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You can do much on behalf of your own rehabilitation and that of others if in a situation calling for healing you think of it this way:

¹⁰⁶ I am here only to be truly helpful.

I do not have to worry about what

CH 4. THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

Workbook for Students

1 Beginning with today, we will have a series of review periods. Each of them will cover five of the ideas already presented, starting with the first and ending with the fiftieth. There will be a few short comments after each of the ideas which you should consider in your review. In the practice periods, the exercises should be done as follows:

² Begin the day by reading the five ideas, with the comments included. Thereafter, it is not necessary to follow any particular order in considering them, though each one should be practiced at least once. Devote two minutes or more to each practice period, thinking about the idea and the related comments. Do this as often as possible during the day. If any one of the five ideas appeals to you more than the others, concentrate on that one. At the end of the day, however, be sure to review all of them once more.

³ It is not necessary to cover the comments that follow each idea literally or thoroughly in the practice periods. Rather, try merely to emphasize the central point and think about it as part of your review of the idea to which it relates.

⁴ The review exercises should be done with your eyes closed and when you are alone in a quiet place if possible. This is emphasized particularly for reviews at your stage of learning. It will be necessary, however, that you learn to require no special settings in which to apply what you have learned. You will need it most in situations which appear to be upsetting, rather than in those which already seem to be calm and quiet.

⁵ The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring the quiet with you and to heal distress and turmoil. This is not done by avoiding them and seeking a haven of isolation for yourself. You will yet learn that peace is part of you and requires only that you be there to embrace any situation in which you are. And finally you will learn that there is no limit to where you are, so that your peace is everywhere, as you are.

⁶ You will note that for review purposes the ideas are not always given in quite their original form of statement. Use them as they are given here. It is not necessary to return to the original statements nor to apply the ideas as was suggested then. We are now emphasizing the relationships among the first fifty of the ideas we have covered and the cohesiveness of the thought system to which they are leading you.

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¹ The review for today covers the following ideas:

² The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this, that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing that it has no meaning so that vision may take its place.

³ I have judged everything I look upon. And it is this and only this that I see. This is not vision. It is merely an illusion of reality, because my judgments have been made quite apart from reality. I am willing to recognize the lack of validity in my judgments because I want to see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them.

⁴ How could I understand what I see when I have judged it amiss? What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go and make room for what can be seen and understood and loved. I can exchange what I see now for this merely by being willing to do so. Is not this a better choice than the one I made before?

⁵ The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call "my" thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made "my" thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that "my" thoughts do not mean anything and to let them go. I choose to have them be replaced by what they were intended to replace. "My" thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the thoughts I think with God.

⁶ I am never upset for the reason I think because I am constantly trying to justify "my" thoughts. I am constantly trying to make them true. I make all things my "enemies" so that my anger is justified and my attacks are warranted. I have not realized how much I have misused everything I see by assigning this role to it. I have done this to defend a thought system which has hurt me and which I no longer want. I am willing to let it go.

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IX. True Rehabilitation

par 103-106

¹⁰³ Every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation to rehabilitation emphasizes the body, while the vocational orientation stresses the ego. The "team" approach generally leads more to confusion than to anything else because it is too often misused as a way of exerting the ego's domination over other egos, rather than as a real experiment in the cooperation of minds. Rehabilitation as a movement is an improvement over the overt neglect of those in need of help, but it is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of the halt to lead the blind.

¹⁰⁴ The ego is likely to fear broken bodies because it cannot tolerate them. The ego cannot tolerate ego weakness either without ambivalence because it is afraid of its own weakness as well as the weakness of its chosen home. When it is threatened, the ego blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will. You may then be tempted to withdraw to allow your ego to recover and to gain enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough not to threaten your ego but too limited to give you joy. Those with broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego because of its belief that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its own temple.

¹⁰⁵ A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. All symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this, the mind that so meets them heals itself. Rehabilitation is an attitude of praising God as He Himself knows praise. He offers praise to you, and you must offer it to others. The chief handicaps of the clinicians lie in their attitudes to those whom their egos perceive as weakened and damaged. By these evaluations, they have weakened and damaged their own helpfulness and have thus set their own rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is not concerned either with the ego's fight for control or its need to avoid and withdraw. You can do much on behalf of your own rehabilitation and that of others if in a situation calling for healing you think of it this way:

¹⁰⁶ I am here only to be truly helpful.

   I do not have to worry about what

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Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.”

One of his most popular books is: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.