While this and the next section (The Worldview of the Course) of this website summarize some of the main ideas of the Course so readers can be aware of these, it should be noted that the ideas presented here that aren’t quotes are not authored by Jesus, though quotes from the Course are provided throughout these sections to confirm the validity of the ideas. All passages quoted in this and other sections of this website are from A Renewed Course in Miracles.
Reality and Truth
The thought system of the Course has its foundation on all of the eternal Attributes of the Divine, including Love, Peace, Joy, Mercy, Grace, etc. Its teaching revolves around the pillars of Reality and Truth. In the Course, Reality is only what is eternal. Therefore, nothing in the physical universe, which many take to be the only rational measure of reality, is real because all forms will eventually dissolve. Even our most advanced natural-scientific understanding states that the quantum realm came into being – from a Cause that is still not comprehended by natural science – only after the newly-born physical universe had cooled enough to permit differentiated particles to emerge, and that even the galactic or cosmic realm, as expansive as the waves of the physical universe itself, will eventually return to nothingness, or to something not currently comprehended. Truth, which is the basis for the logic of the Course, proposes that the perishable cannot by definition be a stable foundation for Reality, thus the entire world we are familiar with is really simply an illusion, and its forms ultimately nothing.
“Of this you can be wholly certain: the Divine is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of making the Eternal.” “Reality is changeless. It is this that makes It real, and keeps It separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be Itself. It cannot change.”
This idea about the Truth of Reality, as well as Truth in all Its Aspects, is the starting point of the Course. “Your original starting point [in Creation], and now your new one [in life], is Truth, and you must always return to this beginning like returning home.”
Sorting Out
Knowing what Truth is, for instance, the truth that only the eternal is real as defined here, allows us to sort out the true from the false and the real from the unreal. This “sorting out” is essential to our lives and destiny. The key thought of the entire Course could be said to be that what is the same is the same, and what is different is different. In the context of the Course this means that everything that is true and real shares the same qualities of Truth and Reality, and therefore, in this sense, are all the same. Likewise, everything that isn’t eternal shares the same qualities of temporariness and the illusion of form, and in this sense also are all the same. And, most importantly, these two realms, the Eternal and the temporary, Reality and illusion, are different from each other in every way. This is the key distinction that Truth allows us to make in our lives and in the world, and from this clarity we have the possibility of ceasing to mix up in our minds what is real and what is unreal, a mixing up that keeps us confused, unable to access our power as creative beings, and stuck in a world that we seem to be victims of.
“The only purpose of this Course is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice that can be made… All illusions are merely one illusion. And in the recognition that this is so rests the ability to give up all attempts to make them different and then to choose between them. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly different, between Truth and illusion, Knowledge and perception. There is no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the relinquishment of an illusion recognized as such. Where all belief has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up, and choose what forever must be true?”
“Everyone in this world seems to have their own special problems. Yet these are all the same, and must be recognized as the same if the one Solution that solves them all is to be accepted… A long series of different problems seems to confront you, and as one is settled the next one and the next arise. There seems to be no end to them. There is no time in which you feel completely free of problems, and at peace.
“The temptation to regard problems as many and separate is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem-solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable.
“No one could solve all the separate unique problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront the mind with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as problems are regarded this way. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved. All this complexity is merely a desperate attempt by the ego not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved.
“If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the Answer because you would grasp Its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems that confront you, you would understand that you have the Means to solve them all. And you would use the Means because you recognize the problem.”
As we sort out what is the same and what is different in every aspect of our lives, eventually learning not to accord truth or reality to even one illusion, we naturally make our way from the realm we find ourselves in – that of form, of the transitory, and of the unreal – to Reality, from the temporary to the Eternal, and from what appears to be the outer world to the inner. This is the transcendent journey that the Course invites us on. “The Journey to the Divine [and therefore to the Eternal] is merely the reawakening of the Knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a Journey without distance, to a Goal that has never changed.”
