The Process of Psychotherapy

Introduction

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

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

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

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

I. The Limits on Psychotherapy

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

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

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

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

II. The Place of Religion in Psychotherapy

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

2. Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real place in religion. ²In this world, there is an astonishing tendency to join contradictory words into one term without perceiving the contradiction at all. ³The attempt to formalize religion is so obviously an ego attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable that it hardly requires elaboration here. ⁴Religion is experience; psychotherapy is experience. ⁵At the highest levels they become one. ⁶Neither is truth itself, but both can lead to truth. ⁷What can be necessary to find truth, which remains perfectly obvious, but to remove the seeming obstacles to true awareness?

3. No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. ²Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. ³All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. ⁴This is never apparent to the patient, and only rarely so to the therapist. ⁵The world has marshalled all its forces against this one awareness, for in it lies the ending of the world and all it stands for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

III. The Role of the Psychotherapist

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

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

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

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

IV. The Process of Illness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V. The Process of Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI. The Definition of Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII. The Ideal Patient-Therapist Relationship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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