You shall continue to be confused and thwarted until you find the cause of your confusion.

"When you are down earning your living, you have built in to you knowledge that you must obey instructions for your work. Whether it’s bookkeeping or driving a truck or building machinery you understand the instructions given you at that place of employment must be followed. And there’s good reason for it. You follow instructions you get good results — the product comes out nicely. If you drive your car you’ve had training and experience in driving your automobile under various conditions. It’s built into you to follow instructions for driving your car sensibly and safely and even courteously. These instructions make everything run as smooth as things can run in this uncomfortable world.
We’re going to talk at the start here this morning about you following higher instructions, which can draw you upward from the very low and painful level of very human life.
Now let me put it simply as it can be put at the very start so that you have no excuse now for continuing to be as careless as you have been about your own life. You say you value your life. You don’t value it at all! You’ve been throwing it away! Don’t tell me that you value your life, that you like you. If you liked it you’d be doing something different to it than what you’d been doing up to now.
It’s like you’ve seen the travel logs of the pack horses going down the Grand Canyon carrying people down there. We’re so fixed like these packed animals in our behavior going along a certain path that we’re mule-like in our stubbornness and we won’t let anything jolt us out of those patterns for fear that we might find something new.
You fear anything that is outside your present nature and you resist it. And this is why you are not efficient in following simple instructions. You’re going to hear a lot of them by the time we end here about forty-three minutes from now." Vernon Linwood Howard

You have what may be a vivid picture, in your imagination, of a frightening scenario.

Now you can study it. You can investigate. Inquire with the four questions.

Maybe even make friends with it.

You may find it's not as bad as you think. You may find it's not actually even true. It's not happening. You are safe. You are loved. You are surviving. You are beautiful. You are cared for.

Just like when you were a child and always knew you were not really an orphan. Just having fun pretending.

Are you pretending? workwothgrace

“If ye believe not that I AM he, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24 That is, you shall continue to be confused and thwarted until you find the cause of your confusion. When you have lifted up the son of man then shall you know that I AM he, that is, that I, John Smith, do nothing of myself, but my father, or that state of consciousness which I am now one with does the works. Neville Goddard

When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work. The correction of fear is your responsibility.

You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. At that level you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the same. Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.

Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do. This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged. Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so. This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain. In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow. Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind. Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic. Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate the fear.

It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet.

The first corrective step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an expression of fear. Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps may be summarized in this way:

Know first that this is fear.

Fear arises from lack of love.

The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

Perfect love is the Atonement.

I have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonement, is always a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy. The recognition of this worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement. You have done something loveless, having chosen without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered.

The need for the remedy inspired its establishment. As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you accept the remedy, you have abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs. ACIM