I’ve sometimes been accused of taking Jesus away from people.
It’s almost like saying there is no Santa Claus.
Well, not only, though, is there no Santa Claus,
but there’s no Jesus as the world has typically thought of him.
And so I have been accused of taking Jesus away from people.
But you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And the Jesus that I take away, which is really based on the Course’s view.
Obviously, there are other ways of looking at Jesus, but this is the Course’s way,
that it’s really take all the specialness away.
And as I was saying before the break, the Jesus that the world has worshipped
that the Bible has written about,
and 2,100 years of Christian tradition has revered,
is someone who is basically a magician.
He does things in the world to help us.
Everybody knows about the miracles, loaves and fishes and water into wine, etc.
The resurrection is seen as a miracle, his birth is a miracle and his healings were that way.
And certainly Christians are urged to pray to him for help.
And this is magical from the Course point of view
because it has nothing to do with a change of mind.
It has only to do with something to do with the body.
Anytime you have a belief – a core belief that says sin is real,
anything you do to undo that sin has to be magic because there is no sin.
And so all that has to be corrected and undone and healed
is the mind’s belief in sin, not sin itself.
Sin is not an entity in and of itself.
It’s not a phenomenon within itself. It’s simply a belief.
What’s important is to understand where you’re really coming from
when you ask Jesus for specific help.
You’re really coming from a place that says the world is real,
my body is real, my problems are real,
my problems are very problematic to me and I need help with my problem.
And therefore, I go within, I ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help.
The correction for that is what is in back of that message
Helen received, which I cite very, very often.
This happened after the Course was already completed.
And Helen one day asked Jesus for help in what she should say
to somebody who was in need of help.
And Jesus’ answer to her, which really took her by surprise,
was he did not tell her the words at all.
Instead, what he said, don’t ask me to tell you what to say to this person.
Ask me, instead, to help you look at this person
through the eyes of peace and not judgment.
And then all the help of Heaven; all the angels will come to your aid.
And what he was clearly saying is, don’t ask me to tell you what to do,
what to say, because that’s not important.
Ask me to help you remove, to cite the beginning of the text,
to remove the blocks to the awareness of my presence.
And when those blocks are gone,
then you would automatically know what to say and what to do.
And that’s what was meant by the metaphor
“all the help of angels would come to you.”
Because then the love in you which you would identify with
would then tell you what to say or do.
And this goes to the heart really of what Jesus ought to be for us.
Again, I’m only speaking from the perspective of A Course in Miracles.
Since we believe we exist, and no matter how many years you study the Course,
as long as you think you’re studying the Course, you believe you exist,
and the “you” that you believe exists is a very special person.
You have a personality, you have a body, you have a history,
you have a past, you have an anticipated future;
and therefore, as long as that is there, we need a correction
that meets us, to quote one passage in the Course,
that “meets us in the condition in which we think we are.”
And that condition is a dualistic condition of being in the body,
of being in a world of time and space, which is inherently illusory.
But as long as we think we’re here and that we represent the symbol
of the ego thought system of separation and specialness,
then we need a corresponding symbol that would correct our mistake.
Jesus is such a symbol.
And we’ll just stay with Jesus for the moment, although again, as I said earlier today,
any symbol of a love that’s not of this world would work.
It doesn’t matter whether you give it a name.
It doesn’t matter if you personify it.
It doesn’t matter if you see it as an energy force or whatever.
But it’s recognizing a thought system within you that is not your ego.
But we’ll stick with Jesus for now.
It’s very important that you have an experience of a Self
that is outside of your ego, who represents your Self,
your right-minded Self with which you are out of touch.
So in that line I read to you earlier that “The name of Jesus Christ is
but a symbol, but is a symbol of a love that is not of this world”
that’s the love you want to relate to because that’s the answer
that’s the ultimate answer to every thought that’s part of the ego system:
separation, attack, sin, guilt, fear, terror, judgment,
cruelty, suffering and death.
Every aspect of the ego thought system is gently corrected
when you bring it to that love.
And since we think we are individuals and
the Course is written to us as if we were individuals,
then we need an individual who represents the other.
And that’s what Jesus represents.
And so that Jesus I would never want to take away from anyone,
because that’s your ticket home. That’s your way home.
You can’t make this journey alone.
It’s very difficult to make it without some kind of externalization
of this figure called Jesus, but it is impossible to make it alone
without realizing there is something within your mind that is sane;
something within your mind that is strong,
not the strength of the world but the strength of Christ;
something in your mind that is innocent,
something in your mind that knows not of sin, knows not of separation,
knows not of anything of the ego system.
And again, since we give ourselves a name, we therefore give
this other thought system a name, too, and Jesus is that name.
So I’m certainly not taking that Jesus away from anyone.
And I certainly would also encourage people, especially those who are starting out,
and that could span 10, 15, 20 years,
that you still find it helpful to ask this figure for external help.
At least you’re asking the right figure.
But as I always emphasize, you don’t want to stay there.
You don’t want to stay with always asking Jesus to solve problems for you here,
whether it’s something relatively trivial like a parking space
or relatively significant like healing cancer
or helping you make a life-changing decision
It doesn’t matter. You’re still seeing the world as real
and Jesus as, again, this kind of magical figure who waves a magic wand
and everything is taken care of for you.
It is much more helpful to follow what he told Helen.
Ask me, instead, to help you look at this person or this situation
or this event through the eyes of peace and not judgment.
I mean that’s the real purpose of having this internal teacher.
But you can’t do this by yourself.
And if our world here and our physical, psychological experience
is built on hate and on guilt, which it is, I always quote the line,
“The world is a delusional system of those made mad by guilt.”
Well, we could say the body is a delusional system of those made mad by guilt.
So since that’s what our lives rest on
and that’s what has motivated us in this world to preserve
and that’s what has guided us through the maze of our special relationships,
we need a love that is the answer to that.
In that sense, you could say the Course is a version of bhakti yoga,
which is a form of yoga, which is really based on loving the guru.
While you could very well do this Course without that experience,
I think it greatly enhances it.
If you could allow yourself to feel that love,
the love that we’ve invested in people or things
or substances or achievements,
if we redirected that love to this figure that we call Jesus,
that’s what would take us home. That’s the end of specialness
because in his love, everybody is included.
In the ego’s version of love, everyone is excluded except
those particular people we want to cannibalize, we want to murder.
But when you allow this love that this figure represents
to come into your life more and more, there’s nothing comparable to that here.
The greatest love experience anybody could have here is just a
pale, pale, pale shadow of that love, of feeling a love that is not of this world.
And again, since we identify ourselves with our own identity,
it is really important to then shift that identity to another identity that is not us.
So the only Jesus I want to take away from people is the myth
is the illusion, is the specialness one,
not the Jesus who lives in our minds as this tremendous expression of God’s love.
He’s the window home.
He’s the doorway through which you will pass.
And you shouldn’t be ashamed of your love for him.
You shouldn’t be ashamed of asking his help that you become more and more like him
and that you look at the world the way he looks at the world.
Not that you do what he would have done,
because what bodies do is totally irrelevant.
That you want to look at the world through his eyes,
through what the Course calls Christ’s vision. That’s what you want.
What could be a more wonderful experience to have in this world
than to feel that love inside you?
And then to let that love just kind of pour through you and embrace everyone.