There is a line in Chapter 20 of the text speaking of our brother where Jesus asks that
the question we should ask of ourselves, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" and that
will be our topic for this morning. What's important about that is that we're not asked
not to see...we're not asked not to see our brother as a body because that's practically
an impossibility in this world since we are so identified with our bodies. Most students
of the Course remember the line in Chapter 2 where Jesus says that it's practically impossible
to deny our physical experience in this world and that would be a particularly inappropriate
"form of denial" and that again is because we are so identified with our bodies. In fact,
we think that we are bodies reading A Course in Miracles. We think we are holding the book
in our hands. We think we are reading with our eyes. We think we are listening to tapes
of workshops with our ears. We think we are thinking about what we're reading with our
brains. We think our bodies act on what we think we are reading, et cetera, and so it
is again practically an impossibility to deny that we are bodies. And so Jesus is not saying
that we should deny our physical perception, our visual perception of someone else as a
body, anymore than we should deny what that body does. What he is asking us to deny however
is the ego's interpretation of what the body does or what the body looks like. So, for
example, if someone is sick or someone is dying or someone has died, our experience
as a body in this world is that this person is sick, that the person is dying, or that
the person has indeed died and therefore is no longer in our presence. That's a lie. That's
the ego's interpretation based on its belief that the separation is real and that the body
which is the embodiment of that thought is also real. Yet we are taught over and over
again in the Course that "ideas leave not their source" and the thought of separation,
the idea of separation has never left its source in the mind which means that there
is no body and there is no world. It is the mind that interprets what the physical eyes
see and the brain does with that sensory data. It's the mind that interprets it that's the
issue. In the teachers manual, Jesus says that remember that you don't get "angry at
a fact." You get angry at an interpretation of a fact. The fact is that you may have attacked
me or attacked people with whom I identify. The interpretation is that you attacked me.
Your body may have done things, your mouth may have said things, but that has nothing
to do with me unless as the end of Chapter 27 says, unless I "failed to recognize it
is" my dream. And in this context, the dream is that I want to keep the separation that
I believe I stole from God but I want to make someone else responsible for it. That's my
dream to find a scapegoat, to find somebody onto whom I could project my unconscious guilt
over my perceived sin of separating from my source. That's my dream, therefore I want
people to attack me so I could point an accusing finger at them and say, "Behold me, brother,
at your hand I die." It's your fault, not mine. And as the beginning of Chapter 27 says
which is that same section that that line appears, "Behold me, brother, at your hand
I die," that your brother's "sins are writ in Heaven"...."and go before him." In other
words, God in Heaven sees someone else's sins and what shows me, what shows Him, and shows
the world that indeed you have sinned against me is my suffering body. So we're not asked
to perceive the sinlessness of our brother, we're not asked to not perceive his body,
we're asked to look at our wish to see him sinless and to correct it. "Do I really wish
to see him [my brother] sinless?" And as long as I am identified with my ego, the answer
is a resounding, no, I don't want to see him sinless. I want to see him sinful. So I don't
deny, once again, what your body does. I deny my ego's interpretation of what your body
does, namely that you are doing this to me. Therefore that warrants the category that
I am placing you in as a sinner, and therefore God will punish you instead of me since the
fundamental ego principle is "one or the other." If you're the sinner, I must be the sinless.
If I'm the sinner, you're sinless. So in order for me to keep the separation, once again,
I believe I took from God, I must find someone else responsible for it because that person
then will be punished instead of me. So in order for me to see my brother sinless, in
order for me to have the wish to see him sinless, I have to have the underlying wish first that
I want to correct my prior commitment to the ego and my prior belief that the ego was right
and the Holy Spirit and Jesus were wrong. So the answer to that question depends on
which teacher I am choosing, the ego with its thought system of sin, guilt, fear, and
punishment or Jesus with his thought system of forgiveness, peace, and healing. So the
answer to that question is predicated on which teacher do I choose, and the decision for
that teacher depends on whether I choose to remain in the dream or to awaken from it.
Everything boils down to that one basic choice: do I wish to awaken or do I wish to remain
asleep?