The World Is a Dream
A core understanding that the Course presents is that illusion – everything that isn’t eternal – has the nature of a dream. Just as when we wake from a dream after sleeping we realize that what we thought was real while dreaming was only an illusion, so when we come to the place where we know with certainty the truth about Reality, including our being, we will realize that all we thought was real to that point was merely a deeper kind of dream than those we have daily when we enter sleep, but a dream nonetheless. Thus the key to getting beyond the world we believe ourselves to be stuck in, and victims of, is to awaken from the dream of this world. However, where our sleeping and dreaming in this world of illusions differ from our daily sleeping and dreaming is that we don’t just automatically awaken from the dream of the world after a given amount of time, as we wake from our daily sleeping and dreaming. We have to consciously decide to awaken. A paradox indeed, because how can we do anything consciously while inside a dream?!
Fortunately the entire Course is designed to help us accomplish this awakening. Its perspective in reaching us and teaching us is always from the Realm of the Eternal, beyond the dream, reaching into the dream to gently offer awakening to us.
The goal of awakening from the dream of this world of illusions and the means to achieve this goal are stated in different ways throughout the Course. Sometimes the word “aim” or “purpose” is used instead of “goal”, and “function” used instead of “means”. Sometimes the goal is stated as seeing, or holiness, or Truth, or the Divine. Each expression of this goal and of the means to reach it is merely a variation of the same goal: awakening from the dream of the world, using the means that Truth offers us – primarily nonjudgment, forgiveness, and miracles – and that the Course presents us throughout its teaching.
Awakening means being free of illusions, and “Freedom from illusions rests only in not believing them.” “The source of all illusions is the belief that they have a purpose, that they serve a need, or gratify a desire. Understood as purposeless they are no longer perceived. Their uselessness is recognized, and they are gone. How but in this way are all illusions ended? They have been brought to Truth, and Truth beheld them not. It merely saw beyond the meaningless.” Our task in awakening is simply to stop believing in what isn’t there. This simplicity assures our success.
Describing What Is Hidden to Our Consciousness
“When this Course said that Spirit sorts out the true from the false in your mind, this also means that Spirit has the Power to see what you have hidden and therefore imprisoned in your unconscious, and see the Will of the Divine there.”
While illusions show us what isn’t actually there, they also hide from us what is there. Living in a dream world keeps us from being consciously aware of Reality. To help us awaken, the Course describes Reality to us in detail so that we come to see the difference between It and the world of illusions, and begin to think in accordance with Reality, i.e., to think truly. At the same time, much of the Course’s teaching describes hidden aspects, beliefs, attitudes and processes currently operating in our minds or psyches that weave the dream of the world and keep us perpetually asleep in it. These dynamics are currently hidden from us as a result of our being asleep in a dream. They are able to operate outside of our awareness just because they are in the unconscious, which is precisely why we need to become conscious of them. Becoming aware of these dysfunctional dynamics in our minds enables us to correct and ultimately heal them.
An example of a description of Reality from the Course is: “Everything that the Divine created has It bestowed on you lovingly as yours forever. Nothing can be lost to you in all the Universe. And every Thought within Its Mind is present in your own.” An example of a description of hidden dynamics in our unconscious that weave the dream world of illusions and keep us perpetually asleep in it is: “My attack thoughts are attacking my Invulnerability.”
Becoming conscious of Reality and Truth, which we have access to through what the Course calls the “superconscious” aspect of our mind or psyche, and of the unconscious processes that keep us stuck in confusion and illusion, is necessary for us to become clear and to awaken. And what a gift these descriptions are! How often in a dream do we have a voice describing to us how we are making up the dream, and how to awaken from it? But how else could we awaken when awakening depends on our own conscious decision?
As we hear described throughout the Course these hidden dysfunctional aspects, beliefs, attitudes and processes playing out in the unconscious part of our minds that are the cause of our dream of this world, we may react by feeling skeptical or dismissive (such things certainly can’t be happening in my mind!), appalled, hopeless, afraid, or even angry. But it may also cause us to feel grateful that the hidden cause of the world we experience is finally being revealed to us so we can do something about it, given that we’re the only ones who can decide what to do with our own minds.
