Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 15: Dissolving Dissociation

 

11. Giving the Dark Lessons to Spirit

The essential thing to recognize is that you do not know. Knowledge is Power, and all Power is of the Divine. You who have tried to keep Power for yourself have lost It. You still have the Power, but you have interposed so much between It and your awareness of It that you cannot use It. Everything you have taught yourself has made your Power more and more obscure to you. Therefore you do not know what It is, or where It can be found. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it must fail you. For Power is not seeming strength, and Truth is beyond semblance of any kind.

Yet the only thing that stands between you and the Power of the Divine in you is merely your teaching yourself what is false, and your attempts to undo the true. Be willing, then, for all of what you have taught yourself to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourself how to imprison the Child of the Divine, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even dream of it. Can the Divine learn how not to be the Divine? And can Its Children, given all Power by their Creator, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep in place of the Power that you have, and the Being that you are?

Atonement teaches you how to release yourself forever from everything that you have taught yourself in the past by showing you only what you are now, and forever.

Learning is accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present, by giving the present whatever meaning it holds for you. What you have taught yourself gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have learned as your own teacher can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past, because your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. Do not attempt to understand any event, anyone, or anything in its light, for the “light” of darkness, by which you have tried to perceive, can only obscure. Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for if you do, you contradict the Light, and thereby think you perceive the darkness. Yet darkness cannot be perceived, for it is nothing more than a condition in which true perception becomes impossible.

You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourself unto the Light in you cannot yet correctly assess the truth and value of this Course. Yet the Divine has not abandoned you. And so you have another Lesson you can learn, sent from It, and already learned for every Child of Light by Spirit, to Whom the Divine gave this Lesson. This Lesson shines with the Divine’s Glory, for in It is the Divine’s Power, which It shares so gladly with Its Children. Through this Lesson you will learn of the Divine’s Happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all of your dark lessons must be brought willingly to Truth, and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take.

Every dark lesson that you bring to Spirit, Who teaches Light, It will accept from you, because you do not want it. And It will gladly exchange each one for the bright Lesson It has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Spirit means anything. You have one method of confirmation, as sure as the Divine, by which to recognize if what you have learned in any situation is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who interact with you or even think of you share in your perfect Peace, then you can be sure that you have learned the Divine’s Lesson, and not your own. Unless all this is true, there remain dark lessons of unforgiveness in your mind, which hurt and hinder you and everyone around you.

The absence of perfect Peace means only one thing: you think you do not will for the Divine’s Children what their Creator wills for them. Every dark lesson teaches this in one form or another. And each bright Lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not hide but willingly let go, teaches you that you will with the Creator unto Its Children.

Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything you have taught yourself. How would you know how you can? Yet your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned in the past of yourself as your own teacher you do not want to keep. Ask to be taught, and do not use your past experiences to confirm what you have learned. When your Peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself:

 

“I do not know what anything, including this, means. And so I do not know how to respond to it. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.”

 

By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom the Divine has given you will speak to you. It will take Its rightful Place in your awareness the instant you abandon your dark lessons, and offer these to It.

You cannot be your own guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary. Because you did, the Means on which you can depend for miracles have been provided for you. The Divine’s Children can make no needs their Creator will not meet, if they just turn to It ever so little. Yet It could not compel Its Children to turn to It, and still remain Itself. It is impossible that the Divine lose Its Identity, for if It did, all of Its Children would lose theirs. Being your Identity, the Divine cannot change Itself, for your Identity is changeless. The miracle acknowledges the Divine’s Changelessness by seeing Its Children as they have always been and always will be, and not as they would make themselves. The miracle brings the effect that only Innocence can bring, and thus establishes the fact that Innocence must be.

How can you, who have been so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish for yourself your Guiltlessness? This would be impossible. However, it becomes possible when you are sure that you are willing to acknowledge that of yourself it is impossible. It is only because you still think that you can run some little part or deal with certain aspects of your life alone that the Guidance of the Holy Spirit appears limited to you. By so limiting this Guidance, you would seek to make Spirit undependable, and use this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons from It. And by so limiting the Guidance that you would accept of Spirit, you are unable to completely depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you.

