The steps in the separation:
- believing that we could create ourselves, and that we did create ourselves through our making of the ego;
- believing that we “sinned” through this mistake and in so doing became irreparably flawed;
- believing that our Creator would pursue us for as long as it took to find and destroy us for this “sin”; and,
- projecting a world outside ourselves to appear helpless and thus attempt to escape guilt and punishment for our “sin,” and falling asleep in this illusory world,
became the layers we now find ourselves entangled in as the dream of time and the world of illusions. To undo these compound mistakes the Course guides us to retrace our steps that brought about the separation in the reverse order they occurred, resolving each step or layer with the help of the Holy Spirit, Who leads us through this very process.
“The separation was a descent from Magnitude to littleness. And so the way back is to retrace the way to Magnitude.” “When part of the mind willed the separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, all of the mind willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of this ambiguity became clear perception, or tracing its steps backward step by step out of the detour it had entered.”
These steps that led into separation being retraced in reverse order and thus “undone” may be thought of in the context of the Course in various ways, including as follows, with the first layer explored reflecting the last step in the separation and therefore the first step leading out of it.
A. Confusion and Stubborn Closed-Mindedness
It is not surprising that uncertainty is a keynote of our experience in this world, the end result of splitting our mind and then projecting a world of countless separate entities outside of us as a reflection of the split within. So getting our feet on the solid ground of certainty instead of the quicksand of confusion is a necessity to begin moving toward Reality.
“Confusion follows on confusion in this world, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its basis does not change, although it seems to be in constant change. But that state is what confusion really means. Stability to those who are confused is meaningless. And shift and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.”
“But you who cannot undo by yourself what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your mind, also cannot see through it by yourself.”
“The unquestioning mind that really still needs to ask questions because it still resides in delusion is closed merely because it believes the present and the future will be the same, just like the past. This establishes an unchanged state, or stasis. This is usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the future will be worse than the present or past, and this fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.”
“The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future that can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not understand it has condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for it believes that what it looks upon bears witness that its judgment of hopelessness is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.”
As a result of our ancient and ongoing experience of confusion, uncertainty and trauma in this world of illusions, we may even at a young age become fixed in a mindset of cynicism or hopelessness, which, ironically, we tend to stubbornly defend, perhaps because we believe that at least we made it up and that therefore it belongs to us and that no one can take it from us. We may also be convinced that our mindset of cynicism or hopelessness is based on a true assessment of how the world really is. Whatever the cause of our mind becoming fixated on illusions and our mindset fixed, not only have we become stubborn in defending our confusion, but we also continuously misunderstand what it means to give and to receive. In the deep insensibility of our spiritual sleep it is remarkable, in fact miraculous, that we could ever have any clue that we are stuck in a dream, even more to discover that we ourselves are the cause of the dream, and because of this that there is real – ultimate – hope for us to find our way Home and awaken to Reality.
“The essential thing to learn is that you do not know. Knowledge is Power, and all Power is of the Divine. You who have tried to keep Power for yourself have lost It. You still have the Power, but you have interposed so much between It and your awareness of It that you cannot use It. Everything you have taught yourself has made your Power more and more obscure to you. Therefore you do not know what It is, or where It can be found. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it must fail you. For Power is not seeming strength, and Truth is beyond semblance of any kind.
“Yet the only thing that stands between you and the Power of the Divine in you is merely your learning of the false, and your attempts to undo the true. Be willing, then, for all of what you have taught yourself to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourself how to imprison the Child of the Divine, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even dream of it. Can the Divine learn how not to be the Divine? And can Its Children, given all Power by their Creator, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep in place of the Power that you have, and the Being that you are? Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourself in the past by showing you only what you are now.
