A common question that many students raise, especially when they work with the Course
for a while is how they deal with people in their lives (like family members or colleagues
at work) who don’t share the Course’s thought system, and perhaps even think that
the Course system could be directly antithetical to what they believe or, if they’re religious
in nature, could be seen as heretical or “the work of the devil.”
And how does one deal with situations like that?
And this is quite a helpful one to kind of discuss.
I’ve had lots of personal experience with that, having grown up in a Jewish family,
and my parents were both—were not particularly observing Jews or very much identified Jews.
My wife, Gloria’s family, she has two “born agains;” a brother and sister.
Her brother, actually, is deceased, and her parents (especially her mother) were
dyed-in-the-wool Roman Catholics.
So, we both have had kind of experience with our families as many of you, certainly with
friends and colleagues.
The important thing is to remember the essential distinction that "A Course in Miracles" makes
between form and content. And this also relates to the section in the teacher’s manual on
attaining characteristics of God’s advanced teachers; the second one, the second of those
characteristics being honesty.
And there Jesus makes it very clear that he’s talking about content and not form.
He’s saying honesty is where what you say and what you do is consistent with what you
think (M-4.II.1-2).
In other words, if you’re right-minded then everything you say or do would be consistent
with your right-mindedness, namely it would be loving, it would be kind, it would be defenseless;
it wouldn’t be fraught with specialness, and you would only say and do what would be helpful.
Now, very often it is not helpful to tell people the actual truth.
In fact, probably the best example of this would be Jesus himself in the Course.
He frankly lies.
He doesn’t tell the truth in form.
He tells us that God is lonely without us (T-2.III.5:11).
He tells us God weeps over our being absent, being separated (T-5.VII.4:5).
He says God’s incomplete without us (T-9.VIII.9:8).
Well, that’s not true.
God doesn’t even know that we left because we haven’t left.
God is also talked about as a person; the masculine pronoun is used to denote Him.
He’s described as having body parts: He has arms, He has hands into whom—into which
we’re supposed to place our future (W-pI.194.8:1).
He has—obviously He has eyes and tear ducts because He weeps.
So, obviously these all have to be taken as a metaphor and not literally true.
You don’t want to be what typical Course students have been or have done where you go to a funeral
and you tell people—you proclaim to people, “Well, what are you upset about?
There is no death,” and then you give them the appropriate workbook lessons to read.
Or people who visit friends who are sick, and they quote Lesson 136: “Sickness is
a defense against the truth.”
And, while literally, this is true, it is not very caring or loving, and in that sense,
it’s not honest.
And so, what the world knows of—it calls “white lies,” which is where you kind
of bend the truths to be helpful.
So you don’t tell children the absolute truth about things because they’re not ready
to hear it; that Jesus does that in the Course itself and, basically, that’s the guiding
principle that we should use to direct our lives; that we want to do and say what would
be helpful; not necessarily what is literally the truth.
So that if you’re with people, for example, who have a different thought system than you
or a different religious thought system than you and you don’t know them very well, and
they’re not particularly interested in what you believe, what’s the point in kind of
flaunting the Course in their faces?
What’s the point of kind of walking around with the blue book ready to kind of strike
out against them at a moment’s notice?
What you want to convince them of is the truth of the Course by your actions.
I’m fond of quoting a very important line in the text where Jesus says, “Teach not
that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you,” (T-11.VI.7:3-4).
So, the way we teach his thought system of resurrection, which really is the Course’s
definition of “awakening from the dream,” the acceptance of the Atonement; the way we
teach him–teach his lesson and his love–is to demonstrate it.
He tells us at the beginning of the teacher’s manual that teaching is demonstration (M-1.in.2:1),
and so it’s demonstrating the love of the Course that is really helping people recognize what it says.
It’s not preaching its gospel word for word.
In the YouTube presentation just before this, I discussed how one behaves when in the company
of people (friends, colleagues, family) who do not share our belief system, namely "A Course in Miracles."
I'd like to continue that discussion by citing Lesson 184, specifically paragraphs 9, 10, and 11.
I often refer to these when I teach because these are very, very helpful to—in cautioning
students not to confuse (as I mentioned in the first part of this), not to confuse form and content.
