Friday, 01 May 2009 14:14

THE RIGHT MIND: HOME OF CORRECTION

The Promise of Hope (Volume 19 Number 1 March 2008)

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

The Decision Maker: The Seat of Destiny

A common confusion that befalls many students of A Course in Miracles

concerns asking the Holy Spirit or Jesus for help; or, to state it another way, what

it means to be in one's right mind. Our everyday problems and specific worries

seem so pressing, and Jesus' seeming invitation in the Course to help us with

them is so persuasive we almost cannot fail to ask for help to solve them. And

indeed, there are some passages in his course that can be misconstrued to mean

that we should indeed ask him or the Holy Spirit for such specific help (and one

workbook lesson even mentions God in this connection [W-pI.71.9]!). Yet these

references, if taken out of context, directly contradict the central message of A

Course in Miracles that it is the mind alone, and not the world or body that is the

problem. In fact, Jesus twice urged Helen Schucman early in the scribing not to

fall into this ego trap when she attempted to ask him for help in alleviating her

fear, Helen being a fear- or anxiety-driven person:

Though this message to Helen came very early in the dictation, it succinctly

encapsulates, as it foreshadows, all that would come over the next seven years of

scribing. It highlights the journey Jesus takes us on from the world to the mind, so

we may return to the mind's willingness to be separate: the wish to be autonomous and free of what we insanely believe to be the yoke of perfect

Oneness. Now in touch with the decision-making ability of the mind, we can

happily choose again, the subject of the final section of the text (T-31.VIII) and

the ultimate purpose of this course.

The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release

from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for

help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions

always entail a willingness [i.e., the mind's decision] to be separate.If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering

with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I

would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking.

This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course (T-

2.VI.4:1-4; VII.1:4-6; italics mine).

Yet despite our good intentions of being good Course students -- recall the line:

Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough (T-18.IV.2:1-2) -- we often fall prey to the ego's clever strategy of concealing from us the true nature of

the problem and its source. Simply put, the problem is not our perceived problems

in the world and body, but the fact that we think we have a problem. Near the end

of the text, Jesus makes the same point in discussing our self-concepts, saying:

It is the mind alone that thinks, what we call the decision maker. And this

decision-making part of the split mind can choose between only two thoughts: the

ego's separation or the Holy Spirit's Atonement. That is it. This error of thinking,

therefore, stems from the basic error we have shared together as one Son: the

insane belief that we separated from God our Source and from our Self, the Christ

that God created one with Him. It is this mistake that needs correction, not the

multitudinous camouflages the ego employs to divert our attention from the

mind's faulty decision. Jesus instructs us early in the text:

This decision-making point is, as it were, the seat of destiny (to use a

philosophical term usually applied to the Platonic or Neoplatonic soul). It is the

part of the mind that continually chooses between the problem (the wrong mind's

thought system of separation) and the answer (the right mind's correction of

forgiveness).

Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error

was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace (T-5.VII.6:5).

You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the

nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you

thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth;

or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it

go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe thebrain can think (W-pI.92.2).

The Right Mind:

Looking at the Wrong Mind Without Judgment

Understanding that the decision maker is the thinker enables us to understand the

purpose of correction that is the right mind's only function. When we are right-

minded we have become observers, looking with Jesus at our choice for the ego.

His gentle and forgiving vision allows us to suspend our judgments of guilt,

projected in turn onto others. This leads us to the following operational definition:

the right mind is looking at the wrong mind without judgment. This undoes the

guilt that had preserved the decision maker's error, solidifying it so it could never

be approached and undone. This is the meaning of Jesus' exhortation to us not to

fall into the ego's seductive trap of sin, guilt, and fear:

Again, it is the mind's looking at our errors through the eyes of this most unholy

trinity that is the problem, not the seeming errors themselves.

Recognizing this truth enables us, as students of A Course in Miracles, to avoid

the ego's snare of believing we are following Jesus' teachings by going to our right minds and asking his help for specific problems in our lives. To do so merely reinforces the ego thought system of deceit and distraction that gives us a

deluded sense of accomplishment; a false positive that conceals our one function

of undoing the ego's negative. This is why Jesus urges us to look at the ego with

him so we may see beyond it to the truth, as we see in this series of statements

from the text:

No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking

is the way they are protected.We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel

itwe must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real (T-11.V.1:1,3,5).