“Learning is accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present, by giving the present whatever meaning it holds for you. What you have taught yourself gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have learned as your own teacher can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past, because your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. Do not attempt to understand any event, anyone, or anything in its light, for the ‘light’ of darkness, by which you have tried to perceive, can only obscure. Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for if you do, you contradict the Light, and thereby think you perceive the darkness. Yet darkness cannot be perceived, for it is nothing more than a condition in which perceiving becomes impossible.
“You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourself unto the Light in you cannot yet correctly assess the truth and value of this Course. Yet the Divine has not abandoned you. And so you have another lesson you can learn, sent from It, and already learned for every Child of Light by Spirit, to Whom the Divine gave this lesson. This lesson shines with the Divine’s Glory, for in it is the Divine’s Power, which It shares so gladly with Its Children. Through this lesson you will learn of the Divine’s Happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to Truth, and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take.
“Every dark lesson that you bring to Spirit, Who teaches Light, It will accept from you, because you do not want it. And It will gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson It has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Spirit means anything. You have one method of confirmation, as sure as the Divine, by which to recognize if what you have learned in any situation is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who interact with you or even think of you share in your perfect Peace, then you can be sure that you have learned the Divine’s Lesson, and not your own. Unless all this is true, there remain dark lessons in your mind, which hurt and hinder you and everyone around you. The absence of perfect Peace means only one thing: you think you do not will for the Divine’s Children what their Creator wills for them. Every dark lesson teaches this in one form or another. And each bright lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not hide but willingly let go, teaches you that you will with the Creator unto Its Children.
“Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything you have taught yourself. How would you know how you can? Yet your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned in the past of yourself as your own teacher you do not want. Ask to be taught, and do not use your past experiences to confirm what you have learned. When your Peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself: ‘I do not know what anything, including this, means. And so I do not know how to respond to it. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.’ By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom the Divine has given you will speak to you. It will take Its rightful Place in your awareness the instant you abandon your dark lessons, and offer these to It.”
Thus letting go of thinking we know anything real while still immersed in illusion is the first step in reversing our movement further into the thorns of separation, and beginning to move backward out of illusion. “The first true step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly [through the sequence of mistakes originally causing the separation, and since then assuming the role of being our own teacher], but can just as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in keeping focused on this without guilt, and keep yourself fully aware of the fact that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because the Divine placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the original error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in Peace.” “Undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it.”
“We prepare for Grace in that an open mind can hear the Call to awaken. It is not shut tight against the Divine’s Voice [the Holy Spirit]. It has become aware that there are things it does not understand, and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home.” “How can the Divine Children awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment, so must they judge not, and they will awaken. For the dream will seem to last while they are part of it.”
“Those who remember in every circumstance that they know nothing, but who have become willing to learn everything, will learn everything there is truly to learn. But whenever they trust themselves to teach themselves, they will not learn truly. For they will have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they already know, which they must think in order to assume the role of being their own teacher. Think not you understand anything until it passes the confirmation of perfect Peace, for Peace and true Understanding go together, and never can be found alone. Each brings the other with It, for it is the Law of the Divine that they be not separate. They are cause and effect each to the other, so where one is present the other must be.
“Only those who understand that they cannot know unless the effects of true Understanding are with them can really learn at all. And for this true learning to take place it must be Peace they want, and nothing else. Whenever you think you already know, Peace will depart from you, because you have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully realize that you do not yet know, Peace will return, for you will have invited It to do so, by abandoning the ego on behalf of Spirit in you. If you want Peace, you must abandon the teacher of attack. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of Itself, fill every mind that so makes room for It.”
A major part of this first step in the reversal of the direction of our minds is the turning around of what we believe to be cause and effect in our lives. We discover that what looks like cause and effect while we move in the direction of entanglement is actually inverted when going in the opposite direction toward healing and awakening, with apparent effect now seen as cause and cause seen as effect.
