What makes this course, I think, unique among spiritualities, is the way that it integrates
this very high spiritual vision; how it integrates its metaphysical non-dualism, that God is
the only reality and there’s nothing else, and it integrates this with very specific
guidelines in how we should live our everyday life, not in terms of behavior, but in terms
of how we should approach our everyday lives so that there’s a way of integrating all
these teachings, and what this is about is how Jesus meets us where we think we are.
When you are identified with your body, as everybody is, to be told that you’re a mind
and the body is an illusion, and besides you’re not even here, is not very helpful.
It might be intellectually stimulating.
It certainly is true, but on a practical level it’s not very helpful, because our bodies
demand that they be attended to, they, in fact, they need a tremendous amount of attention.
Nowhere in this course are we ever asked to deny our bodies, and it emphasizes in so many
different ways that we’re not supposed to take shortcuts.
Everybody likes to take a shortcut.
Nobody wants to do the hard work.
The shortcut in this course is that there is no shortcut.
That’s what ensures that you’ll get home, and the “hard work” means to practice
day in and day out right where you are; the people that you’re living with, the people
whom you work with, the people that you think about, people that you read about in the news.
Anything and anyone is a suitable object for projection, and not only people; addictions
of all kinds; special relationships.
While the Course only deals with people, deal with anything: substances, special relationships
with “holy books,” special relationships with ideas, with causes; anything that you
believe that is important that is outside of you.
All of these become part of our classroom.
In nowhere, no time does Jesus ask us to give up anything, but he has to use where we think
we are, and that’s what this section’s all about.
In this section (T-14.I, “The Conditions of Learning”), he talks about indirect learning.
It’s “indirect” because the direct learning would be mind to mind.
“Indirect learning” is going from the projections of the mind, which is our experiences
here in the body and in the world and our relationships and, as everyone knows who works
with the Course, that’s the heart of the Course in terms of practice; to look at our relationships.
That’s the indirect learning.
This is not about getting people a direct experience of God.
People don’t want a direct experience of God.
If they did, they wouldn’t have left God.
Our Oneness in Heaven is by direct experience with God.
Now, we all have split minds, so obviously there’s a part of us that does want that
experience of His Love, but we certainly don’t want it all the time.
So, as we’re told right at the beginning of the text, this is not a course on love.
This is a course on undoing the blocks to awareness of love’s presence (T-in.1:6-7).
This is a course in undoing the ego, and when you undo the ego, what’s left is the Love
of God and then you don’t have to do anything with that except just be in that Presence.
So, this course does not aim at giving us a direct experience or direct learning or teaching.
We’re not ready for that.
We’re too fearful of that.
We need a way of getting back to the mind; that’s the indirect proof of truth.
If the truth is that we are part of God’s living and loving Oneness, that’s the truth.
The indirect proof of that truth is that within the illusory dream of separation we are all
one in the ego, we are all one in the Holy Spirit, and we are all one in the power to
choose between.
We are able to relate to the reflection of the truth, of the oneness, but not the oneness
itself because our ego has told us in the presence of that oneness, in the presence
of that love, the self that we have now made and identified with would disappear, and as
long as we cling to this identity, we cling to the fear of love.
But we could learn to live with and accept love’s reflection, which in this world would
be forgiveness.
We could learn to live and accept Heaven’s Oneness through It’s reflection, which is
realizing everyone here is the same.
You know, as I mentioned earlier, that’s, I think, on a practical level, that’s the
most difficult part of this course to really, really practice: no perception of differences...
no perception of differences is ever justified.
Now remember, perception is interpretation (T-3.III.2:3).
Our eyes see differences all the time.
We’re not asked to deny what our eyes see, but it’s the perception, the interpretation
that says these differences among us matter; the differences among people; between men
and women matter, between parents and children matter, between black and white matter, between
Christian and Jew that matter; Christian and Muslim matter.
And this harks back to the original perception of differences that we said mattered a great
deal: God and His Son were different.
God was one; the Son was number two.
That was totally unacceptable.
That’s the first authority problem.
And from that point on, we’re all—we hit the ground and just started running and have
not stopped.
“Differences” is the ego’s bread and butter.
That’s the basis of all of our judgments, all of our projections.
Look what the world did with poor Jesus.
It made him very different right off the bat, at which point he stopped being a symbol of love
and became a symbol of special love, and we all know what that means.
Yeah?
When you say about there being no justification for seeing differences, you’re not talking
about taking the differences out of the world as we see it.
You’re talking, if I understand you correctly, you’re talking about completely not even
using the premise of the world where there are differences.
In other words, not taking anything where there are differences seriously at all.
Yes, in the sense of not taking it seriously, in the sense of giving it power over an experience
of peace that would have to embrace everyone—otherwise it’s not peace.
So, if the world in which there are differences between people means anything impactfully
to me, then I’m already— I’ve got the wrong idea right there.
Again, that doesn’t mean that we deny the obvious differences in the world, but we don’t
use the differences as a way of attack or judging.
The idea is to realize that beyond all the differences, which are all form, there’s
the underlying content that we’re all the same.
Right.
And that’s the key.
Yep.
And that takes a lot of work, and you don’t have to do anything.
Just start with the people in your daily life, in your personal life.
Anyone who has power over you you’re seeing as different.
Again, that was the big mistake that Christianity made with Jesus right from the beginning.
They made him different; they made him special.
He had something no one else had.
How could you possibly love someone who has what you don’t have?
And the ego knows exactly what to do with that perception: it kills.
That’s what Jesus means in Chapter 19 when he said, when he asks us to forgive him, he
said, “For I became [guilty] of your sin, and therefore I had to die instead of you,”
(T-19.IV.A.17:2).
What’s the sin?
The sin of cannibalizing, the sin of stealing; we accused him of stealing the love that we
secretly accuse ourselves of, and we know he stole the love because he’s the only
“Son of God,” which means, "He stole God’s Love.
God loves him more than He loves me.”
And therefore he—that’s our sin, but we now project onto him, and therefore he had
to die, and then a whole religion is built on that projection.
Right from the beginning there was that core error, at least certainly from the point of
view of the Course.
It made Jesus different; ontologically different.
Not that he’s different as an older brother is different, that he’s older and wiser
and more loving; he was different right from the beginning.
You’re really talking about throwing away the premise of the world.
You really mean that.
I-I really mean that.
It’s like so hard to hear you, because like—Should I say it all again?
Because like the number one is that very difference that you’re just saying is, is meaningless.
I’m afraid that’s true.
So, we’re not talking about modifying the world here.
No, we’re not talking about modifying the world.
You got it; give that man a gold star; right.
Right you are; that’s right.
We’re not talking about modifying the world.
Why would you modify a world that’s not there?
Right; yeah.
I mean, insane people do that, right?
Insane people, who hallucinate, do that, and it’s no accident that throughout this course
Jesus calls us “insane,” and uses the word “hallucinate.”
Yes, this is not about modifying the world.
You got it.
It’s about using the world, seeing it as a projection, to go back to the thought of
separation in the mind.
When that thought of separation in the mind is healed, you will perceive the entire world
as one, and all the differences will just kind of fall away.
Yes, this is a very radical thought system.