The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth

(T-12.II.1:5).

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the

barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to

seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-

16.IV.6:1-2).

Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it

not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above

all, be not afraid of it (T-18.I.6:7-9).

Therefore, the positive in this course is to look at the ego's negative and say we

no longer want it; saying yes to Jesus means saying not no, negating the ego's negation (T-21. VII.12:4).

Knowing that to look calmly at the ego means its undoing, the anthropomorphic

ego strategizes that the way to preserve its existence in the mind is to make the

Son of God mindless. By thus weakening the Son's decision- making mind,

rendering it inaccessible to change, the ego ensures that the original error in

choosing it can never be undone:

To restate this important point, the purpose of A Course in Miracles is to take us

on a journey -- with Jesus as teacher and guide -- from the mindless to the

mindful; from the world of bodies to the inner world of mind. He teaches us to

understand that the world we see is the witness to (y)our state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition (T-21. in.1:5). As we have observed other times in these pages, our perceptions of the world become the royal road (Freud's

evocative term) that leads us back to the mind, helping us gain access to the

decision-making ability we had foresworn. To focus, then, on the mindless

external world of our experience, insisting or even demanding that our inner

teacher participate in such insanity, merely reinforces the ego's strategy of

keeping us from changing our minds. This tactic is really a fragmentary shadow

of the ego's third law of chaos (T-23. II.6), which holds that God subscribes to our

insane thought system of separation and sin. Thus the line almost all Course

students know by heart: Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world (T-21.in.1:7). In a passage regarding our giving up judgment, Jesus tells us that the undoing is necessary only in our minds

(T-6.V- C.2:5). Why, then, should we even want to ask Jesus for specific help for

specific problems, since they do not exist? -- the subject of our next section.

Asking for Specifics

We are told repeatedly in A Course in Miracles that purpose is everything, and

that the only question we should ever ask of anything is: What is it for? (e.g., T-

17.VI.2:1-2). Therefore, we need to examine the purpose behind our asking for

specifics, when it so clearly goes against the message of the Course. The answer

to this question is obvious when we consider the ego's strategy of mindlessness.

To ask for specifics reflects the belief that the world is real, reinforced by our

focusing attention on the body and not the decision-making mind. Jesus addresses

this in the beginning of The Song of Prayer, the companion pamphlet that is an

The ego, which always wants to weaken the mind, tries to separate it from

the body in an attempt to destroy it. Yet the ego actually believes that it is

protecting it. This is because the ego believes that mind is dangerous, and

that to make mindless is to heal (T-8.IX.6:1-3).

extension of the Course's principles. The context is prayer, or asking the Holy

Spirit for help:

Jesus, therefore, wants us to consider the magnitude of the gift of God's Love we

have thrown away, in exchange for which we have the trifling specifics of our life

of specialness. In his discussion in the text on the song of love we have forgotten,

he reminds us that the notes of this song -- its specific parts (the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes [S- 1.I. 3:3] -- are nothing [T-21.I.7:1]). And in the workbook, we read an even more direct summary of the ego's strategy of

confusing us as to the nature of the problem and its solution. Afraid the decision-

making mind would locate the problem in itself -- having chosen the ego's

separation as its reality -- and thus correct its mistake by choosing the Holy

Spirit's Atonement, the ego, as we have seen, projects the problem from the mind

to the body. Once attention is rooted in the body and its world, it is directed

toward solving the multitudinous problems the ego presents to us, as well as its

holding out the carrot of meaningful solutions. Here are Jesus words:

This message is reiterated in the text, where Jesus lays out for us the ego's

purpose for our problems:

By becoming involved with tangential issues, it hopes to hide the real

question and keep it out of mind. The ego's characteristic busyness with

nonessentials is for precisely that purpose. Preoccupations with problems

set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding

learning progress (T-4.V.6:4-6).

A problem cannot be solved if you do not know what it is. Even if it is really solved already you will still have the problem, because you will not recognize that it has been solved. This is the situation of the world. The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized.The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer.All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it

be resolved (W-pI.79.1; 4:2; 6:1).