“Just as attacks against the dreamer from figures in their dreams appear to prove that the dreamer could not be the maker of their dreams, so do perceived affronts against you from the elements of your ‘waking’ life appear to prove that you are not the maker of your experience. In the dream of this world cause and effect are thus first split off and then reversed, so that effect – the perceived happenings in life – is believed to be cause, and the cause – the perceiver – becomes apparent effect of what seems to be happening to them from the world they perceive. This was the last step in the separation, with which awakening, which proceeds to go the other way, begins. This last step in the separation was itself an effect of what had gone before as the previous steps in the separation. The miracle is the first step in giving back to thoughts the function of causation, not effect of what appears to be happening outside the mind. For this confusion has produced the dream, and, while it lasts, will awakening be feared. Nor will the Call to awakening be heard, because it will seem to be the call of fear. . . . Beginning here, awakening will proceed to change the course of every step that led into the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone.”
As we have seen, our part in awakening is simply to accept for ourselves what has already been accomplished for us—the undoing of all our mistakes and the resolution of all our problems, which has already been completed in Eternity in the Atonement. But to do this we must open our minds to the possibility. This “thought reversal” about what is already completed (Atonement), what is possible for us to do (awaken), and what is required of us (forgiveness) becomes the first step in ceasing from continuing into illusion, and beginning to go in the opposite direction, out of illusion. This first step in undoing is the most challenging because it involves letting go of our dogged certainty about the world we perceive (though ironically this world is based on uncertainty), and completely reversing our direction, seemingly going backward from the way we have gone before in our lives. This also marks the beginning of detaching ourselves from the values of the world, and therefore going against the stream of the world, which takes great courage.
“The first step [in the undoing process] . . . is really only a thought reversal.” “The beginning phases of this thought reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within. It is difficult, at first, to realize that this is exactly the same thing, for there is no distinction in Reality between within and without. If your sisters and brothers are part of you, and you blame them for your deprivation of anything, including of your joy, you are blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself without blaming them. That is why blame must be undone, not reallocated. Lay it on yourself, and you will not be able to know yourself, for only the ego blames at all.”
By acknowledging our confusion and opening our minds, we begin to realize that other possibilities of interpreting life exist. “I [Jesus] came to your mind because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Because in seeking another way you gave an invitation to the Holy Spirit, I have been able to come to provide a model for how to think miraculously, which is being carefully presented to you in this Course.”
In accordance with the Law of Love, we can only receive what we give. So in order to reverse our direction in life and begin the undoing process, we must first release or let go of our fixed mindset and learn something about true giving and receiving so that we can receive the help we need to begin the journey of awakening. Thus the first step in reversing the direction of our lives involves an act of true giving. If even for a moment we consider someone else’s interests as important as our own, and are prepared to give to them as we would receive, such an act of true giving constitutes our responding to the “Call” of awakening that the Holy Spirit always offers us in the dream. Our response in this way to Spirit’s Call is our invitation to Spirit to receive Its Help, and Spirit always says yes to this invitation from us. And our journey of awakening begins!
“A major learning goal this Course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can truly receive.” “Your willingness to give all things to the Holy Spirit, withholding nothing for yourself alone, is the only principle awakening needs.”
“The first step in the reversal or undoing process, then, is the undoing of the ‘getting’ concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit’s first Lesson is: To have, give all to all. . . . The split mind of the learner projects its own split, and therefore does not perceive whole and consistent minds in others, making it suspicious of their motivations. This is the real reason why in many respects the first lesson [in undoing] is the hardest to learn. Still strongly under the influence of the ego in itself, and therefore responding primarily to the ego in others, the split mind is being taught to react to both as if what it believes is not true. Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative here, because the other one, which would be much less acceptable, would obviously be that it [the ego] is insane.
“The ego’s judgment, then, is predetermined by what it is, though not more so than is any other product of thought. The fundamental change in life will still occur with the fundamental change of mind in the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit’s Voice makes it impossible for the learner at this stage not to listen. For a time, then, the learner is receiving conflicting messages from two voices it considers authorities, the ego and Spirit, and accepting both. This is a classic ‘double bind’ in communication. The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other.”
