In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we reviewed “For They Have Come (ACIM, T-26.IX)” from the text of A Course In Miracles (ACIM).
Here are the first 3 paragraphs of “For They Have Come” a favorite section of Helen Schucman – the scribe of ACIM – and one of the two she shared with Ken Wapnick to introduce him to the Course:
“Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! ²And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation, with his freedom joined! ³However much you wish he be condemned, God is in him. ⁴And never will you know He is in you as well while you attack His chosen home, and battle with His host. ⁵Regard him gently. ⁶Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within him, that you may behold his glory and rejoice that Heaven is not separate from you.
Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven all your sins, and left without a single one you cherish still? ²Forget not that a shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the face of Christ and memory of God. ³And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? ⁴The ground whereon you stand is holy ground because of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it with Their innocence and peace.
The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. ²What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light. ³Because of Them. ⁴It is Their Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient place upon an ancient throne. ⁵Because of Them have miracles sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground that hate had scorched and rendered desolate. ⁶What hate has wrought have They undone. ⁷And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans to join with it, and make it like itself. ⁸The shadow of an ancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They have come.”
We also read “The Little Garden” – an earlier portion of the text – which shares a similarly inspiring message as “For They Have Come.”
Here are the first 3 paragraphs of “The Little Garden“:
“It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. ²For the body is a limit on love. ³The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. ⁴Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you. ⁵Can you who see yourself within a body know yourself as an idea? ⁶Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. ⁷You cannot even think of God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize.
The body cannot know. ²And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. ³God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. ⁴Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. ⁵The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. ⁶It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. ²And to defend this little speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. ³This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. ⁴In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. ⁵Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. ⁶The sun becomes the sunbeam’s “enemy” that would devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.”
We also read portions of Lesson 165: “Let not my mind deny the Thought of God”. (ACIM, W-165)
Here are the first 3 paragraphs of this lesson:
“What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond? ²What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you? ³And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? ⁴What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?
The Thought of God created you. ²It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. ³It belongs to you. ⁴By it you live. ⁵It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. ⁶The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. ⁷Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.
Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? ²Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? ³And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him, and he remain with them?
…
The discussion centered on Lesson 165, “Let Not My Mind Deny the Thought of God,” and the beautiful text section “For They Have Come” from Chapter 26 of A Course in Miracles. Together, these passages present the Course’s essential movement from guilt and separation to forgiveness, holiness, and the remembrance of God. The group also drew on Ken Wapnick’s commentary, which points out the poetic and musical quality of the Course’s prose. The deeper meaning may be felt in the stillness between the words—the silence that points beyond language toward the experience of God’s Love. Ken often suggested that we let the Course wash through us like an epic poem, letting the profound message carry us throughout our lifetimes of unlearning insanity. He also emphasized keeping the non-dual metaphysics close in one’s mind.
Lesson 165 begins with a series of searching questions. What makes the world seem real except our denial of the truth beyond it? What obscures the happiness and eternal life God wills for us except the belief in separation which indulges thoughts of misery, mindlessness, and death? What could hide what cannot truly be concealed except our wanting to identify with illusion? The lesson’s central idea is that the thought of God is not absent from us. It is already present, and only our decision not to see it seems to conceal it. Perfect Oneness hasn’t betrayed or abandoned us; we are merely dreaming that we abandoned and betrayed our perfect innocence.
This does not mean that God has withdrawn or that we must earn our way back to Him. Rather, the Course teaches that the mind has chosen the (ego) thought system of separation and then projected its consequences onto a world that appears external and real. We believe that our unhappiness is caused by specific bodies, relationships, politics, money, illness, aging, loss, and circumstances. Yet the Course gently redirects us to the level of mind, where we are always making the important choice. The question is not whether the world seems difficult; it is whether we are willing to look beneath our interpretation of it and consider the alternative of forgiving ourselves and restoring peace.
The group noted that the lesson is, in effect, asking a single question in many forms: Do we really want to remain miserable, or are we ready to consider a different way of seeing? The Course never coerces an answer. It simply invites honesty. Our resistance is not proof that the teaching is wrong; it actually is a huge clue that we’re foolishly, but forgivably, denying ourselves the option of being kind to ourselves by being kind to all. It is useful information about how strongly the ego wants to preserve its separate identity and its familiar grievances that keep the illusions and misinterpretations of separation actively sabotaging our peace.
The text section “For They Have Come” describes the end of the journey in evocative language. Ken Wapnick observed that it carries an “aura” that transcends the written word. Words such as love, holy, hate, light, and ancient give the passage a distinctive tone. The word “ancient” is especially significant because it points to the timeless instant (now) when the mind seemed to choose hate instead of love. The equally timeless possibility – and happy inevitability! – of choosing again … against the insanity of condemnation in any form.