Because the Course describes what is currently hidden to our consciousness – both Reality accessible through the superconscious, and the unreality that has come into our unconscious – it can be seen to be in its essence a timeless spiritual psychology, a profound way of seeing our minds and therefore knowing ourselves. “The goal of the curriculum of awakening, regardless of the teacher you choose, is know yourself. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is seeking their Self and the Power and Glory they think they have lost.” In the context of the Course presenting a new and groundbreaking perspective on the human psyche, it is noteworthy that the two collaborators in the writing of the Course with its author were psychologists.
Peace and Courage
While the journey of awakening to Reality, and thus to ourselves, is the most important adventure we can go on in life, we have to admit that it is an endeavor that will require great courage! We will have to be willing to go through our deepest fears and emotional pain to be able to know on the most profound levels our true being, and in knowing this to come to know Reality again. To do so we will need to reevaluate all that we have assumed and believed about ourselves and the world, and all that we feel has sustained us until now. As we reassess our values, the importance we have assigned to the “toys and trinkets” we have surrounded ourselves with, and the pleasures and dramas that have kept us engaged and preoccupied in the world, we find that this new direction toward awakening is one that moves against the stream of the world as well as counter to the flow of many of our relationships, and we may seem to be terribly alone in embarking on this journey inward.
The Course makes a bold assertion on its very first page that may give us courage to accept the challenge of awakening from the dream of this world, a statement which, it declares, summarizes the entire Course, and which captures the essence of what is the same and what is different: “Everything real is eternally perfect. Nothing unreal exists. In these truths the Peace of the Divine is found.”
According to the logic of Truth, because the Real is eternal and perfect it must also be invulnerable, and thus cannot be threatened in any way. It is and will always be beyond all illusions, including those of birth (beginnings), space (contrast), time (change), and death (endings). Even though the unreal – the temporary – does seem to exist now from our perspective of perceiving everything entirely from inside the world of form, from the Course’s perspective beyond time, and therefore beyond the point where all form has dissolved, the temporary or unreal certainly doesn’t exist. Once we become aware of a view of life from this perspective within Eternity instead of from within time and form, we see at least as a possibility that fear is meaningless because all that we can fear is simply not there. And with even a glimpse of the release from fear, our options for our own lives become correspondingly released from limitation. This gives wings to our possibility of journeying to Reality.
Forgiveness and the Eternal Correction of All Mistakes
Replacing fear with peace and courage gives wings to our possibility of journeying beyond illusions, but we need wind under our wings to soar free. This comes as we forgive all that we have gotten wrong in our lives and that we will still get wrong, and all that anyone has gotten and will still get wrong. These wrongs are all the same. They are all merely mistakes regardless of any appearance of magnitude or outrageousness they may have. They are all simply the equal meaningless aspects of a dream, and, according to the central teaching of the Course, they can all be corrected with equal ease. Focusing attention on ours and/or others’ mistakes serves only to feed these mistakes and bind us to them. Thus unless we learn to let go of wrongs we will remain chained to the illusory, even with newfound wings. Fortunately, by letting go of wrongs we are not giving up anything real or of value. Forgiveness just recognizes that the world of form can have no eternal, and therefore no actual, effects. We can forgive because the only thing needing forgiving is the unreal.
“Be still a little while in Peace and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the Realm where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. Just free its wings and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy Purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to Sanity, to Freedom, and to Love.”
As we remain clear from anger, resentment, and fear even when making mistakes and in the face of others’ mistakes, we allow something miraculous to take their place. Just as the apparent magnitude or quality of mistakes has no reality, so the miracles that address and resolve them are also free of any limits on their effectiveness, as described in the Course’s very first principle of miracles: “Miracles transcend every law of time and space . . . and are therefore free of all levels and orders of difficulty. With regard to this quality of transcendence, every miracle is exactly the same.”
