I have some preconceived notions and I’d like you to shoot holes in my theory,
but it seems to me that when we find the Course
we start practicing the principles and we get more peace,
not necessarily to be happy inside the dream,
but to spend more time in our right minds so that at one point
we wake up and realize that nothing happened.
But Helen’s life doesn’t seem to be representative of that.
That’s true. Helen was not a student of the Course.
In one sense, the Course came to heal her relationship
with Bill and Bill’s with her.
On the level of form, it did not do that.
Bill was much more dedicated to studying it.
He read it more than Helen.
He was particularly fond of the workbook.
He did the workbook more than once.
Helen, as I said before, never really studied it, was not a student.
She didn’t have to be a student.
Someone who was on the level she was at doesn’t need A Course in Miracles.
As she said and as I quoted earlier, don’t take her as a model.
And, she was very adamant about that with people:
don’t look to me as an example.
Again, to her credit, she never posed as an example,
and she never pretended to practice this.
So she would tell people, you’ll feel better if you forgive
and let go of these grievances and heal this relationship, and you should do that.
And then basically, I guess under her breath, she would say, but I'm not.
So, that’s just how it was.
There was a wisdom to her that at times was very practical
in terms of, as I’ve been saying, the advice that she would give,
and also would be very, very lofty.
And, she knew what the Course said from the inside.
Again, she did not have to study it.
Sometimes she’d ask me to read something to her,
but she would very rarely read it, but she knew, we'd quote lines
and she knew exactly what they were.
This was not – she was not kind of just a blank slate
in that sense or an airhead that this came through.
It came through someone – in a sense, she was the source as well as the scribe.
Not that she was Jesus,
but the presence of egoless love in her mind
that we all know of in the Western world as Jesus, Helen was, too.
And again, her function on one level was to be a scribe
and to hear the inner voice and to communicate what the voice said,
but what it really meant was she had a function in terms of content,
which is regaining that position of being a very advanced person.
At the beginning of the teacher’s manual,
Jesus talks about advanced teachers of God.
The ten characteristics really belong to the advanced teachers;
that’s what he says.
And these are the people who, in a sense, come into the world
to regain their true Self, and as a result,
they present the world with a gift.
The gift, in a sense, is their presence, but it then takes specific form.
So, like great artists. Those of you who heard me
when I did the workshop on art and I talked about Beethoven,
he, too, had a real sense of mission.
And he recognized relatively early in his life that he, in the words that he used,
that he was the Bacchus who pressed out the wine for all mankind.
The Bacchus being the god of wine.
And that he realized that he would be a great musician, a great composer,
and he would give the world this gift.
That there are certain people who have a sense of why they’re here.
Now Helen certainly was not conscious of anything.
But it’s not the specific gift, because it’s too easy to make these people special.
The gift is, you regain your Self.
Just as Prince Hal said at the end of King Henry IV Part 2,
“Presume not that I am the thing I was.
For God doth know and so shall the world perceive,
that I’ve turned away my former self.”
That’s everybody’s purpose: To turn away our former self and to become king.
Not an earthly throne. You become king of your mind;
you become king of your Self.
So when Jesus tells us in the workbook, “My Self is ruler of the universe.”
I am in control.
The kingdom is the kingdom of my mind and I am in control of that.
And then there are some people who, when they do this,
and they do this at a very advanced state,
then what they leave the world is a great gift.
As much as any great artist or great thinker and certainly the Course itself.
Then, what they leave behind is a reminder of who we really are.
Sometimes what’s left behind is a means, a process, whereby
we could remember who we are, such as what you find in the Course.
But there are all of these reminders.
And the people who present them to us are those people
who have regained, have thrown off their former self,
turned away from their former self, and have regained their true Self.
So Helen is an example I think of an advanced teacher.
In some sense, she did not need the Course.
In fact, I wouldn’t even say in some sense. She did not need the Course.
Again, she already knew the Course before it came.
She heard everything it said.
She was very good at giving people advice based on it.
She just chose not to practice it, at least in any overt way.
But she was very faithful to the spirit of the Course
in the sense of turning away from her former self.
And then allowing the love of her true Self to shine through.
So she became, just as King Lear said about himself, every inch a priestess.
She became who she was, and she always was that.
That’s what I mentioned at the beginning today,
that when someone would meet her, she had that air of authority about her.
It would be very hard to ignore her in a room,
even if she didn’t say anything.
You could just feel her presence.
I want to close by reading Helen’s poem “Requiem.”
This has an interesting story as most of the poems do.
I mentioned earlier that we were very friendly with some Maryknoll Sisters
who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
And one of them, Regina, was a lovely lady
who was very, very dear to Helen, as Helen was to her.
And her mother was dying.
And Regina had flown down to Florida, I think it was,
to be with her mother when she was dying,
and it was obvious the mother was going to die.
And I said to Helen, because I never missed an opportunity,
and I said to Helen it would really be lovely if you could write a poem
for Regina about her mother, because I think it would be meaningful to her.
So Helen did. She didn’t always do what I said, but sometimes she did.
And when I read the poem, I thought to myself,
not only is this a lovely poem, I said, this is Helen’s poem,
that Helen basically wrote her own requiem poem.
So this is the poem.
The voice would be anyone who is comforting someone who has died.
So basically, the poem is addressed to the person who is dead, or has died.
There are two references, and the poem can be a little confusing if you analyze it.
There’s a similarity between Jesus in his role and God.
At the beginning, it’s Jesus calls the person;
and then later, it becomes God calling.
And basically, the poem goes back and forth, so just so you’re aware of that.
You came but for a while. When Jesus called
You were content to go. For who would stay
To watch the dreary cycle of the nights
Turn coldly gray with each return of day?
This world was not your home. Would God allow
His child to wander long without a home
Which He Himself makes bright? Your tired eyes
Closed gratefully when He at last said, “Come.”
You have forgot all this. All thoughts that hurt,
All sorrow, all regret, have ceased to be
In your remembrance. He Who called to you
Has loosened all your chains and set you free.
Because I love you I would have you go.
Because I love Him I can scarcely weep.
Because He loves you glory goes with you,
And in that glory you but seem to sleep.
He came in mercy. Let me give Him thanks
You stayed with us until you saw Him smile
And tell you it is finished. He will come
For me that way in just a little while.
It is for this I wait, in certainty
That He Who made the stars will not forget.
I will be glad to see Him smile at me,
Or if He choose, to wait a little yet.