School for A Course In Miracles
"The universe of learning will open up before you."
(Start at bottom of this post with #1 “The Undoing”… and then move up the ladder to the top at #6 “Achievement”)
6) Period of Achievement: The Real World…we ‘go Holy Instant’, and stay there. This is what the Manual calls “advanced teachers of God”. This is when the nine other characteristics of God’s Teachers automatically become part of us. We then share our awareness of the sameness of God’s Son with all persons and all things in all situations.
5) Period of Unsettling: Dark night of the soul… Ken says it’s when all hell breaks loose. We begin to realize that our own belief in an ‘individual self’ is still holding back our awakening to our true Self . It is similar to lesson 93, when we realize that we still are holding on to a not-self of “evil, darkness and sin.” We are learning to lay all judgements aside…in every circumstance, even about who we think we are (at this stage, a decision maker who could choose the something else of an ego).
4) Period of Settling Down: Time of “reasonable peace”… we have learned that asking Jesus for help not only hasn’t killed us or even taken anything away, but we are actually feeling pretty good and hopeful, being able to ask for his vision whenever things push our buttons again. It’s the calm before the storm, or the eye of the hurricane.
3) Period of Relinquishment: Giving up what doesn’t work… we are starting to see that things that used to seem valuable to us, like getting the stuff we thought we wanted (special love), and blaming and judging others (special hate) and keeping away what we don’t want, may not really be working for us. But we are not quite ready to give some of that up. So there can be a sense of sacrifice during this time. What we really learn to relinquish is not stuff or certain behaviors, but we simply let go of keeping Jesus and his perception of us and the world out of our awareness.
2) Period of Sorting Out: Learning what’s valuable, what isn’t…by asking Jesus to help us see that we are not upset or temporarily happy for the reason we think. We used to think certain things/people caused us pain or pleasure, and then the inevitable pain when the other shoe dropped. Now we are beginning to see that what only brings us true peace is inviting Jesus into our awareness, to help us look at our misplaced investments (distractions).
1) Period of Undoing: Changing teachers… from the ego’s ladder that goes nowhere (“lookin for luv in all the wrong places”), we get on the ladder of the Holy Spirit that takes us back to the right mind. We ask Jesus for help to be our new teacher.
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There is also a small kitchen (for our use, with sink and refrigerator, and coffee & tea machine) available next to Bonzel Room on the ground floor of Marian Hall.
And there is also a large refrigerator available in our Woodmen meeting room. It is recommended that you label any refrigerator items with your name, date and room #.
So Jesus walks us gently but thoroughly through the process of letting go of the pain and blame that supports our belief in a separated identity, separate from him and our Father in Heaven. He helps us let those insistent silly beliefs go.
Jesus respects our fear of him and his message, yet he lays down a spiritual roadmap and offers us a way out, a journey out of our chosen misery and seeming isolation… if and when we are ready to take that gentle journey back with him (see Chapter 8: “The Journey Back”).
Overview of Text Chapters:
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Chapters 1-4: Basically a conversation between Helen and Jesus (with material edited out personal to Helen & Bill):
First major shift in writing with Ch. 5, Sec. V (on guilt), from basically a dialogue with Helen in the first four and a half chapters, to Jesus dictating the rest of Text from this point on:
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Next major shift in writing… with more intense emphasis on process of looking at ego’s made-up insanity:
Ch.12: HS Curriculum… realizing the ego’s central teaching: that love is dangerous
Ch.13: Guiltless World.. full blown exposé on our internal unrecognized guilt (longest chap.)
Ch.14: Teaching for Truth… the proverbial ‘calm before the storm’ chapter, before the following three chapters (15-16-17) on special relationships… Chap. 14 includes sections on two major Course themes: the “What is a Happy Learner” and “Our Call for Help/ Our Call for Love “
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Ch. 15, 16, 17… on Special Relationships
Ch. 18… on Our Dream “Life”
Ch.19… Our Own Four Obstacles to Peace
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Ch.20, 21, 22… Second “calm before the storm” (with three chapters on Vision, Reason, and Salvation in The Holy Relationship)… before The Laws of Chaos & Specialness (starting in Chap. 23):
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Ch.23… (Laws of Chaos) Ken Wapnick calls this the “toughest” chapter in the Text, with very little reprieve in it… how way we methodically deceive ourselves into believing in separation.
Ch. 24… The Goal of Specialness, extended description of the “Substitute for Love” in the fifth Law of Chaos.
