School for A Course In Miracles
"The universe of learning will open up before you."
(This takes the place of our normal 9am Tuesday meeting)
Most western religious and spiritual paths assume something is really wrong to begin with, and then go about trying to fix it or evolve beyond it. To them, sin and separation are devastatingly real. The Course specifically sets up its version of the Atonement (that nothing happened), right in its Introduction to the Text on page 1.
This Intro immediately spells out that this is not a course about love, loving, or evolving somehow towards love, or even making the world a better place in which to live… but on letting go of our own judgements of others and ourselves which block our awareness that we are still beings of Love:
“The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim however at removing the blocks to the (our) awareness of love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance.” (Text, p.1)
So then, this is simply a course about undoing those blocks, in our minds, to realizing that love is already a done deal, and our true Identity is still part of that Love… period. We are God’s children, always have been, always will be. The Course shows us how to stop pretending that we’re not eternally part of God’s Love… insisting in our criticizing, fixing, and sometimes even ‘helping,’ that we are not ‘still’ as God created us.
“But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father’s plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.” (Les.#317)
So what’s my Father’s plan? In the Course’s 1300 plus pages, Jesus is always encouraging us to look at each other differently by asking the Holy Spirit for help ‘to see beyond the veil,’ see beyond the differences we think we see and even cherish. Early on in the Course he also states that this course is not about behavior (Text p.29, par.2-3). It is not about what we do or don’t do, but about how we “see” each other.
And more to the point: with whom are we seeing or perceiving… our ego or the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells us we have this internal place called the mind, where we are constantly choosing between one of these two teachers or inner guides. (NB: This internal place is not what the world calls our brain, but a deep place within us the Course describes as the ‘mind.’) When we choose the ego as our teacher, we see separation and blame. When we choose the Holy Spirit, we experience the Atonement, that nothing happened and our true Identity is still intact.
Problem is, when we are choosing the ego, we’re not really conscious of that choice… but we do feel its effects. We are irritable, judgmental, and certainly not peaceful. We are quick to point out that our discontent is not our responsibility, but we easily finger-point the culprit as something or somebody else. It’s amazing when we go thru the course of our day, and begin to realize… how many times each and every day we are blaming, and how much we are on high alert to find a new drama where we can find and accuse others of robbing us of our peace.
However, choosing to ask the Holy Spirit to perceive and experience people and things differently is a very conscious and vigilant effort. We first honestly look at how hateful our thinking and seeing is, and even tho we believe we are right, we admit how painful it is to hold onto that righteousness. (Would I rather be right or happy?) This becomes the motivation to hope that ‘there must be a better way,’ and I begin to be a little more willing to find and try that ‘better way’. The better way for Course students is the Course’s process of forgiveness, ie. learning to ‘see’ differently. We forgive, or let go, of our way of viewing the world full of victims and victimizers. Then we allow, or let, the Holy Spirit’s vision, of what we truly are, take its place.
(Lesson Titles #31-35)
Forgiveness in the Course is a return to the awareness of the “Done Deal.” Whatever our eyes might be telling us, we ask for the Holy Spirit’s gift of vision to see/experience that our brother’s innocence (and ultimately our own) is still intact… already there and present, no matter what they are doing or not. This doesn’t mean, in terms of behavior, that we don’t do the next appropriate and helpful thing. But it does mean that while we are doing whatever our chosen behavior is, in our heart of hearts, we come to know we are each already ok, already saved, and already God’s one Son.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky made up fantasy. For those of us who have practiced the Course’s forgiveness, we experience that this is the reality behind all the seeming facades that ’cause’ us to blame and condemn. We actually begin to feel and know, about ourselves and others, what Jesus consistently tells us in Lessons #201 thru 220:
“I am not a body. I am free. I am still (already) as God created me.”
Thank you Jesus!
and Happy Thanksgiving!
A false belief that there can be something or someone other than God or more than God.
A belief in separation projected onto special relationships with things, people, or ideas.
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The first idol we made-up in our minds (and in a sense worshipped) was our belief that we could be a separated Son of God, autonomous and distinct from our Father in Heaven. The Course calls that “new” identity/idol ego. This silly belief gets projected onto time and space, with all our worldly idols a reflection of that original mistaken error.
These ‘idols’ includes all our special love and hate relationships, with things and people we like, and things and people we don’t like. All those “idols” are simply mirrors of that believed separation within us in our mind. That is their purpose in the world… to keep us involved in all the worldly drama, and not realize their source.
The way out, of taking this seemingly gigantic hallucination seriously, is to see past those worldly idols and be willing to have an experience beyond them (with Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s help), to the true innocence of others and ourselves as God’s One Son, still intact. The Course calls that willingness forgiveness.
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“A sick god must be an idol...that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God….a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious and vulnerable.”
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“The body is the ego’s idol...a wall of flesh around the mind.”
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“Idols must fail/fall because they have no life…you came to die…and you see death and disappointment everywhere.”
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“What is an idol? Nothing… Where is an idol? Nowhere.”
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“Whenever you feel fear in any form… be sure you have made an idol, and believe it will betray you.”
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“This is the purpose of an idol: that you will not look beyond (your needing) it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete.”
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“The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children’s toys…The rules he (the child) made for boxes and for bears have failed him…and he is afraid.”
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