In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we reviewed Lesson 198 of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles with generous help from Volume 6 of Kenneth Wapnick’s JTTW (Journey Through The Workbook of a Course In Miracles 8-volume set).
We opened the session with these italicized lines from Lesson 131:
“Today I seek and find all that I want.
My single purpose offers it to me.
No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.” (ACIM, W-131.15:5-7)
As we identify with nothing that can be threatened, peace is a happy inevitability.
In A Course In Miracles, there are 154 instances of the word “condemn” (or variations of that word).
Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Lesson 198:
“Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.
Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousandfold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are one.”
The inherent harmlessness, kindness, patience, grace, tolerance, and gentleness of our unlimited (sane) selves stand in sharp contrast to the ego’s harmfulness, cruelty, impatience, gracelessness, intolerance, and roughshod treatment of our precious siblings. That inappropriate treatment only seemed to occur. In truth, no crime is possible, which is to say that duality is impossible. Perfect Oneness has no opposite, and anything that seems to exist outside it (including everything seemingly separate that would imply a condemnable crime) is made up by the ego’s silly self-inflation. “… God thinks otherwise.” (ACIM, T-23.I.2:7) Our real identity (even if we’re not aware of it much) is still intact; the only bogus identity that disappears when we’re done with our forgiveness lessons is the dream figure that our egos have been projecting into the void of condemning thought. Everyone’s ego is a pathological liar we can afford to not take seriously!
(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 Tuesday, May 11, 2026.)
Editor’s note: Below is a minimally edited AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of a (minimally edited) text transcript of the YouTube recording. I’m still exploring the use of AI to summarize and organize lengthy text material. If you find this helpful (or not), 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 it much; just a few minor adjustments to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings and a few added links.
In this School For A Course In Miracles class, we explored Workbook Lesson 198, whose central teaching is both wonderfully simple and deeply challenging: “³Only my condemnation injures me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free. (ACIM, W-198.9:3-4) The discussion drew on Kenneth Wapnick’s Journey Through The Workbook of a Course In Miracles and repeatedly returned to the Course’s radical change of mind: what seems to hurt us is never the true cause of our loss of peace. Our pain comes from the meaning we give to events, people, bodies, and circumstances—and, more specifically, from the condemnation in our own mind.
The lesson begins by overturning our ordinary understanding of injury. We normally assume that something outside us—a person’s behavior, an illness, an insult, a loss, a frightening event—causes us to suffer. The Course does not ask us to deny that such experiences seem real and can feel painful. Instead, it asks us to question the ego’s interpretation of them. If our true Identity is as God created It—whole, changeless, innocent, and beyond separation—then nothing in a world of changing forms can actually damage that Identity.
This is not intended as spiritual bypassing or as an instruction to pretend that difficult experiences do not occur. It is an invitation to distinguish between the apparent experience in the dream and the mind’s interpretation of that experience. The body may seem vulnerable, the world may appear unjust, and relationships may bring distress. Yet the Course gently redirects us from trying to solve the problem solely at the level of form to asking a more useful question: What am I choosing to believe about myself, my brother, and God?
The ego’s answer is always some variation on separation. It says that we are bodies, isolated from one another, competing for limited resources, and vulnerable to forces beyond our control. It urges us to look for causes outside ourselves and to make others responsible for our lack of peace. It treats differences as decisive and sameness as irrelevant. From that confused premise, condemnation becomes nearly automatic. If someone else seems guilty, we may feel justified in our anger, fear, resentment, or victimhood. None of these are ever justified in truth, but neither do these emotions merit self-condemnation; we just need to notice when we’re afraid of the peace that is beyond any current resistance to it.
But this apparent victory has a cost. If we believe we can attack, we must also believe that attack has power. If we judge another person as deserving punishment, we reinforce the hidden belief that punishment is real and is deserved by us as well. Our guilt then seems to demand retribution, and we become watchful for the attack we expect to return. The mind projects guilt outward and then fears its own projection. In this sense, condemnation injures us because it preserves the whole thought system of sin, guilt, and fear.
The class emphasized that this is why the Course’s forgiveness is so different from conventional forgiveness. It is not merely a moral decision to overlook another person’s wrongdoing. Nor does it mean approving harmful behavior, abandoning good judgment, or failing to take practical action when action is appropriate. Course-based forgiveness is a change in perception. It is the willingness to bring our judgments to the Holy Spirit and to let their underlying purpose be reinterpreted.
We do not forgive because another person has committed a real sin and we are being generous enough to excuse it. We forgive because the belief in sin is the error that keeps both of us imprisoned. When we hold a grievance, we have assigned someone the role of guilty attacker and ourselves the role of innocent victim. The Course asks us to notice that these roles arise together in the same divided thought system. Releasing our brother from the prison of guilt releases us from the same prison, because minds are joined.
This does not mean we need to force ourselves into a false sense of sweetness, or deny that we are angry. The first step is honesty with ourselves. When we are upset, fearful, resentful, or hurt, we can acknowledge that we are not at peace. Instead of defending the grievance or condemning ourselves for having it, we can bring it to the Inner Kindness Teacher—the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or whatever loving symbol helps us remember that another way of seeing is available. We need only be willing to look without judgment at what the ego has made.
This gentle looking is essential. The ego would have us either act out our grievances or suppress them, both of which reinforce the problem. The Holy Spirit offers another option: observe them with inner kindness, patience, and gentleness, recognizing that everyone is “fighting the same hard battle.” We can mentally stand above the ego battleground rather than remain immersed in it. The important thing is that we are no longer identifying completely with the conflict. We are looking at the thought system of attack with a Teacher who does not condemn us for choosing it.
