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I should like to review a prayer from the early part of the text: “I am here only to be truly helpful” (T-2.V.18). It was originally part of a personal message for Bill, which did not belong in the Course itself since it was specific to a particular situation. We took the message out, but kept this prayer because it was so lovely. I will start with its introduction:
You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of others if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:
I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or
what to do, because He Who sent me will
direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes,
knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal.
This prayer can be misleading if we confuse form and content. Yet its meaning is clear from what follows, not to mention Jesus’ message to Helen about not looking through the eyes of judgment. The two sections in Chapter 2 that come next also make clear that Jesus is not talking about behavior. In fact, he gently chides Helen, as the reader may recall, for asking him to take away her fear of something external, saying, in effect: “Do not ask me to remove your fear, but instead let me help you with the conditions of the mind that led to it—your willingness to be separate” (T-2.VI.4:3-4).
This prayer, therefore, is a wonderful expression of what we have been discussing; specifically, finding oneself in a situation that calls for help. Combining this prayer with other concepts in A Course in Miracles, we realize that what is helpful—the only thing that is helpful—is to remind people they can make another choice. This is the only true help we can be to anyone, the meaning of living with Jesus under his arch. Thus, in the midst of a conflicted situation, we strive to be a presence that says to all people: “My brother, choose again. Choose a thought system that does not see separate but only shared interests.” Everyone is calling for help—victims and victimizers, good guys and bad guys, scapegoatees and scapegoaters—for we are all in the same ego boat. Extending help means manifesting the peace that comes only from being in the right mind, reminding others that the holy instant we have chosen is the same one they can choose—right-mindedness instead of wrong-mindedness. The former always sees separate interests, makes distinctions, and perceives differences as justifiable and valid; the latter sees in everyone the universal call for help and its universal answer. In other words, right-minded thinking does not acknowledge the concept difference, only sameness.
Understanding this will help us not fall into the form-content trap in reading this prayer. “I am here only to be truly helpful. I am here to represent Him Who sent me” does not mean that Jesus or the Holy Spirit send people to us, although that is our experience, as it was Helen’s and Bill’s. Yet how could They really send people to us? There are no people to send! Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not involved in the world of form, and yet we keep trying to drag Them into our insanity so that They would share it. We do this because we think that if They join our insanity, we would become sane. Therefore, not only do Jesus and the Holy Spirit not send people, They do not do anything at all, being only a Presence of right-minded and loving thinking in our dream. Since this dream is in the mind and not the body, it is to Their loving Presence that we bring our unloving thoughts, returning from the ego’s world to Jesus’ world, to live gratefully at last within the pillars of his loving arch.
Excerpted from The Arch of Forgiveness
Father, we thank You for these gifts that we have found together. Here we are redeemed. For it is here we joined, and from this place of holy joining we will come to You because we recognize the gifts You gave and would have nothing else. Each hand that finds its way to mine will take Your gifts from me, and as we look together on the place whereon I laid your worthless gifts for you, we will see nothing but the gifts of God reflected in the shining round our heads.
Holy are we who know our holiness, for it is You Who shine Your light on us, and we are thankful, in Your ancient Name, that You have not forgotten. What we thought we made of You has merely disappeared, and with its going are the images we made of Your creation gone as well. And it is finished. For we now commend into Your Hands the spirit of Your Son who seemed to lose his way a little while but never left the safety of Your Love. The gifts of fear, the dream of death, are done. And we give thanks. And we give thanks. Amen.
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Excerpted from The Gift of the Ego: Fear – The Gift of God: Love