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Chapter 12: The Holy Spirit’s Course of Instruction

5. Locating the Source of Awakening

To identify with the ego anywhere is to attack yourself and make yourself poor. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived. This leads to depression or anger, because those who experience the ego have exchanged the Abundance of their natural Love of Self for self-pity, making them afraid of themselves, though they do not realize this. Even if they are fully aware of anxiety, they do not perceive its source as their own ego-identification, and they always try to handle anxiety by making some sort of “arrangement” with the world. Those in this predicament must perceive the world as outside themselves, for this is crucial to their adjustment to ego-identification. They do not realize that they make this world up, for there is no world outside of them.

If only the loving Thoughts of the Divine’s Children are the world’s reality, or the Real World, then the Real World must be in their mind, and everything else, including all other thoughts, must be illusion. The world’s insanity must also be in their mind, but an internal conflict of this scale can’t be tolerated. For a split mind is endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed kinds of thought, or thought systems, within itself is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, but not Reality, outside itself. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego-identification, for everyone believes that their true identification is the means to safety.

However, consider what has happened, for thoughts have consequences to the thinker. You are at odds with the world as you perceive it because you think it is antagonistic to you, appearing to exist outside of you. This is a necessary consequence of what you have done in identifying with the ego. You have projected outward what is antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would have to perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that the antipathy you feel, in all its forms, is in your mind, and not outside it, before you can release yourself from it. And that is also why you must release yourself from your antipathy before you can perceive the world as it really is, that is, perceive the Real World.

This Course clarified earlier that the Divine loves Its Children so completely that It gives them the time to remember true Creation and enter again into Life, which is eternal. The Divine does love the Real World, and those who perceive this world’s reality cannot perceive the world of death. For death is not of the Real World, in which everything reflects Eternity. The Divine gives you the Real World in exchange for the one you made, which is the symbol of death. For the world you look upon is a world of separation, and if you could really separate yourself from the Mind of the Divine, you would die spiritually, which is impossible.

In the insanity of their split minds – after they forgot to laugh at the mad idea that they could be their own creators – the separated ones were willing to accept even death to deny their Creator. But their Creator would not have it so, and so it is not so. They could not will against the Divine, and that is why they have no control over the world they made, projected outside of themselves. It is not a world of true will because it is governed by the desire to be unlike the Divine. And this desire is not will. The mis-projected world is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless “laws,” and without true Meaning of any kind. For it was made out of what you do not want, mis-projected from your mind because you were afraid of it.

Yet this world exists only as a dream in the mind of its maker, as does this dream’s Remedy, awakening. Do not believe this world is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind, because the mind is the mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that all fear that you perceive is in your own mind, and nowhere else, you will at last have located its source, and where fear began it must end. Here you will see that the altar of your mind is the Altar of the Divine, where Divine Essence abides. And here the Divine has placed the Remedy for the split mind and all its fear: the Atonement.

The Altar has become defiled because your mind has become split, but the Real World has not been defiled because it is Whole. Divine Essence has placed the Atonement on the Altar of your mind for you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this Altar, for it is the Altar to Truth. There you will behold your mind transformed and healed, and there you will learn to perceive truly. From this Place where the Divine and Its Children dwell in Peace until awakening is complete, and where you are welcome, you will know Peace and thus perceive the world truly. But to find this Place you must relinquish your investment in the world as you have mis-projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the Real World to you from the Altar of the Divine.