Do you think that the Holy Spirit would withhold from you what It would have you give? You have no problems that It cannot solve by offering you a miracle. Miracles are for you. And every fear or pain or trial you have has already been undone by the miracles that are for you. Spirit has brought all of your troubles to the Light, having received and undone them for you by recognizing that they never were. There are no dark lessons It has not already lightened for you. It has already corrected the lessons you would teach yourself. They do not exist in Its Mind at all. For the past does not bind Spirit, and therefore doesn’t bind you.

Spirit does not perceive time as you do. And each miracle It offers you corrects your use of time, and makes the use of time Its Own. It Who has thus freed you from the past would teach you that you are free of it. It would merely have you accept Its Accomplishments as yours, because It did Them for you. And because It did, They are yours. Spirit has set you free from what you made in the past. You can deny Spirit, but you cannot call upon It in vain. It always gives you what It has accomplished for you in place of what you made. It would establish Its bright Teaching so firmly in your mind that no dark lessons of unforgiveness and guilt can abide in what It has established as holy by Its Presence.

Thank the Divine that Its Holy Spirit is in you and works through you, and that all Its Works are yours. Spirit offers you every miracle that you let It do through you. The Divine’s Children will always be indivisible. As we are held as One in the Divine, so do we learn as One in Spirit. The Divine’s Teacher is as like to Its Creator as are Its Children, and through Its Teacher does the Divine proclaim Its Oneness and Its Children’s. Listen in silence, and do not raise your voice against the Divine’s Voice. For It teaches the miracle of Oneness, and before Its Lesson division disappears. Teach like Spirit here, and you will remember that you have always created like your Creator. The Miracle of Creation has never ceased, having the holy Seal of Immortality upon It. This is the Will of the Divine for all Creation, and all Creation joins in willing this.

Those who remember in every circumstance that of themselves they know nothing, but who have become willing to learn everything, will learn everything there is truly to learn. But whenever they trust themselves to teach themselves, they will not learn truly. For they will have forgotten their motivation for learning by thinking they already know, which they must think in order to assume the role of being their own teacher. Think not you understand anything until it passes the confirmation of perfect Peace, for Peace and true Understanding go together, and never can be found alone. Each brings the other with It, for it is the Law of the Divine that They be not separate. They are Cause and Effect each to the other, so where One is present the Other must be.

Only those who understand that they cannot know unless the Effects of true Understanding are with them can really learn at all. And for this true learning to take place it must be Peace they want, and nothing else. Whenever you think you already know, Peace will depart from you, because you have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully realize that you do not yet know, Peace will return, for you will have invited It to do so by abandoning the ego on behalf of Spirit in you. If you want Peace, you must abandon the teacher of attack. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of Itself, fill every mind that so makes room for It.

The Teacher of Peace can never abandon you. You can abandon It temporarily, but It will never reciprocate. For Its Faith in you is Its Understanding. This is as firm as Its Faith in Its Creator, and It knows that Faith in Its Creator must encompass Faith in the Creation. In this Consistency is Spirit’s Holiness, which It cannot abandon, for it is not Its Will to do so. With your Perfection ever in Its Sight, It gives the Gift of Peace to everyone who perceives the need for Peace, and who would receive It. Make a space for Peace in your heart and It will come. For Understanding is in you, and from It, Peace must come.

The Power of the Divine, from which both Peace and Understanding arise, is yours as surely as It is the Divine’s. You think you don’t know It only because alone it is impossible to know the Divine. Just see the mighty Works that It will do through you, and you must become convinced you did them through It. It is impossible to deny the Source of Effects so powerful that they could not be of you. Leave room for the Divine, and you will find yourself so filled with Power that nothing will prevail against your Peace. And this will be the Confirmation by which you recognize that you have understood.