The Healing Power of Kindness: Vol. 2: Forgiving Our Limitations

This second book on kindness centers on two statements of caution Jesus offers in A Course in Miracles. Characteristic of his gentle guidance, he tells us not to be disturbed by the shadows surrounding our little willingness to learn from him, and not to despair because of our limitations. These cautions were the themes of two workshops presented at our center—”Shadows of Limitation” and “Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity”—that form the basis of this book. If we identify with the ego, our limitations become cause for comparison and judgment, and thereby impel us to seek ways to overcome the imperfections in our bodies and the world. This focus serves the ego's purpose of concealing the mind's decision for guilt, substituting a limited self for the unlimited Self of Christ. Identifying with the loving Presence of the Holy Spirit in our right minds, we recognize our self-defeating choice, thus allowing true correction to heal. We now look kindly on our imperfections, redefining them not as our reality but as mere detours on our journey home. These shadows of limitation become the contours of the classroom that Jesus uses to teach us his kind lessons of forgiveness. Thus do they ultimately fade in the light of the Atonement, in which we are all joined as the one perfect Son of God.

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and one of the foremost teachers of A Course in Miracles, which he has been working with since 1973, when he joined Dr. Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, and Dr. William Thetford at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He has written more than 25 books on the Course, including Love Does Not Condemn, Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of 'A Course in Miracles,' The Message of 'A Course in Miracles,' and many others. He has also produced over 150 audio and video titles discussing the principles of the Course. He is President and co-founder, with his wife Gloria, of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles in Temecula, California.