Students of A Course in Miracles would most likely not hesitate to state that they would love to have Jesus as their companion on the journey home. Indeed, who wouldn't (including even those who profess not to believe in him)? And, in fact, the message of A Course in Miracles can very simply be summarized by saying that our journey home is made with him as our companion and teacher, rather than with the ego. So, for example, he pointedly says in Chapter 8 of the text:

When you unite with me you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you.... Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home.... On this journey you have chosen me as your companion instead of the ego. Do not attempt to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.

The ego's way is not mine, but it is also not yours.... Reach, therefore, for my hand because you want to transcend the ego (T-8.V.4:1-2; 5:4,8–6:1,8).

While these wonderful words and sentiments are all well and good, there remains a serious problem for those who profess their love for Jesus: He does not come alone. Our brothers must come with us -- more specifically our special love and hate partners. Otherwise, Jesus cannot be our companion. He makes this very clear in the later section, "Light in the Dream," where he says:

You who hold your brother's hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone.... In your relationship is this world's light. And fear must disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to your brother. You will succeed only in frightening yourself.... I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take your brother's. You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go we carry God with us.

In your relationship you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness.... My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of your relationship, is your need for salvation. Would I not give you what you gave to me? For when you joined your brother, you answered me (T-18.III.4:1,3-6; 5:5– 6:1,5-7).

It has always been one of the great temptations of spiritual seekers to focus almost exclusively on their relationship with God, or some representative of the divine, be it Jesus or Mary for many Westerners, or a guru for followers of an Eastern path. This practice of basically ignoring our everyday personal relationships for the sake of developing a relationship with the divine figure or surrogate may indeed work well for many spiritual aspirants. And in this regard it is helpful to recall Jesus' words to Helen Schucman, scribe of A Course in Miracles, given on two separate occasions. While acknowledging how other spiritual paths are helpful for others, Jesus encouraged Helen to remain with the Course he had given her, at the same time cautioning her not to make judgments of those whose paths differed from hers:

You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for you (T-18.VII.6:5).

Don't take another's path as your own, but neither should you judge it (Absence from Felicity, second edition, p. 430).

Nonetheless, when looked at through the perspective of A Course in Miracles, exclusive attention paid to the "spiritual world" as opposed to the "illusory world" carries with it a huge risk of using such "lofty" spiritual concerns as a defense against dealing with our pressing personal problems, specifically the problem of unconscious guilt. This most sacred treasure of the ego thought system, ultimately born of self-hatred over our separation from God, continues to remain out of awareness, where no intervention of the divine can remove it, unless, of course, we are speaking of the magical variety, the stuff of which all formal religions are made. It may not be immediately apparent why this is such a serious problem, yet one could not be in the presence of a love that transcends this world's individuality and specialness as long as one clings to guilt, the very presence of which defends against such love. It is as if we were putting one foot on the accelerator pedal of our car at the same time our other foot is pressed solidly on the brake. In this case, it is imperative that the right foot know what the left foot is doing. Succinctly stated, and shifting metaphors, we cannot take Jesus' hand on the journey as long as ours is still holding on to guilt. As Jesus teaches us, in another context: "Vision or judgment is your choice, but never both of these" (T-20.V.4:7).

Thus protected, the guilt is unchallenged and uncorrected, and once this negative judgment of ourselves is successfully repressed, it has nowhere to go but out. In other words, following the important psychological principle that what is repressed will be projected, guilt festers, as it were, in the unconscious, where it patiently awaits a suitable object on which to be projected. The vicious dynamic of projection is where guilt, acting under orders of the ego's fear, is "sent out" into the world to seek and find itself in others. This dynamic is graphically portrayed in the following passage from the first obstacle to peace:

The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master.... Fear's messengers are trained through terror, and they tremble when their master calls on them to serve him. For fear is merciless even to its friends. Its messengers steal guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. And in their savage search for sin they pounce on any living thing they see, and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured.... They will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. For they are frantic with the pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him who sends them forth by offering him what they hold dear (T-19.IV-A.11:2; 12:3-7; 13:2-5).

The most devastating aspect of this already devastating scenario of the ego's "hungry dogs of fear" is that the entire process occurs with the guilt-harboring individual being oblivious to what is truly going on -- wonderful protection for the ego, indeed, since a problem cannot be solved if there is no awareness that there is even a problem! Moreover, the projection of guilt enjoys even greater protection when it can be hidden behind religious or spiritual pronouncements that purport to come from that path's scripture or charismatic leader. No better example of the tragic nature of this dynamic of guilt's projection under the guise of religious virtue can be found than in the two thousand years of Christian history. We find here that otherwise well-meaning followers of Jesus had no understanding of the true source of their judgments, persecutions, and even murders of those who disagreed with their religious beliefs. The justification, of course, was that it was God's will that the non-believers be punished for their infidelity, blasphemy, or what-have-you. Yet all the time, these Christians' self-recriminations for their own lack of faithfulness to the true and all-loving God remained buried in the darker recesses of their guilt-laden minds, leading them to the exact opposite in practice of the meaning of the teachings they were consciously espousing. The opening pages of Chapter 3 in the text (T-3.I) describe this phenomenon of how Christians projected judgment onto God, inevitably leading to the "tragic" consequences of persecution, thus exemplifying how "frightened people can be vicious."