In fact, the Course assures us, all mistakes and “wrongs,” past, present, and future, have already been forgiven, corrected and “made right” from a place outside of time, and our only true responsibility in life is to accept this Correction for ourselves. This all-inclusive Correction of all mistakes and illusions throughout time, called the Atonement, is the central theme of the Course. When we accept the Correction and Perfection of the Atonement for ourselves and replace with forgiveness what is ultimately our fear of the dissolution of form, we soar free of illusions, and our lives are transformed in every way.
“Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that the Divine created must live forever, and nothing It did not create is real. In this one sentence is our Course explained. In this one sentence is our practicing given its one direction. And in this is the Holy Spirit’s whole curriculum specified exactly as it is.”
Our Eternal Helpers
Along with giving us the key to peace and courage and to being free from what has bound us to the old and unreal, the Course introduces us to wonderful news that addresses what may seem to be the aloneness we feel in reassessing our values and changing our focus and direction in life through the sorting out of the real from the unreal. This good news is that on our journey of awakening we can actually never be alone, because Helpers have been assigned by the Eternal to accompany us, in order to assure our ultimate success.
The first Helper, which the Course calls the Holy Spirit or Spirit, is our Teacher and Guide on the journey to Reality. Spirit is the representative of the Divine in our lives on Earth until we know the Divine directly again. We discover that Spirit knows us more intimately than we currently know ourselves, having been with us from when time began, and seeing clearly all aspects of our being, even those currently hidden from our conscious awareness. Spirit knows exactly what is needed by each individual to awaken from the dream of this world, so that we can journey home to Reality together through Its Guidance. Spirit speaks to us throughout our days and nights in the quiet space of our heart, helping us sort out the real from the unreal in every situation.
“The Holy Spirit teaches you how to distinguish between pain and Joy. That is the same as saying that It teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. Given your current state of confusion, you cannot make this distinction without the Holy Spirit’s Guidance. That is because you have taught yourself that freedom is fearful, and that imprisonment is freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe that they are the same to now teach you that they are different? The Holy Spirit’s Curriculum has only one Goal and therefore teaches only one Direction. Its Direction is Freedom, and Its Goal is the Divine. It cannot conceive of the Divine without you, because it is not the Divine’s Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is the Divine’s, you could no more will to be without the Divine than It could will to be without you. This is Freedom and this is Joy. Choose this for yourself and you are offering the Divine Its Realm, because It created you for this.”
The Course reveals that it was the Divine Itself, in co-creatorship with Spirit, Who, from beyond time at the instant time began, created the “Plan of Atonement” – the timeless Correction of all errors – and that it is Spirit’s Task to help us complete our unique individual part in this Plan in time, and in doing so to awaken from time. Fortunately, taking care of the correction of all mistakes is Spirit’s Responsibility, not ours! Thus we can let go of what has been a crushing burden in our lives—our attempts to correct our own and others’ mistakes. The dream world we look upon as an outer world around us is what has resulted through our attempts to assume Spirit’s Responsibility and correct mistakes in our own way, because such attempted correction is based on the same erroneous frame of mind that caused the mistakes in the first place. Indeed, our sole responsibility in allowing miracles to be worked through us is to accept the Atonement for ourselves, and let all mistakes go by handing concern about them over to Spirit. With this crushing burden removed from us, we can move on to what’s really important in our lives, which is sorting out the real from the unreal in each situation, healing our minds of the wounded state they are in, awakening to our true being and thus to Reality, and taking our place in Eternity again as cocreators of Perfection.
The second Helper the Course introduces us to is the author of the Course, Jesus, a human being who has transcended all illusions, including those of birth, space, time and death. Because of this transcendence of all illusions he is able to suspend illusions for us, including the “laws” of physics – of time and space – when needed in any given situation in order to allow true learning toward awakening from the dream of this world to take place that otherwise would have taken immeasurably longer to achieve. This suspension by Jesus of the laws of time and space to facilitate awakening is what the Course calls a miracle. Through these temporary shifts out of illusion, miracles also provide us with the abundance of Love’s Presence wherever lack is believed to be, bringing us Joy and Peace, and facilitating the healing of our minds.
