Susan Dugan and Bruce Rawles explore the topic of The Definition of Healing (ACIM, P-2.VI) in their series of ongoing conversations about A Course in Miracles in this YouTube video. The Course’s focus is always and only on our own mind, and our choice between the two thought systems in our own mind: ego (insanity) or our sane correction that ACIM refers to as Holy Spirit or the non-dual version of Jesus, distinct from the dualistic version presented in dualistic religions. Any ego-free presence in our mind will work just fine for that correction, as our teacher Ken Wapnick reminds us.
As in their earlier ACIMblog.com conversation on how healing is accomplished, the emphasis is not on improving the body, rearranging circumstances, or fixing another person. Healing is a change in the mind: a willingness to question the ego’s interpretation of pain, conflict, sickness, and victimhood.
The psychotherapy language is deliberately broadened. The “therapist” can be anyone practicing the Course, and the “patient” is anyone with whom we are in relationship—spouse, child, parent, colleague, neighbor, political opponent, or the person who has just irritated us. These relationships become classrooms in which the mind can notice its investment in separate interests. The real patient, Susan and Bruce remind us, is always the mind that has chosen the ego’s thought system of separation, guilt, judgment, and fear.
This follows the approach of Kenneth Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM.org): always and only about the mind, our decision-making faculty that chooses constantly between insanity and sanity. Sickness, from this perspective, is not a bodily diagnosis, nor a punishment, nor evidence of spiritual failure. It is the mind’s identification with a vulnerable, guilty, separate self. The body and world then seem to provide convincing evidence that this self is at the mercy of forces outside itself. Yet the Course gently redirects attention to the decision-making mind—the place where we choose between the ego’s interpretation and the Holy Spirit’s correction.
Paraphrasing some wisdom from Ken recently heard on an audio of one of his classes:
We realize how masochistic the ego is when we uncover our secret complicity in wanting atrocities and betrayals to befall us. Worse yet, we insanely relish and relive each abuse and unfairness because that confirms our identity as a righteous suffering self, a majestic martyr, a victorious victim. Separate selfhood is the greatest and most viciously defended crown jewel kept hidden in plain sight in the ego’s highest citadel. A baby cries to get any attention for its separate self; it doesn’t matter if the attention is for “positive“ or ”negative” behavior as long as its individual identity is acknowledged.
We may protest that we want only peace, while unconsciously using grievances to prove that someone else is guilty and that we are innocent by comparison. The ego would always preserve its separate identity at the cost of happiness. Susan brings this lofty metaphysics into daily practice: the lesson is revealed in whatever is “pissing me off at the moment”—a difficult relationship, a political conflict, an anxiety, a bodily symptom, or even a flashing and unwanted computer-screen distraction.
The pivotal opening paragraph of the section says that psychotherapy can be defined simply as forgiveness. The unforgiving mind believes it is unforgiven, shelters guilt, and guards it with alert defense. Healing begins when we hear the mournful inner “dirge” of grievance and begin to question it: perhaps I am not upset for the reason I think. This does not mean denying that cruel behavior or distressing events appear to occur in the world. It means asking why my peace has become dependent on them, and recognizing the projection of guilt that makes another person, body, or circumstance seem to be the cause of my inner condition.
This is closely related to the earlier ACIMblog discussions, including “How is judgment relinquished?” and “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”. In each, forgiveness is not conventional pardon, moral superiority, or a spiritualized attempt to overlook real sins. It is a re-evaluation of the belief that sin, guilt, and separation are real. As Wapnick repeatedly taught, the purpose is not to make a better ego or obtain a miraculous rearrangement of form, but to look without judgment—with Jesus or the Holy Spirit beside us—at the guilt we have hidden and projected.
The discussion of sickness and unforgiveness makes this practical. Although forms of upset seem vastly different to us, the Course points to one underlying problem and one correction. A small irritation and a major grievance both allow the mind to see its habitual projection. We need not pretend that there are no differences in the world of form; rather, we learn through experience that every disturbance can serve the same healing purpose. As the ego’s “hierarchy” of problems begins to soften, we become less captivated by the content of our stories and more attentive to the choice of teacher in the mind.
The therapist-patient relationship therefore becomes a symbol for every relationship. We see in another what we have not forgiven in ourselves, and thus are offered another chance to look at it, re-evaluate it, and release it. When we try to fix, diagnose, change, or mentally prosecute the other, we can recognize the projection at work. The useful question is not, “What is wrong with them?” but, “Whose projection is mine to look at?” This is not blame; it is the recovery of responsibility and freedom. The Inner Kindness Teacher does not condemn the mistaken choice, but helps us see that it was only a mistake and can be chosen again.
The conversation ends with the joyous Course principle that no one is healed alone. Seeing another’s innocence and accepting it is a shared release from the belief in sin. This is the same sustained theme of Susan’s work at ForaysInForgiveness.com, which is dedicated to the work of Kenneth Wapnick: forgiveness is a gentle, lifelong practice of bringing the mind’s darkness to the light without judgment. Our everyday classrooms are, as Bruce says, “mathematically perfect.” Whatever confronts us is not a reason to despair, but another invitation to look kindly at what the mind is doing and to remember that we go home together—or not at all.
It is obvious that the reading, while seemingly targeting psychotherapists in clinical settings, applies equally to everyone in every relationship, reminding us of the need to see the sameness masquerading as differences in form and particulars. Here are the paragraphs we read and remarked on from the “Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice” supplement:
“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.”(ACIM, P-2.VI.1:1-8)
…
“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.”
(Underlines added by this author for emphasis; not in the Course itself.)
Whose projection do I need to concern myself with? Mine, of course! Healing is always about accepting the correction in my mind – the undoing of unfounded, unconscious guilt – that forgiveness forever offers us.
(This video was recorded on July 19, 2026.)
If you have questions or comments about this video, previous videos in this ACIM-related video series, or other Course-related topics, please email them to us via the ACIMblog.com contact form. Susan and Bruce will review and try to respond to questions and suggestions for future conversations. We look forward to extending the conversation with you!
If you are interested in Susan’s excellent weekly Tuesday evening classes based on Kenneth Wapnick’s teachings, you can contact her here.
Here are some prior ACIM-related conversations with Susan Dugan and Bruce Rawles.
If you have enjoyed these conversations, here are the latest releases from FACIM. You can also support the work of Susan (ForaysInForgiveness.com) and Bruce (via donation links at the bottom of the sidebars on their respective websites) if you feel so inspired. THANKS!
