This afternoon we will talk about abuse. There's no one in this world who doesn't experience
abuse in one form or another, either the abuse of others in our personal life, abuses that
we link to more collective abuses, governmental abuses, IRS abuses, weather abuses, divine
abuses, A Course in Miracles abuses. Or we experience ourselves as being abusers, but
abuse is something that is a theme in our lives that is very difficult to avoid and
it's extremely important as students of the Course that we look at this through the lens
of the Course how we deal with abuse. Let's begin by looking at how we experience abuse
when we are the apparent victims of this abuse. To begin with, let's make it very clear that
A Course in Miracles is not saying that one should remain in an abusive relationship.
I've heard very, very often over many years of involvement with the Course of people saying
that I've chosen to stay in an abusive marriage, for example, because I know this is my classroom.
And therefore no matter how much I'm abused physically and/or emotionally, this is something
that I've chosen and this is a lesson Jesus or the Holy Spirit want me to learn and I'm
going to stay in this abusive relationship until I learn it. That is not what the Course
is teaching, and Jesus would never ever tell you to stay in an abusive relationship. What
he would tell you is whether you stay or you leave, you should do so without guilt and
without anger. There's a line in the Course early on speaking of the Holy Spirit that
when God created the Holy Spirit, He did so as to place a limit on our ability to miscreate.
Now the context of that is that we all have our right minds and that right-minded thought
system that the Holy Spirit embodies is the limit on our ability to miscreate. We are
not only egos. Well, you could take that same principle and we could apply it to our everyday
life where very often it is extremely helpful from a spiritual point of view, let alone
just a common sense point of view, to stop somebody from being abusive. You are not only
doing that to avoid yourself being hurt or loved ones being hurt, but you are also doing
this to prevent, to place a limit on someone else's ability to miscreate, namely that you
are stopping them from behavior, verbal or bodily behavior that would make them only
feel guiltier. Since no one would abuse anyone else unless they were already guilty, continued
abuse is simply reinforces the abusers guilt. So very often this is a helpful thing to do,
not only to avoid pain for yourself or others, but to also in a loving way, stop somebody
else from doing something that will hurt them. So we are not talking about condoning abusive
behavior but we are talking about if you do act to prevent the abusive behavior, that
you do it not in a way that is punitive. There is no reason why one cannot be firm, one could
not act to stop people from hurting other people, and doing it in a non-punitive way.
We all have had very positive experiences growing up when we've been in the presence
of adults, whether it's family members or teachers who have stopped us from doing things
which have been harmful but have done so in a non-punitive way. Obviously we also have
suffered at the hands of people who have been punitive in their discipline but we also have
known how helpful it is to be stopped by someone, to be disciplined by someone but not to experience
ourselves as being punished. Very often this is what a wonderful expression in our world
of love where someone loves you so much that he or she is preventing you from making a
mistake that would be hurtful or that would impede learning such as, for example, learning
inappropriately in school or making mistakes in school where your mistakes are corrected,
not again, in an attempt to punish you for wrongdoing but in a loving attempt to correct
you so that you will be better able when you go into the world as an adult to act in a
more adequate way and helpful way. So as always in this course, we are not talking about form
but we are talking about content and it's why you do something that's important. But
to remain in an abusive relationship where you are abused constantly is only a way that
only serves to reinforce your own guilt as well as the guilt in other people. And underlying
this is that thought that our sin demands sacrifice, that God or the Holy Spirit or
Jesus will want us to be punished in a relationship or situation and this is a way that we root
out our guilt and stamp out our sin that we have to sacrifice ourselves through pain and
suffering as a way of atoning for our sinfulness. This is not the way the God of A Course in
Miracles thinks. This is not the way Jesus or the Holy Spirit thinks. This is the way
the world thinks. So in this first part of a two-part series on abuse, we are looking
at the idea that one could easily get out of an abusive relationship and stop an abusive
person from abusing ourselves or others but to do so in a loving way. This would be the
right-minded way of doing it so that one does not stay in a relationship out of guilt, one
does not leave a relationship out of anger, but one leaves with the peace of God. And
if one truly leaves peacefully, then that means everybody benefits from the situation,
from the interaction, and nobody loses.