What is most tragically kept hidden through all this, to state it once again, is our unconscious guilt, which, as the following passage makes abundantly clear, remains the stumbling block to our remembering our Creator and Source, and the return home to His Love:

Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon His Son. The guilty always condemn, and having done so they will still condemn....

Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing. Make no one fearful, for his guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego's harsh commandments you bring its condemnation on yourself, and you will not escape the punishment it offers those who obey it.... When you condemn a brother you are saying, "I who was guilty choose to remain so."...

See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you. Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part. Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it is there until it is undone. Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone (T-13.IX.1:1-2; 2:1-2; 4:4; 6:1-8).

The clear emphasis placed on the need to forgive our brothers as the means of knowing that we are forgiven is also expressed in these two brief passages from the text:

You cannot enter God's Presence if you attack His Son.... Christ is at God's altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter (T-11.IV.5:6; 6:1-2).

To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you (T-31.VIII.8:4-7).

This vision of the all-inclusive nature of the Sonship is nicely expressed in the following Christmas verse Helen had taken down, "The Gifts of Christmas," the very first of a long series of poems. It can serve as a helpful reminder this season, and every season, that our wish to remember our Identity as Christ, God's one Son, cannot be accomplished without sharing His sinless vision and all-encompassing Love:

Christ passes no one by. By this you know
He is God's Son. You recognize His touch
In universal gentleness. His Love
Extends to everyone. His eyes behold
The Love of God in everything He sees.
No words but those His Father's Voice dictates
Can reach His ears. His hands forever hold
His brothers', and His arms remain outstretched
In holy welcome. Would you look on Him,
And hear Him calling you this Christmas day?

Behold, He offers you His eyes to see,
His ears to listen to His Father's Voice,
His hands to hold His brothers', and His arms
To reach to Him as He would reach to you.
You are as like to Him as He to God,
And you to God because you are like Him.
All that He offers you is but your own.
Accept His gifts to you this Christmas day,
That you who are as God created you,
May come to recognize the Christ in you.
            (The Gifts of God, p. 95)

It is this Christmas message that Jesus wants us to understand and accept, for it is the core of his curriculum, the heart of his teaching: We cannot complete our journey and return home unless we exclude no one, for if we do, we secretly exclude ourselves and protect the guilt that does in fact exclude our Self. If, as the wonderful line instructs us, the sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness (T-15.XI.2:1), then that light must embrace everyone, without exception, otherwise its seeming brilliance offers but a glittering illusion of holiness. And that is why the holy relationship -- the shift to a perception that no longer sees separate interests in the relationship -- is the herald of eternity (T-20.V). While not the true oneness of Heaven, the forgiven relationship nonetheless reflects (or heralds) this oneness, because it undoes the belief in separation. This then makes the space necessary for the automatic return to the Son's memory of his true Identity as God's one Son. Thus Jesus says that "the ark of peace is entered two by two" (T-20.IV.6:5), "salvation is a collaborative venture" (T-4.VI.8:2), and we return home "together, or not at all" (T-19.IV-D.12:8).

It is important, moreover, to keep in mind that Jesus is speaking throughout the Course of the content of a relationship, not its form. In other words, a student of A Course in Miracles need not have an actual partner in the flesh to complete Jesus' curriculum of forgiveness successfully. We are in relationship all the time with those from our past, present, or anticipated future. This is inevitable, as the separation thoughts of our split minds will always involve others, the projected images of our own unconscious thoughts -- the secret sins and hidden hates (T.31.VIII.9:2) we prefer to "give away" rather than confront in our minds. Since the problem of our special relationships is within, so too, is its answer: joining in our minds with the loving presence of Jesus, who gently instructs us in the process of forgiveness that removes the guilt entirely -- first from our brother, and then from our self, leaving only the light of Christ to shine so joyously where the darkness had been.

In light of this discussion, we can understand how a decision to hold on to our grievances and indulge our need for specialness is a decision not to make the journey home. Excluding another, regardless of the seeming justification for our attack, is the ego's subtle way of excluding the One who would be our companion and guide, without whom we would forever wander the ego's world, "uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear" (T-31.VIII.7:1). And we practice this exclusion only because of the fear of losing the ego's treasure of specialness and individuality, which, of course, cannot enter the Kingdom of Love and Oneness with us. Thus, this Christmas let us pledge to ourselves that we shall at last be true to Jesus' vision for us in A Course in Miracles, to ask his help to uncover the secret and hidden thoughts of judgment against ourselves, in the context of our asking him to help us forgive our brothers. In this way, our journey together -- we, Jesus, and all the Sonship -- can shine away these internal obstacles, returning to our awareness the true light of Christmas we all share as one indivisible Son -- the holy Christ [Who] is born in me today (W-pII.303).