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).
We began with Workbook Lesson 235: “God in His mercy wills that I be saved.” (ACIM, W-235)
“I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me, and with perfect certainty assure myself, “God wills that I be saved from this,” and merely watch them disappear. I need but keep in mind my Father’s Will for me is only happiness, to find that only happiness has come to me. And I need but remember that God’s Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His Arms. I am the Son He loves. And I am saved because God in His mercy wills it so.
Father, Your Holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You.”
Unlike the separate identities we’ve fabricated with our split minds, our real (shared, all-inclusive) identity is safe and saved, beyond threat, danger, and harm. This is expressed in this inspiring selection from the text:
“How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and 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. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself.” (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-7)
The first half of “The Fear of Healing” (ACIM, T-27.II) was the topic of the previous week’s class, so we started with paragraph 11. Here are paragraphs 11-13 of this section:
“In a split mind, identity must seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, must be a way to punish sins you think are yours in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, not your brother, different from you in that he is more guilty, thus in need of your correction, as the one more innocent than he. This splits his function off from yours, and gives you both a different role. And so you cannot be perceived as one, and with a single function that would mean a shared identity with but one end.
Correction you would do must separate, because that is the function given it by you. When you perceive correction is the same as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit’s Mind and yours are One. And so your own Identity is found. Yet must He work with what is given Him, and you allow Him only half your mind. And thus He represents the other half, and seems to have a different purpose from the one you cherish, and you think is yours. Thus does your function seem divided, with a half in opposition to a half. And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two.
Consider how this self-perception must extend, and do not overlook the fact that every thought extends because that is its purpose, being what it really is. From an idea of self as two, there comes a necessary view of function split between the two. And what you would correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. Your brother’s sins become the central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. Yours are mistakes, but his are sins and not the same as yours. His merit punishment, while yours, in fairness, should be overlooked.”
We also read Beyond All Symbols (ACIM, T-27.III)
Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Beyond All Symbols:
“Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as “weakened power” or “hateful love”?
You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a “hateful love,” a “weakened power,” and above all, a “living death.” And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.
The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.”
…
We opened the session with Workbook Lesson 235, “God in His mercy wills that I be saved.” Salvation (a.k.a. forgiveness, right-mindedness, atonement, “God’s Answer” to the separation, undoing the ego, miracle, healing, real world, true perception, innocent perception, vision, face of Christ, reason, justice, holy instant, holy relationship, function, happy dream, Second Coming, Word of God, Last Judgment, Final Judgment, resurrection, redemption, correction, awakening, and sanity – all from the Course’s perspective; see Glossary-Index for “A Course in Miracles“, page 11) restores awareness of our true identity, which remains whole and guiltless, regardless of changing circumstances. Reality is safe; the apparent threats belong to the dream of separation and cannot alter what is real. “Salvation” here does not mean that God intervenes to protect the body or arrange a happier life in the world. It means waking from the belief that separation, sin, and guilt have changed our identity. The lesson’s assurance of safety points beyond the body and its experiences to the mind’s unaltered and unalterable innocence. “… not one note in Heaven’s song was missed (ACIM, T-26.V.5:4)” expresses that same idea: the separation never damaged Heaven’s reality. Perfect Oneness, Perfect Love, Unchangeable Truth have never been compromised by dualistic dreams.
We reviewed paragraph 11 in Chapter 27, Section II, “The Fear of Healing,” before moving to paragraphs 12–16. That review reminds us we have split our minds and that we must see this insanity clearly to undo it, with the help of our Inner Kindness Teacher. The ego makes the self seem divided, then projects that division outward. We see ourselves as comparatively (i.e., partially) innocent and another person as more guilty, more mistaken, or more in need of correction. This creates a hierarchy: my “sins” are understandable, while your “sins” prove what is wrong with you, and somehow magically might make my “sins” less egregious.
One participant describes this as a “hot potato” game with guilt: each person tries to leave the burden in someone else’s hands. Its source is the “we–they” paradigm, in which differences between people, communities, or nations seem to establish who is right and who is blameworthy. Projection hides the mind’s guilt by locating its apparent cause outside us. We then feel justified in judging or correcting someone else, while remaining unaware of the guilt we have tried to disown. The world and our relationships (seen through the corrective vision of forgiveness) are places where our hidden, unconscious, unfounded guilt becomes visible to us—not as evidence that another person is its true cause. We need the Holy Spirit’s help to undo this erroneous guilt both “outside” and within, since the ego mind always assumes guilt. The Holy Spirit’s correction always shows us that guilt is a forgivable misunderstanding that tries to make dualistic dreams unpardonable crimes. Here is some of Kenneth Wapnick’s commentary on unconscious guilt and projection on the FACIM.org website.
