From ego incompetence and insanity to Holy Spirit’s sanity: habits and the four stages

This past week, I facilitated four different ACIM study groups/classes (3 on zoom, 1 in person) on the Rules for Decision, habits, and the need for practice, practice, practice in undoing our investment in the insanity of ego thinking by looking without condemnation (i.e. with Holy Spirit) at the masochistic belief in separation. Like Gary Renard‘s teachers remind us, the repetition of right-minded thinking isn’t just a good idea, it’s essential … and I needed that repetition to remind me how important it is to watch my mind for investment in dualistic, divisive, and delusional thinking, which undermines my peace.

I learned about the four stages of competence over a decade ago during training for a process improvement consulting position for the US Air Force. We typically go through four stages when learning any new skill or habit. The four stages are (from Wikipedia):

1. Unconscious incompetence

   The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence *( misery, insanity, uncertainty, loneliness, fear) and the value of the new skill *(forgiveness), before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn *(recognizing that there must be a better way (ACIM, T-2.III.3:6)

2. Conscious incompetence

   Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes – * and forgiving yourself! – can be integral to the learning process at this stage.

3. Conscious competence

   The individual understands or knows how to do something. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration, and if it is broken, they lapse into incompetence. *(Developing implicit trust in the Holy Spirit’s correction of forgiveness is not a “weekend workshop” but rather a lifetime process of questioning the ego’s insane practice of cultivating and nurturing grievances and instead learning to automatically forgive instead of condemn.)

4. Unconscious competence

   The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned. *At this point in our forgiveness classroom (beyond the scope of ACIM), we have completed the Atonement process and no longer need ego, Holy Spirit, or the decision maker; our sane mind is returned to Source.

* – added by this author; not part of the Wikipedia excerpt

In the fourth stage, we no longer need to practice forgiveness because there is nothing left in our mind to forgive. Obviously, those who have attained this stage are few and far between! Perhaps we could call this state of unconscious sanity metaconscious. Thanks to our “Course Nerd” group for inspiration for this word.

“A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. 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.” (ACIM, W-pII.13.1:1-6)

This “guiding star” vision permeates the Course at frequent intervals – the light at the end of the competency/sanity tunnel – while simultaneously providing profoundly practical advice for using every whit of our dreams (both nighttime and “waking”) for forgiveness fodder. It’s no accident that practical and practice are similar words; we become genuinely practical when we practice forgiveness consistently.

Examples of everyday habits where we can recognize this pattern of going from total (automatic) cluelessness to automatic fluency/competency/mastery include riding a bicycle, playing a musical instrument, and tying shoelaces. When we mindfully extend this concept to our forgiveness practice, we realize that it takes consistent vigilance and (ultimately total) trust in our Inner Kindness Teacher, Holy Spirit, or the Course’s Jesus – any ego-free symbol in our mind will work. Eventually, ego sabotage becomes the exception rather than the rule. We slowly but surely learn to accept the Holy Spirit’s correction more quickly and consistently. A classic joke sums this up:

“How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Practice!”

Related words that remind us of the need to develop the forgiveness habit (trusting in Holy Spirit’s guidance:

• consistent (72 instances)
• steady (4 instances)
• steadfast(ly) (6 instances)
• habit (11 instances)
• repetition(s) (14 instances)
• practice (and all its variations) (368 instances)
• practical (without variations) (13 instances)
• practice (without variations) (287 instances)

Practicing the Holy Instant (ACIM, T-15.IV) is an excellent section ACIM that elaborates on the importance of practicing forgiveness, why and how to do it.

The first paragraph of the Rules for Decision has this powerful message in italics for emphasis; if you blink, you might miss the potency of these four words:

“Do not fight yourself.” (ACIM, T-30.I.1:7)

There are 26 instances of the word “fight” or variations of that word in ACIM. Since there is no opposition to perfect Oneness by definition, the only thing that can fight (or appear to fight) must be dualistic, so we have an excellent clue to indicate when we’ve chosen the ineffective (dueling dualistic) thought system of ego.

Here are the first three paragraphs of this section:

2. (1) The outlook starts with this:

²Today I will make no decisions by myself.

³This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. ⁴But it must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. ⁵For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should react to them. ⁶And then another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear.

3. This is your major problem now. ²You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do. ³And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first. ⁴This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. ⁵And therefore angry. ⁶There are rules by which this will not happen. ⁷But it does occur at first, while you are learning how to hear.”