All those who have already joined Jesus in completing their part in the Atonement in time, and have thus become One again with Spirit, with the Creator, and with Its perfect Creation, are also our eternal Helpers. “(These Helpers) will appear when and where it is helpful for them to do so. To those to whom such appearances would be frightening, (they) give their Ideas. No one can call on them in vain. Nor is there anyone of whom they are unaware. All needs are known to them, and all mistakes are recognized and seen beyond by them.”
Finally, the Course makes clear that the journey of awakening is a collaborative process, and therefore that all our sisters and brothers are also our eternal Helpers, particularly those who have been designated as our spiritual companions on the journey. It is through engaging with our sisters and brothers in what the Course calls the holy relationship that we are able to remember the Eternal and awaken to Reality.
Of course the Creator Itself and the Divine Essence of Its perfect Creation, being the Source of our Being and our true Self, are fully aware of us always, and Their Help is always available to us when we call to Them.
Reality Is Skewed in Our Favor!
With courage and spiritual companionship accompanying us on our journey of awakening, we soon realize, as we grapple with the task of undoing all that we have believed about ourselves and the world and allowing something new to take its place, that our journey will require great trust and patience. We will need to trust in and be patient with ourselves, our sisters and brothers, and the Divine and Its Helpers as we now conceive them.
Our trust and patience are given a solid foundation as we are able to confirm the central point that makes the goal of awakening from illusions possible and even inevitable – another piece of extraordinary good news for us – which is that Reality is “skewed” in our favor. We have to exert enormous effort to uphold the unstable world that appears to be all around us as if it were stable, and illusions as if they were real, and we’ve never succeeded and can’t succeed in this effort just because what is unstable by nature can’t be made to be stable, and illusions by definition can’t be made real. In contrast, for Reality to be Itself we don’t have to do anything but get out of the way. By Its Nature, Reality already is and will always be the way things truly are, beyond the temporary world we perceive around us.
This fact guarantees that when we remove what has been propping up a temporary world as if it were solid and stable, then what is really present that is solid and stable will simply emerge in the place where illusions appeared real previously. Or, more accurately, we’ll simply discover what was always there but which we partially or completely missed noticing before because something else – confusion and illusion– was commanding our attention.
The Course refers on its first page to this clearing of inner space to make room for Reality: “The goal of this course isn’t to teach the Meaning of Love, because Love’s Meaning is beyond what can be taught. The goal of this training is rather to remove the obstructions in the mind, heart and will to the awareness of Love’s Presence. The Presence of Love is our natural Divine Inheritance.”
This understanding of Reality being skewed in our favor is captured in two of the key ideas of the entire Course:
- Thoughts remain forever connected to their source.
- We are [i.e., we remain] as the Divine created us.
“Thoughts and ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this Course has placed on that Idea is due to Its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal, being the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its Truth establishes you as one with the Divine.”
Reality, being a Thought of the Divine, has not left Its Source – the Divine – and therefore we need do nothing to establish It. We are as the Divine created us because we also are Thoughts of the Divine and have also never left our Source in reality. Therefore we are eternally part of Reality. Because of this, awakening to Reality can be said to be the most natural thing in the world.
Suspending Judgment
In order to allow Reality to enter our awareness, a simple, yet for many of us extraordinarily difficult, act is asked of us: to suspend judgment about what is going on in and around us. This doesn’t mean that we discard our understanding, such as the knowledge and skills we’ve developed through our education and training and in life. It means that we don’t assume that our understanding is the final word about a situation. Our individual understanding is like a tree in a forest of meaning. Through suspending judgment in any given moment, we discover that what we believe we “know” about what is happening must be incomplete, given our limited perspective in the context of the whole. Through consistently suspending judgment, we discover that our judgments, rather than helping us as we believe they do, actually hinder us from fully experiencing life. They act as filters that stand between us and Reality, skewing what is with a mental construct about what we believe should be, and therefore that we expect to be, projected by us onto the blank screen of the world. Our judgments thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy, substituting our “meaning” in place of a greater and true Meaning that is waiting for us to embrace. Because of this, the suspension of judgment is part of the first step in reversing our direction in life out of illusion in our journey of awakening.
