It's Always Your Lesson!
Question: How do you deal with ongoing difficult people and situations in the context of applying the principles of A Course in Miracles?
Well, when it seems to go on for a period of time.
A lot of times people tell me stories about that,
whether it's Course groups,
or relationships, or job situations,
where they almost feel...
they start to feel a bit like a doormat, or like whatever they're doing
something's not working
because there's still a sense of frustration,
there's not a sense of transcendence...
So, well for me, one thing that helped me early on...
I did do it individually, so to speak,
with groups, but one time,
it was for quite a long time,
the Spirit was like a broken record,
I kept hearing, "It's your lesson."
"It's your lesson, it's your lesson, it's your lesson..."
I said, "But, but, but, but, but,..." "It's your lesson, it's your lesson."
It was like really coming home strong.
So I would say, "Okay,
there's definitely a lesson here,
and there's definitely some discernment,
because I'm not at peace,
and whatever I seem to do, no matter whether I try
to send love and light or whatever,
you know, it's in my face,
it's not going away."
And it actually helped me as I started to travel around
and go to Course groups around the United States,
and even into groups in other countries,
I kind of got a broad perspective of Course groups,
of people going through struggles
in relationships, in job situations,
feeling stuck in geographical climates, and stuck in horrendous conditions.
And I would be looping around, going year after year.
So sometimes I go to a Course group,
and one person would say,
"I'm in a horrific relationship!"
or, "I'm having the hell of a time with this one person,
and it's just driving me absolutely crazy.
But I know the Course tells me,
all I have to do is change my mind
and da-da-da-da-da".
And then I come back the next year, "How's it going?"
"I'm still in this horrific relationship with this person, and it's just intense,
and it's terrible, but the Course tells me
all I have to do is change my mind."
Then I come back the next year,
I hear it repeat over and over and over,
this kind of cliche, kind of like,
"I know all I have to do is change my mind,
it's not about the form,
it's not about the person, this and this and this..."
It reminds me a little bit of one time
with Jesus and Helen Schucman,
and Jesus said to Helen Schucman,
"What do you do when you find yourself in a desert?"
And Helen was kind of like, "Is this some kind of riddle,
or what's going on?"
And he's like, "What do you do when you find yourself in a desert?"
And Helen was just like stumped.
And finally she said, "What do I do when I find myself in the desert?"
And Jesus said,
"Leave!"
(laughter)
Now, let me explain the context of this.
For me... I found, too, that when I first started
getting into this, and the Holy Spirit
would guide me to Course groups and this and this and this...
And as you start to go deeper and deeper
with your spiritual practice,
you just have to really be open-minded
and flexible about things, in terms of...
Like I was saying before,
"You direct me where to bestow the miracles."
A lot of times people will say to me,
"Well, I have a difficult situation in my life,"
we could call this a difficult situation,
and they say, "I'm having a heck of a time
changing my mind about this situation.
It's just in my face, and no matter what I do
and how I try to approach it differently, it still keeps coming out
like this old Star Trek episode
where this ship kept blowing up, they kept looping around,
and the ship would blow up
over and over and over and over.
And what I would say is that when you have
this mindset of thinking, "I should be able to accept
the miracle and bring peace to this situation,"
it seems like a pretty reasonable request...
When people work with me for years, I will tell them
that situational thinking is part of the problem.
That you can never really bring peace into situations.
God didn't create situations. Think of it: Do you think God,
abstract love and light,
one day just decided... just kind of make up a situation:
"I've never done one before... We don't have any situations here
in Nirvana, in Heaven,
but let's make up a situation..."
No, situational thinking is part of the problem.
You can never bring peace to situations.
You can never bring the truth into the illusions.
Truth is oneness and situations are the illusion.
So you see how deep this goes,
you can't even bring peace into situations.
You have to be so open-minded;
to say to the Holy Spirit,
"Okay, you direct me. What do you want?"
And believe me, when you give that
devotion to the Spirit, it's like a tossed salad.
Wow, it does it... everything that you think is your life,
it's going to turn into a tossed salad.
I didn't ask you to take away...
(what?...)
this relationship... My house!...
My country!
My life! My dog!...
You can start to pray to the Holy Spirit: "Heal my mind!"
