ACIM Chapter 14. II. The Happy Learner P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 14. II. The Happy Learner P 1, 2

II. The Happy Learner

1. The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. ²You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. ³The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. ⁴This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. ⁵You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. ⁶Yet it may still make sense to you. ⁷Have faith in nothing and you will find the “treasure” that you seek. ⁸Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. ⁹You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. ¹⁰A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. ¹¹For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

Indeed, we have made something of nothing but can’t make it true. For instance, I have believed that I must work hard to wake up from this dream of separation. This is not true, but I made it true for me by believing it. There is a book I like a lot, A Course in Miracles – The Direct Path.

Here is something it says that is helpful for me.

For a standard light bulb, there are only two possibilities – on or off. There is no in-between. When the bulb is off, there is darkness. When the bulb is on, there is light. We are sometimes taken aback by the fact that the author of the Course seems adamant that there are always only two choices, two possibilities. Darkness or light, Spirit or ego, true or false. Yet we must accept that the vast field of complexity the ego has created is nothing more than an attempt to confuse. The universe really is much simpler than we, as the ego, imagined – it really is black and white, true or false. For the ego then, there is only one possibility – off. For the enlightened ego we created, there are two possibilities – on OR off. For Spirit, there is only one possibility – on. The ego (and the enlightened ego) do not exist. Therefore: The only real possibility here is on. If the light appears to be off, there appears to be a state that does not exist. This is an ego illusion.

McCauley, D.. A Course In Miracles – The Direct Path (p. 81). 232 Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The enlightened ego is just a step we all take, not the end of the path.

He goes on to point out that if we stay with the enlightened ego (where most of us are) we will continue to go back and forth between on and off. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to experience “nothing” while believing it is what I need in order to be happy. When I am experiencing life from the perspective of the ego mind, I remind myself that the light is still on. I have a choice. Live life as an awakened mind or live it as the ego mind, and I am choosing to see the light more often than the dark. I will do this until my mind has shifted permanently, and reminding myself of the truth often is helping.

II. The Happy Learner P 2

2. The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. ²This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. ³Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. ⁴Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. ⁵Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. ⁶The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. ⁷The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

So, how is it that I have made the truth hard to learn? It certainly seems like the truth would be apparent, and yet, it seems it is not. I look at it like this. The world is made of our thoughts believed. Jesus tells us that all this chatter in our minds is not our real thoughts. We choose to have the chatter, and we choose to believe it. From these thoughts come the world we see. And it is these thoughts that determine our perceptions of what we have made. And it is all very complex.

We believe that there are billions of others who are unlike us.

In this crowded world, we believe there is not enough to go around, and so we compete with these others for the little there is. Even the richest of us are not satisfied and so spend their lives in competition with others who are rich, vying for the title of richest. All the while, others are starving, but what has that to do with those that have?

And some are healthy, while others are sick. Some work diligently to find magical solutions to ease the burden of the sick and bring them to health. Others are just relieved that the sickness has passed over them and have little concern for the sick ones. Some love the outdoors, and others only see the outdoors in terms of its usefulness to their personal needs.

There are invisible boundaries between sections of the land, and people fight to protect their side of the boundary from incursions by those on the other side of this invisible line. Science makes discoveries only later to discover they were wrong. I like someone, and then I don’t. I don’t even like everything about any one of them or even myself. There is no end to the idea of separation, and in this illusory world, ideas become form, and we believe they are real.

The more we try to make something of nothing, the more complex it becomes and the less happiness it affords us.

All the while, we have in our minds the Holy Spirit placed there by God to help us find our way through this web of deceit. All we need do is accept the help. In the end, He is telling us that only the truth is true. The truth is we are the Sons of God, existing where He placed us in our creation. Therefore, anything else cannot be true.

Everything I learn in A Course in Miracles, all my practices, and my forgiveness processes are for the simple purpose of helping me to realize that I want only the truth. The first few lessons in the Workbook are the foundation for the rest of the Course. I don’t know how many times I read them and felt only an unspecified irritation.

I told myself that they didn’t make sense.

Nothing I see means anything, and I have given it all the meaning it has for me. Nor do I understand anything I see. My thoughts don’t mean anything. I am upset because I see something that is not there? What does that even mean, I would ask myself. I see only the past? Of course, I see what is in front of me, right?

All the while, I attributed my upset to the nonsensical nature of these lessons. I was really upset because I was being shown that what I believed was not true. Now, when I do these lessons, I breathe a sigh of relief. I understand them, and I accept them. I know that they are true even as I still sometimes resist them when I want to keep believing in some part of my illusion. But only the truth is true, and so, in the end, I let the stories go and do so gladly because I really do want the truth. I remind myself that darkness is the illusion. The light is still on.

Contemplation for paragraphs 1, 2 from 2026

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