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Ch. 25-26… Third and final ‘calm’ (a breather), on equal justice for all of God’s one Son, how to move from injustice to real justice (is life really not fair?)… before the last part of the Text.
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Ch. 27-28… more on Dreams: the dreaming of the world and its underlying horrific “secret dream” of the wrong mind.
Ch. 29-30… In-depth discussion of the ego’s idols… and and the steps or ‘rules’ on how to move past those idols (the seven rules for decision-making in Ch. 30).
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Ch. 31… The capstone of the Text : all the themes of the Course are brought together, coalescing in this last great movement of the Course’s grand symphony.
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. (Les. 132, par.6)
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? (Les. 132, par.13)
The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. (Les. 132, par.4)
Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth… As I begin to see, I recognize His reflection on earth. I forgive all things because I feel the stirring of His strength in me… How safe the world will look to me when I can see it! It will not look anything like what I imagine I see now. (Les.60)
Tim discusses the nature of the real world, its purpose , and how to see it.
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A Course in Miracles discusses pain throughout the entire book, using words like suffering and pain more than 600 times. Two sections, that spend a lot of time looking at pain and its purpose, are “The (Our) Attraction to Pain” in Chapter 19, and Lessons 190, 193, 194, & 195 in the Workbook.
One of the most humiliating (to our egos anyway) and sometimes downright infuriating things that Jesus tells us about pain is this… It’s not that we don’t like pain or try to avoid it, but we are actually attracted to it. Really?
It gets worse… He continues with statements like: “In your suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.” (Text, p.659, par.15)
Ok, wait… back up…if that’s even possibly true: what, how… why ??
From Jesus point of view, pain is the great and grand witness to our supposed separation from Our Father. It screams our separated selves are real, and proves it by loudly proclaiming “I’m real, I exist, because look how much pain I’m in!”
(First off, don’t be a martyr. Even Mother Teresa said, if you’re in pain, take your medicine if you wish to. Jesus concurs. If you have a headache, or whatever, take an aspirin, take a walk, or do what makes you feel better. It would be silly not to.)
Unconscious pain permeates all three parts of our make-believe “Disconnect from Heaven” story of sin, guilt, and fear… each component of that saga can at least be described as incredibly painful.. the separation from Source (sin), the feeling of awfulness (guilt), and the sweat of terror of impending doom (fear).
But what if the pain was simply made up to reinforce the seeming reality of the story. We are God’s Son after all, and our cosmic make-believe might not only seem actually real, but so real that we even convinced ourselves to believe it… especially by adding the element of pain to the drama…
“If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real , there is no God.”
(WB#190, par. 3)
Ok, ok… we sorta get the metaphysics, but what do we do now? How do we start to ‘undo’ this whole thing?
When I began working the lessons way back when, I realized one of my problems was… I didn’t consciously believe any of the Lesson titles. For example take one of the the first in-your-face lessons, WB #5 … “I am never upset for the reason I think.” Not maybe, not sometimes, but never.
Seriously? I’m always upset for the reason I think… that’s why I’m upset in the first place. I wouldn’t be upset if it were not for… ok, whatever. At least I can admit that’s what I believe. But, like Byron Katie always says in her sessions with others… “Is that true?”
So to start, I put a what if in front of the lesson (and actually all Lesson titles)… What if I’m not upset for the reason I think? Am I even a little willing to go there? Some part of me says yes. That at least opens the door for me to look at maybe another possibility.
So, what then might be the real reason I’m upset? This is when we/I definitely need to ask Jesus for help to be able to ‘see outside the box.’ My ego experience has always locked me in to blaming others for my pain… sometime myself or my own behavior, but mostly others.
What if I’m upset, in pain, feeling terrible physically or psychologically… simply because I’ve dropped Jesus hand, left my Father in Heaven, and am pretending I’m this separated thing that can feel pain and eventually die? And I’m blaming something or somebody else for the pain I see and feel.
Would I even be willing to entertain the possibility that I made this up?
Another reason we really need Jesus or the Holy Spirit’s help when looking at this is… not only do we not believe it, but it’s really ego-easy to begin beating ourselves up if we did choose something this stupid…. Now I’m not only in pain, plus now I’m blaming myself for creating this mess in the first place… a double whammy ! I hear myself begin the ego litany… “Bad Course student, bad… !”
