I had not really thought about this dream for a very long time,
but in thinking about this workshop and things that I would talk about,
I remembered the dream, and I suddenly understood
that dream for the first time in terms of what I was just saying
about this kind of idea about passing a test.
And this is not a test that you're kind of graded on.
It really is a test of saying whether or not someone is ready.
In the dream, where this middle-aged lawyer appears,
the dream began where I'm in a room with a lot of people,
like junior staff members. They were younger than I was.
And the room was like a library; it had bookshelves around it.
And then this woman appeared and she kind of motioned me aside,
took me to another part of the room or into another room, I forget.
And she asked me a question. And the question was
if my family had money and I had the power to,
would I change anything in my life, in my past life.
And the answer that I gave was that, no,
I would not change anything because everything that happened
was really part of a larger path.
And that even though at the time it would be impossible to know
the significance of anything, when one looked back,
one could see that there was a kind of a method
in the madness of one's life,
the mistakes as well as the good things that one did.
And they all were contributory to a larger whole,
that no one could have any understanding or appreciation of at the time.
And the answer, which the middle-aged lawyer
in the dream acknowledged was correct, that was the right answer.
Looking back on that dream now,
in light of the things I've been saying about Helen,
and identifying Helen as the woman in the dream for me,
I think it became clear that what I was saying is that
you accept people where they are.
And you don't try to change anything.
To try to change something or to try to change people
would be an example of what Jesus cautions us against in the Course,
which is making the error real.
You don't change something unless you think it's wrong,
and you don't think it's wrong unless you think it's real
and that it has an effect on you.
And then there's kind of that magical idea that if you alter something
or change somebody's behavior or change somebody's trait
that you don't like, that you're doing something significant.
And therefore, you will feel better,
without really caring about the other person.
It was like saying I was ready now to be with Helen
in a way that would be fully respectful of her,
both her true Self as well as her ego self.
And again, that was the test.
An example of how I flunked, one Saturday afternoon,
and we usually spent Saturdays going shopping,
and ended up going to Mass at a Catholic Church
late Saturday afternoon; that was usually our Saturdays.
But this was a very bad day. It was raining, it was not very nice out,
so we spent the whole day in Helen's apartment.
And Helen was furious at somebody.
This was one of the Course teachers that seem to arise out of nowhere
who was obviously building a little kingdom for himself,
and Helen detested him and what he was doing.
What she detested was the obvious spiritual phoniness
that this person was kind of really building an ego empire,
had no real understanding of the Course and certainly had no love for it,
was simply in it for what he could get out of it.
And Helen ranted and raved about this person;
and that was juxtaposed with her ranting and raving about Bill.
And so that was basically the course of the afternoon.
Finally, I think it was after dinner,
and typically what would happen on these days, no matter what we did,
is that the only time Helen would really allow herself to be quiet
would be late in the evening, after dinner, and then
her husband, Louis, would take a nap and we would sit on the couch,
and if we weren't editing the Course, we might have been done with that at this point
we would be then talking, we would pray together,
and at that point, Helen could be quiet.
So I seized the opportunity.
And I built what I was doing with her on an experience Helen had,
another vision she had in that summer prior to the Course,
when she had this experience of being with Bill at an altar,
and there was a huge altar that had the Hebrew word for God,
Elohim, E-l-o-h-i-m, and from in back of the altar,
Jesus appeared and Jesus started to come towards her.
I'm kind of encapsulating this, the total vision.
And she started to kneel in front of Jesus and he stopped her
and instead he came around and he stayed in the middle
and he knelt with Helen on one side and Bill on the other,
and the three of them knelt before this altar to God.
So I took that image, which was a very important one for Helen,
and I said, why don't we kind of pray together?
And why don't you see yourself with Bill on one side
and this other person on the other?
And let's just try to be quiet and I'll be there with you.
So that's what we did, and actually, it worked.
And Helen felt better, the anger was gone,
and when I left for the evening I felt that was something.
I came by the next morning and
usually when Helen would answer the doorbell,
she'd give me a little kiss and hello, etc., and this time,
she looked at me with a scorn and with a rage,
that, with that full measure of authority,
and she said, "Don't you ever do that to me again."
That was all she said. I didn't know what she was talking about.
She very, very rarely got angry at me and this time she was ready to kill.
Anyway, she explained to me that after I left,
and she went to bed a little bit after that,
she awoke in the middle of the night with this rage,
and she was ready to kill Bill and this other person.
And she was so enraged that she couldn't go back to sleep.
And she tossed and turned and just fumed the rest of the night,
and it was because of what I had done.
Now, in one sense, this is kind of a cute story.
It was not cute at the time in terms of Helen's response,
but I recognized then, and again I'm not sure of the sequence of all these events,
but I recognized then that I had no business doing that.
I mean as right-minded as it appeared to be
and as loving as it appeared to be, and certainly as Course-centered
as it appeared to be, it was not what Helen wanted.
Helen wanted to be angry,
and she didn't want the anger taken away,
even though I obviously didn't force it on her,
but I certainly encouraged her.
And it was very clear to me, and something,
I don't know whether that was it or something happened
similar to that which did not involve me,
but at some point within the first couple of years or so of my relationship with her,
I realized that Helen would never change.
But I also realized that Helen did not have to change.
And that was the significant thing.
From that point on, I basically stopped trying to get her to forgive Bill
or forgive Louis or forgive anybody else.
So that it became clear to me, once again,
that the most loving way one can be with Helen
was simply to accept her, and that the most unloving thing
one can do for Helen was to try to change her.
As the Course became more well known,
and Helen met more and more people,
and it was very striking when you met Helen, because
Helen had written an earlier piece actually when she was in college,
kind of her life, and she called it Heaven and Helen.
It was a wonderful title. Helen had a wonderful way with words.
And that's Helen -- Heaven and hell -- that was Helen.
Heaven, Helen. She had both.
And it was very striking to people.
And I can't tell you how many people tried to change her.
And I would plead with them, those people whom I knew,
I said don't do that; you're not helping her.
And they would come back with the traditional psychological mumbo jumbo.
You're infantilizing her, this is specialness -- that's Course mumbo jumbo.
You know, you shouldn't be encouraging this.
I don't think the word co-dependency was used in those years,
but that's what they were talking about,
and I would try to explain to them that they were missing the point.
They were not being loving. Helen did not want to change.
Well, that's silly. Nobody doesn't want to change;
besides, Helen is the lady who took down the Course.
And she's the one who hears Jesus' voice.
And she helps all these people, and she's so holy and on and on and on.
And they were -- a lot of the attempts I really felt almost were cruel.
Not that they were meant cruel consciously, but most of you know the line,
"Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough."
Good-intentioned people are doing it for their own intentions,
not for the people they're trying to help.
It is very important, both in terms of how you approach yourself
and how you approach other people, that you be accepting.
That doesn't mean you don't help people on the level of form,
it just means you don't try to change them
unless they want to be changed.
And they will let you know if they want to be changed.
People are very, very good at letting you know what they want,
but you have to listen, because they don't always do it in words,
because they don't always know it consciously.
But if you listen, they will tell you.
Just as I realized after a year or two of being with Helen
that she did not want to change, and it was not helpful
or loving or kind in any way to try to impose a change on her.