Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 12: The Holy Spirit’s Course of Instruction

7. Resigning as One’s Own Teacher

In this world only Love is strong, because only It is undivided. In Heaven all is Love, so all is undivided and all is strong. In this world those who are strong in Love do not divide or attack because they see no need to do so.

Before the idea of division or attack could enter the mind, it must have conceived itself as split or divided. In this state of madness or un-saneness it then attacked the split it perceived, in an effort to remove it from itself. Forgetting what it was and therefore not knowing what it was doing, the split mind did not realize that it can attack only itself. It perceived itself as weakened as a result of its attack against the split it perceived, but it senselessly believed that this meant its attack had been effective. Feeling itself weaker, and therefore no longer perceiving itself and all its sisters and brothers as equal, it attempted to “equalize” the situation it had made by using attack against its sisters and brothers, because it believed that attack was successful in weakening itself.

This tragic experience of the split mind is why the Recognition of your own Invulnerability is so important in the Restoration of your Sanity. For if you accept your Invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect in Reality. Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, your Invulnerability demonstrates that nothing actually happened in truth. Therefore, by attacking you have not done anything except waste time. Once you realize this, you also realize that there is no sense in attack, for it manifestly does not work, and cannot protect you.

But the Recognition of your Invulnerability has more than merely negative value. If your attacks on yourself failed to weaken your Invulnerability, then you are still strong. You therefore have no need to attack your sisters and brothers to “equalize” their strength with yours by attempting to make them weak like you thought yourself to be.

You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by first recognizing that your attack on yourself had no real effects. For others do react to attack if they perceive it. If you are trying to attack others, you will be unable to avoid interpreting their reaction as reinforcement of the need to attack. The only place you can cancel out all such reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the initiator and recipient of your attack, and if this attack has never been, then it has no consequences and no Purpose.

The Holy Spirit’s undivided Love is your Strength, for what you currently mistake as love is divided, and therefore not real. You cannot attack Love, or yourself as Love, if you trust It, and if you trust your Self as It. But remember Who your holy Self is, and that It encompasses you and your sisters and brothers and all of Creation. You can learn of perfect Love only with an undivided or integrated mind, because a split mind is a poor learner. Your mind became split because, like a child playing with a magic wand in a dream, you wanted to retain the characteristics of your creation by the Divine, but with your own content. Your split mind became projected outside you as the separation, and you have been confused ever since. But the Divine did not abandon you to your confusion, but sent Spirit into your dream to guide you out of it.

Your creation by the Divine was not of you, and the content of a nightmare is not worthy of retention. Your madness in the dream of separation has made you a poor learner, and poor learners need specific teaching. In your current fragmented condition, you have learning challenges in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired that you can progress only under constant clearcut direction, provided by a Teacher who can transcend your limited resources. This Teacher becomes your Resource, because through yourself as teacher you cannot truly learn. The learning situation in which you have placed yourself is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require an exceptional Teacher and a specific Curriculum.

Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. Such teachers would hardly be turned to to establish the Curriculum by which limitations can be escaped. If they understood what is beyond their limitations, they would not perceive themselves as limited, nor would their learning be impaired.

You do not remember the Meaning of Love, and this is your impairment. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up your own curriculum goals in place of your previous ones that have clearly failed. For the ego’s learning goal, which you placed in your mind and then accepted as your own, has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning in any form.

No one can generalize and transfer to all situations what they have not learned in specific ones, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask what learning aids are for of those who have failed to learn? They do not know. For if they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.

This Course stated that the ego’s rule is, “Seek but do not find.” Translated into curricular terms this is the same as saying, “Try to learn but do not succeed.” The result of this curriculum goal is obvious: every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted. For these are all designed for learning facilitation, which the ego’s strange curriculum goal is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and using the aim of teaching to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? Such a curriculum doesn’t make any sense.

This kind of senseless learning process since time began has so weakened your mind that you are currently unable to love. For the curriculum you have chosen to follow opposes Love, and amounts to a course in fear, resulting in a degree in guilt and a major (focus) in hate and how to attack yourself. A necessary minor (focus) in this dysfunctional curriculum is in learning how not to overcome the split mind that made the content and goal of the separation believable. Because of this you cannot overcome the split mind without Help, for all your learning has had the hidden goal of maintaining the split mind’s continuity in perpetuity.

Your disabled will in this confused state makes your learning meaningless, as your senseless learning disables your true will. And so you have learned to fight against true learning, and have succeeded in not learning, for that has been your desire. You have not yet realized that there is something you do truly will to learn, and that you can learn because it is your will to do so and because it is learnable. You who have tried to learn what you do not will and cannot learn should take heart. For though the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, if perceived clearly it is merely ridiculous. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Such logic makes perfect sense to the ego, but is merely meaningless to the spirit.

Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It will merely be the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the entire learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

Properly understood, your learning potential is limitless because it will lead you to the Divine. You can teach the Way to the Divine and learn It if you will follow the Teacher Who knows It, and the Curriculum for learning It. The true Curriculum is totally unambiguous because the Goal is united, and the Means and End are completely in accord. You need only offer your undivided attention to this true learning process. Everything else will be given you. For it is your true will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of the Divine’s Children. Their learning potential is as unlimited as the Divine.