BILL: "The MIDWIFE of a course in miracles"
By Mayerling Perluzzo
September 2012

Almost all the students know that Helen Schukman and Bill Thetford were two psychologists who received the material known today as a course of miracles in a collaborative endeavor (ACIM).

To read what has Carol Howe, in the biographical book "never forget laughing", I've noticed not only valuable asset of its mission and role as an obstetrician this important document, but the challenges that this was on his way.

It is clear that we don't need these personal stories to engage us with the healing of your mind, But seeing that book in the store, immediately I felt inspired to take it in my hands.

ACIM teaches us that we are all a unique child of God, so you idolize and praise any of us, It is not rather than reinforce the crazy idea that we are "separated" and as a good student of the course, Bill always refused any position where he was placed on a pedestal. He knew that his work with course, not made him different from the rest and had its own outstanding forgiveness works.

As psychologist had held important positions in the professional world of the psychology of that time. He even worked for the own CIA, where she managed brilliantly one of the most sophisticated systems in the knowledge and personality construction (THE PAS).

Ironically, the course has a markedly different orientation, It is a training to "undo the ego". That "ego" which had spent a lifetime and its efforts in study it thoroughly.

Despite their talents, training and potential, Bill was definitely not happy, When the course comes into your life. Many know the curious anecdote when proposes a day to his partner Helen, It must "find another way", given the amount of conflicts they shared in the Department of psychology at University of Columbia.

They who had a deep knowledge on the formation and development of the ego, but they were asleep and as unhappy as the rest.

Just one of the greatest challenges for Bill, It was without doubt his relationship with Helen. Here are your own words:

"I was a substitute for her husband, his brother's, his father's. Supposedly, I had to compensate her for what her father had not done in his life. I don't know why I accepted this. It was a very complicated relationship".

As a student of ACIM I had never stopped to think about how they had carried out this mission. Receive a material that contravened all his work and could collapse his prestige as traditional psychologists. Definitely, as tells her friend Carol, they felt very confused, stunned and divided almost throughout the long period in which the course were transcribing.

Despite all the difficulties, they were always committed and both recognized that they will not hesitate to make the effort, even when they had already been several years and wondered if the material would have some final.

As Carol says about them:

“…Helen and Bill let their egos of side systematically to produce it. Even in the midst of his frequent panic, Helen could suspend his ego and enter in their straight mind, where the material already existed by full. He listened and wrote carefully and with great integrity. It seems that he could come and go between your ego, and the spirit, his mind straight and wrong mind, "with more skill than almost anyone on the planet..."

It is worth asking ourselves, What transformation occurred in the Bill as a result of being in contact with this important material?

All his closest friends explain that during its last years the main goal that marked his life almost in exclusive way, It was to heal their relationships using the forgiveness that teaches the course as a tool.

Were years of much practice, rather than to teach and show. Made flexible and open. He knew that his role had more to do with the birth of the course, with its subsequent expansion. And why he facilitated and supported the work of teaching many others like Gerald Jampolsky, French Vaughn, Roger Walsh, etc.

Bill used his time to complete its queue for forgiveness: their parents, Ken, Helen and above all with itself. Once retired he devoted himself to deprogram the brainwashing orchestrated by his ego.

Within their favorite practices was reading and reciting the last section of the textbook 'Select new', which referred to memory, and that served as inspiration for his book "Choose Once Again".

His most intimate friends claim to hear him to pronounce his main prayer: "Help me" or its more expanded version. "Help me to do this".

He read about the life of Bill and the transformation of his final years, It reminded me that the most important thing I can do for the world is awakening individually.