“It is necessary for (those seeking awakening) to realize not that they should not judge, but that they cannot. In giving up judgment they merely give up what they did not have. They give up an illusion, or better, they have an illusion of giving up. They have actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for them, they no longer attempt it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, they put themselves in a position where true Evaluation by Spirit through them can occur.
“The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things past, present, and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of their judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain that there is no distortion in their perception, so that their judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. What person is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for themself?
“Remember how many times you thought you knew all the ‘facts’ you needed for ‘sound’ judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? And this does not take into account how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong. Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making?
“Judgment is not wisdom; wisdom is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then only one more judgment of your own, which is that there is One Who is with you Whose Evaluations are perfect. This One does know all the facts, past, present, and to come. It does know all the effects of Its Evaluations on everyone and everything involved in any way. And It is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in Its Perception. Therefore lay judgment aside, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it, as you have done. And it was all illusion. Nothing more. Now can (those journeying to awakening) rise up unburdened and walk lightly on. Yet it is not only this that is their benefit. Their sense of anxiety is gone, for they have none. They have given it away along with judgment. For they have given themselves to the One Whose Evaluation they have chosen now to trust instead of their own judgments. Now their mistakes are quickly corrected, for their Guide makes no mistakes. Their Guide is sure. And with It by their side, where they once came to judge they now come to bless. Where they used to weep they now laugh.
“It is not difficult to relinquish judgment. But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it. (Those journeying to Reality) lay it down happily the instant they recognize its cost. All of the ugliness they perceived around them was its outcome. All of the pain they looked upon and experienced was its result. All of the loneliness and sense of loss, of passing time and growing hopelessness, of sickening despair and fear of death, came from judgment. And now they know that these things need not be. Not one is true. For they have given up the cause of these things, and these have disappeared like mist in the morning sunlight, because they were only the effects of their mistaken choice of perspective—of judgment. (Everyone journeying to Reality) learns that their giving up of judgment brings them Peace. Can it be difficult to want only this?”
The Real World
As a result of our getting out of the way of what is, through clearing even a little of our mental, emotional, and energetic space – the goal, after all, of all mindfulness and attunement practices such as prayer, meditation, and contemplation – we are in a position to go through the pillars of Reality and Truth that are the starting point of the Course, and emerge into a new perspective of the world, in essence a new world, which the Course calls the “real world.” This is the same world we currently perceive, but its purpose has changed from perpetuating illusions to awakening from them. The foundation of the real world is forgiveness rather than fear, and this world offers us happy dreams instead of nightmares for as long as we dwell there—just as long as each of us personally needs to learn all of our awakening lessons under Spirit’s Guidance and emerge forever from all dreams. In the real world we begin to remember who we are in Eternity, which in turn gives our lives in this world unshakable meaning and purpose.
The Course describes the real world, which arises in our consciousness as we clear a space for Love’s Presence, as “a world in which I direct my mind, instead of one in which my mind is directed for me. . . . where I am powerful, instead of helpless. . . . in which I have no ‘enemies’ and where the belief in separation and unworthiness has been undone and has no meaning; and, because it is the Truth . . . where I see my sisters and brothers and the real world, which my belief and perception have denied until now.” To actually dwell daily in this beautiful new perspective of the world on the Journey to the Eternal, we have to take responsibility for everything we experience. We have to direct our minds, to choose to be powerful instead of helpless, to let go forever of the childish belief in flaw and unworthiness and therefore to have no “enemies,” and to learn to perceive truly. And ironically we do this by deciding to make no decisions on our own, but collaborating with Spirit on all our decisions.