“The recognition of the direction the journey Home must take will be perfectly expressed when you and your sisters and brothers insist on collaboration with one another. Regardless of how far into conflict you have wandered, learning this first of the Holy Spirit’s Lessons will turn both you and your sisters and brothers in the right direction. And the more you teach this lesson, the more you will learn It.”
Eventually our confusion and stubborn closed-mindedness transform into a genuine humbleness and gratitude as we begin realizing how much we don’t yet know and how exciting it is to be truly learning; as we begin understanding that as we give we receive; and as we begin experiencing life becoming miraculous and flowing.
B. Conflict and Attack Thoughts (“Hate”)
“Egos can clash in any situation, but spirits can never clash.” Once we even minimally let go of our insistence that the world must be the way we have believed it is, and experience an instance of true giving, movement backward out of the dream of this world begins, and eventually we come to the next step in the separation that must be undone, which is the constant battle of our ego with other egos, with the world, with ourselves, and with the Divine—inner and sometimes outer battles that take up so much of our time, attention and energy. To the degree that these conflicts continue to captivate our attention, the attention we have to devote to awakening will be limited, and the duration of time required for our awakening will be prolonged. Conflict of any kind is without meaning because there is no conflict possible in Truth and Reality and in the present moment that has been given to Atonement. “All fear is past and only Love is here.” In reality there are no dragons to slay or foes to vanquish, or warriors or heroes needed to defeat them. We discover that the mythologies of conflict were merely tributes to the egoic aspect of our minds. Truth has no need for myths.
“The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because It cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for It. It resolves the apparent conflict that illusions engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. It was said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to waste your time attempting to understand conflict. It wants you to realize that because conflict is meaningless it cannot be understood. It was already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings Love. Nothing else can be understood because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else has meaning.”
Because the only way to undo a world of “vengeance” is to stop animating it with attack thoughts, the ego’s endless variations of the myth of opposition, antagonism and conflict are devised to keep the Presence of Love out of our awareness, and ultimately to waste time instead of our using time as Spirit intends it to be used. “Our Home awaits us. I will move there without delay or distraction.” Forgiveness, or the giving up of attack thoughts, is the only way to break the spell of conflict. And our experience of Peace is how we know that conflict is no longer attractive to us.
“If you identify with your thought system, which you do because you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems that are in complete disagreement, then peace of mind becomes impossible. In addition, if you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, then you are teaching and learning conflict. But you do want Peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for Peace to help you fundamentally change your life. Its Lessons are not insane, but the conflict in your mind is, which the Holy Spirit’s first Lesson has brought into awareness. However, there can be no true conflict between Sanity and insanity, because only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that Truth was created by the Divine, and that your decision cannot change It. As has been stated several times in this Course, upon this fact does the whole of awakening rest.
“As you begin to experience and realize the quiet Power of Spirit’s Voice and Its perfect Consistency, it must dawn on your mind that the ego’s attempts to persuade you that Truth is for you to decide is an attempt to undo a Divine Decision that was made irrevocably for you. That is why it was suggested previously that there is Help in reminding yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for the Divine for you. You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you are free to think you are. But it must be insane to believe it is up to you to decide what the Divine’s Creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, Its second Lesson [in undoing] is: To have Peace, teach Peace to learn It.
“This is still a preliminary step because having and being are still not equated, but it is more advanced than the first step, which is really only a thought reversal. This second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a step in the direction out of conflict, because it means that alternatives have been considered, and one has been understood and chosen as more desirable. However, the evaluation ‘more desirable’ still implies that the desirable has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one.
“It should be clear that at this second stage the recognition of the lack of levels or orders of difficulty in miracles [the first principle of miracles] has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired. To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if the Divine Itself created you as a creator. The second step, then, is still perceptual but it is nevertheless a giant step toward the unified perception [i.e., seeing] that parallels the Divine’s Knowledge.
“As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing toward the center of your thought system, where the fundamental change will occur. You are only beginning this second step now, but you have started on this way by realizing that ultimately only one Way, that of Truth as the Divine created It, is possible. You do not yet realize this consistently, and so your progress has been intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first, because it follows the first, the most difficult step. The very fact that you have accepted that a reversal in your thought system is needed is a demonstration of your growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you forward to awakening.”
The Course gives us a simple formula to cut through the almost overwhelming temptation to believe that we are in competition and conflict with our sisters and brothers, that they are covertly if not overtly in opposition and antagonistic to us, and that they are therefore our foes and warrant attack, or counterattack if we perceive them attacking first.
“There is only one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense, and because it is the Holy Spirit’s Evaluation it requires no effort at all on your part: Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help. That [an appeal for healing and help] is what errors, or lacks of Love, are, regardless of the forms they take. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give help to those appealing for it, that is, those caught in error or expressing lacks of Love, regardless of the forms these appeals take, for this and only this is what they are really asking for. Offer them anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack their reality, by interpreting it as you deem fit.”
“In (Spirit’s and our) new Perception of the world, everything is seen as justifying forgiveness and the sight of perfect Innocence. Everything that arises is met with instant and complete forgiveness.” “How can a misperception be an unforgivable error and a call to attack? Let all your sisters and brothers’ errors be to you nothing except a chance for you to see the Workings of the Helper given you to see the world It created [i.e., the real world], instead of the one you made.”
It may take much effort to transform the deeply held ego belief that the world and those in it are out to get us into the certainty that everyone is either sharing Love with us or is calling out to us for help and for Love, and that the miracle always provides the perfect response to each such call. Love Itself creates the conditions for this transformation.
C. Fear
Allowing Spirit to interpret for us all calls for help from our sisters and brothers, rather than interpreting their actions ourselves, we also begin to address the next step in the undoing process: fear. “Fear and Love are the only emotions the separated ones are capable of experiencing. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial depends for its own existence on the belief in what is denied. By interpreting fear correctly – as a positive affirmation of the underlying belief in lack and loss that it masks – and providing for this lack through the miracle, you are undermining fear’s perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses that are experienced as not working at all are automatically discarded by the mind. If you raise the need that fear conceals to clearcut, unequivocal predominance, and address this need, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal Love, which was its only purpose. The mask that has been drawn across the Face of Love has disappeared.”
When we allow ourselves to be released from the insanity of conflict, and realize that our sisters and brothers are just like us, trying to experience Peace and to find a way out of this dream, and that all “transgressions” are merely mistakes, no matter how horrendous in the dream these appear to be, we are ready to take the next step of undoing, and we eventually come to what the Course calls “the darkest cornerstone of the ego’s foundation,” which is a terror that is so frightening to us that we have pushed it deep into our unconscious because of the trauma it causes us. This terror is really the cause of the entire separation dream that seems to make the world outside of us. It is the fear that we betrayed our Creator in that instant so long ago when our mind became split. It is the fear that if we ever were to truly see inside ourselves to that betrayal of our Creator and ourselves, we would instantly be obliterated by our guilt, or by the Divine.
“The circle of fear lies just below the level of the world that the body looks upon, and which seems to be the entire foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it, and keep it hidden. The shadow of this circle rises to the surface of this world, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it, and keep it joyless. But its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept apart from what was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot perceive this, for the body arose from this for the protection of this circle of fear, which must always depend on keeping it not seen. The body’s eyes will never perceive it. Yet they will look upon what it dictates.”
“Loudly the ego tells you not to see within yourself, for it promises that if you do, your eyes will behold your sinful nature, and the Divine will strike you blind for your iniquity. This you secretly believe, and so you do not behold within.” “Your deep fear is that you are the home of darkness, unforgivable flaw, and evil. You fear that if anyone could see the truth about you they would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You secretly believe that if what you fear is true about yourself were revealed to you, you would be struck with horror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, living on after having this confirmed being impossible.”
This hidden terror includes the fear of madness if we delve too deeply into the “dark roots” of our minds. And yet, unless we do behold this cornerstone of the ego’s foundation with absolute clarity, going through the stark fear to the Light beyond it, and thus allow the fear to be undone, our moving backward out of separation through undoing will temporarily be halted. Fortunately, at this point in the process of undoing, the awakening we have achieved so far assures our further success. And we have mighty Helpers to help us take this step into and through fear.
“To see within is simply to find my will as the Divine created it, and as it is. I fear to see within because I think I made another will which is not true, and made it real. Yet it has no effects.” “Be not afraid of this journey into fear, for it is not your destination. And we will walk through it in safety, for Peace is not far, and you will be led in Its Light.”
“The closer you come to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. But even the little Spark [of Truth] in your mind is enough to lighten (the way). Bring this Light fearlessly with you, and hold it up to the foundation of the ego’s thought system bravely. Be willing to evaluate it with perfect honesty. Open the dark stone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the Light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.” “You are afraid of what you would see (within), but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would see within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in Peace upon the Altar to your Creator [i.e., the chalice of the heart, mind and will].”
But the Course indicates that there is an even deeper thing we fear, which the ego’s circle of fear itself was made by us to cover. We made the circle of fear and then became terrified of it in order to hide this deeper fear, assuring ourselves that we would never have to face it.
“Still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning Love of the Divine, and the Divine’s for you. This is what you really want to hide. . . . The entire insane belief system of the ego has been built because you think you would be helpless in the Divine’s Presence. And you are intent on saving yourself from Its Love because you think It would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid It would sweep you away from yourself, and make you little. For you have come to believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur. You think you have made a world that the Divine would destroy. And you believe that by loving your Creator, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love for the Divine, and the deeper you go into the darkness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it. And it is this that actually frightens you.”
“If it can be only yourself you attack, then you did not hurt the world and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you hide in terror from the deadly fear of the Divine that mis-projection hides behind. You now see that the thing you dread the most is your awakening. But you are strong, and it is Strength you want. And you are free, and glad of Freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound because you feared your Strength and Freedom. Yet awakening is in them.
“There is a moment in which terror seems to grip your mind so totally that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize, once and for all, that it is yourself you fear, the mind perceives itself as split. And this vision had been concealed while you believed attack could be directed outward, and returned from outside to within. It seemed to be an enemy outside yourself that you had to fear. And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy and the source of fear. Now for a moment is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last. Yet in this Instant is the time as well in which awakening comes. For fear of the Divine has disappeared. And you can call on It in Its Love to save you from illusions, calling It Creator and yourself Its Child.
“Pray that this Instant may be soon, even today. Step back from fear and advance to Love. Every Thought of the Divine goes with you to help you reach this moment of terror, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever. When the fear of the Divine is gone, there are no obstacles that still remain between you and the holy Peace of the Divine.”
When we go through fear to the Light and Love beyond, deep within, we discover that what we fear doesn’t exist. Yes, we did split our minds in that instant long ago that began the separation, but at the inner Altar that we reach when we go through the circle of fear we find the Remedy for our mistake, the Atonement, waiting for us. In this Atonement we discover our intense and burning Love for our Creator, and Its for us, and realize that this Love will not crush us into nothingness, but will extend us to Eternity. And we emerge from this experience knowing that our only task to complete our awakening process is to accept the Atonement for ourselves in each situation, every moment, so that our part in the Atonement can be completed in time without delay. Accepting Atonement means seeing beyond all mistakes rather than having these misappropriate our attention, and instead simply asking Spirit’s Guidance in each situation, which is the surest way to get things right. In other words, we emerge from going through fear with the assignment of being vigilant only for completing our part in awakening, and not being concerned with anyone else’s part, or with the past.
“The undoing of error is necessary only in each person’s mind, so that they cannot project error. The Divine Itself has established what you can appropriately project or extend with perfect Safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit’s third Lesson [in undoing] is: Be vigilant only for the Divine and Its Realm. This is a major step toward fundamental change. Yet it is still a lesson in thought reversal, because it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against as well as for. The process has advanced far from the first lesson, which was primarily a reversal, and also from the second, which was essentially the identification of what is more desirable.
“This third step, which follows from the second as the second does from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable. But while the first step seems to increase conflict, and the second still entails it to some extent, this one calls for consistent effort against conflict.
“This Course already stated that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This third Lesson of the Holy Spirit teaches not that you can be vigilant, but that you must be. It does not concern itself with levels or orders of difficulty, but with the clearcut priority for vigilance. This step is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, but it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. But chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, because they are mutually exclusive. As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this, and are holding the belief that you can choose either one.
“By teaching you what to choose, based unequivocally on what you really want, the Holy Spirit will ultimately be able to teach you that you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your will from choice, and direct it toward creation within the Realm. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will only lead you to this liberation. You create by what you are, and this is what you must learn. The way to learn it is inherent in this third step, which brings together the lessons inherent in the first two, and goes beyond them toward real integration.
“If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what the Divine created there, you are acknowledging your mind as the Divine created it. Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. And since it is whole, you are teaching Peace because you have believed in It. The fourth and Final Step in this process [of undoing and awakening] will still be taken for you by the Divine Itself. But by the third step, the Holy Spirit has prepared you for the Divine.”
Vigilantly fulfilling our sole responsibility of accepting the Atonement for ourselves, and in so doing letting go of all fear on a moment-by-moment basis, we are ready to move on to the last step in the undoing process.
D. Blame, Shame, and Guilt
“The world you look upon is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Observe this world carefully and you will realize that this is so.” “This world is an attempt to prove your innocence while cherishing attack. Its failure lies in that you still feel guilty, though without understanding why.” “Awakening and the healing that it brings seem to come from anywhere except from you. So, too, does the source of guilt. You perceive neither guilt nor awakening as in your own mind, and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you must also realize that guilt and its healing – awakening – must be in the same place. In understanding this you are healed or saved from guilt.”
We know how debilitating blame, shame and guilt are to the psyche, especially that of a child. Blame and shame that have become guilt play a significant role in the maintaining of the dream world, and therefore become a major focus of the Course for escaping from that world. “The acceptance of guilt into the mind of the Divine’s Child was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end.”
“Guilt is more than merely not of the Divine. It is the symbol of the attack on the Divine. Attacking the Divine is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego’s belief in it. This is the belief from which all guilt really stems. The ego is the part of the split mind that believes in division. But how can Part of the Divine divide and detach Itself without believing It is attacking Its Source? (We have) explored the authority problem as involving the concept of and belief in usurping the Creator’s Power. The ego believes that this is what you did, because it believes it is you. It follows, then, that if you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you relate with or even respond to your ego, you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment.”
When we are able to move out of the stages of entanglement, first out of confusion and stubborn closed-mindedness, then out of conflict and attack thoughts, and finally out of fear, there is one more obstacle to our journey Home, one more “gaslighting” ploy that the ego frame of mind we have adopted in our mind uses to try to pull us back into the dream and in so doing keep itself in existence. Just as the first step in the splitting of the mind was our experiencing guilt through believing that we had usurped the Creator’s Power in making a pseudo-self for ourselves, so as we approach the last step in the undoing process out of the separation, the ego attempts to keep us stuck through guilt.
“None of the effects of guilt are in the present. For guilt is over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why cling to it in memory when you do not desire its effects?” “To the extent you value guilt, you will perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent you recognize that guilt is meaningless, will you perceive that attack cannot be justified.”
Our guilt a this stage takes multiple forms: the guilt of leaving our sisters and brothers behind in the dream; the guilt of abandoning the ego, which we made in the insanity of our split mind and which has acted as our self throughout time, and leaving it to dissolve into the nothingness out of which it was made; and the original guilt of having projected outside ourselves a terrible dream world where untold scenes of misery, tragedy, and even horror have been experienced over the vast expanse of time. All of these guilt feelings are meaningless because they have no reality in the Realm of Heaven. We are not abandoning our sisters and brothers, for they will awaken with us as we awaken. Yes, the ego will fade into nothingness, but no one is guilty for experiencing a bad dream. And our original guilt was merely a child’s misunderstanding of how they believed their parent would respond to a mistake. The Atonement undoes all of these mistakes, and undoes all guilt connected with them.
“This Course has said that the ego’s emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present [where Eternity, and Atonement, are found].” Therefore, “The undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit’s Teaching. For as long as you feel guilty, you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to the Divine, and therefore deserve death. You will think that death comes from the Divine, and not from the ego, because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe that you want death. And from what you want the Divine does not save you.” “Release from guilt is the ego’s entire undoing.”
The last step in the undoing process that leads out of all dreams, even the happy dreams the Holy Spirit gives us in the real world, when we have learned to let go of all guilt, is called the “Final Step” in the Course, and It is a Step that isn’t made by us, but one that the Divine Itself takes for us when we are ready. The Divine knows when each of us is ready for It to translate us out of dreams forever and into the Realm of Heaven and Eternity. And we will know that we are ready when our perception has become true vision – seeing – and thus is so completely clear of illusions, including guilt, that there is nothing in it that isn’t like the Divine. At that Instant our part in the Atonement is complete, we are at the Gate of Heaven, and the Divine reaches from beyond all dreams and lifts us forever into our true Home. The entire Course could be said to be a preparation for this Final Step to take place, though this Step is not the goal of the Course because it is beyond what can be taught and learned.
The manifestations of the separation, including guilt, fear, conflict, and confusion, and all their variations, are not resolved as neat packets once and forever at each stage of the undoing process, but any of them may appear throughout the process regardless of the stage of undoing, until awakening has been completed. Fortunately, miracles are also available and active on our behalf at all stages throughout the undoing process. This includes every loving thought held by anyone, which brings blessing to all. “Every loving Thought held in any Part of the Divine Family belongs to every Part. It is shared because It is loving.” “The Light of the world brings Peace to every mind through my forgiveness.” Miracles facilitate true learning, which is learning toward awakening, the learning of Atonement Lessons. We learned wrongly when we made this world, and to undo the world we must learn rightly through being taught by the Teacher given us for this purpose—the Holy Spirit.
All Manifestations of Spirit and Attributes of the Divine are also always present throughout the process of undoing, and available for our comfort and use at any Instant, as are our personal Helpers and all our eternal Friends. Because these Manifestations, Attributes, Helpers and Friends are real rather than illusory, and therefore eternal, ultimately Reality will prevail. It is our decision when It will prevail for us.
Summary of the Steps and Lessons of Undoing
| Into Separation Through Miscreation | Out of Separation Through Undoing | Holy Spirit’s Lessons In Undoing |
| 1. Guilt | 4. Refining our perception in the real world until it becomes “seeing” | 4. The “Final Step” taken by the Divine Itself |
| 2. Fear | 3. Accepting Atonement for ourselves in each situation and moment | 3. Be vigilant only for the Divine and Its Realm |
| 3. Conflict / Attack Thoughts / “Hate” | 2. Forgiveness: understanding that anything that isn’t Love is an appeal for healing and help, and responding only with healing and help | 2. To have Peace, teach Peace to learn It |
| 4. Confusion and Stubborn Insistence on our own version of reality, and on being right about this | 1. Acknowledging that there may be more to the world than what we’re aware of, that there must be a better way to live and relate, and considering someone else’s interests as important as our own | 1. To have, give all to all |