The
Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You
who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not
happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is
happiness. This 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. You do not realize
that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely
nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the
“treasure” that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already
burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little
piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For 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.
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. This
is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very
difficult for twisted minds. Consider 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.
Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to
listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet
you do not see it. The 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.
All
this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. To those
unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing
that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:
The truth is true.
Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not
there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need
to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith
to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will
find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will
understand it.
Like
you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be true. He brings the
light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines your brothers
see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than
you see. They will be happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them, because it
teaches them release from nothing and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains that
seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to
them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must
have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and
release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.
When
you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so you learn that what
seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be a happy learner. You will never learn how to
make nothing everything. Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish
it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it is
undone. I said before, “Be not content with nothing,” for you have believed that
nothing could content you. It is not so.
If you
would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to
be unlearned for you. And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the
firm foundation that truth is true. For what is builded there is
true, and built on truth. The universe of learning will open up before you in all its
gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back.
The
happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he meets the conditions of
knowledge in the Kingdom. All this lies in the Holy Spirit’s plan to free you from
the past, and open up the way to freedom for you. For truth is
true. What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the dark
door that you believe is locked forever. You made this door of nothing, and behind it is
nothing. The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of
nothing. Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ Who gives it to you, that you
may join Him in the holy task of bringing light. For, like your brothers, you do not
realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep of darkness.
Behold
your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. The light in
you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep. The vision of Christ is given the
very instant that it is perceived. Where everything is clear, it is all holy. The
quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible to
deny the simple truth. For there is nothing else. God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him
with everything. Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?
A Course in Miracles
Chapter 14