To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive

it. Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you

see them, and let them go into God's Hands.What could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a bit of trifling

advice about a problem of an instant's duration? (S-1.I.4:2- 3,5-6)

It is clear from these passages that when we ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help

with specific problems, we are allowing the ego's agenda of subterfuge to

contaminate our relationship with our Teachers. They thus become part of the

problem instead of the answer. This was the gist of a personal message to Helen

in 1977, at a time when she was repeatedly asking Jesus for very specific help for

very specific problems, such as where to shop for clothes or what street corner to

stand on to hail a cab. This period, which actually extended for several years, was

very helpful to Helen in the sense that it exemplified Jesus' loving and gentle

kindness in meeting her where she was, instead of demanding that she come to

him. It was a wonderful example of the meaning of this passage, which also came

early in the scribing:

Since Helen was clearly in a fear-driven state, and her trust in Jesus ambivalent,

to say the very least(1), it was helpful for her to experience his help and love in a

form that was comfortable for her; i.e., these specific, relatively unimportant

concerns. Yet to have continued this practice indefinitely would have been

deleterious to her own growth, not to mention sabotaging her relationship with

her beloved elder brother. And so, when she was ready -- meaning her fear had

sufficiently abated -- she was able to hear the following:

In other words, Helen's questions to Jesus were specifically designed -- albeit

unconsciously -- to manage him; to so control the relationship that his love (a vast area of experience) and true correction in her mind would have relatively little effect on her. Her requests, at times even demands, reinforced her mindless

state and thus limited Jesus' help to what she presented to him. His message did

finally get through, for shortly thereafter Helen was able to move away from such

specificity and begin to accept Jesus' true correction of undoing her ego.(2)

Any specific question involves a large number of assumptions which

inevitably limit the answer. A specific question is actually a decision about

the kind of answer that is acceptable. The purpose of words is to limit, and

by limiting, to make a vast area of experience more manageable. But that

means manageable by you (Absence from Felicity, p. 445).

The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is

expressed. In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in

whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle, to

attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient

can understand without fear (T-2.IV.5:1-3).

Undoing: The True Meaning of Correction

In order to understand what Jesus means by correction in A Course in Miracles,

we need to examine one more important principle in his teaching: the ego itself

has no power. In truth, the ego is nothing, being but an illusory thought of

separation that did not happen because it could not have happened. Therefore, the

ego's major ally of sin and guilt has no true power, being nothing, and the

material world that arose from such nothingness must also be nothing. And so

why should we attempt to solve a non-existent problem that is a projection of a

non-existent thought? This makes no sense. What does make sense, however, is

recognizing that it is the decision maker that has the power here, not the ego.

Thus the problem we correct is not the ego, but the decision-making mind. There

are several places in A Course in Miracles where Jesus discusses this, for

example:

This understanding greatly simplifies our lives. We need not struggle against the

world's slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to quote Hamlet, for these are not the problem, as discussed previously. Only the insane would fight, like Don

Quixote, against hallucinatory enemies, and Jesus is helping us to share his sanity

in recognizing that the ego is not the problem, but our belief in the ego most

definitely is. This is why, returning to the issue of asking for specifics, we should

not ask what we should do, but ask instead for help in undoing the interference to

our knowing what to do. Therefore, A Course in Miracles is a remedial work of

correction, providing a special Teacher and a special curriculum (T-12. V.5:4).

Another message to Helen, this one in 1975, underscores this teaching. As was

her wont, Helen asked Jesus for help in knowing what to say to someone who was

in trouble. One would think that this would have been a request fully in keeping

with the Course's teachings. After all, we are supposed to be helpful to others.

However, this is a request not only not in keeping with Jesus' message to us, but

is antithetical to it. Recall his words to Helen about how depreciating the power

of the mind is in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. Asking for

Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you (T-4.VI.1:2). The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies.The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it (T-7. VI.3:1,5-6).

Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it (T-7.VIII.5:1-2).

behavioral help means that the one who asks has already shifted the problem from

the mind to the body, in adherence to the ego's strategy of mindlessness that

ensures that the decision-making mind will have been rendered impotent. This,

therefore, is what Helen was told in response to her question:

The message is for all of us; that we go to Jesus for help in undoing our egos,

allowing his love to flow through us, which will effortlessly provide the most

helpful words and behavior that any situation requires. In other words, we ask for

help to step away from our perception of problems and accept his vision instead;

inevitable once the interference to it is undone.

