A common confusion that befalls many students of A Course in Miracles concerns asking the Holy Spirit or Jesus for help; or, to state it another way, what it means to be in one's right mind. Our everyday problems and specific worries seem so pressing, and Jesus' seeming invitation in the Course to help us with them is so persuasive we almost cannot fail to ask for help to solve them. And indeed, there are some passages in his course that can be misconstrued to mean that we should indeed ask him or the Holy Spirit for such specific help (and one workbook lesson even mentions God in this connection [W-pI.71.9]!). Yet these references, if taken out of context, directly contradict the central message of A Course in Miracles that it is the mind alone, and not the world or body that is the problem. In fact, Jesus twice urged Helen Schucman early in the scribing not to fall into this ego trap when she attempted to ask him for help in alleviating her fear, Helen being a fear- or anxiety-driven person:

The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness [i.e., the mind's decision] to be separate.…If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course (T-2.VI.4:1-4; VII.1:4-6; italics mine).

Yet despite our good intentions of being good Course students -- recall the line: “Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough” (T-18.IV.2:1-2) -- we often fall prey to the ego's clever strategy of concealing from us the true nature of the problem and its source. Simply put, the problem is not our perceived problems in the world and body, but the fact that we think we have a problem. Near the end of the text, Jesus makes the same point in discussing our self-concepts, saying:

Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts. It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple statement that it thinks (T-31.V.14:3-4).

You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the…brain can think (W-pI.92.2).

Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace (T-5.VII.6:5).

Understanding that the decision maker is the thinker enables us to understand the purpose of correction that is the right mind's only function. When we are right-minded we have become observers, looking with Jesus at our choice for the ego. His gentle and forgiving vision allows us to suspend our judgments of guilt, projected in turn onto others. This leads us to the following operational definition: the right mind is looking at the wrong mind without judgment. This undoes the guilt that had preserved the decision maker's error, solidifying it so it could never be approached and undone. This is the meaning of Jesus' exhortation to us not to fall into the ego's seductive trap of sin, guilt, and fear:

Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not afraid of it (T-18.I.6:7-9).

Recognizing this truth enables us, as students of A Course in Miracles, to avoid the ego's snare of believing we are following Jesus' teachings by “going to our right minds” and asking his help for specific problems in our lives. To do so merely reinforces the ego thought system of deceit and distraction that gives us a deluded sense of accomplishment; a false positive that conceals our one function of undoing the ego's negative. This is why Jesus urges us to look at the ego with him so we may see beyond it to the truth, as we see in this series of statements from the text:

No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected.…We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it…we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real (T-11.V.1:1,3,5).

The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth (T-12.II.1:5).

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).

Knowing that to look calmly at the ego means its undoing, the anthropomorphic ego strategizes that the way to preserve its existence in the mind is to make the Son of God mindless. By thus weakening the Son's decision- making mind, rendering it inaccessible to change, the ego ensures that the original error in choosing it can never be undone:

The ego, which always wants to weaken the mind, tries to separate it from the body in an attempt to destroy it. Yet the ego actually believes that it is protecting it. This is because the ego believes that mind is dangerous, and that to make mindless is to heal (T-8.IX.6:1-3).

We are told repeatedly in A Course in Miracles that purpose is everything, and that the only question we should ever ask of anything is: What is it for? (e.g., T-17.VI.2:1-2). Therefore, we need to examine the purpose behind our asking for specifics, when it so clearly goes against the message of the Course. The answer to this question is obvious when we consider the ego's strategy of mindlessness. To ask for specifics reflects the belief that the world is real, reinforced by our focusing attention on the body and not the decision-making mind. Jesus addresses this in the beginning of The Song of Prayer, the companion pamphlet that is an extension of the Course's principles. The context is prayer, or asking the Holy Spirit for help:

To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it. Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God's Hands.…What could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a bit of trifling advice about a problem of an instant's duration? (S-1.I.4:2- 3,5-6)

A problem cannot be solved if you do not know what it is. Even if it is really solved already you will still have the problem, because you will not recognize that it has been solved. This is the situation of the world. The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized.…The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer.…All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved (W-pI.79.1; 4:2; 6:1).

By becoming involved with tangential issues, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. The ego's characteristic busyness with nonessentials is for precisely that purpose. Preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding learning progress (T-4.V.6:4-6).

