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:
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 (T2.VI.4:1-4; VII.1:4-6; italics mine).

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.

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:
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).
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:
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).
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).

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 rightminded 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:
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).
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 (T16.IV.6:1-2).

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:
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).
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., T17.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

extension of the Course's principles. The context is prayer, or asking the Holy
Spirit for help:
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)

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 decisionmaking 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:
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).
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).

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:
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).
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:
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).
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)

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:
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).
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

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:
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).
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):

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).
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:

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).
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
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 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 Onemindedness 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.

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:
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).

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:
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).
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.