The word undoing, as well as its derivatives, appears quite frequently in A Course

in Miracles and is used as a way of defining the role of Atonement, salvation,

forgiveness, and the miracle -- the Holy Spirit's correction. See the following

examples (my italics):

All these statements reflect the basic process of right- minded correction that does

nothing positive, for what can be positive within a world of illusion? Instead, such

correction undoes the belief that there is a world that is problematic, returning the

problem to its source in the mind, as we read:

Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors (M-18. 4:6).

Miracles represent freedom from fear. Atoning means undoing. The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles (T-1.I.26).

The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done (T-28. I.1:1-3).

And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful (T-18.IV.8:5-7).

salvationis the undoing of what never was(W-pI. 43.2:3).

Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear (W-pI.46.2:3-5).

You cannot ask, What shall I say to him? and hear God's answer. Rather ask instead, Help me to see this brother through the eyes of truth and not of judgment, and the help of God and all His angels will respond (Absence from Felicity, p. 381).

What is therefore undone is not the problem as we experience it -- whether in the

outer or inner world -- but, once again, the decision-making mind's belief in sin

and guilt as reality. Being in one's right mind, therefore, does not mean being

peaceful, loving, and kind, which are but effects. What allows us to be this way --

i.e., their cause -- is our choosing to undo the ego's thought system of conflict,

attack, and hate. The acquisition of the ten characteristics of God's advanced

teachers proceeds to the degree that we unlearn (or undo) the ego's thought

system of separation and judgment. Thus we read at the conclusion of Jesus'

discussion that unlearning is 'true learning' in the world (M-4.X.3:7).

Indeed, Wordsworth's famous words are true, the world is too much with us, but

its seeming hold on our attention is weakened to the extent we realize that we are

the ones holding on to it. As the need to defend against our non- existent guilt

lessens, we are increasingly able to ask our Teacher's help to look at the world for

what it is: a maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem. As the silliness of

our erstwhile position dawns on our minds, our gentle laughter, joined with

Jesus', allows the world to ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it (M-13.1:2). We are ready for the world we truly want: the real world of light and peace and joy.

The World Beyond Correction

The miracle, therefore, is the kind means A Course in Miracles employs to lead

us from the right-minded perception of our wrong-minded thinking to the One-

mindedness of Christ. It is the journey that takes us from our perceptions of the

world, retracing them to their source in the mind, recognizing that all these

misperceptions -- of the outer world of special relationships and the inner world

of guilt -- are defenses against the decision-making mind's choosing to remember

its Identity as the One-minded Self.

A miracle is a correction.It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays

within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and

love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings

(W-pII. 13.1:1,4-6).

The ego seeks to resolve its problems, not at their source, but where they were not made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there will be no solution.

The Holy Spirit wants only to make His resolutions complete and perfect,

and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there

undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the separation more and

more undone, and union brought closer (T-17. III.6:1-4).

With Jesus as our guide, we have successfully seen through the ego's attempts at camouflaging its source in the mind by diverting our attention to the mindless world of bodies, problems, and ineffective solutions. The mind's decision for sin, perceived to be very real, has been buried beneath a world in which sin is perceived, not only as a reality, but as a trait and event in everyone except ourselves. Thus is sin kept impervious to change, and the guilt and fear it engenders beyond all meaningful remedy. Confusion reigns supreme, but its true source in the mind is kept hidden by our concerns, leading to the demand that God give us answers to our made-up problems.

Into this hopeless situation, Jesus' voice calling us to look at the world differently -- the role of forgiveness -- is heard at last. It returns our attention to the mind's guilt, allowing it to be undone as its dark illusion softly disappears in the light of truth. As belief is withdrawn from the ego, it evanesces, and our minds are free to choose the gentle remedy of Atonement. For an instant the thoughts of separation and Atonement remain, and then both are gone, leaving only God and His one Son:

We close this hymn to salvation by letting Jesus urge us one more time to hear his voice and make it our own, extending it to embrace the world we had condemned. Now are we free, and now we reclaim the love we once threw away when we believed our sin to be real. Nothing remains in our holy minds but the love and light we have, extend, and will forever be:

FOOTNOTES: 1. For a complete discussion of Helen's relationship with Jesus, along with the personal messages she received, see my Absence from

Felicity, pp. 379-84,405-68.

2. Again, see Absence from Felicity, p. 427, for a discussion of an example of this shif.

O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold

you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to

meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are

joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him,

out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all

fear and given back to love (C-4.8).

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete (C-4.6).