The passage is also written in blank verse, giving it a musical quality. Ken compared it to a symphony and cited the violinist Isaac Stern’s phrase about “the silence between the notes.” In the same way, the deepest communication in this section may be found not merely in its concepts but in the quiet it evokes. The words lead toward an experience that cannot be fully contained in words: recognizing Christ in our siblings (everyone we meet or think about) and remembering God.
The Course’s practical formula is simple but demanding: see the face of Christ (innocence, guiltlessness) in another person to see it in ourselves and remember God. This is not sentimental idealism. It requires us to notice our resistance to innocence. The ego only deals in guilt. However, this guilt can and does appear in endless varieties and is disguised in countless forms. It sees others as wrong, threatening, selfish, inferior, and responsible for our unhappiness. Since “ideas leave not their source,” the ego also sees ourselves as similarly guilty, ashamed, flawed, and deprived. The same thought of condemnation is applied everywhere. The Course has us work with what seems “outer” until we become adept at undoing projection, as we realize the cause is “inner”. If we condemn our brother, we condemn ourselves and God; if we condemn ourselves, we condemn our brother and God. The apparent triangle of God, self, and brother is not truly divided. How we see one is how we see all. One brother is all brothers and all sisters in non-duality.
This insight can initially feel sobering. It means that every grievance is more extensive than it seems. When we are angry at another person, anxious about the future, resentful of an event, or worried about money, we are not merely responding to an isolated problem. We are holding a shadow between ourselves and our brother, and that shadow obscures both the face of Christ and the memory of God. This ego-imposed shadow doesn’t damage reality, which is not threatened by our dream of separation and guilt. But it does make us miserable until we question the sanity of the ego’s guilt-spewing mental machinery and pull the plug on its lunacy. The price of maintaining separation is severe, although we often do not recognize it until we have glimpses of the peace that forgiveness offers.
Yet the Course never asks us to condemn ourselves for having grievances. It asks us to look at them from gentle eyes. The opening lines of “For They Have Come” are therefore both poetic and instructional: think of how holy you must be, from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly to your brother; think of how holy your brother must be, in whom your salvation rests. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes upon him who carries Christ within him; this applies to everyone you meet or think about.
These are not commands to manufacture spiritual feelings or “shout down” the ego. They are directions (corrections) for the mind. They tell us what to remember when we notice that we have chosen judgment. The correction does not depend on changing someone else or trying to make a relationship outwardly ideal. It consists in our willingness to question the ego’s interpretation and ask to see with the Holy Spirit instead. It is remembering that what appears to be an external relationship is really taking place in the mind.
Forgiveness is a shared process. We do not awaken alone. The holy relationship (letting everyone “off the hook” for an impossible cosmic crime) replaces the ego’s special loves and special hates because it recognizes a common interest rather than competing interests. If our brother remains condemned in our mind, we cannot know the innocence that is also in us. But if we recognize Christ in another, we remember the holiness we share. The sane call of holiness to holiness is stronger than the insane attraction of sin (separation, substitution, specialness) because it is the call of love to itself.
This is why the Course speaks of the return to Heaven not as an achievement that must be earned, but as a return to the Home we never truly left. The dream of separation is fading, however slowly, because it has no foundation in truth. We may fear giving up the separate self—the small, defended identity that seems to make us unique—but the eternal love behind the temporal fear outlives the ego’s resistance.
The passage repeatedly contrasts an “ancient hate” with the ancient love that replaces it. The ancient hate is the original wish to be separate from God, expressed in countless forms of attack, guilt, competition, fear, and blame. It is not merely a personal anger toward a particular individual, although the ego’s insanity includes all of these specifics. Insanity is the entire thought system of separation. The Course’s imagery can be stark: murder, death, desolation, a barren ground scorched by hate, a bloodied earth, and garments of insanity. Such imagery is meant to clearly expose the brutality of the ego’s thought system without making it real.
The ego’s world includes obvious forms of violence, but its underlying violence is mental. Every time we insist that another person is separate from us, guilty, or deserving of exclusion, we symbolically dismember the oneness that is our true Identity. This dissection and dismemberment has no impact on what is forever true, but within our dream, these terrors seem very real. Every judgment becomes a small act of separation. The Course uses strong images because it wants us to recognize the enormous cost of taking the ego seriously. We have made a frightening movie, then forgotten that we wrote the script, produced it, directed it, starred in it, and chose to watch it – over, and over, and over, in countless nauseating, horrifying permutations.
