My mind holds only what I think with God.
No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth (Lesson 131).
I loose the world from all I thought it was (Lesson 132).
The reason we cannot fail in our search for truth is because truth is all there is. There is nothing else to find. In God there is only certainty about this, for only certainty is worthy of truth. But we are still lost and confused. We still think separation is a thing we did and have to undo, untangle, et cetera.
We think we have to be reborn. God knows we are eternal, and thus incapable of change, let alone birth and death.
Truth is true, and only truth is true (e.g., T-9.VIII.7:2). While we can look away from this, like children squeezing their eyes shut and thinking they’re invisible, we cannot make it false. Nor can we make what is false true.
Therefore, right here, right now, you and I know the truth. We know it and we deny that we know it. We hide behind a wall of projection that we insist is the cause of every problem we have, from a stubbed toe to a missed deadline to death.
A nontrivial aspect of our practice of A Course in Miracles is becoming aware of projection, noticing its negative effects, and becoming willing to no longer project. God’s Love is True, and all there is, and yet we go on throwing block after block in front of it to obscure it. There is a better way!
We want to stop projecting hindrances to our awareness of God’s Love, and we want to stop denying that we are the ones doing it. The better way arises when we agree to become responsible for finding it.
It is a simple shift in thought, a decision at the level of the mind, to remember God’s Love and only God’s Love. And it’s easy because God’s Love is all there is anyway.
Our willingness to stop projecting – which is to become responsible for the content and function our mind (which is to give both to the Holy Spirit) – is what it means to “loose the world” from all that we believe it is.
We think we know what a pine tree is for, or a church, or a wedding ring. This lesson is part of the course’s emphasis on letting go of that deluded certainty. We don’t know what anything is for. Therefore, we let go of all of it.
It is tempting to slip back into definitions. We can make “letting go” a thing we hold onto too! We think saying “I don’t know what it means” means we know something. But we don’t! That’s the challenge. If we don’t know, we can’t say – we can’t say anything at all. We become silent. We become learners. We become humbled.
Really, this lesson is both a review and an opportunity to let the world mean only what God would have it mean. It has no value but the value the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God, writes upon it. And all the Holy Spirit writes testifies to our innocence, and the innocence of our brothers and sisters, and thus makes clear and safe the way to salvation.
Let us practice with a glad heart today, reviewing two basic ideas that in conjunction open our minds to the truth as God created it.
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That’s beautiful– or I should say, it is terribly beautiful, especially paragraphs three and four (“…While we can look away… to death.”)
It sends chills [of recognition] through me. But I am beginning to turn the chill (sadness) into warmth (happiness).
I also want to get your thoughts on yesterday’s COA (Watson and Perry’s Circle of Atonement) commentary to Lesson 145. it mentioned, around paragraph four, something very similar to Loving Parent / re-parenting / Inner Family work. (a therapy associated with ACA / Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunction) and IFS (Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems therapy).
I have been doing that therapy (elements include: the Loving Parent, Inner Child, Inner Teen, Critical/Controlling Parent) and it has helped a lot, but I can’t recall specific sources in ACIM where they (Watson and Perry) may have derived this from. I don’t recall ACIM specifically (or ‘not specifically’) mentioning that — to quote Watson and Perry’s commentary — I (“the mind I share with God”) am to go “within me” to contact “a fearful child, awash in pain” to “comfort [with] gentle loving kindness”.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated! Thanks again for being there!
(from COA’s commentary to Lesson 145): “Let me begin within myself: how unkind I am to myself in the way I think of myself! How merciless I am in judging my mistakes! This harshness with myself is the origin of the harsh world I see.
There is within me, and within us all, a vast space of kindness, an enormity of heart that embraces everything in love. This is the Mind I share with God. Within me, too, is a fearful child, awash in pain, believing it has eternally damaged the universe. Let me turn with love to that hurt part of myself and open my arms in comfort and gentle loving-kindness. My heart is big enough to hold this pain instead of rejecting it. The love I share with God is vast enough to grant mercy to myself. Let me not shut myself out of my own heart any longer. Let me take myself in, in warmth and gentle welcome.
Let me look on the ones close to me, as well, with this same gentle, kind acceptance. Here is the cure”
http://www.allen-watson.com/lesson145.html
Thank you, Lenny.
Basically, I think what helps is what works, and if a particular language (including imagery, concept etc) is working for us, then it’s good. What makes us happier in a natural deep and sustainable way?
So to that extent, I think emphasis on the inner child as a model for relearning kindness, gentleness, nurture – in a word, love – is positive. I would not in a million years tell somebody for whom it is functional and healing not to do it.
That said, I do not confuse the helpfulness of this or that healing modality, or language (IFS, say, or twelve steps programs or ACIM), to be tantamount to the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE. They are just methods in the context of separation that can help undo our belief IN separation and thus become open to remembering that the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE are already given wholly and perfectly.
Healing modes – IFS, ACIM, EFT, AA, ETC – are helpful IN specific settings – Sean’s childhood, Sean’s addiction, Sean’s genetics, Sean’s conditioning et cetera. They are not about wholeness, save in a vaguely referential way.
And that word – “specific” – shares a root with “special” – the origins of which emphasize separation (observable differences that matter).
So in THAT sense, any healing modality just reinforces the underlying error of believing that what I am is separate, apart from, different, et cetera.
A Course in Miracles – like most Christian-based nondual practices (Abhishiktananda comes to mind) – aims at undoing that error, because ALL our so-called problems (addiction, behavioral dysfunction, depression etc) arise from it.
Still, our perception of the value of those modalities typically lies in their ability to make us temporarily happier – in ACIM terms, they help translate the nightmare of separation into a happy dream. And in the context of the happy dream, the deeper cosmic psychic healing (of separation itself) proceeds much more fluidly and intentionally because one understands in a deep way it is already done.
We are watching a movie we know the end of 🙂
So I think COA (Robert, Allen et al) and their interpretation and presentation of the ACIM material is great for those for whom it’s helpful, and for those for whom it is not, then I don’t think there is any harm in shaking the dust off the provervial sandal and moving on to what IS helpful. Here in the fractures and seams, what else can we do?
Thanks, Lenny
Love,
Sean