In those paragraphs Jesus makes it very clear that we have to use all the symbols of the
world, the concepts of the world, not because they’re true but, as he says, to proclaim
your unreality in forms that the world can accept without fear (W-pI.184.10:3), or something like that.
In Chapter 2, at the end of section IV, “Healing as a Release from Fear,” Jesus talks about
that the value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which its expressed (T-2.IV.5:1-2).
In other words, it’s not the form that’s important; that you want to convey the message
of the Atonement, which is that the separation never happened, in whatever way would not increase
someone’s fear.
And so, speaking the literal truth very often, again, can only exacerbate someone’s fear,
not reduce it.
And remember, the key idea, the whole message of the Atonement is that the separation never
happened, so why would you want to say something or behave in a way that would separate you
from other people?
That’s the question you should always want to ask yourself.
Rather, you want to use the differing symbols of the world, the differing thought systems
of the world, not to give them a prominence or a power that they don’t have.
After all, the "Psychotherapy" pamphlet says that belief in God
is a meaningless concept (P-2.II.4:4).
It’s not the thought system that’s important, it's not the belief, not the theology that’s important.
As Jesus says in the introduction to the Clarification of Terms, it’s the experience that we want,
not the theology (C-in.2:5), and the experience is the experience of love.
And the key element in love (as it’s expressed in this world) is that it is non-special;
it is non-exclusive.
It unifies; it doesn’t separate or fragment.
So, when you’re in the company of people who don’t share your thought system, why
do you want to use the thought system as a way of reinforcing separation?
I mentioned (again in Part 1) the Course’s discussion of honesty.
Honesty is consistency.
So, if you’re coming from a loving space, which is the space—the holy instant—when
one is in one’s right mind, in which there is no separation.
So that’s what Jesus means when he says, “At no single instant does the body exist
at all,” (T-18.VII.3:1).
In the holy instant there is no body because there’s no thought of separation.
So, if that’s where you’re coming from, which is what everyone’s aim ought to be
as a student of the Course, then this is what you want to share.
And so, you want to use, once again, the seemingly different, or not “seemingly;” they are
different; symbols are different; forms are different; behaviors are different; bodies
are different.
But you want to use the seeming differences (or the apparent differences) not to accentuate
the fact that you are different.
Just the opposite.
You want to use these symbols as a way of expressing the joining, and you do this by
your defenselessness; as I mentioned earlier, by demonstrating that the love of Jesus lives in us.
And, namely, demonstrate that the love of Jesus lives with us is to exemplify who he
was and what his message was 2100 years ago as well as today, and that message is that
we are all the same.
We appear to be different.
We look different and we have different theologies and different belief systems and different
values and different ways of expressing these values.
But in the end, we’re all the same because we are the same mind.
So, it is very, very helpful and an extraordinarily powerful teaching tool to use the differentiating
symbols as a way of expressing the fact that we are all the same, which means you’re
not defensive; you don’t judge; you don’t attack.
And it does often mean, again, as I said in the first part, that you tell white lies and
you may even seem to agree with someone.
You don’t have to affirm the truth.
You want to live the truth.
When you affirm the truth, you’re differentiating and you’re separating and you’re judging.
When you live the truth you simply love, and love takes whatever form is the most helpful.
Just again, in that passage where Jesus says the value of the Atonement does not lie in
the manner or the form in which it is expressed (T-2.IV.5:1-2).
It’s the content that’s most important.
So, you could be with people who may actually think that you agree with them.
So what?
What’s important is that you don’t want to—you don’t want them to feel that you’re
separate from them.
Now this does not mean that there’re times when you don’t disagree with someone’s
point of view, but the point is—but the issue then would not be that you want to show
that they’re wrong and you’re right.
It just may be appropriate in that circumstance to disagree, and often it’s a very helpful
lesson to show people that you can disagree in form, but you’re still in agreement on the level of content.
In other words, you don’t use the disagreement as an attack, as a way of putting other people
down and proving that they’re wrong and you’re right.
So, in the end, the whole issue is one of leaving the form–the body, the behavior
–and going to the content of the mind.
That’s where the Holy Spirit or Jesus are and that’s where you want to—that’s
whom you want to join with, and when you join with them anything you do behaviorally with
anyone will have to be kind and loving and defenseless, and that’s how you teach the
message of "A Course in Miracles."