So we set it up so that we would be powerless, and other people and other forces would be
seen as causing and instrumental for bringing on our pain, and all that Jesus says we have
to do is see the problem as it is and not the way we have made it up (T-27.VII.2:2).
That’s it; that’s healing.
When he describes what forgiveness is, he says, “Forgiveness is still, and quietly
does nothing.
It merely looks, and waits, and judges not,” (W-pII.1.4:1,3); same thing; very simple.
He tells us, also in the workbook, the miracle “looks on devastation, and reminds the mind
that what it sees is false'” (W-pII.13.1:3).
All three statements are saying the same thing: “You simply look with me,” with Jesus,
“at the problem, and if you let me help you, you will understand as I do, that your
problem is not outside because there is nothing outside.
You put it outside so you would believe it were outside.
What you see outside you projected outside, and I will help you understand why you have done so.
So all the things that we’ve discussed, and then looking at it with the love of Jesus
next to you, as he says at the end of Chapter 23, “Who with the Love of God upholding
him [will] find the choice [between] miracles [and] murder hard to make?”
(T-23.IV.9:8), which means you cannot do it without his love guiding you, or any other
symbol—love of any other symbol that you choose; doesn’t have to be Jesus, but you
must look at the choice between miracles and murder; “miracles” being the Atonement
principle in the right-minded box and “murder,” of course, being in the wrong-minded box.
But you must actually see that’s what the choices, because you must be able to see that
your existence was built upon a coffin in which rested God, and then you try to kill
off everybody else and make them into the criminals so they’ll be punished for the
coffin on which you stand.
And the guilt over that, of course, is enormous, and if you just want to begin to understand
the enormity of that, just consider the entire physical universe literally, literally rests
on the projection of that error of believing we separated from God.
It was our guilt that literally drove us insane and out of our minds.
So this entire physical universe is simply a bad dream.
As near infinite as it appears to be, spanning, god knows, how many billions of years, as
complicated as the cosmos is with all the galaxies; galaxies upon galaxies upon galaxies
that they don’t know about yet, and then many of them existing in other time dimensions;
on and on; very, very complicated; it’s all one dream.
It all comes from one source: guilt.
So that gives you an understanding of how powerful our belief in guilt is.
You look at the problem as it is and not the way you set it up (T-27.VII.2:2).
There’s nothing simpler.
The principles of the Course are very simple and very basic.
The problem is that we don’t follow them.
Why? because we don’t want to let go of the problem.
That’s, again, what you must really understand and appreciate about yourself and everybody else.
That’s why people do such outrageous things, and the most outrageous things are usually
done by people who are religious in all parts of the world, and that does not exempt Course
in Miracles’ students because they’re able to use their religion and their spirituality
as a defense against the hatred that’s breeding in their own minds.
It’s the hatred of themselves for what they believe they’ve done, that they can’t
wait to get rid of and dump on the infidels, the pagans, the heretics, the non-believers,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
And because it’s done in a religious context it seems to have God’s blessing on it at
which point, of course, God becomes as insane as everybody else.
The only thing to know is that, which god is more insane?
The Jewish god, the Christian god, the Buddhist god, the Hindu god, the Muslim god, the Course
in Miracles’ god, the Christian Science god; it doesn’t matter.
They’re all insane because they’re all seen as ways of justifying the ego thought
system of their followers, and they all somehow seem to condone judgment and sometimes murder.
That’s why almost every religion or spirituality that began on a very high level with the inspiration
of its founder ended up so, so absolutely terrible because people get terrified of the truth.
They get terrified of the non-dualistic truth that reality is all that there is, and reality
non-material, non-temporal.
It doesn’t have division; it’s perfect Oneness.
There hasn’t been a religious movement or spiritual movement that that hasn’t happened to.
Hinduism began with the Vedas and Upanishads; very, very high teaching.
It ended up just like the Roman Catholic Church: statues, rituals, hatreds; all kinds of things.
Christianity began with Jesus.
You can’t get any better than that.
Look where it ended up?
And don’t be surprised when the same thing happens with "A Course in Miracles."
That doesn’t invalidate the inspiration that began a movement any more than it would
the Course, but it simply says that people get frightened and, as the Course itself says,
“Frightened people can be vicious" (T-3.I.4:2).
They can be very vicious but underlying that is all fear.
It’s the fear, “Who would I be without my anger?
Who would I be without my hatred?
Who would I be without my judgment?
Who would I be without me?”
That’s the real fear.
And what defines “me” is my self-hatred because that’s how I was born.
My ego was born out of hatred for God and then hatred for myself over what I believe
I did to God.
So that’s where I was born, in that and, again, following the laws of the split mind,
whatever I believe about myself will be so, so awful and horrific that I will repress
it, and whatever I repress I project out.
And since we all did this as one Son when we made the collective—as a collective we
made the cosmos, then that one Son just fragmented into billions and billions and billions of
pieces, and each little fragment contained the whole; the whole of the ego’s insanity
and the whole of the Holy Spirit’s sanity, which corrects and undoes the ego.
And each of us carries that in its entirety; the full-blown ego system and the full-blown
Holy Spirit system, but each of us has to say and each of us were born out of the same
fear, so why should that be a surprise that everybody hates everybody else?
There’s always judging and criticizing, if not killing and maiming everybody else because
that’s what the world is.
It began with a killing.
Don’t forget that: it began with the murder of God and, since “Ideas leave not their
source,” (T-26.VII.4:7; W-pI.167.3:6), everything else simply is a shadowy fragment of that
original thought.
That’s the sickness.
Sickness has nothing to do with the external symptoms.
The sickness is the thought that, “I did this, and not only that I did it but I’ll
do it again!
In fact, not only would I do it again, I’m doing it again each and every moment I’m
taking a breath, each and every moment I think I’m here.
Each and every moment I have to indulge my specialness I’m killing God again.”
That’s what Jesus means in Chapter 16 when he says if you knew your “special relationship
[were] a triumph over God, would you want it?” (T-16.V.10:1).
And the awful truth is that, even though he tells us it’s a triumph over God, we still want it.
How many Course in Miracles’ students have read that line over and over again and still
indulge all their specialness?
That’s what you want to understand, that everything we do here is a microcosmic shadow
of what we believe we all originally did at the beginning.
That’s the guilt that we’re carrying around with us.
If you don’t understand it, it will stay buried, and if it stays buried it’ll continually
surface through projection because nobody stops and looks within.
That’s why this Course is such an important and impressive spiritual document because,
more than any other document that I know of, it documents the ego, and it’s not a very pretty picture.
Most religions and spiritualities either ignore the ego or sugarcoat it or cover it over and
say, “Well, just let it go!
Give it over to the Holy Spirit; it’s really nothing.
I choose love and that’s it.”
Well, if it were that easy this world wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t need a Course that
spends so much time talking about hate and murder and guilt instead of only love and peace.
So you must really appreciate with humility and kindness toward yourself how fearful you
are of this Course, which means how fearful you are of healing.
Not of healing the body but of healing the mind because that’s the problem.