Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 22: True Reason and the Final Question

 

7. The Final Question That Must Be Answered

It is time to understand that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless. Being helpless is the cost of your belief in flaw, separation, and unholiness. Powerlessness and helplessness are the separation’s condition, the one requirement that it demands to be believed and maintained. Only the powerless and helpless could believe in separation and sin. Enormity has no appeal except to the little. And only those who first believe that they are little could perceive attraction there.

Those who do not identify with their holy Self unconsciously believe they have betrayed It, and from such betrayal they must defend themselves by keeping their belief unconscious. But this split in awareness cannot be resolved by keeping it out of awareness. You must be for your sisters and brothers or against them. Either you love them or attack them, protect their Unity or perceive them shattered and destroyed by your attack.

No one really believes that the Children of the Creator of the All are powerless. Therefore those who perceive themselves as helpless must believe that they are not Children of the Divine. What can they then perceive themselves to be except in opposition to these Children? And what can they then do but envy them their Power, and by their envy make themselves afraid of It? These are the shadowy ones, silent and afraid, alone and not truly communicating, fearful that the Power of the Children of the Divine will destroy them, and raising up their helplessness against them. They join the army of the powerless to wage their secret war of bitterness, vengeance and spite against their sisters and brothers, to attempt to make them the same as they believe themselves to be. Because they do not know that they are One with their sisters and brothers, they know not whom they battle.

They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely as another to attack their comrade in arms or turn upon themself as to remember that they thought they had a common enemy and cause. Frantic and loud and strong the shadowy ones seem to be. Yet they do not know who their enemy is. They only perceive that they hate it. In hatred they have come together, but have not joined each other. For had they done so hatred would be impossible.

The army of the powerless will always be dispersed in the Presence of Strength. Those who are strong are never treacherous, because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their dream.

How would an army act in dreams? Any way at all. In dreams an army could attack anyone, with anything, for any reason, because dreams have no Reason in them. A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant, and a mouse roars like a lion. And what appears to be love is turned to hate as easily. This is no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam.

The army of the powerless is weak indeed. It has no enemy and no weapons. Yes, it can seem to overrun the world of illusions, and seek an enemy there. But it can never find what is not there in truth. Yes, it can dream it found an enemy, but this will shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never comes to rest in victory. And as it runs, it turns against itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the great enemy who always eludes its murderous attack by turning into someone or something else. How treacherous does this enemy appear to be who changes so, that it is impossible even to recognize it!

Yet hate must have a target. There could be no faith in separation without an “enemy.” They who believe in separation would not dare believe that they have no enemy! Then they would have to admit that no one made them powerless. Reason would surely bid them seek no longer what is not there to find. Yet first they must be willing to perceive a world where the belief in separation and sin is gone. It is not necessary that they understand how they can perceive such a world. Nor should they try to understand. For if they focus on what they cannot currently understand, they will merely emphasize their helplessness, and let separation tell them that their enemy must be themselves. So let them only ask themselves these questions, the answers to which they have to decide for themselves in order to have it done for them:

 

Do I desire a world in which I direct my mind, instead of one in which my mind is directed for me?

Do I desire a world in which I am strong instead of helpless?

Do I desire a world in which I have no “enemies,” and where the belief in separation and unworthiness has been undone and has no meaning?

And, just because it is the Truth, do I desire to see the Real World and my sisters and brothers in it, which my faith, belief and perception have denied until now?

 

You have already answered the first three questions, but perhaps not yet the last. For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. Yet Reason would assure you these questions are all the same.

This Course stated that we would make this time of rebirth different by making it all the same, through releasing all belief in differences and separation. This time that we have dedicated together to Truth and a new thought system would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. This final question, which is indeed the last you need answer, still seems to hold a threat that the other questions have lost for you. And this imagined difference attests to your belief that Truth may be the enemy you yet may find in the army of the powerless. Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of confirming separation, and therefore not accepting Strength.

Remember that the choice of Truth or fantasy, Strength or helplessness, is the choice of whether to heal or attack. For healing comes from Strength, as attack from helplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal. And whom you want to be healed must be the one you choose to be protected from attack. And what is this decision except the choice of whether to perceive a brother or sister through the body’s eyes, or let them be revealed to you through vision? How this decision leads to its effects is not your concern. But what you want to perceive must be your concern, and choice. This is a course in cause, and not effect.

Consider carefully your response to the last question you must still answer. And let Reason tell you that it must already be answered, and is answered in the other three. And then it will be clear to you that as you perceive the effects of separation, in any form, all you need do is simply ask yourself:

 

Is this what I would perceive? Is this what I want to be real?

 

Your perspective – how you choose to frame your world – is your one decision that becomes the condition for what occurs. It is irrelevant to how it happens, which is not your concern, but not to why it happens, which is your choice. You have control of this. And if you choose to see a world with only sisters and brothers and no enemies, in which you are strong, and in which you direct your mind, the Means to see it – the Real World – will be given you.

Why is this final question so important? Reason will tell you why. It is the same question as the other three, except in time. The others are decisions that can be made, and then unmade, and made again, as suits the circumstances. But Truth is constant and therefore has as a requisite a State where vacillations are impossible. You can desire a world in which you direct your mind instead of one in which your mind appears to be directed for you, and still change your mind about it. You can desire to exchange your helplessness for Strength, and lose this same desire as a little glint of “sin” still attracts you. And you can desire to see an innocent world, and still let an “enemy” tempt you to use the body’s eyes, and change what you desired before.

In content all these questions are the same. For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world that your belief in separation shows you for what the Holy Spirit sees. For it is what the Holy Spirit sees that the world of separation denies. And therefore those whose perspective looks on separation are perceiving the denial of the Real World. Yet the last question adds the context of constancy in your desire to see the Real World, so the desire becomes the only one you have. By answering the final question “yes” you add sincerity to the answers that you have already made to all the rest. And only then have you renounced the option to change your mind, i.e., to change your perspective again. When giving up the option to change your mind again is what you truly want, the other questions are really answered.

Why do you think you are unsure that the others have been answered? Would it be necessary that they be asked so often if they had? Until your decision of perspective and attention has been sincerely made – proactively so that it will not change with changing circumstances – the answer to these questions will be both yes and no. For you have answered “yes” without perceiving that “yes” cannot mean “maybe” or “no.”

No one intentionally decides against their happiness. But they may do so if they don’t know they do it. And if they perceive their happiness as ever-changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing, then they do decide against it.

Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion and has no meaning. Real Happiness must be constant because It is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy can be seen only through constant vision. And constant vision can be given by Spirit only to those who desire Constancy.