“Level confusion,” a condition that everyone who believes in the world of illusions suffers from, results when we haven’t sorted out what is the same and what is different – dreams and Reality, true cause and effect, the past and the present, and what is and isn’t our responsibility in our journey of awakening – therefore mixing up the true and the false in our minds. Level confusion thus keeps us stuck in uncertainty, contributing to the misuse or waste of our creative power. “Sorting out” what is the same and what is different as the remedy for level confusion is accordingly a major practice in the Course. Sorting out what is the same and what is different means being clear that all things that are true and real share the same qualities of Truth and Reality and therefore are all the same; that all things untrue and unreal share the same qualities of falseness and illusion and are therefore also all the same; and that these two realms, Reality and illusion, are different from each other in every way.
The type of level confusion depends on the context of our experience: outwardly focused, inwardly focused, or time focused. Outwardly-focused “perceptual level confusion always involves perceiving with the body’s eyes, i.e., confusing the body with the mind or the mind with the body, which can also be experienced as “mind-brain confusion”—believing that the brain generates thought rather than being a receiving device for thought.” Inwardly focused “awareness level confusion involves confusing the nature of impulses being acted on in consciousness, or confusing the level of awareness from which control and responsibility are being experienced.” Time-focused “dimension level confusion involves confusing the dimension of time being served and experienced, namely either the past or a future that bypasses the present and is therefore a continuation of the past, or the present now.”
Seeing never generates perceptual level confusion, the superconscious never generates awareness level confusion, and experiencing Eternity in the now never generates dimension level confusion, because the now, the superconscious, and seeing “can’t be entered in a state of confusion. However, level confusion can result from assigning false attributes, such as fear, to seeing, to the superconscious, or to Eternity, that obviously have nothing to do with these wholly beneficent states.” “Knowing, or the superconscious, can be perceived as an attacker by the ego (which always feels its existence under threat), but knowing cannot attack.”
Regardless of whether the levels of perception, awareness, or dimensions of time are confused, ultimately level confusion always involves mistaking the dream of this world as reality. “The presence of level confusion always results in an unreliable sense of reality because it is ultimately confusion about dreaming and awakening, and accordingly results in an unreliable sense of what appropriate behavior. . . is in any situation.” “The dreamer who doubts the reality of their dream while they are still dreaming is not really healing the level-split between awakening and dreaming. You have dreamed of a separated self, and you have believed in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not changing.”
“It has been clarified that the basic conflict is one between fear and Love, and that the proper organization of the psyche rests on a lack of level confusion, specifically a lack of confusion about the level in or on which true creative activity takes place, the superconscious, and that on which miscreation takes place, the unconscious.”
“It has been clarified that miracles are the means of correcting level confusion. In reality, all mistakes must be corrected at the level at which they occur.” “The sole responsibility of miracle workers is to accept Atonement themselves. This means that they know that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once they accept this, their mind can only heal. By denying their mind any destructive potential outside itself, which is the right use of denial, and reinstating its purely constructive powers through knowing that the mind’s errors, or destructive potential, have already been healed and undone by the Atonement, they place themself in a position where they can undo the level confusion of others. The message that they then give to others is the truth that their minds are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from overestimating its own learning device – the body – and restores the mind to its true position as the learner [of its Teacher, the Holy Spirit].”
It may be noticed that perceptual level confusion seems to primarily involve the mind, given that perception is simply the mechanism for the mind to see reflected back to itself the kind of creative activity it is generating in the world at any moment. “To you perception is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a person thinks, so do they perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world.” “Perception seems to teach you what you perceive, through showing this to you. Yet it only witnesses to what you taught in making the perception. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you wanted to be true.”
Awareness level confusion seems more to involve the will, in that the levels of awareness involve actions and behavior generated in consciousness in response to subconscious and external impulses as well as to superconscious guidance and control, when these are invited. It also involves creative activity (an aspect of will) in the superconscious, as well as miscreative activity in the unconscious as long as the sublevels of the unconscious are not in right alignment.
Dimension level confusion seems to involve the heart, given that the dimension of time one dwells in (the past/future or the present now) is where one’s “treasure” is believed to be, which is where one’s heart will also be.
When awakening is complete and the mind is unified again, mind, heart and will naturally will also be unified in the complete and whole Self. At that point all levels and thus all level confusion will be dissolved and miracles will no longer be needed, so the unconscious / subconscious and the limited conscious awareness will apparently also be gone. Then the superconscious Self within the Creator, the Perfect Creation and the Divine Family will alone remain in Eternity.