From this perspective, guilt is not a sin that requires punishment. It is merely a mistaken, impotent belief that can be corrected. The ego insists that our error is grave, permanent, and irreversible. The Course calls it a tiny, mad idea: an impossible attempt to separate from perfect Oneness. That attempt never changed reality, however persuasive its effects may seem within the dream. The error is not evil, wicked, sinful, or beyond repair. It is simply a mistake — and therefore forgivable.
There was much humor in the class, not as a way of making light of suffering, but as a reminder that the ego’s thought system is inherently absurd. The ego tells us to take its judgments very seriously. It magnifies and misinterprets every perceived difference, slight, and upsetting appearance as dangerous. It invents an elaborate murder mystery out of neutral “pixels” of perception, then assigns everyone a role in the drama. Each role is awarded some degree of blame. Egos are not kind to anyone, and this always includes any decision-making mind subscribing to ego’s incessant blame blatherings. The Course does not ask us to make the dream more convincing or to become better managers of its misery. It helps us recognize the interpretation we have added to neutral data and invite a new interpretation. Our Inner Kindness Teacher merely suggests that waking from the dream of misery (duality) is the only real alternative that will ever satisfy us.
The Holy Spirit’s correction does not necessarily remove every difficult form from our experience; it does remove the content, however, when we truly forgive. Physical or psychological symptoms may change, or they may not. The Course’s primary concern is always (content in) the mind. Healing is the release of the belief that a body, event, or circumstance has the power to establish our identity or take away our peace. At the highest level, it does not matter whether the form changes, because peace has been restored at the level of cause.
The Course meets us wherever we seem to be. Sometimes changes on the level of form can serve as helpful symbols of trust, gentleness, or guidance. But they are not the goal. The temptation is to turn the Holy Spirit into a dream-repair technician, asking for particular outcomes while overlooking the deeper gift: the restoration of our awareness that our safety is in the mind. The Holy Spirit’s purpose is not to make the dream permanently comfortable. It is to help us awaken from the belief that the dream is our home.
Lesson 198 also reminds us that the way home is not found in the world. We may spend a lifetime looking for happiness in special relationships, achievements, possessions, recognition, physical security, or control. These may have temporary value in our experience, but none can provide the lasting peace we truly want. A goal must be sought in the direction in which it lies. If we want peace, we cannot find it by pursuing the ego’s agenda of separation, judgment, and attack.
This is good news, even when it initially sounds daunting. We have not actually left our Source. The journey from ourselves does not exist. We may have forgotten Love’s presence, but Love has not departed from us. The outcome of awakening is guaranteed because reality has never been altered. Our task is not to create holiness, earn innocence, or manufacture our own salvation. It is to remove the blocks we have placed before the awareness of what is already true. This requires ever-increasing trust in the sanity of our Real Identity, a.k.a. Holy Spirit, or the Jesus of the Course.
The practical application is beautifully direct. Whenever we notice a condemning thought, we can pause. Instead of following it into another round of analysis, blame, defense, or self-attack, we can ask for help. We can say, in whatever words feel natural: “Holy Spirit, help me see this differently.” Or: “I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I can decide otherwise.” Or simply: “I want peace instead of this.”
The willingness need not be dramatic. The Course does not demand that we solve the entire separation in one moment. We can work with the particular grievance, irritation, fear, or disappointment in front of us. We can forgive one small judgment at a time. Each time we choose against condemnation, we weaken the ego’s claim that separation is real and strengthen our memory of shared innocence.
This requires repetition, repetition, repetition, and patience. We are deeply habituated to the ego’s interpretation of experience. We may begin the day with a sincere decision for peace and find ourselves lost in judgment by midmorning… or by mid-sentence a moment later. It doesn’t matter; no crime has been registered in eternity. Rather than using that lapse as evidence that we have failed, just make it another classroom for forgiveness. The goal is not perfection in the ego’s sense. The goal is to become increasingly willing to notice when we are not peaceful and to choose again.
Like any meaningful discipline, this mind training takes practice. We do not condemn an athlete for needing repeated training before a skill becomes natural; we can extend the same patience to ourselves. The Course is a curriculum in practical application, not merely a set of uplifting ideas … and astonishing revelations about the absurdity and cruelty of the ego. Its value is discovered as we bring forgiveness into the ordinary moments of the day: the traffic delay, the political argument, the difficult conversation, the anxious diagnosis, the remembered grievance, and the private self-criticism.
The lesson concludes with a vision of freedom in which judgment has been laid aside, and the world’s frantic thought patterns grow quiet. This is not an achievement of personal willpower. It is the gift that becomes available when we stop insisting on the ego’s interpretation and allow forgiveness to do its quiet work. The stillness of our true Self has never been disturbed by the dream of condemnation. It remains untouched, waiting only for our willingness to remember it.
Our mission, then, is simple: notice the condemning thoughts, do not make them sacred, and offer them to the Holy Spirit, who sees them as insignificant, trivial, and negligible – actually non-existent. We can picture our Inner Kindness Teacher gently lifting them from the mind with a pair of tweezers and placing them in a tiny recycling bin, where they can be released rather than morphed into another grievance. Every such moment is a step away from fear and toward the peace that was never truly lost.
Only our condemnation injures us. And only our own forgiveness sets us free.