed. A ctually, I
was just block ed until I discover ed the purpose of my life. When our ener gy is applied in the dir ection of co -creating
with God, of a willingness to supply love wher e ther e was
none befor e, new ener gy bursts forth fr om deep inside us. The world never gives you per mission to shine. Only love
does that. I r emember being a cocktail waitr ess and walking
into work one night thinking, “ Oh, I get it. They think this is
a bar. ” As A Course in Miracles  student, I now saw it
diﬀer ently. “This isn’t a bar, and I’m not a waitr ess. That’s
just an illusion. Every busi ness is a fr ont for a chur ch, and
I’m her e to purif y the thought for ms, to minister to the
childr en of God. ” W e can tak e our own lives seriously,
regardless of whether or not anyone else does. No job r eally
has any mor e potential impact on the planet than any other. We’re always impacting the world in which we live, thr ough
our pr esence, our ener gy, our interactions with others. The
question is, what kind of impact ar e we having. I once knew a woman who wanted to be an actr ess, but
wasn’t getting work. In the meantime, she was working as a
personal assistant to a pr ofessional writer. He ador ed her
work and wanted her to travel with him all ar ound the
country, doing book tours, setting up lectur es and helping
him in various ways. Although she told me that she found
working with him very e xhilarating, she didn’t want to leave
Los Angeles because she felt she needed to be available in
case ther e wer e acting jobs her e that she might audition for. “Nothing would be better for your acting car eer,” I told
my friend, “than that you would start star ring in your ownlife. ” The r eason many people want to be actors is not
because they ar e truly called to the art, but rather because
they want so desperately to cr eate something beautiful in
their own lives. Show up. Be enthusiastic. P ut some ener gy
into the life you’r e living now. How will anyone ever be
impressed by your starlik e quality if you’r e waiting to
cultivate that quality until you become a star. How would a miracle work er decide whether to go on the
trip or stay in L os Angeles. W e mak e decisions by asking
that the ‘Holy Spirit decide for us. ’ Ther e are always so
many factors in life that we can’t know. ‘We mak e no
decisions by ourselves,’ but ask how we might be most
helpful in car rying out His plan. The moral authority that this
attitude gives us cr eates a starlik e quality. It is our humility,
our desir e to be of service, that mak es us stars. Not our
arrogance. An ego thought that tempts a lot of people is the
insistence that “I don’t do windows. ” Ther e’s an old Zen
tradition of disciples spending years dusting the altars of
their masters as part of their pr eparation and training. The
apprentice lear ns from being in the pr esence of the master,
from serving him, and in time will surpass him. As the I
Ching says, the universe ﬁlls up the modest and cuts down
the pr oud. In modesty, we allow things to blossom. W e’re
not ashamed to admit we’r e still in pr ocess. The ego
emphasizes the goal rather than the pr ocess by which we
achieve it. This is actually the ego’s way of sabotaging us. We become pr oud and har dened, and ther eby less
attractive. Ther e is nothing lik able about false pride. It
doesn’t help us get work, or to get mor e successful. Our job is to tend to our own gr owth as people, our grace
and integrity and humility. We need no other goal. The cor e
of our being then gr ows into a substantial power, e xternallyas well as inter nally. Our ministry becomes a dir ect line of
creation, fr om God thr ough us to all mankind. 6. NEW HEAR TS, NEW JOBS
“Child of God, you wer e created to cr eate the
good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not for get
this. ”
The ego says, “Y our value is based on your cr edentials. Y ou
need a Ph. D. or its equivalent befor e you can get a good
job. ” But some of the best and brightest of our generation
were educated mor e by life than by school. Ther e’s a mass
of talent in our society who have been everywher e and done
everything, but have few cr edentials to show for it. Our
achievements have been mainly inter nal. Our ministries—our new car eers—will r eﬂect these
internal achievements. They will e xpress a new integration
of mind and heart. They will e xpress the consciousness of
people contributing their individual r esour ces to a general
healing tide. These car eers will be cr eated as individual
reﬂections of our unique talents. W e will not “ﬁnd” these
jobs; we will cr eate them. Ther e are no ads in the “ Help
Wanted” section of newspapers for world saviors or miracle-
work ers. New for ms of employment ar e emer ging in
response to new ener gies. Carl Jung advised people to look closely into whatever
fairy tales or myths particularly attracted them as childr en. When I was a child, I was enchanted by a fairy tale called
“The Girl in the P atchwork Dr ess. ” In this story, the cr own
prince of a kingdom is going ar ound the country looking for
a bride. In one town, a huge ball is being held so that the
Prince can have a chance to meet all the young ladies wholive ther e. One girl wanted very much to go to the ball but
she didn’t have enough money to buy the material she
would need in or der to mak e a beautiful ball gown. So she
did what she could. She pick ed up scraps of material fr om
other girls’ worktables, and put together a patchwork dr ess. On the night of the ball, she enter ed the party and gr ew
embar rassed when she saw how beautiful all the other girls’
dresses wer e. Feeling ashamed, she hid in a closet. The
prince came to the party, danced with all the girls ther e,
and at a certain point, he had had enough. He was bor ed
and he was going home. But as he was leaving, he noticed a
piece of cloth sticking out of a closet door. He or dered his
guards to open the door, wher e they discover ed the girl in
the patchwork dr ess. The prince danced with her, found her
more inter esting than any of the other girls, and he mar ried
her. When I thought of that story as an adult, I knew why it
had meant so much to me as a child. It r evealed a
signiﬁcant ar chetype in my own life. I would ultimately taste
a little bit of just about everything life had to oﬀer. This
would never ear n me a degr ee in anything, but it would ear n
me a kind of overview. That vision of things would become
the basis for my car eer. A lot of people among us ar e like
the girl in the patchwork dr ess. W e have a little bit of this,
and a little bit of that. But you can’t get a Ph.
God; it is not the ego.
What is the source of creativity and abundance?
Not working for money, but for love and serving others.
What is the key to a successful career?
It is an illusion, and it blocks our ability to receive abundance.
What is the problem with the ego's perspective on money?
It can be limiting and distract us from our true purpose, and it is not the same as asking God for guidance.
What is the issue with setting specific goals?
The Holy Spirit, which is a divine physician within us, and our willingness to surrender to its guidance.
What is the source of healing?