The Split Mind and Level Confusion
While our mind in Reality is part of one Mind – the Mind of the Creator – our mind in this world has become split. One part of our mind, the true part, which the Course calls our spirit, is still as it was created and has never left Eternity. The split, false part of our mind is the part that has fallen asleep in the world of illusions. The split part of our mind projects a pseudo-self, which the Course calls the ego, to act as its self in the world of form. As a result of this split we believe our mind to be separate from all other minds, housed in a separate body with separate interests from others.
The Course informs us that the split mind is in fact the cause of the fragmented world we look upon outside of us – which is merely a projection on the “screen of the world” that reflects the mind of each one projecting it – rather than our split mind being caused by the fragmented world we look upon outside and around us. Because we believe our mind is separate from all other minds, Spirit guides us to work only on healing the split in our own mind, and to focus only there in evaluating and sorting out the same from the different, the true and the real from the false and unreal, until our mind becomes healed and whole again.
“In each one’s mind, then, and in each one’s mind only, Spirit sorts out the true from the false. . . . The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be assessive of other minds because It does not want you to focus on your errors, which [because of projection] is what you would perceive in other minds, and which would cause you to teach and learn these errors yourself. Spirit would hardly be consistent if It allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the thinker, then, Spirit is evaluative, but only in order to unify each mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment and therefore learn to be without judgment. The undoing of error is necessary only in each person’s mind, so that they cannot project error.”
With Spirit’s Help, the clarity we receive in sorting out the true from the false in our minds becomes an invaluable personal asset on the journey the Course invites us on because it allows us to become aware of the essential components in every situation in our lives. If we weren’t able to make this distinction, we would be stuck in what the Course calls “level confusion” – mixing up the levels of mind and matter, inner and outer, and what’s important and isn’t important – a kind of chaos in our psyche where certainty would be impossible. Dispelling level confusion thus becomes a major aspect of the goal of awakening: determining what, in every situation, is our responsibility and what isn’t; what is merely being experienced because of the way we’re framing a situation and what is actually present; and what are the dimensions of the past, the present, and the Eternal working in the situation. When level confusion is removed from our minds even for an instant, fear is also removed, and miracles are able to be performed through us.
The Test of Everything on Earth
Discerning the essential components of a situation allows us to ask and have answered what the Course suggests is the most important question we can ever ask, and the only real question there is (for there are no questions in Eternity, where everything is simply known), namely: “What is anything for?” That is, what is the purpose of a relationship, idea, experience, goal or object in our lives or in any given situation? What is the way we are conceiving it that is driving how we are engaging with it, which in turn determines how we experience it? The Course calls this question “the test of everything on Earth.” “The test of everything on Earth is simply this: ‘What is it for?’ The answer makes anything what it must be for you. It has no meaning of itself, being temporal, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve, and therefore would have it serve.”
The Course also calls the question of what everything in this world is for – of determining its purpose in each situation – the real problem of the world. This is because the way we frame situations in our minds based on the way we conceive and interpret things, including their purpose, has tremendous power, because we have tremendous power, being Children of the Creator of the Eternal. When we frame things wrongly based on a misunderstanding of their purpose, we project that error onto those things, and this will have a harmful effect on the recipients of our mis-projections to the degree that these recipients believe in the errors we’re projecting.
Obviously in our current state, with extremely limited true awareness and understanding of ourselves and of the world, we’re not in a position to know what anything is really for in the context of the Whole, i.e., in the context of the Plan of Atonement, which the Course also calls the Divine’s “Plan for Awakening.” Fortunately, the Holy Spirit knows what everything is for, and will reveal everything’s real purpose as we ask this question of Spirit on a regular basis in every situation throughout each day. Asking Spirit on an ongoing basis Its Understanding of the purpose of each thing that enters our field of awareness and is in our experience is part of what is meant by collaborating with Spirit on all our decisions, because sensing something’s real purpose helps our decisions to be aligned with our true purpose: awakening.