Correction is not our function. The ego’s version of correction means judging another as sinful and trying to make them pay or change. Correction belongs to the one (Holy Spirit, Jesus, or any ego-free symbol in our mind) who knows perfect fairness and sees through the guilt that seems to negate our eternal innocence. This corrective presence is the Holy Spirit. Our role is to ask for that corrective help in changing how we see; it is not to take the Holy Spirit’s place as judge of another person.
Forgiveness is not a moral verdict that another person’s behavior was acceptable, nor is it a command to ignore harm or remain in a damaging situation. It changes the purpose and interpretation of the relationship. Rather than use it to confirm guilt and separation, we use it to notice our condemning judgments and become willing to see differently. The focus is the mind’s choice of teacher. It does not require denying what happened in ordinary life; it asks us to question the meaning of guilt we have attached to it.
Trusting the Holy Spirit is always the context for meaningful correction. Everyone shares the same underlying need—to find peace and, metaphorically, to go home. The forms of our lives differ, but those differences do not establish different degrees of worth or different needs for forgiveness. The lighthearted suggestion to read a chapter “backwards” captures a related practice: begin with the goal—peace, or the holy instant—and let that guide how you understand the steps along the way. Looking at a golf hole from the completion point of the green back toward the tee is like knowing the destination is a “done deal” and that we can afford to relax, since we’re already “home, dreaming of exile.”
dreaming of eggs aisle“For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.” (ACIM, W-158.4:5)
Our choice to identify with the ego splits our mind, assigning different roles to different people, making their functions appear opposed. The mind seems to contain competing purposes, with one half aligned with the ego and the other represented by the Holy Spirit. This is not a battle between two equal forces. The Holy Spirit does not fight the ego; the conflict comes from the mind’s investment in the ego’s interpretation. Right-mindedness is the choice to look with the Holy Spirit, while the ego’s guilt-based perception is not a genuine rival to reality. Reality need not fight illusions, but shadowy illusions are forever fearful of the light of reality that would dispel the darkness of the ego’s nothingness. The apparent division is part of the dream, not a division in God or in our true identity. Here is Ken Wapnick’s (FACIM) metaphysical chart with detailed explanations on the Course’s theory of mind and forgiveness.
Thoughts of guilt in the split mind express outward via projection. The thought of love extends throughout a unified mind that has never been divided. The word “extend” does not mean that ideas are sent away from us, since “ideas leave not their source” (ACIM, W-132.5:3). The ego propagates its sense of guilt through projection and blame, attempting to deflect attention from the source; the right mind reflects love through forgiveness. Useful questions are not whether we have become perfectly forgiving, but which interpretation we are choosing and whether we are willing to ask for help.
Paragraph 13 describes the ego’s strategy more directly. If I think of myself as divided, I will see my function as divided too. Another person becomes the target of correction, so that their apparent errors can be treated as different from mine. Everyday comparisons between countries and cultures become examples where we notice what seems wrong elsewhere and imagine we would do better. The ego always uses differences to separate, while the Holy Spirit uses our encounters to reveal shared interests and a shared need for peace.
We read from Ken Wapnick’s JTTT (Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set), where Ken describes the “hierarchy of sins”: we may acknowledge ordinary mistakes in ourselves while reserving the label of serious sin for others. That comparison can feel like moral discernment, but it can also preserve the ego’s claim to innocence. (The irony is that the ego – being made from the idea of guilt – tries to reclaim its innocence by making others more guilty, yet the ego has no clue that our real identity is innocence for all, and there is no need to steal innocence or make itself seem less guilty by making others more guilty!) The person we condemn becomes the guilty one; we become the one who is entitled to correct or forgive them. Even apparent forgiveness can preserve judgment if it depends on seeing the other as guilty to any degree and ourselves as morally superior. The point is not that every action has the same worldly consequences, but that guilt does not define anyone’s deepest eternally innocent identity.
The later paragraphs describe the pictures we make of our brothers and sisters. The “picture” is not the person’s eternal reality; it is the image shaped by our perceptions, judgments, and expectations. When we see someone as a body who can attack, injure, or deprive us of peace, we are seeing through the ego’s frame. Movies are a helpful analogy: the apparent world is a convincing display of images, but its convincing appearance does not make it true. Truth does not change. The metaphysical assertion that the world is an illusion is presented as a gradual teaching, not an instruction to dismiss everyday experience or other people’s suffering.