But then, if I’m willing to listen to another voice, and change ‘course,’ I feel Jesus gently saying to me…
Stop… stop. Look at me; talk to me. Sit with me for a while… let me help you experience something else, something wonderful. I love you. Softly, listen… you are not this separated-alone-self in pain. You and I are connected… to each other, and to everyone else. We always are, we always will be. Be willing to feel this… God is loving us now!
Suddenly, as if someone threw a switch, I’m in a lot less pain, and I’m not as crazed as I was a moment before…
please see these video replays on
https://youtu.be/i5me8P-h4to
https://youtu.be/EkESXfXcaSI
(by Tim)
Jesus tends to use many Christian terms in the Course; however he redefines them all in terms of how he sees us and the world and our purpose of letting go of our seemingly separated identity. This certainly includes how and how often he refers to the Holy Spirit (HS). In Chapter 5, sec.III titled “The Guide to Salvation,” Jesus makes these compelling statements:
“The Holy Spirit is the bridge for the transfer of perception to knowledge…”
“The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea gains as it is shared.”
“The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the ego.”
“The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the spirit.”
“The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace.”
“The Holy Spirit is the perfect Teacher. He uses only what your mind already (seemingly) understands to teach you that you (really) do not understand it.”
“Look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as He understands.”
I recall many times Ken Wapnick would call the HS the ‘memory of God and God’s Son that we took with us into the separation.’ These new thoughts surrounding our view of the Holy Spirit extend and expand our traditional Christian experience of the HS as a dove at Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, or the the tongues of fire that descended upon the Apostles in the upper room at Pentecost.
As we sit with and consider these Course ideas about the Holy Spirit, we begin to see and become open to an active, aware… experience of “something else,” something different and profound and transcending. The real answer to our own crying out…. “there must be another way,” than what we have been doing on our own, because it hasn’t really worked.
Our willingness and desire to “look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as He understands” starts to change the way we see and understand everything, especially ourselves.
Ch.11, p.202 par.1-2… Escaping ego guilt by looking at it:
The “Dynamics” of the Ego…
No one can escape from illusions (of sin and guilt in the mind) unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions (by projecting the blame for our lack of peace on our brothers), for they cannot be dangerous (because illusions are not real). We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this (wrong minded choice for the ego) to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.
2 What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge (love and truth)? And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of fear, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does not exist. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. If reality is recognized by its extension, what leads to nothing could not be real. Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear (and guilt), for it cannot be seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.
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Ch.12, p.219 par.4-5 … “Little Child, you are hiding your head under the cover:”
4 Remember what was said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish. But if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not understand what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do understand yours. Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets (of guilt) you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.
5 Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and Help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal. The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your dreams.
6 You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a child of God in his purpose.
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Ch.12, p.220 par.9… Why we keep fear and guilt hidden:
The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would you not exchange this awareness for the awareness of fear? When we have overcome fear—not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, and not by denying its full import in any way—this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacles (sin, guilt and fear in your mind) to real vision without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against (saying ‘no’ to believing sin, guilt, and fear are real, and very bad). If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, and He will judge truly (He will show us we are still sinless). Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it from you.
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Ch.13, p. 242 par. 1-2 “…it is so crucial to look:”
III. The Fear of Redemption
1 You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred (and guilt) and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement. We have said that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it. Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. You could look even upon the ego’s darkest cornerstone without fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption.
2 Under the ego’s dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed. You realize that, by removing the dark cloud (of guilt) that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer His call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevent you from this. For still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide.
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Ch.13, p. 243 par.4-6 … We must eventually look at our real fear, not only of guilt, but of Love Itself:
You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.
…You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome.
6 You must look upon your illusions (sin, guilt and fear in the mind) and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation (being unreal, they have no foundation). In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion (our chosen belief in the ‘tiny, mad idea of separation’… the TMI) on which the others rest. For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied.
… Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit’s vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought (of sin and guilt and fear) you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
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Text p.262 par.7-8… “Guilt makes you blind:”
7 Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within you would see only the Atonement (guiltlessness is already a done deal), shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.
8 Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.
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Ch.13, p.262 par.1-3… Projecting guilt on others:
1 You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not (in my brothers). The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement (projection) always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt (in our mind), from which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful (the other guy). You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of “sources,” provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all.
2 Insane ideas (about sin and guilt) have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release.
3 In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.
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Ch.15, p.317 par.3 … “The attraction of guilt”… attractive only because we have not looked:
3 The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is, and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here.
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Ch.31, p. 660 par.2… The cost of guilt is death:
2 Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body (the projection of guilt), you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. For constancy (of the real world) arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt (in the mind), because they chose to let it go instead.