The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear (T-2.IV.5:1-3).

Any specific question involves a large number of assumptions which inevitably limit the answer. A specific question is actually a decision about the kind of answer that is acceptable. The purpose of words is to limit, and by limiting, to make a vast area of experience more manageable. But that means manageable by you (Absence from Felicity, p. 445).

In order to understand what Jesus means by correction in A Course in Miracles, we need to examine one more important principle in his teaching: the ego itself has no power. In truth, the ego is nothing, being but an illusory thought of separation that did not happen because it could not have happened. Therefore, the ego's major ally of sin and guilt has no true power, being nothing, and the material world that arose from such nothingness must also be nothing. And so why should we attempt to solve a non-existent problem that is a projection of a non-existent thought? This makes no sense. What does make sense, however, is recognizing that it is the decision maker that has the power here, not the ego. Thus the problem we correct is not the ego, but the decision-making mind. There are several places in A Course in Miracles where Jesus discusses this, for example:

Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you (T-4.VI.1:2).

The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies.…The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it (T-7. VI.3:1,5-6).

Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it (T-7.VIII.5:1-2).

Another message to Helen, this one in 1975, underscores this teaching. As was her wont, Helen asked Jesus for help in knowing what to say to someone who was in trouble. One would think that this would have been a request fully in keeping with the Course's teachings. After all, we are supposed to be helpful to others. However, this is a request not only not in keeping with Jesus' message to us, but is antithetical to it. Recall his words to Helen about how depreciating the power of the mind is “in direct opposition to the purpose of this course.” Asking for behavioral help means that the one who asks has already shifted the problem from the mind to the body, in adherence to the ego's strategy of mindlessness that ensures that the decision-making mind will have been rendered impotent. This, therefore, is what Helen was told in response to her question:

You cannot ask, “What shall I say to him?” and hear God's answer. Rather ask instead, “Help me to see this brother through the eyes of truth and not of judgment,” and the help of God and all His angels will respond (Absence from Felicity, p. 381).

The word undoing, as well as its derivatives, appears quite frequently in A Course in Miracles and is used as a way of defining the role of Atonement, salvation, forgiveness, and the miracle -- the Holy Spirit's correction. See the following examples (my italics):

Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors (M-18. 4:6).

Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles (T-1.I.26).

The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done (T-28. I.1:1-3).

And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful (T-18.IV.8:5-7).

…salvation…is the undoing of what never was…(W-pI. 43.2:3).

Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear (W-pI.46.2:3-5).

The ego seeks to “resolve” its problems, not at their source, but where they were not made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there will be no solution. The Holy Spirit wants only to make His resolutions complete and perfect, and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the separation more and more undone, and union brought closer (T-17. III.6:1-4).

Indeed, Wordsworth's famous words are true, the world is too much with us, but its seeming hold on our attention is weakened to the extent we realize that we are the ones holding on to it. As the need to defend against our non- existent guilt lessens, we are increasingly able to ask our Teacher's help to look at the world for what it is: a maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem. As the silliness of our erstwhile position dawns on our minds, our gentle laughter, joined with Jesus', allows the world to “ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it” (M-13.1:2). We are ready for the world we truly want: the real world of light and peace and joy.

A miracle is a correction.…It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings (W-pII. 13.1:1,4-6).

With Jesus as our guide, we have successfully seen through the ego's attempts at camouflaging its source in the mind by diverting our attention to the mindless world of bodies, problems, and ineffective solutions. The mind's decision for sin, perceived to be very real, has been buried beneath a world in which sin is perceived, not only as a reality, but as a trait and event in everyone except ourselves. Thus is sin kept impervious to change, and the guilt and fear it engenders beyond all meaningful remedy. Confusion reigns supreme, but its true source in the mind is kept hidden by our concerns, leading to the demand that God give us answers to our made-up problems.

Into this hopeless situation, Jesus' voice calling us to look at the world differently -- the role of forgiveness -- is heard at last. It returns our attention to the mind's guilt, allowing it to be undone as its dark illusion softly disappears in the light of truth. As belief is withdrawn from the ego, it evanesces, and our minds are free to choose the gentle remedy of Atonement. For an instant the thoughts of separation and Atonement remain, and then both are gone, leaving only God and His one Son:

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete (C-4.6).

O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love (C-4.8).