This morning we’re going to talk about what the ultimate goal of "A Course in Miracles"
is, which is our returning home to the place that we never left.
We’re told in the text that we’re awake in God, dreaming of exile (T-10.I.2:1); that
state of being awake in God is home, and the very end of the text in that glorious “Final
Vision” of Jesus, says and you are—and we are home where You (meaning God)—“we
are home, where You would have us be,” (T-31.VIII.12:8).
Well, there’s nobody who, in this world whether they’re students of the Course or
not, whether they believe in God or not, who would not say on some level, yes, of course,
they want to return home and, at the beginning of Lesson 182 talks about how this world is
not our home.
“I’ll be still an instant and go home,” is the title of the lesson (Lesson 181, I’m
sorry [sic]), and—and where Jesus says after describing the state of alienation that we
all feel in this world, that there’s nobody here who doesn’t know about that (W-pI.182.2:1),
and on some level doesn’t recognize that being in this world is being in a state of exile.
So, every one of us yearns to go home, but when this Course offers us this splendid means
of achieving this glorious end, what do we do?
We run like hell the other way, right?
The Course says the means to return home, the means to awaken from the dream is to give
up judgment—sorry, is not to justify our judgments, not to justify our attack thoughts,
not to seek for causes for our problems, mental and physical, in things that are outside of
us, and so we end up doing, of course, exactly the opposite.
We still make judgments.
So, if we don’t make quite the overt judgments we used to make about people in the world,
we certainly make them more subtly about other Course in Miracles’ students, or Course
in Miracles’ teachers, or the Course itself, and we find ourselves in a perpetual state
of judgment and, as Jesus explains in one very, very trenchant passage, “If you want
the goal, why don’t you accept the means I’m giving you to achieve that goal?”
(T-20.VII.2:6-7) In other words, “Why do you persist in not forgiving?
Why do you persist in choosing a grievance instead of a miracle?
Why do you persist in choosing the ego instead of me as your teacher?”
And this is not meant to instill guilt in us or reinforce guilt in us.
It’s simply meant to point out how ambivalent we are about going home.
Now, my wife, Gloria, many years ago in an Academy class (this was while we were still
in Roscoe) gave her class an assignment, or as an exercise in class, saying, “What if
each of you had in front of you a button and all you’d have to do is press the button
and you would accept the Atonement, awaken from the dream, and be home?
How many would do it?”
And, of course, not a single person said, “I would press that button,” and that’s
the honest answer.
As long as we identify with our physical, psychological self, with the name that we
think is ours, and a history, a body of history that we believe is “our life,” and anticipated
future, etcetera, we’re not going to welcome a course that says, “Simply do what I say
and you’ll awaken from the dream and return home.”
The fear is too great.
The fear of love is too great.
“The Fear of Redemption” section—that’s a very crucial section in the text that says
your fear is not of crucifixion.
“Your real terror is of redemption” (T-13.III.1:10-11).
We all welcome crucifixion.
That’s why our lives are filled with crucifixions.
We’re filled with suffering.
We love to inflict suffering on other people that we feel “have it coming to them.”
It’s the redemption; it’s the undoing of the guilt.
It’s the fear—it’s the love that we’re so afraid of because, as that section points
out, if we really accepted that love we would leap into our Father’s Arms, and the love
and the world that we have made so real, that we are such an intimate part of, would disappear,
which it would (T-13.III.2:5-9).
So, what's very helpful as students of "A Course in Miracles" is to be aware of how terrified
we are of love, how terrified we are of returning home.
As awful as this place is and as awful as this rotted prison is, as the Course says,
(T-26.I.8:3), that we call this body, this “engine of destruction,” (T-20.VIII.4:8),
as awful as all that is, it is our home.
It is familiar, and we’re perversely and strangely comfortable in it, and when in the
presence of love or any symbol of love, we cringe in terror, run like hell and quickly
mount a whole series of defenses against it through attack, through avoidance, through
proving the Course wrong.
“What do you mean ‘I’m not a body.
I am free’?
I am a body.
I am sick.
Hurry!
Call the doctor quick,” Helen, Bill, and I made up once.
That was the ego’s answer to “I am not a body.
I am free.
I am still as God created me,” (W-pI.rVI.in.3:3-5).
But that’s what we do.
“I’m a body.
I am sick.
Hurry!
Call the doctor quick.”
But that’s how we live, whether we’re talking about a physical ailment or an emotional problem.
We always want there to be problems as a defense against the fact that we’re terrified of
going home, and what’s helpful is to be able to look at this without judgment.
That’s the crucial thing: look at the ego and our decisions for guilt and pain and hate
and anxiety and depression, and look at that and say, “This is a defense against the
love that would take me home.
This is a defense against the process of forgiveness that would clear the decks in my mind, cleanse
my mind of all ego thoughts, and would help me awaken from the dream.”
And be aware, “there’s a part of me that wants to return home and there’s a part
of me that is terrified,” and we don’t have to resolve that conflict.
We simply have to look at them both side by side, bringing the darkness to the light,
bringing our fear of returning home to our desperate yearning to return home, and then
trust that the love that is in our right minds would heal that division, undo that dissociation,
and then we would joyously and with great gladness return home where God would have us be.