Sometimes in sports a referee or umpire will say, “No harm, no foul.” In other words, there’s some
body contact, let’s say, in basketball or hockey or football, but nobody was hurt and
so the decision’s made just to let the players continue, and “no harm, no foul.” I’ve frequently
commented on the I Ching, which is that compendium of ancient Chinese wisdom,
which is really one of the true gems in spiritual literature of our world, and one of the phrases,
in fact it’s the phrase that recurs more than anything, anyone else, I think, in the I Ching
is, “No blame.” There’s a passage early on in the text where Jesus says you have no idea of
the deep release that—and peace that would come when you totally give up judgment (T-3.VI.3:1).
And “judgment,” which is another word for “blame” is really one of the bedrocks of the ego system,
certainly one of the bedrocks of the ego defensive system. Not only does the separation
begin when we make a judgment, God’s Love was not enough, and so we have to achieve our own,
but what secures this thought and preserves it in our mind is the world that we made up
as a defense against the mind in which we’re always judging. In fact, one could say that’s
why we made up the world, to be replete with some billions and billions and billions of fragments,
each of which in and of itself would be a suitable object for our projection, whether we project
our guilt and our hidden hates and secret sins onto people or pets, animals, plants, trees,
the solar system, presidents, computers that fail, cars that break down. No matter what it is,
there are so many opportunities in our everyday world for us to find some scapegoat,
someone we could blame, someone we could say has harmed us, and therefore that deserves a penalty.
In sports there are players who commit a foul are penalized. In our world, our everyday world
when we accuse someone of sin, it’s not quite so harmless as giving the other team a foul shot or
as a penalty of yardage or whatever, but the real penalty that we’re exacting of those we
accuse of sin is that they would be killed instead of us.There’s that line near the
end of the text that says that whenever you suffered it concealed your own desire to kill
(T-31.V.15:10). And that whenever we make a judgment we’re saying, “You are the sinner
and not me,” and even though that may not be my conscious idea or what I’m aware of,
that is what is in back of it. That’s what’s in back of all of our projections. “I’m not
the guilty person; you are and therefore you’re the one who deserves God’s punishment and wrath.”
And again, even if we’re not aware of that, even if we’re only kind of mildly annoyed at someone,
the underlying content, the thought in the mind that fuels this is, “I need to find someone else
to be seen as the victimizer, as the sinner so that person will be punished instead of me.”
That’s why it is so difficult to give up judgment. I mean, one of the clear messages of this Course
is not to judge. It’s in all three books, all the way through,
which again is another way of echoing the I Ching’s “no blame.”
And the reason this is so difficult is that our very existence began with the judgment,
once again, that God’s Love was not enough for me and therefore I’m—it has not satisfied me,
and therefore I’m justified in making a self and then a whole context of special love that will
meet my needs and I’m justified in doing that, but it’s all based on that initial judgment. “Someone
out there, even God Himself, has not met my needs and therefore I am justified in getting even;
making up a self, making up a world that’s the exact opposite to God in Heaven, and indeed works
better for me because it meets my specialness and my need to be seen as an individual.”
So, since judgment is rooted, it’s the very fabric of my existence, it’s so difficult to give it up,
because if I give up judgment, who am I? If I give up blame, who am I? If I see people as innocent,
then my ego tells me, “If they’re innocent then you must be guilty and therefore you must judge
otherwise you cannot preserve your individual, special self.” And again, that’s the fuel;
indeed, that’s the passion that instills us all to walk this world in incredible judgment.
I’m sure I speak for every student of "A Course in Miracles" that no matter how many weeks, months,
days, years, decades you’ve studied this material you still find yourself judging. Alright...and
it’s not because you’re bad or evil or wicked. It’s because you’re terrified of the thought,
“Who would I be without my judgment?” And yet, that’s the ideal that we want to always achieve.
The message we want to give our brothers is, “No harm, no foul. You have not hurt me.
Yes, you might have hurt my feelings. Yes, you might have even hurt my body or the bodies of
my loved ones, but you have not hurt or taken or affected in anyway the love and peace that’s in
my mind. ”What God has given me is within me. It’s the memory of God’s perfect Love that constitutes
the right mind that’s in all of us, and nothing that has ever been done...said, from ancient times
to the present or in the future can ever change that, and that’s the message that we want to
give to people. “No harm, no foul; no blame. Whatever it is that you did, you simply acted
out of your ego, if such was the case, because of your own fear but that has nothing to do with me.”
So, rather than choose what "The Song of Prayer" calls forgiveness-to-destroy (S-2.II.h), where
I forgive you, having first acknowledged your sin and judged it, I say there was no sin,
there was no blame. There’s only the innocence of God’s Son that we both share together.
