Today we're going to discuss the difference between preferences and investments. We're
told early on in the text, actually in Chapter 2, that we're not to deny our physical experiences
in this world. In fact, Jesus tells us that would be practically impossible to do so and
would be an inappropriate use of denial. The reason for that being even though the body
is an illusion and everything we experience as a body, both emotionally and physically,
is an illusion. Nonetheless we believe we are bodies. We believe that we are students
of a book called A Course in Miracles, dictated by Jesus to Helen. So everything about the
Course is part of the illusion. It's perceptual, it's dualistic and we're certainly not asked
to deny any of this and we're not asked to deny our experiences. Rather what we are asked
to do is to let these experiences come from our right mind rather than our wrong mind.
So we're not talking about letting go of our bodies. That will happen at the very, very
end of the process when we recognize that the entire world is a dream, including our
individual experience. So it's helpful to speak on a practical level of the difference
between having an investment in something or having a preference. And just let me give
a personal example of this which makes the point very well. When we were children my
brother and I, my parents and us, had taken a trip to Canada and we arrived very, very
late. It was a Sunday night, I think it was after eleven o'clock in Montreal and we were
in the motel about ready to go to sleep and my mother realized she did not have a piece
of fruit. And for my mother it was part of her nighttime ritual that she could not go
to sleep without having some piece of fruit, an apple, an orange, a pear or something.
And she was horrified that she did not have this piece of fruit, so my father and I went
out. It was after eleven o'clock at night and this was a time when you did not have
7-11's or convenience stores. Nothing was open, and I remember driving through the streets
of Montreal. We didn't know where we were going, of course, and trying to find my mother
a piece of fruit and we tried in vain. And so we eventually came back to the motel empty-handed
and my poor mother had to go to sleep without a piece of fruit. That's an investment. When
you say I cannot survive, I cannot go to sleep, I cannot be happy, I cannot be at peace unless
something happens. And this is just another way of talking about special relationships
and special investments. A preference on the other hand is something else. Yes, my preference
would be to have a piece of fruit before I go to sleep but if I don't have a piece of
fruit, it's not the end of the world. Yes, my preference would be to have dessert in
a restaurant and have vanilla ice cream instead of strawberry. But they're all out of vanilla
ice cream so if I have an investment, I may storm out of the restaurant, go to the nearest
Ben and Jerry's or whatever, and have myself vanilla ice cream. And a preference would
simply say, yes, I'd like to have vanilla ice cream but if you don't have that, what
do you have? That's a more sensible, common sense, and a more loving, kind approach to
how we live in this world. Yes, my preference would be to be with people who think I'm a
good person rather than to be with a person who doesn't think I'm a good person. Well,
but if I have an investment, then I will avoid all people who don't like me. I will take
offense at anything negative anybody says about me, and I would find it very difficult
to live in the human race because most people either would not think I'm the center of the
universe as I think I am, and they would not treat me as such. So while it is fine to have
preferences. In fact, one cannot be in a body without a preference. We all have preferences
for the color of shirts and blouses and sweaters and slacks and skirts that we would wear,
but that doesn't mean that the color that we prefer is the only color in the world for
us or the best color in the world for us. It simply means that's what makes me feel
comfortable. So what we want to do is be aware of the investments we have in things having
to be different (again this is another word for specialness) things having to be different
and then running over everybody, taking advantage of other people, using, abusing, victimizing
people so our needs are met. And when we become aware of this even in its simplest form, seemingly
innocuous form, that's when we want to ask Jesus for help that we shift our identification
from this as an investment to simply being a preference. And if things don't work out
one way, then they will work out another way and regardless of the externalization of my
neediness, I could be at peace. So regardless of my having vanilla or chocolate or strawberry
ice cream, regardless of my having a certain color, wearing a certain color, I could still
be at peace. Regardless of people acting towards me in the way that I like or demand, I could
still be loving. I could still be kind. So the key in everything is to choose the gentleness
of a preference over and above the hardness and the sometimes even cruelty of insisting
on meeting our investments. It's the decision not only between kindness and gentleness and
hardness and attack, between the ego and Jesus, it's really the difference between choosing
Heaven or hell.