(ACIM, T-30.I.1:1–3:7)

Each step in these rules for decision provides an additional “safety net” that addresses countless variations in the ego’s resistance to truth and the undoing of the belief in separation. If we manage to miss one, another waits below that for our protection, but we must want to consider happily that we might be wrong about everything … and that true humility will change everything! Another metaphor for these rules is a flowchart that “catches” situations (“exceptions“) that don’t agree with our willingness to trust and provides appropriate corrections for each step that would otherwise cause a problem and halt the process. The ego thought system is analogous to malware that requires a complete reboot from insanity to sanity, but to “meet us where we’re at,” ACIM provides a gradual process resembling a slow but steady software cleanup.

These steps are distilled as:

(1) Today I will make no decisions by myself. (ACIM, T-30.I.2:2)

(2) If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me. (ACIM, T-30.I.4:2)

(3) I have no question. I forgot what to decide. (ACIM, T-30.I.6:4-5)

(4) At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. (ACIM, T-30.I.8:2)

(5) And so I hope I have been wrong. (ACIM, T-30.I.9:2)

(6) I want another way to look at this. (ACIM, T-30.I.11:4)

(7) Perhaps there is another way to look at this. What can I lose by asking? (ACIM, T-30.I.12:3-4)

Habits are made by selective forgetting and selective remembering. In the case of our Atonement process, we consistently “forget” ego’s lies and misinterpretations and consistently remember Holy Spirit’s corrections for those lies, learning to generalize that process and make it a habit.

The graph above is zoomed out, averaged, and idealized; it’s certainly only meant to suggest the general flow (averaged over typically a long, long time) from insanity to sanity.

As the graphic above notes, this process isn’t linear; we go back and forth countless times between the ego’s 100% insanity and the Holy Spirit’s 100% sanity – a binary process that reflects that we’re either completely insane or completely sane at any moment. (We’re never actually choosing a portion of each thought system at any instant, as the graph might suggest.) Each taste of sanity gives us the clarity to discern how the belief in separation, grievances, and character assassinations has never satisfied us despite the ego’s protestations and propaganda against those facts. Our forgiveness practice always has fulfilled our heart’s desire to experience the fulfillment of inner peace that results from letting go of wanting to fight our real nature.

The graphic below shows two “zoomed in” region examples; the zoomed in region on the left would be an example of when we have brief moments of 100% sanity (trusting Holy Spirit’s forgiveness process) interspersed with longer periods of 100% insanity (ego’s denial of truth and eternal innocence); the zoomed in region on the right would be an example of an opposite trend. Since the ultimate outcome (complete abandonment of the craziness of the sin-guilt-fear thought system) is certain, every sane moment reinforces our decision to forgive and weakens the ego’s credibility. Averaged over a long time, we seem to gradually abandon ego and appear to be partially sane or insane, but at any given moment, we’re completely one or the other; completely ego-obsessed … or completely peaceful as the zoomed-in portions suggest.

The latter part of Rules for Decision reminds us that we’re constantly aligning with either ego (insanity, incompetence) or Holy Spirit (sanity, competently choosing against the belief in separation) EVERY moment:

“… you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. (ACIM, T-30.I.16:2-4)”

When we look honestly and objectively at our thoughts – which we need Holy Spirit’s help to do – we realize that we are probably clueless most of the time, since we’re still so heavily defended against truth as evidenced by our addiction to projecting grievances, blame and guilt onto almost everyone and everything most of the time, even if only in subtle ways. What is required is gentle perseverance and vigilance, humility, patience, tolerance, and trust. We are babies or infants in our understanding and practice of the Course’s forgiveness; even in our sanest, lucid moments, Jesus generously refers to us as children but never as adults.

A related section in the text of the Course is The Decision for God, an excellent complement to the Rules for Decision. The last few sentences in this chapter provide an excellent summary of the process of deciding against the ego and for the Holy Spirit:

“I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.” (ACIM, T-5.VII.6:7-11)

There are 255 instances of decision in ACIM.

Here is a related post emphasizing the need for gently, patiently practicing the Course’s forgiveness and making it an automatic habit: Groundhog Day: Repeatedly Practicing Forgiveness with Jackie Lora Jones and Bruce Rawles

Here is an excellent related post on the Rules for Decision from the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) hosted by Tim Wise and Lyn Corona.

Here’s a related quote from that post:

“The Course’s metaphysical master class in – as the late great Judy Skutch Whitson called it – Olympic-level mind-training brings us gradually from conscious incompetence to conscious competence as we climb the metaphoric ladder above the battleground of ego’s we-they thinking to the joyous “Aha!” revelation that nothing happened to compromise the Innocence of all Creation of which we are All an essential part, and ultimately share the whole Identity.”