We traded our awareness of Heaven for the awareness of dreams. We constructed an enormous ladder and vigilantly climbed down it, learning everything we needed to learn at each rung of the ladder to make the separation, our self-reliance and our specialness seem real. We taught ourselves to believe the most incredulous things and employed dissociation to forget that we were making this all up and teaching it to ourselves. We made up the idea of sin, taught it to ourselves and then chose to forget we did. Then we interacted with it as if it were real. We descended deeper and deeper into unawareness with every rung. And here we are.

Our journey up the ladder commences when we decide to retire from the world and seek reality instead; when we finally arrive at the “there must be a better way” moment we all must come to. From there, with our Guide, the Holy Spirit, we begin our ascent, undoing everything we have made on every rung on the way up.

 

From then on, we are ever either making our way up the ladder of awareness or we are hanging out on our present rung. We cannot climb up the ladder if we do not let go of the previous rung. The rung on which we presently find ourselves is populated with people, places and things. It is also populated by concepts, perceptions and beliefs. In order to move up to the next rung, as we climb home to God, we must come to that rung with empty hands. We must be willing to let go of everything on the previous rung. Every way of thinking about everything must be open to correction. If we were not thinking incorrectly, would we still seem to be here? We must come in humility wanting nothing but the truth.

On this journey, the Holy Spirit will provide us with everything we need if we do not interfere. The things on the previous rung, including ways of thinking, that are still useful to us in our learning, will be on the next rung. Things that are no longer useful will drop away. If something is still on our rung, we can be sure our lesson to be learned from it has not yet been learned.

Having a preference for or a reaction, good or bad, to what is on our rung is just an ego temptation to make real. All forms on all rungs have the same content, fear and guilt. Only the ego is concerned with form and only because it knows that the first step in being concerned with form is to make it real. The ego is desperate to have us make real our miscreations because then we will not give them, and therefore it, up. Each rung of the ladder is an opportunity to learn that something else we made is not real. This is our freedom work.

And that is our journey. We came down the ladder making everything unreal real by believing it. On our way back up the ladder we must learn how to withdraw our belief, which we also made by the way, from the unreal. All this is contingent on our capacity to have empty hands, to stand in I do not know, to have no preference of outcome and most importantly to take direction from the Holy Spirit. We would not still seem to be here if we were not minds in which illusions still persist. Adjustments and corrections to our thinking are necessary until the end. The only way to learn is to stand in I do not know. If we believe we already know, how can we learn? Come with empty hands, grab the next rung of the ladder and be amazed.

“Henceforth, hear but the Voice for God and for your Self when you retire from the world, to seek reality instead. He will direct your efforts, telling you exactly what to do, how to direct your mind, and when to come to Him in silence, asking for His sure direction and His certain Word. His is the Word that God has given you. His is the Word you chose to be your own.

And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful follower, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real.” (W-ep.3:2–4:1)

That He might teach us it is not. His Plan not ours. Empty hands.