The Great Key
Our answer to the question of what things are for is not only crucial to minimizing harm being projected into the world and into our lives from our erroneous understanding. Consciously asking this question hands us the great key to everything we experience, in fact to our entire world. This key is that what we want is always manifested or given to us through our power as creators, a power that can never be lost. This also means that whatever we have and whatever we experience has to be what we have asked for in our heart of hearts. “Your holy will establishes everything that happens to you.” “It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who determines my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept.”
Thankfully our power as creators – which through being misused made the world of illusions, and which assures that we receive in some form everything we desire and request, even if this desiring and requesting takes place on levels not currently accessible to our conscious awareness – also means that as we change our minds about what we want we will change the world. In fact, fundamentally changing or transforming our minds is the only way to change the world, since our mind is the source of the world we experience. This ability to change our minds is the key to escaping the world of illusions, which we made up. If we want a different world, we will receive a different world because of our power as creators. And the only way to truly change our minds is to relinquish our own determination of what things are for, and let Spirit inform us of this in every situation.
As we practice asking Spirit this question of true purpose, it becomes our new way of perceiving, and eventually becomes what the Course calls seeing, the ability to perceive beyond the surface layer of things, beyond their form, to the essence of each thing, to the Eternal in everything from the Eternal in ourselves. This way of perceiving is our highest priority in the process of awakening because it brings together all of the elements of the journey. “Above all else I want to see.”
Bringing Opposites Together
“Opposites must be brought together, not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by Union, as you are. In Union, everything that is not real must disappear, for Truth is Union. As darkness disappears in Light, so ignorance fades away when Knowledge dawns.”
Ironically, once Spirit has helped us to sort out the false from the true and illusion from Reality, It then brings these opposites together, for in bringing them together only what is real remains. “The Atonement does not make holy, because you were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to Holiness, or what you made to what you are. The bringing together of illusion and Truth, of the ego and the Divine, is the Holy Spirit’s only Function. Do not keep hidden from your Creator what you have made, for hiding it has cost you Knowledge of the Divine, and of yourself.”
“You cannot have both the ego’s and the Holy Spirit’s thought systems, for each denies the other. When they are kept apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go because the other is perceived in the same place. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and Love does not attack fear. What needs no protection does not defend Itself.”
“To bring the ego to the Divine is merely to bring error to Truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets, and is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in Light has not been attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for Reality must be One. It cannot change with time, or mood, or chance. Its Changelessness is what makes It real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And Reality will undo unreality for you. Merely by being what It is, Truth releases you from everything that It is not.”
While these core ideas of the Course presented in this summary, and expanded in The Worldview of the Course that follows, could easily be dismissed as being unrealistic or even unbelievable, to do so would be to deny or ignore one undeniable and inexplicable fact that confirms at least the possibility that these ideas could be true: the Course itself is a reality. It exists, the story of how it came into being is well documented and indisputable, and we hold it in our hands. And yet from the standpoint of the world’s limitations the Course must be an impossibility, given its claim of authorship and the way that it came into being. Thus the very presence of the Course proves that its perspective and thought system could possibly be true. And if that’s even a possibility, then it may be one worth exploring, given the implications.
If we do decide to explore the Course, and to set forth on the journey of awakening that it invites us on, we learn that the formal teaching of the Course is just a beginning, and not an end in itself. Our lives are the journey to Reality. Allowing ourselves to receive the gifts that the Course offers us, the insights into ourselves and the world that Truth provides us, enables us to finally get out of the hopeless and seemingly endless illusion that the world is happening to us outside of our control, i.e., that we are victims. Our Helpers in awakening are in our space with us this very moment, offering us, from the Realm of Eternity, the precise perspective and specific lessons we need right now, this instant and every instant, to awaken from the dream. And all our sisters and brothers are with us on this journey, even if they have not yet become aware of this. What an exciting and vital proposition!