And then, all of a sudden, things can really start to
disappear, to turn away.
I had times when I was working with particular Course groups,
and if somebody came and they wanted to socialize
or seemed to get off on to all kinds of tangents and this and that,
or a friend or relative...
You know, they kind of like to call you up and just bitch and moan for an hour:
"Hi! How are you doing? Arghhh..."
The bitching and moaning begins.
You can't even get a word in.
After a while you have to start to realize that these are...
thoughts!
These aren't people. These are thoughts.
You've got a person in your life that seems to be driving you crazy...
Thoughts!
That was an interesting lesson for me to learn.
What's the lesson? That people aren't people.
They're thoughts.
And if there seems to be a nagging thought
in your mind
that doesn't go away, it's because you don't want it to go away.
There's some kind of a sick attraction to it.
I mean it's sick. It's pretty sick.
Of course it's sick! Who would be attracted to suffering and misery?
I remember when I was going through the Course
I was reading one of those sections that said, "Attraction to guilt",
one of the subsections, and I said, "Oh, that's sick!
It's a sick... subheading. Who would title the subheading of a chapter
'Attraction to guilt'? " So I went on to the next section;
"Attraction to pain." "Ohh... that's sick!
"Who would call something 'Attraction to pain'? "
I read through it, the next one was "Attraction to death".
"What?!
I'm a death worshipper! Oh man, where is this going?"
This is the kind of thing that you work with when you work with the Course;
You start to realize that there is an attraction,
like they say in 12-step programs;
to "the stinkin' thinkin'.
There's definitely a sick attraction there that has to be discovered.
And it's not like you as a person are there to bestow your miracles
on this lady or on this Course group.
It's that this whole idea of constructing situations
and breaking things off into fragmented bits and pieces,
like a kaleidoscope, and then trying to bring love and light
into the fragmentation; that is a sick way to go about it.
The Course is saying, "You cannot bring the truth into the illusion."
Just bring the illusions of the ego that you've made up
to the light in your mind, to the truth within,
and watch how quickly it disappears.
And in some cases it will seem to be that you leave.
I remember at one point going, "But Jesus, what about my beloved
Course in Miracles group, how can they make it without me,
they'll never make it without me." Jesus is like, "Oh please..."
(laughter)
You start to realize...
it's like, where is your inspiration,
where is your joy?
If I had just stuck with that same Course in Miracles group...
Gary Renard and I were talking
with his group in Maine and starting off
and he said, "I was just hacking
my way through that group and this and this and this,
and then I wrote a book... Nobody in that group
ever once listened to me,
until I wrote this book, "The disappearance of the universe".
Then all of a sudden people start listening because you write a book.
But we were just laughing because it was all part
of opening to the miracle,
and letting yourself go where the Spirit
would guide you and direct you.
In our cases, with Gary and I, it's like many, many countries,
many, many people that we had never met.
Many, many blessed holy encounters of love,
floods of witnesses from across the continents,
because simply we were willing to say,
"Use me.
And I'm not going to tell you how to use me.
You use me, instead of me telling you what the parameters are,
what the situations are, what the limitations are."
And that's part of the turn, that's how things heal.
And then, what seem to be
difficult situations or nagging people or whatever,
as you rivet your mind, as you align your mind
with the purpose of love and healing and joy,
you start to draw forth many, many many witnesses to that.
And those witnesses come in such floods that they
basically crowd out the attack thoughts.
It's like the attack thoughts are like little twigs,
and they're trying to float in the sea of love; "I'm going under!
I can't keep attacking anymore, it's just too much love!"
It's just this swarm of love coming in. That's how it happens.
You can see how different that is from trying to
hack it out. And in many cases
I was just guided on and on.
And the funny thing is when you follow your heart
and you go where you're guided to go, when you really go for it,
then sometimes some of what seem to be
those old witnesses show up. Again.
And they are changed. Like, "My god, this is beautiful!"
I've had hecklers come, so-called,
what the world would call hecklers,
to gatherings, where they kind of heckle and heckle and heckle.
And I just let the Spirit poor, poor, poor through.
Sometimes by that very afternoon or the very next day
they're like sitting in the front row with a pen taking notes.
Wow, what a shift!
It's just the power of the mind: To not hold on to those thoughts.
Yeah, it works!