Last week we discussed “no harm, no foul” in which I talked about the need to give up judgment
and what judgment was all about. But obviously our judgment, which is a projection of our guilt,
has its origin in our self-judgment, and I thought we could speak this morning about self-judgment or
self-blame, which really is just word for “guilt” or “self-hatred.” There’s a passage in the text
that says very specifically that self-blame and blame are the same (T-11.IV.5:5). Since there’s
no world out there, when we seemingly project our self-hatred, our judgments of ourselves, our guilt
outside of us onto other people and there’s nobody out there, then it’s really exactly
the same thing where the “Ideas leave not their source,” (T-26.VII.4:7), guilt, self-judgment
does not leave their source, and so self-blame and blame are the same.
It just looks and feels differently. That’s why, often, it feels so good when we can get angry.
There’s an adrenaline rush, there’s a sense of real justification and, of course,
we get more and more people joining with us then that makes it seem all the more righteous, and it
feels wonderful because in that insane moment (or you could say it’s an “unholy” instant),
that insane moment we believe we’ve gotten rid of our guilt; we’ve gotten rid of our judgment
of ourselves. So, but the bottom line is what do we really do with this judgment
and this self-judgment? Well, its origin lies in illusion. The self-judgment is saying, “I did
something horrific,” and originally, ontologically that horrific thing that we all accuse ourselves
of doing, because when the separation seemed to occur God’s Son separated as one Son.
It was only when the projection occurred and the world was made
that that one Son fragmented itself into billions and billions and trillions and trillions of
pieces. But it began as one Son and it still is one Son who believed that the impossible happened,
the horrific impossible happened, that we told our Creator and Source His Love was not enough
and therefore we would basically fire Him as our Creator, make our own god, make our own self, make
our own world so that our specialness would be honored. That’s where the guilt comes from. That’s
what the ego calls “sin” and what the Course would call “original sin” except then, of course,
there’s no real sin, but within the framework of the ego thought system that’s the origin,
the belief we sinned against our Source by separating from Him, and that’s where the
guilt comes from and that’s what self-hate is; that’s what judgment about ourselves
is. But since we don’t know we’re minds because all this occurs in the mind, the dreaming mind,
since we don’t know we’re a mind because we have projected it out there’s no way of gaining access
to that mind so we could choose a different Teacher, Who gives us a different interpretation
of the tiny, mad idea, namely “What tiny, mad idea? Nothing happened.” So the problem is we
take this guilt and this hate and we seemingly get rid of it by projecting it out; the ego-principle
being ideas do leave their source. The idea of God’s Son can leave His Source in Heaven and the
idea of God’s Son as a guilty sinner can leave his source in the mind and project it out and project
the guilt out so now the guilt lies in everyone else and, once again, as I was saying a moment
ago, that’s why it feels so good to get angry and that’s why letting go of judgment is so difficult
because it feels so good to say, “I’m finally free of my guilt. Somebody else has it and not me.”
But the problem is I don’t know I’ve done this. We all have caused this veil of forgetfulness or veil
of denial to fall across our minds so all we’re aware of is the world seemingly outside of us,
which we experience as bodies, and we have no awareness of where it came from, and if I don’t
know where it came from, namely my mind’s decision for the ego and to believe in guilt, there’s no
way I could change it. So the Course’s way of helping us do this, which is why the vigilance
is so important, is to monitor our minds for all of our judgments against other people or other
objects or other things or other circumstances. And judgment always means at rock bottom, “Someone
has done something. Something has done something to affect me and to change me for the worse,”
whether I’m talking about my genes or my belief in past lives, the way my mother carried me, the way
I was brought up, the way the weather changes, the way the governments work, the way religions
have been, and on and on no matter what it is, I say something outside has adversely affected me,
which means the problem is in that person or that thing, whether we’re talking about
a human being, we’re talking about a microorganism, or something inanimate.
The guilt lies in them and they are the sinners and not me, and since the
ego’s principle is always one or the other, if someone else is seen as the sinner (excuse me),
I am seen as the sin—if someone else is seen as the sinner I’m seen as sin-less, as being sinless.
So, if I’m really serious about wanting to let go of my judgment and my hatred of myself I really
have to be sincere in my no longer believing the lies and stories my ego tells me, and the lies
and stories always will have as their foundation, “You did something to make me feel the way I am.”
Again, whether it’s somebody in my present life or my past life or on any level, I’m saying,
“The reason I’m upset, the reason I’m so unhappy, the reason I’m such a failure is because my mind
has—not because my mind has chosen the wrong teacher, but because the world has treated me
unfairly.” It’s recognizing that and not giving substance to the lie that allows us finally to
penetrate this veil and allows Jesus or the Holy Spirit to gently take us back from the world
to the mind so we could choose again. But it requires vigilance, it requires honesty,
and integrity that I know longer want to believe the lies, the stories I’ve
told myself. I begin by dismissing the lies I’ve told myself about you
and I end up by dismissing the lies and stories I’ve told myself about me, that the whole thing
is made up. Blame and self-blame are the same. Anger and guilt are the same, and they’re all
defenses against the simple choice we can make to remember who we are as God’s innocent Son.