1. Strictly speaking the answer is no. ²How could a separate profession be one in which everyone is engaged? ³And how could any limits be laid on an interaction in which everyone is both patient and therapist in every relationship in which he enters? ⁴Yet practically speaking, it can still be said that there are those who devote themselves primarily to healing of one sort or another as their chief function. ⁵And it is to them that a large number of others turn for help. ⁶That, in effect, is the practice of therapy. ⁷These are therefore “officially” helpers. ⁸They are devoted to certain kinds of needs in their professional activities, although they may be far more able teachers outside of them. ⁹These people need no special rules, of course, but they may be called upon to use special applications of the general principles of healing.

2. First, the professional therapist is in an excellent position to demonstrate that there is no order of difficulty in healing. ²For this, however, he needs special training, because the curriculum by which he became a therapist probably taught him little or nothing about the real principles of healing. ³In fact, it probably taught him how to make healing impossible. ⁴Most of the world’s teaching follows a curriculum in judgment, with the aim of making the therapist a judge.

3. Even this the Holy Spirit can use, and will use, given the slightest invitation. ²The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest. ³He may be uninterested in healing as his major goal. ⁴Yet something happened to him, however slight it may have been, when he chose to be a healer, however misguided the direction he may have chosen. ⁵That “something” is enough. ⁶Sooner or later that something will rise and grow; a patient will touch his heart, and the therapist will silently ask him for help. ⁷He has himself found a therapist. ⁸He has asked the Holy Spirit to enter the relationship and heal it. ⁹He has accepted the Atonement for himself.

4. God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. ²No, He declared it perfect, and so it was. ³And since His creations do not change and last forever, so it is now. ⁴Yet neither a perfect therapist nor a perfect patient can possibly exist. ⁵Both must have denied their perfection, for their very need for each other implies a sense of lack. ⁶A one-to-one relationship is not One Relationship. ⁷Yet it is the means of return; the way God chose for the return of His Son. ⁸In that strange dream a strange correction must enter, for only that is the call to awake. ⁹And what else should therapy be? ¹⁰Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. ¹¹This is the only message that any two should ever give each other.

5. Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. ²And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship. ³At that moment the good is returned to them, blessed by the Holy Spirit as a gift from their Creator as a sign of His Love. ⁴For the therapeutic relationship must become like the relationship of the Father and the Son. ⁵There is no other, for there is nothing else. ⁶The therapists of this world do not expect this outcome, and many of their patients would not be able to accept help from them if they did. ⁷Yet no therapist really sets the goal for the relationships of which he is a part. ⁸His understanding begins with recognizing this, and then goes on from there.

6. It is in the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient that healing occurs. ²In some relationships this point is never reached, although both patient and therapist may change their dreams in the process. ³Yet it will not be the same dream for both of them, and so it is not the dream of forgiveness in which both will someday wake. ⁴The good is saved; indeed is cherished. ⁵But only little time is saved. ⁶The new dreams will lose their temporary appeal and turn to dreams of fear, which is the content of all dreams. ⁷Yet no patient can accept more than he is ready to receive, and no therapist can offer more than he believes he has. ⁸And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use.

7. Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing. ²This is a necessary understanding for the healed healer. ³He has learned that it is no harder to wake a brother from one dream than from another. ⁴No professional therapist can hold this understanding consistently in his mind, offering it to all who come to him. ⁵There are some in this world who have come very close, but they have not accepted the gift entirely in order to stay and let their understanding remain on earth until the closing of time. ⁶They could hardly be called professional therapists. ⁷They are the Saints of God. ⁸They are the Saviors of the world. ⁹Their image remains, because they have chosen that it be so. ¹⁰They take the place of other images, and help with kindly dreams.

8. Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless. ²Yet well before he reaches this in time he can go towards it. ³Many holy instants can be his along the way. ⁴A goal marks the end of a journey, not the beginning, and as each goal is reached another can be dimly seen ahead. ⁵Most professional therapists are still at the very start of the beginning stage of the first journey. ⁶Even those who have begun to understand what they must do may still oppose the setting-out. ⁷Yet all the laws of healing can be theirs in just an instant. ⁸The journey is not long except in dreams.

9. The professional therapist has one advantage that can save enormous time if it is properly used. ²He has chosen a road in which there is great temptation to misuse his role. ³This enables him to pass by many obstacles to peace quite quickly, if he escapes the temptation to assume a function that has not been given him. ⁴To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient. ⁵There is no halfway point in this. ⁶Either they are equal or not. ⁷The attempts of therapists to compromise in this respect are strange indeed. ⁸Some utilize the relationship merely to collect bodies to worship at their shrine, and this they regard as healing. ⁹Many patients, too, consider this strange procedure as salvation. ¹⁰Yet at each meeting there is One Who says, “My brother, choose again.”

10. Do not forget that any form of specialness must be defended, and will be. ²The defenseless therapist has the strength of God with him, but the defensive therapist has lost sight of the Source of his salvation. ³He does not see and he does not hear. ⁴How, then, can he teach? ⁵Because it is the Will of God that he take his place in the plan for salvation. ⁶Because it is the Will of God that his patient be helped to join with him there. ⁷Because his inability to see and hear does not limit the Holy Spirit in any way. ⁸Except in time. ⁹In time there can be a great lag between the offering and the acceptance of healing. ¹⁰This is the veil across the face of Christ. ¹¹Yet it can be but an illusion, because time does not exist and the Will of God has always been exactly as it is.