This qualification matters. Seeing the world as an illusion is perhaps better first approached by questioning the ego’s assumption that the world is a separate reality created outside the mind; it is not a license to behave carelessly or to deny what someone is experiencing. The practical application is to question the ego’s claim that external events cause our guilt and loss of peace. The “picture” can be used differently: the Holy Spirit turns any and every encounter into a classroom for forgiveness. Changing the purpose of perception, relationships help us uncover and release our judgments rather than reinforce them. FACIM on recurring situations as forgiveness lessons
We explore the “empty space” left when we release the ego’s distorted picture of reality. Here is an interesting related summary of ideas presented by physicist Donald Hoffman (from a longer interview) who uses the metaphor of virtual reality headsets to describe how we don’t perceive the projected universe of spacetime directly; we perceive an infinitesimal, distorted, interpreted version. The “film noir” movie we watch from birth is scary when we give the neutral (projected) data to the ego, which can only misinterpret everything, being intrinsically clueless. Tragedies and horror films are the only genres of ego-made movies. “If this were the real world, God would be cruel.” (ACIM, T-13.in.3:1)
before forgivenessHowever, when we use the exact same feedback from our projected world to our Inner Kindness Teacher (Jesus or Holy Spirit in Course parlance), we realize that we’re watching a horror flick of our own imagination. As the Beatles say, it’s nothing to get hung about!
after forgivenessThe identity space vacated by rejecting ego’s pathetic, partial, polarizing self is not something we need to fill by forcing a spiritual experience or constructing a “better” (separate) self-image. We make room by becoming willing to question our judgments and let another interpretation be given. The Course’s instruction is to be still and let the mind be receptive. Spiritual preparation can itself become a project of the ego: the belief that we must perform perfectly before love can reach us. What we leave vacant, reality will fill with corrected vision, with the awareness of sameness and shared interests and identity.
We read “True undoing must be kind,” and discussed the contrast between a condemning picture and a forgiving one. Forgiveness offers a gentler, truer way of seeing: the “other” is no longer treated as a stranger and a sinner whose guilt proves our innocence. By questioning our projections and reeling them back into our minds (where they’ve never actually left), we release external accusations, and this correction opens the inner door to releasing our erroneous self-condemnations as well.
Kindness corrects the formal religious baggage of putting Jesus on the cross, making this symbol special, different, and unreachable. “There is nothing about me that you cannot attain.I have nothing that does not come from God.” (ACIM, T-1.II.3:10-11) The sanity of forgiveness reverses the ego’s crucifixion of our Appointed Friend in our mind and restores the intrinsic equality of all creation, including every one of us. The point is not to glorify suffering or to suggest that people should accept abuse. Ego attacks that would make us different cannot alter our real identity as the Son of God, shared by all. The Course’s Jesus models a mind that does not interpret attack as proof that love has been destroyed. The practical value of this teaching is a growing ability to notice when we are making another person responsible for our inner distress and to choose again.
The final paragraphs move beyond even the forgiving picture. Forgiveness and symbols are described as temporary teaching aids: they help undo the belief in separation until they are no longer needed. Since the world consists of distinctions and opposites, it cannot depict the nondual reality of Heaven. A symbol can point toward oneness, but it cannot contain or reproduce it. Once there is no separation in our mind, the experience of the truth of our being eliminates the need for signs that point the way to that experience.
This also helps explain the Course’s distinction between atonement and at-onement. “At-one-ment” is the ultimate awareness of nothing but oneness, while atonement is the process of undoing the belief that separation and sin are possible. Keeping the goal in view is inspiring and necessary, but trying to leap straight to the conclusion bypasses the everyday forgiveness work through which the mind becomes willing to release guilt. We restore sanity by gently, patiently, kindly looking at each specific grievance, judgment, or comparison, questioning the ego’s insane interpretations and ultimately discarding those masochistic interpretations altogether.
The session closes by returning to Lesson 235: “Father, your holiness is mine.” Salvation is the recognition that our true identity was never damaged; projection and judgment hide that recognition. Forgiveness asks the Holy Spirit to help us see our siblings without condemnation. This forgiving vision of seemingly externals is really internal forgiveness of ourselves for wanting to identify with a separate self. Each instant of true forgiveness is a step toward the truth that cannot be represented by pictures, images, or anything specific at all. Our “reality is only spirit” (ACIM, T-1.III.5:5). Spirit is abstract, all-inclusive, and undoes all condemning beliefs in sin, guilt, fear, death, and duality.
The work is not to make the dream perfect, nor to force ourselves to feel loving. It is to look honestly at the ego’s misjudgments, notice the guilt and separation they protect, and become willing to choose the other (non-ego) teacher. That willingness does not make us responsible for the world’s behavior or require us to deny its effects. It changes the mind’s interpretation and loosens the belief that anyone’s guilt—that of “another” or our own—is the truth about who we are.
“Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.” (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1)
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 liberally 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, August 24, 2026.)