People often query, “The Course says the world I see holds nothing that I want but there is a job, a car, a house, a relationship or something else that I want. What should I do?” You, The Son of God, want nothing in the world because the world and its contents are not real. It is a dream we made up to make believe that we were special and separate from God. It was made from hate and fear. Its only purpose is to make guilt real. So if our Son of God self does not want anything in the world, who is the self that does?

We, as mind, made a personality self with which to live in the unreal world. We think we are this personality self we made up. We have an identity problem. One of our major lessons is to forgive this personality self and let it disappear. The personality self we made is a child and will always be a child. We just think we are adults with adult wants and desires. The wants and desires we think we have are all children wanting something from their childhood. This is the ego’s trick. As long as we keep believing our wants and desires are about the present, we will try to fulfill them there. We will not look to the past where they were made. If we do not address them where they were made, they cannot be undone.

I want somebody to love me. No. You are the Son of God. You do not want someone to love you. You are love. The child personality self wants someone to love them in the past. Does this mean you do not get into relationships? No. But you want to look at who is getting into a relationship and why. What is the purpose of the relationship? If the Holy Spirit is in charge and the relationship is being used to support each person in getting home to God, it has a Holy Spirit purpose. The child selves are still involved but now you know it. What if you had an argument with your partner and you could say, “I’m not mad at you. My child character self is mad at her father who would ignore her when watching sports.” This would go a long way in not making it real and not playing the ego’s guilt game. Upset is always about the past. Take it there, with the Holy Spirit, to be undone.

This practice of “taking it to the past where it was made” eventually ends up at the separation story. Practicing taking reactions or grievances back to your childhood prepares you for that eventuality. What was the original want, the original grievance? A want to be special. All wants in the illusion boil down to that; a personality self wanting to be special. In the previous example a little girl was upset because her father was not paying her enough attention. Do you see how that could be a reflection of the original separation story?

Your personality self wants to do things in the illusion. That will happen until you remember that you are not the personality self, this is not your home and there is nothing that interests you here. The only purpose in participating at all is to give it to the Holy Spirit to be used for salvation, the undoing of all this.

It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give.(M-13.2:1)

The trick, when participating, is not to let whatever “you” are doing be used by the ego to “make it real.” Whatever you do, always ask, with the Holy Spirit, who is doing it, the Son of God self or the personality self. Then ask for what purpose. The Holy Spirit can use anything you are “doing” to teach you that none of this is real, including your personality self. You just want to be aware of the who and the what for. As long as the Holy Spirit is directing you, you will be using whatever you are doing to make your way up the ladder of awareness back home to God.