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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:

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¹ Today let us review these ideas:

² How can I be the victim of a world that can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last.

³ I made up the prison in which I see myself. All I need do is recognize this, and I am free. I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. The Son of God must be forever free. He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him. He is where God would have him be, and not where I thought to hold him prisoner.

⁴ Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom.

⁵ When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me.

⁶ As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light, I begin to see what my illusions about myself had kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things including myself, and their oneness with me.

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VI. Therapy and Teaching

par 44-50

⁴⁴ You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help you. You have learned to be a loving, wise, and very understanding therapist except for yourself. That exception has given you more than perception for others because of what you saw in them but less than knowledge of your real relationships to them because you did not accept them as part of you. Understanding is beyond perception because it introduces meaning. It is, however, below knowledge even though it can grow towards it. It is possible, with great effort, to understand someone else to some extent and to be quite helpful to him, but the effort is misdirected. The misdirection is quite apparent; it is directed away from you.

⁴⁵ This does not mean that it is lost to you, but it does mean that you are not aware of it. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you have had. I have purified them of the errors which hid their light and have kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. What fear has hidden still is part of you.

⁴⁶ Joining the Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to do, is always a way out of fear. This does not mean that you can safely fail to acknowledge anything that is true. However, the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful and teach you that only what is loving is true. Truth is beyond your ability to destroy but entirely within your grasp. It belongs to you because you created it. It is yours because it is a part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you.

⁴⁷ The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created and therefore cannot be protected. What the ego makes, it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. Its unshared existence does not die; it was merely never born. Real birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing. Everything that can continue has been born, but it can increase as you are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the higher part and thus render your creating undivided.

⁴⁸ As a therapist, you yourself tell your patients that the real difference between neurotic and "healthy" guilt feelings is that neurotic guilt feelings do not help anyone. This distinction is wise though incomplete. Let us make the distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are a device of the ego for "atoning" without sharing and for asking pardon without change. The ego never calls for real Atonement and cannot tolerate forgiveness, which is change.

⁴⁹ Your concept of "healthy guilt feelings" has merit, but without the concept of the Atonement, it lacks the healing potential it holds. You made the distinction in terms of feelings, which led to a decision not to repeat the error, which is only part of healing. Your concept lacked the idea of undoing it. What you were really advocating, then, was adopting a policy of sharing without a real foundation. I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free. You have carried the burden of the ideas you did not share and which were therefore too weak to increase, but you did not recognize how to undo their existence because you had made them.

⁵⁰ You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is not of your making, any more than you are. The Atonement cannot be understood except as a pure act of sharing. That is what is meant when we said it is possible even in this world to listen to one voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship is one, you cannot be limited to the "self" the ego sees. Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs to every part. It is shared because it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating and also yours. Your ego can keep you in exile from the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom itself it has no power.

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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.”

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