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Ch.5, p.85 par.6 … Only 2 choices in teachers on how to look:
That is why the question, “What do you want?” must be answered. You are answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey. The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. You made the other, and so you can.
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Ch.9, p. 168 par.2-3 … Seeing our brothers as guiltless with the Holy Spirit:
2 You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.
3 The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
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Ch.9, p.169 par 2, 3, 6 … It’s the HS job, not ours:
2 You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors (believing in sin and guilt), or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.
… All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit… Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning (believing in the tiny mad idea), and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently canceling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.
Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is. (Which is simply to remember to ask Him for help to see our brothers and ourselves in our minds the way He does… guiltless.)
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Ch.14, p.280 par. 5-6 … Again! The Holy Spirit does it, not you and me:
Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden (of guilt) you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt instead of love (by projecting our guilt onto our brother, and then judging him for it).
6 When you have learned how to decide with God (the HS), all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition (I need to do this on my own) seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do (how to look at guilt in the mind, and let it go). He knows. And He will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this (process of the HS forgiveness… recognizing and letting go of guilt).
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Ch.14, p.288 par.6-7 … Bring your dark secrets to the HS:
6 The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of you together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His.
Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge (oneness). You cannot see alone… The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have.
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Ch.14, p.289 par.1 … And bring Him your “dark denial of innocence:”
1 In the darkness (of guilt) you have obscured the glory God gave you… All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God (the guilt is simply not real, but made-up). It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone.
12 This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger. You do not know him, and your interpretation of him is very fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems to be yourself unharmed. Yet in his hands is your salvation. You see his madness (and guilt), which you hate because you share it. And all the pity and forgiveness that would heal it gives way to fear. Brother, you need forgiveness of your brother, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you will raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.
13 Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins against him (making him guilty), or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice. He has in him the power to forgive your sin, as you for him. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet your savior stands beside each one. Let him be what he is, and seek not to make of love an enemy.
14 Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful He is! You thought He sinned because you cast the veil of sin upon Him to hide His loveliness. Yet still He holds forgiveness out to you, to share His holiness. This “enemy,” this “stranger” still offers you salvation (guiltlessness) as His Friend.
6 See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation (judgement) that you offer the Son of God (your brother and yourself) lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you.
The book A Course in Miracles uses the words heal/healer/healing more than 725 times… only about 100 times less than forgive/forgiveness/forgiven (835). How are forgiveness and healing related in the Course? How are they the same? How are they different?
Early on in my beginning exposure to the Course, the list of Course words associated with a transcendent experience of holiness (ie, guiltlessness) began to grow and grow… a miracle, forgiveness, healing, reason, a holy instant, true perception, Atonement, the face of Christ, etc.
It takes most of us a while to realize that in content they all basically mean the same thing. It frees us to not get so bogged down in sometimes subtle differences, depending on how Jesus is using the words. One of the places in the Course where Jesus explicitly points out their sameness is in the Manual p.55 on “How are healing and Atonement related?”
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Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified (true) perception…
… To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?
… That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood, if the teacher of God is to make progress.
Manual p.85, par. 3:
For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves.
What is their shared meaning, then? That answer lies in a closer look at what and where the “only” problem is, and what and where the one and only solution is. Workbook Lessons 79 & 80 are emphatic and uncompromising that our only problem (in spite of all our seeming issues in the world) is our belief in our mind in separation from Our Father in Heaven, which never really happened. The healing of that belief is our forgiving (i.e. admitting and letting go) of that belief. Our awakening in true perception that separation is impossible and our real identity as God’s One Son is still intact… that’s the definition of Atonement in the Course.
Another similar helpful realization is that all the words, associated with an ego-based wrong-minded experience in our mind, are also the same in content, and could be used interchangeably… sin, guilt, fear, anger, wrong perception, sickness, death, separation, grievances and judgement… all mean the same thing, all stem from our belief that sin/ guilt/ fear and separation from Our Father are even possible.
The mistake or common problem we all have is we take this condition of sin and guilt in our mind and project that onto the world of bodies. Now we think sin and guilt are alive and “well,” but it’s not in us (not in our minds)… it’s in the world, in the other guy. He’s the one that’s to blame now; he’s the guilty party. And in time and space he may well be guilty of doing not very nice things… but that’s not our real issue.