This recognition is not meant to produce shame. On the contrary, it is the gentle call to release ourselves from the tyranny of wanting to be an ego. When we see that the ego’s world is a projection, we no longer have to defend it or pretend that it is the truth. We can admit that the apparent horror is a dream and ask for help in seeing past it. On our own, we may be horrified by the ego’s darkness. With Jesus or the Holy Spirit (or any ego-free symbol in our mind), we can look at it without panic and learn that it has no power to change what God created.
The text describes the transformation in striking metaphorical imagery: the blood of hatred fades, grass grows green again, white flowers sparkle in the sun, and what had seemed a place of death becomes a living temple in a world of light. Hate has rendered the mind barren; forgiveness restores it. Miracles spring up like grass and flowers on scorched ground. What hate seemed to make, forgiveness – “an earthly form of love” (ACIM, W-186.14:2) has undone.
This does not necessarily mean a dramatic alteration in the external world. The real transformation occurs in the mind. The “holy ground” where forgiveness happens is not a particular geographic location. Frogiveness, being of the mind, occurs outside space and time, although specifics within space and time seem to trigger and become the catalyst for forgiveness. It is the abstract, shared mind in which the decision for separation was made and can now be undone. Forgiveness makes any apparent place holy because it reveals the holiness that was already there… and everywhere and every when.
At the level of perception, however, the world can become a gentle reflection of this shift. Ordinary objects, relationships, and daily activities can seem to “sing” of oneness. This is not because the forms themselves become divine or special, but because they are no longer used as evidence of guilt and separation. When the mind is peaceful, everything can be received as a symbol of shared innocence rather than as an occasion for attack.
The discussion of “angels” followed this same understanding. In the Course, angels are not literal celestial beings having form. They symbolize God’s light, protection, and loving thoughts. They represent the truth that we have never actually left God. Seen through forgiveness, our brothers themselves become angelic presences: reminders of the right mind, innocence, and the possibility of peace.
“To keep away all darkened thoughts of sin and keep the light where it has entered in” can be understood as the protection that forgiving thoughts offer to the thinker of thoughts that undo insanity. Unforgiveness protects projection; forgiveness protects extension, inclusion, and love. As we question the ego’s ongoing war, we are lifted above the battleground and can see the conflict as a forgivable projection rather than as an inescapable prison.
The “golden footprints of forgiveness” describe this gentle path home. They do not require us to leap immediately from fear into a full awareness of perfect oneness. Forgiveness is an immediate experience in which the world becomes kinder and more transparent. It occurs first “in lovely flashes” (ACIM, S-3.II.2:3) but grows over time with practice. We still seem to be individuals in a world, but we see its forms differently. When we forgive, the specific situations, objects, and people around us reflect the message that we are safe, joined, and loved. The world is not made holy by being different from other places; it is made holy by the purpose we give it.
The section culminates in the image of the temple of the living God being rebuilt. Where the cross once stood, the risen Christ now stands. Forgiving vision heals ancient mental scars. The cross represents the ego’s belief in sacrifice, punishment, guilt, and death. The risen Christ represents the correction: innocence cannot be destroyed, love cannot be crucified, and what God created remains whole. Forgiveness replaces ancient enmity with an ancient miracle—the remembrance that separation never truly occurred.
The phrase “For they have come” refers to God and Christ returning to awareness, but Ken Wapnick clarifies that “they have come” because we are coming to them. We bring the darkness to the light, and it disappears. If we try to bring the light into the darkness (try to make sanity fit within the context of insanity) we will remain confused and upset. We are not waiting passively for God to arrive from somewhere else. We are withdrawing the barriers we placed against the awareness of Love. As these barriers fall away, God and Christ seem to return to the mind that had denied them. In truth, they were never absent.
The group ended by returning to Lesson 165’s message of hope. Doubt is not the truth about us. God’s certainty remains beyond our doubts, His Love beyond our fears, and the thought of Him beyond all dreams. The Course removes the doubts we have placed between ourselves and our certainty of God. It does not create a new truth; it helps uncover the truth that has always been present.
The practical invitation is therefore gentle and immediate. We can practice in hope because hope is justified. We can pause when we judge, worry, hate, or feel ashamed, and remember that the thought of God has not disappeared. We can ask for help to look with loving eyes. We can let an ancient hatred become a present love. Each moment of forgiveness is a return to the holy ground of the mind, where the separation we thought we made quietly fades, and the memory of our eternal Home shines again.
Editor’s note: What appears above (after the 3 quoted sections) is an AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of an abridged text transcript of the YouTube recording, which I have carefully edited and revised as needed. I’m using AI to summarize and organize lengthy material. If you find this helpful, or have any suggestions or thoughts about the content above, please let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated! My intention is to provide useful insights and information related to ACIM. I found this summary quite good and didn’t change much; just a few minor adjustments and additions to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings.
(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Sunday, June 14, 2026.)