You cannot know that your ego and the world are unreal until you experience Reality. A direct Revelation of God, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Holy instant, and the Holy relationship are the experiences that lead you to this awareness. You must experience your Real Self, and you must experience Oneness, to know that what you have been experiencing is not true.

Many students reach a point where they try to accept the intellectual idea that the world is not real without having experienced Reality. They end up deeply conflicted, because they still value the world. Sometimes, they use this idea as a form of denial so as not to deal with painful issues in their life. They will say things like, “I shouldn’t feel this grief/depression/anger, because it’s over something that isn’t real, right?” or “I shouldn’t want a special relationship/money/material objects/recognition, because they aren’t real, right?” But you wouldn’t feel these emotions or desires, except that they are for things that have value for you – which means that they are very real to you. No one values what they know is not real, and you cannot force yourself to accept something is unreal until you have experienced it as unreal.

You are not asked to give up your values, but to invite the Holy Spirit in to “purify” your values. They will not be taken from you, but, rather, used by the Holy Spirit to teach you what parts of them have real value, and what parts do not. When you learn what does not have value, it will naturally fall away from you. You cannot force this.

“You have regarded the separation as a means for breaking your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means of re-establishing what was not broken, but has been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He knows you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you think you are. All this and nothing else would He separate from you.” (T-14.VI.5)

A Course in Miracles is meant to be used in the course of an ordinary life. You are not asked to live a life of deprivation and denial. You are not asked to hide away from the world, but to live right in the middle of it with an awakening mind. You are not asked to be a hypocrite, pretending to not value what you do value. You are asked to invite the Holy Spirit to help you sort out what has real value, and what does not. This is not something that you can do without the Voice for Truth guiding you. If you decide for yourself what is real and what isn’t, what has value and what doesn’t, you are doing the Holy Spirit’s job.

~Liz Cronkhite