Our brother’s seeming guilt is just a projection and distraction from the sickness and guilt we feel in our own mind for having pushed God out of our own awareness. And that’s where, in the internal place the Course calls the mind, the only remedy or healing can take place for us.
(1) We start with our perception of our brother’s guilt, (2) honestly admit to ourselves that is what we think (that he is to blame for our lack of peace), and then (3) be willing to have Jesus show me my brother’s sin in the world is simply an outward picture of my own inner condition, i.e. belief in my own guilt. Jesus will help me then experience that my brothers’ seeming sins and my own have had no effect on our one true innocent identity. Jesus still loves us… he didn’t go anywhere. We are still God’s One Innocent Son.
This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want (the tiny mad idea of sin and separation). From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires (to see I am guilty of separation), judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward (the guilt is now in others, not me), looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world (the world we see was made as an attack on God and on our Identity as His Son). From judgment (of ourselves as guilty) comes a world condemned (others are now guilty). And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world (the real world) comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God (and not condemnation), to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.
In light of what we said above that the only sickness is in the mind is due to our belief in separation from God, then the solution for that ‘sick’ belief is the Holy Spirit helping us to acknowledge and let go our unconscious chosen belief in that separation .
So how do we deal with sickness, disease, broken limbs, or anything in the body. Do we take our vitamins, or exercise, or should we do any of the stuff we do to keep our bodies healthy?
One way of looking at our bodies is to see them as reflections of the choice between the two inner teachers (ego or Holy Spirit) in our mind. In that sense our bodies are simply puppets of which puppeteer (teacher/guide) in our mind we have chosen. When we choose the voice of separation (ego), we identify and see our made up separated selves as bodies (in which the ego puppeteer actually believes he is the puppet). Just believing we are a separate body moving in a world of separation is the “sick” or psychotic belief… whether the body seems to be healthy or not. Sickness in the Course has nothing to do with the condition of the body. The sickness is that we believe we are a body… period!
Can you imagine going to a puppet show and you realize the puppeteer believes he actually is his puppets! That would probably make us all pretty nervous.
At the mind level, remember the real healing is simply letting go of believing we separated from God and are now vulnerable bodies at the mercy of others. That was the ego’s purpose for believing it’s a body in the first place. We maintain the seeming separation, but the pain we feel (the horror of separating from Our Father) is now blamed on something or someone else. The real source of pain, of belief in separation in the mind, is forgotten and projected out onto others.
So… that projection could be on a person who harmed me, or a germ that made me sick. Whatever it was, the ego says I didn’t do it…I didn’t choose this pain, but it was done to me.
Just below the surface of any physical or psychological pain we are feeling, there is always a ‘face’… some one or some thing we are pointing a finger at… and we are saying to them it’s all your fault. However, it is simply our constant ego need to blame others for the pain from our own internal choice to be separate from God and each other. We still feel the pain of that belief in separation (the pain is a way to prove to ourselves we really separated). But now we blame the pain on something outside our minds… on the world with all its other bodies, and then judge them as the culprit. They are responsible for my pain, not me. That’s the lie we tell ourselves…
Jesus tells us that the question we need to ask of anything is what’s it really for? What’s my body’s purpose?
If our bodies are puppets or reflections of our mind’s chosen inner guide (ego or HS), then the question should not be… do I want an intact healthy puppet or a broken sick puppet to communicate with other puppets. The truly helpful question would be… what do I want to communicate: what is my body’s purpose? Is it to convey the message of the ego and tell others the pain of my separation is their fault? Or is it the Holy Spirit message (from Les. #201-220): we are not bodies (puppets), we are free, and we are still as God created us.
Either a seemingly healthy puppet, or a seemingly sick puppet, can and will work to communicate either message. The choice is which purpose, which message do I want to share (peace or blame) with my brothers… and not what shape my puppet’s in.
Our bodies are simply communication devices. Do we want them operating properly? Jesus doesn’t care about bodies; it’s our mind he’s concerned about. If we think a healthy puppet helps us carry the HS message in our awareness to others and ourselves, then why not take the vitamins. If our puppets function better with exercise, then exercise if we want to. Respect our bodies/our puppets as classrooms to help others and ourselves wake up. Just try not to take the puppet’s make-believe ‘health,’ or lack of it, too seriously.
The world (and the body) is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes (our choice to believe in separation and guilt), acted out so you can look on them (our wishes) and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world (or your body), but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.
Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world (including the way we see our body) must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source (in the mind).
There is no world! (There is no body!)
This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth.
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