Being truly helpful

One of the most practically significant affirmation contained within A Course in Miracles appears in the early chapters of the Text.

I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Christ, 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.

If the goal of the Course is the healing of our fragmented mind, this affirmation provides us with a concise blueprint of how that is accomplished by means of our individual intention manifested in daily practice and application. "I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal."

The first big problem is encountered in the first line of the affirmation. "I am here only to be truly helpful."  Quite apart from the impossibility of knowing what is and what is not "truly helpful" to the greater plan of atonement, there is the added challenge of holding a unified and consistent intention to want only that.

"The truly helpful are invulnerable because they are not protecting their egos, so that nothing can hurt them. Their helpfulness is their praise of God . . . The truly helpful are God’s miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you. "

One cannot be truly helpful while listening to and following the voice of the ego.

"I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do because He who sent me will direct me."

Memorizing these five lines is a worthy and useful undertaking. Carmen and I have each done so, and repeat it to ourselves silently and to each other out loud many times each day. The value of doing this cannot be easily explained, but I recommend it.

1. I am here only to be truly helpful.
2. I am here to represent Christ, who sent me.
3. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do because He who sent me will direct me.
4. I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
5. I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.

-  oOo   -

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky