The one thing to fix in the world

A Course in Miracles teaches us that we are not trapped in a world that is beyond our sphere of influence, our daily experiences to the contrary. This is because the world we interpret and give meaning to, is merely “…the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition.” (T-21.in.1:5). This certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. After all, nothing in this world lasts. All things sooner or later become defective, and all life eventually deteriorates and dies. I tell myself my deepest desire is to have everlasting life in a world of everlasting love; yet eventually I appear to lose everything I love. So if “the world is the outside picture of an inward condition”, it must follow that my mind must be full of thoughts of decay and death, at least unconsciously, right?

This is true for anyone whose state of mind is in wrong-minded ego mode, which is true for 99 percent of the world population all the time, including my own state of mind. This is because when push comes to shove, my own selfish interests will have to be met first, at all cost. Self-preservation is this life’s primary driving force. Sure I want happiness, but I want it my way. This, of course, merely mirrors the ontological moment when the seemingly sleeping Son of God chose to follow the ego in the dream (nightmare, really) of autonomy, seemingly separating from God. Terrified at the prospect of being severely punished by God for this “sin of separation”, the Son made up time and space, including an entire universe, with the twofold purpose of (1) becoming untraceable to God, and (2) providing so many distractions to occupy the mind that the memory of the state of Oneness wouldn’t be able to ever dawn again in the Son’s mind.

So while my mind is in ego-mode, everything I perceive, think and do will reflect that ontological moment. “Each day, each minute, and each instant you but relive the time when terror took the place of love” (T-26.V.13:1). This is not to say, by the way, that we cannot reflect Heaven here in time and space. After all, I do have the choice to switch teachers at any instant of the day. Whenever I choose to do that, the Love that is my very inheritance will manifest in this world, through the miracle. Since projection makes perception (T-21.in.1), the world I behold will reflect my decision to either wrong-mindedly project, or to right-mindedly extend.

Beware, however: the ego is very clever at imitating the Holy Spirit. If I constantly behold only a good, lovable and joyful world, chances are that I have fallen into the trap of denying the darkness in my mind that I need to clean up. If the cause of this world is the ontological attack thought, salvation cannot lie in denying attack thoughts; it must lie in calmly looking at all attack thoughts, accompanied by Jesus (or the Holy Spirit). Only then can I see its silliness. I then realize I am the dreamer of the dream, and therefore the maker of all the images I see. Our one remaining freedom in this world is the power to choose a better Teacher to guide our thoughts, in the service of slowly undoing all attack thoughts that we become aware of. That’s why workbook lesson 23 says that “I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.” (W-pI.23).

In that lesson, we read that “If the cause of the world is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect [of my state of mind]. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effect will change automatically.” (T-23.2). To clarify this, Kenneth Wapnick often used the symbol of a cinema: if I don’t like what I see on the screen, I do not run to the wall to try to change the image; rather, I should go to the projection booth and switch movies. The choice for the movie is the cause; what I subsequently perceive the effect. In the Course, Jesus invites us to evaluate and change the cause, not the effect.

At first, this seems to be strictly in line with the well-known quote from chapter 18: “I need do nothing.” (T-18.VII.5). However, this does not mean that we literally are to do nothing in the world, as some students unfortunately interpret it. We may be tempted to stop caring for the environment, climate, sustainability, health, et cetera, because the world and its bodies are all illusory anyway — we merely need to change our mind and choose inner peace. However, as Kenneth Wapnick often pointed out, that is not what Jesus teaches in his curriculum. Yes, from a metaphysical viewpoint it is true that everything here is illusory and nothing here is of any value, since nothing lasts. However, as long as we still identify with our body so much, which virtually everyone still does, we have lots of “mind-work” to do in really bringing about the change of mind we so fervently desire.

‘Changing my mind and choose inner peace’ requires that I fully accept the message of the Atonement that says that nothing happened to disturb the innocent peace of the Son of God, and that I never really wanted the world I now behold. To get to that point, however, I should regard the world as a useful classroom in which I can be very active, but guided by a different teacher. Every chapter and every lesson in A Course in Miracles carries that same simple message in it, explicitly or implicitly: choose once again which teacher I will allow to guide my thoughts. Once we increasingly make the right choice, we come to realize that our thoughts in time and space are not our real thoughts at all; that is, only impulses of love are real, and it is through these that I can reflect a bit of Heaven here on earth, and cleanse my mind from all the dark spots I still hold on to, hoping against hope that my individual autonomy is indeed a fact. It is not; only God is Fact, and our spiritual journey consists of slowly and gratefully accepting that truth.

Therefore, there is really only one thing to fix in the world: the quality of my thoughts. I don’t do this by meditating for extended lengths of time in a mountain cave, although regular meditation does help to ease the constant stream of ego chatter, an essential prerequisite for mind training. The most important vehicle for changing the quality of my thoughts is accepting the lessons of love that are offered me on a daily basis in the world which I now regard as a useful classroom. On a practical level, this means I ask Jesus (or the HS) to help me see all situations that used to upset me differently, no matter how small the upset seems to be. As Ken Wapnick remarked: “We practice on the ‘little’ things of the body, so what we may come to learn about the magnitude of spirit”, which is what you and I really are. 

So it’s perfectly fine for you and me to be very active in this world on “fixing” the environment, the climate, sustainability, healthcare, you name it — but the true “fix” is our choice with whom we do it as guiding teacher: the ego or the Holy Spirit? If I act from an ego frame of mind, my primary (though unconscious) motivation in working on climate, sustainability or healthcare will be to establish my special self-worth, and to show God that, yes, I sinned, but my good deeds should grant me a place in Heaven when I die. This way I merely keep making the error real. If, on the other hand, I act from the right-minded perspective of the Voice for Love, my primary motivation will be to reach the real world by seeing the sameness in everything I perceive. My thoughts and actions will emanate from kindness, which must result in inner peace, and ultimately in the returning awareness of our Home in the Heart of God, which we never really left anyway.

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See also my “Miracles or Murder: a guide to concepts of A Course in Miracles“. This guidebook, endorsed by Gary and Cindy Renard, was published in March 2016 by Outskirts Press and is available at Amazon.com:

See also my Feb. 2019 Course workshop at www.youtube.com called “Farewell to your self, to find your true Self”. (English captions/subtitles available)

Dutch visitors may also be interested in this Dutch page: ikzoekvrede.nl.

“This course is too difficult to learn”

When students of A Course in Miracles start to notice that Jesus is serious when he tells them that “…to learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning.” (T-24.In.2:1-2), there is a strong temptation to become discouraged. After all, a complete reversal of everything I believe seems to be utterly impossible, no matter how much I claim to love Jesus and his message. So the tendency is to throw up my hands in desperation, exclaiming that “…I don’t see how I’m going to pull that off. This course is too difficult to learn!”

You and I are certainly not the first nor the last to feel such discouragement. Nor is it exclusive to A Course in Miracles; many spiritual thought systems seem to ‘demand’ a transformation in values and beliefs that seems awkwardly hard to pull off. And if you assume that Helen Schucman was fully enlightened and lived the Course promptly and perfectly when she took it down, you’ve got another thought coming. As Kenneth Wapnick recollects in his biography on Helen called “Absence from felicity“, Helen frequently complained to Jesus that what he told her was too complicated, too difficult, and too hard to learn. Though, to her credit, it never seriously occurred to her to stop, she did frequently experience tremendous resistance and anxiety, especially at the beginning, and she certainly needed Bill Thetford’s loving support throughout.

Again in Absence from felicity, we read that Jesus frequently tried to help Helen in calmly looking at her own resistance. Although much of this advice was specifically meant for Helen personally, some occurrences that clearly apply to all students made it to the text, workbook and manual. In chapter 2 of the text, Jesus addresses Helen’s anxiety: “You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. […] It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way.” (T-2.VII.1). Which is of course Jesus’ main point: try to become a little more miracle-minded each day.

In chapter 29 of the text, Jesus specifically addresses Helen’s complaint that this course is too difficult to learn: “Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God?” (T-29.II.1:3-4) In chapter 13 of the text, Jesus further comments on this insight: “In the extreme, you are afraid of redemption and you believe it will kill you. […] To some extent, then, you must believe that by not learning the course you are protecting yourself.” (T-13.II.8:4;7:5).

In other words, when we protest to Jesus that his Course is too difficult to learn, his response is something like: “Don’t tell me you cannot learn this simple curriculum of forgiveness. Look around you: just to keep up the illusion that you can be separate from God you have built an entire phenomenal universe with zillions of stars and planets and bodies, with the wildest imaginable things going on. This was not thrust upon you; you made it. Don’t tell me you cannot learn my simple curriculum that merely says that what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true?”

Ouch — so when we complain this Course is too difficult to learn, we are really saying we do not want to learn this Course, because we are afraid its outcome would mean our annihilation. As Jesus comments in the text: “The ego’s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction.” (T-22.III.2:1-2). And again in chapter 31: “To you who seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat that to achieve a goal you must proceed in its direction, not away from it. […] This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the same illusion and the same mistake.” (T-31.IV.7:3).

Of course everyone does want to learn Jesus’ curriculum of peace; otherwise we wouldn’t be spending so much devoted effort to it. At the same time, everyone does not want to learn this curriculum of peace, because we are still too terrified of what life would be without a personal autonomous individuality. The purpose of A Course in Miracles is not to make us feel guilty for being such weak and wretched spiritual misfits — on the contrary, its purpose is to bring exactly this conflict in the split mind into full awareness, above the daily battleground of mindlessness, calmly see the silliness of it all, and happily choose once again; a thousand times a day, as a happy learner.

At this point it can be very helpful to fully realize the incredible power of the mind, even in this illusory dream world we call the universe. As early in the workbook as lesson 16, Jesus emphasizes that we have no idle thoughts: “What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought you have contributes to truth or to illusion; either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions. […] Every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible.” (W-pI.16.2:2-4). So if you want to make progress as a Course student, learn to become aware of this distinction a little sooner day by day, without feeling guilty about not being fully enlightened yet. We are not admonished to never ever make any mistakes any more. You and I are only asked to be willing to be taught differently, by choosing the Holy Spirit as our guiding Teacher instead of the ego. If you can do that two seconds sooner than last month or last year, you are well on your way!

To recap, let’s revisit Jesus’ extremely clear clarion call in chapter 31 of the text to fuel our own motivation to practice this mind searching: “What you have taught yourself is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too complex to grasp… No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. […] The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. You who have taught yourself the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you!” (T-31.I.2:7-4:6). Try to remember this the next time you open that big blue book. Happy practicing!

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See also my “Miracles or Murder: a guide to concepts of A Course in Miracles“. This guidebook, endorsed by Gary and Cindy Renard, was published in March 2016 by Outskirts Press and is available at Amazon.com:

See also my Feb. 2019 Course workshop at www.youtube.com called “Farewell to your self, to find your true Self”. (English captions/subtitles available)

Dutch visitors may also be interested in this Dutch page: ikzoekvrede.nl.