Do you know the Taung Child?

This child lived approximately three million years ago. Its skull – all we have to remember it – indicates that at about four years of age its eyes were plucked out by a great eagle.

Imagine its terror – being held down by a bird twice its size. Imagine its pain. Imagine its suffering and death.

Now imagine its mother. Did she see it happen? Did she try to stop it? Did she try to comfort the child as it died? Was there any comfort for her?

The love of the parent for its child is one of our oldest inheritances. Humberto Maturana suggests that the extended childhood characteristic of our human family works because parents love their children, need help raising them, and thus learned how to communicate in order to cooperate and coordinate in creating a care-based culture. All our being rests on the love that neoteny brings forth in us.

We are descendents of mothers and fathers in more ways than one.

This naturally informed Jesus’ easy reference to God as his “abba,” a nomenclature which emphasizes the absolute trust of the child in the absolute kindness of its parent, as perfect a love as Jesus could imagine because, really, it is as perfect a love as any of us can imagine.

In this review, A Course in Miracles draws on this ancient tradition, and asks us to hold it in mind as we study and practice.

Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him. So we bring our practicing to You (W-pI.rV.In.2:5-6,3:1).

This is necessary, we are told, because we are “preparing for another phase of understanding” (W-pI.rV.In.1:3), which will require “more effort and more time” (W-pI.rV.In.1:2). We are preparing to remember, in a real and sustained way, that “God is but Love, and therefore so am I” (W-pI.rV.In.4:3).

This Self alone knows Love. This Self alone is perfectly consistent in Its Thoughts; knows Its Creator, understands Itself, is perfect in Its knowledge and Its Love, and never changes from Its constant state of union with Its Father and Itself (W-pI.rV.In.4:4-5).

So we are being invited to intensify our practice, but in the direction of devotion and surrender – that is, in the direction of a child who knows that her mother loves and will not abandon her. She need do nothing. We are talking about trust, not intellectual accomplishment. We are talking about becoming followers, not leaders. We are remembering the ancient promise of love itself.

“Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (MT 18:3) needs “only one slight correction to be meaningful in this context” (T-2.VII.6:14): “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never remember the kingdom of heaven.” For we are already in it but have forgotten.

And what then of the Taung Child? How does that distant member of our vast family factor in to our learning?

He lives in me as my fear of pain and death, no? He lives in me as my fear of being parentless and my fear of losing a child. He lives in me as my respect for the birds of the sky, whose need to eat is no less worthy than mine. And he lives in me as the knowledge that no brother or sister can be separate from me. He speaks to me as Christ, no less than Jesus and no less than you.

Listen to him:

I am incomplete without your part in me. And as I am made whole we go together to our ancient home, prepared for us before time was and kept unchanged by time, immaculate and safe, as it will be at last when time is done (W-pI.rV.In.8:7-8).

Together, then, yes? Together for all of us.

There is no cruelty in God and none in me.

Lesson 170 asks us to consider that we are confused about the difference between fear and love – that we are calling fear love, and worshipping it accordingly, and as a consequence are actually afraid of love.

This reversal divides us against ourselves, making peace impossible.

Fear seems to protect us, right? It seems like a rational response to a threat against our safety and well-being. It’s a sign that we are under attack and need to defend ourselves. A snarling dog, a man pointing a gun, a diagnosis of incurable cancer . . . fear makes sense, no? Only a fool would argue otherwise.

And yet A Course in Miracles suggests that this belief in the reasonableness of fear is actually a block to love because it can be used to justify attack in the form of self-defense. Hurt is always both the objective and outcome of attack but calling it “self-defense” allows us to avoid responsibility for that hurt. Attack is always cruel and yet “no cruelty abides in us, for there is none in God” (W-pI.170.13:2). What gives?

It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within . . . love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are (W-pI.170.3:1-3).

The projection of fear outside of us – and the subsequent cycles of attack and defense, as we rage in vain against a mirage – is not a crime against God or nature. It’s just a colossal waste of time. The better way – the way of healing – is to challenge our belief in the “necessity and reasonableness” of fear because it justifies attack. We listen to the Voice for Love, the Holy Spirit, Who asks us to “lay down all defenses as merely foolish” (W-pI.170.5:4).

It is important to give attention to the depths at which we do not believe that “laying down all defenses” makes sense. We have to see how deeply we cherish our supposed right to self-defense, how literally everything in our world is connected to this “right.” We believe that if we give up self-defense, we’ll die.

When we begin to glimpse the enormity of this challenge, then we begin to understand just how radical A Course in Miracles truly is. Just as the historical Jesus advocated and practiced nonviolence, so are we called to that beautiful and demanding tradition in which we lay aside our many weapons of attack – and the argument for self-defense upon which they all depend – to watch them “crumble into dust” because dust is all they ever were (W-pI.170.5:5-6).

Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever . . . Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty (W-pI.170.12:1-3, 6).

Is it clear? We become nonviolent because attack is never justified (T-30.VI.1:1). Cruelty can never be a source of solace, grace or safety. Nor are there exceptions to this rule (e.g., W-pI.170.1:2). When we accept this, and live accordingly, then the world is made new. Only the perfection of our brothers and sisters is remembered. It is in this state that we are ready for God to take the last step (T-13.VIII.3:2).

This is a choice we actively make! Here in these bodies in this world we actively choose to let go of every justification for attack, and instead seek only to be a means by which the memory of God’s love is restored to all minds.

We have reached this decision many times before and always turned back without making it (W-pI.170.11:3). The god of cruelty and attack assumes many forms, all of them deceptive, all of which demand we reject our power to choose love and instead worship in paralysis at the altar of fear (W-pI.170.8:6-7). And we have listened. We have obeyed.

Lesson 170 reminds us repeatedly that the decision to become a peacemaker rather than a hostage to fear “can be terrible” (W-pI.170.8:1). Of course we have walked away from it. But it can also be the moment of our release, if we are willing to look at the decision clearly, accept the Holy Spirit’s evaluation of it, and become responsibility for choosing again.

How shall we do this?

The lesson suggests that the answer to this question can be found in the Fourth Obstacle to Peace in Chapter Nineteen of the Text. There, we learn that the final and greatest obstacle to love is our fear of God. We are sworn to forget this obstacle exists, let alone commit to its undoing.

How do we face our fear of God?

Together. We face it together.

A Course in Miracles is clear that the way we remember – and bring to light – this final daunting obstacle is by forgiving our brothers and sisters. We do not reach this juncture alone, and we cannot go forward from it alone either. We need each other to establish the mutuality of forgiveness.

Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins against him, or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice (T-19.IV.D.13:1-4).

In other words, we remember love by forgiving our brothers and sisters – by seeing in them only the perfection of Creation, untouched by the vicious judgments of the ego. When that is all we see in others, then we will understand that we merely perceive our own reflection. There is only holiness in Creation. What else could we see? And when that is all we see, what possible justification for conflict remains?

If you want to remember Heaven, then do Heaven. Be Heaven.

On this view, Lesson 170 is a watershed moment in our practice. Think back to those early first lessons, when we were looking around at things, coming to terms with the power of our mind to define and categorize them, effectively giving meaning to literally everything. Here we do something similar, but with exponentially greater depth and power.

You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false (W-pI.170.2:6-7).

We have this moment together, you and I: shall we not, together, create the peace we are created to create?

←Lesson 169
Lesson 171→

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

It is not possible to be separated from God. But it is possible to deny our oneness with God. We can ignore grace but we cannot undo it. We cannot make what is true false. Our happiness and peace depend on a right understanding of what we are in truth and on our willingness to accept that reality, rather than resist it.

This lesson begins with four questions, each of which is aimed at showing the depth and intensity of our self-denial. They are leading questions – each supposing a variation of the answer “I am doing this to myself” (T-27.VIII.10:1).

So this lesson basically has two parts: remind us that we are not – because we cannot be – separate from God and, to the extent we feel we are separate from God, to remember that we are the ones driving that separation and there is another way.

Deny not Heaven. It is yours today, but for the asking . . . Ask to receive, and it is given you (W-pI.165.4:1-2, 4).

What tends to stand in the way of accepting Heaven is doubt. We don’t believe that we’re worthy. Or we God is capricious and unreliable. Or we’re on the wrong path and the right one will make everything easier. All of these concerns are forms of doubt.

Doubt brings forth the idea of sacrifice and makes it appear meaningful. That is because doubt always arises as confusion about what we are, which means that we are confused about joy and pain (e.g. T-7.X.3:6-7).

Conviction lies within [Heaven]. Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow (W-pI.165.4:5-8).

The end of doubt is certainty, but certainy comes when we ask with desire, and accept what is given in response. Do you want the peace of God? Then the peace of God is there, by virtue of your desire for it. It is not God’s intention that we should go without the sure knowledge of our identity.

Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God’s sustaining Love and from his home (W-pI.165.6:5-6).

The suggestion is that we lean not our own certainty – which is feeble and compromised at best – but rather on God’s. Where God abides, truth abides, and where truth abides there can be no doubt. Hence the injunction to not deny the Thought of God but rather to accept that it cannot be absent from us (W-pI.165.7:2-3-5, 8:1).

Our willingness to practice this way is what matters. The gift has already been given; God’s grace is already our only reality and identity. We merely open our minds to remember what is already in them. Beyond fear and hate, beyond doubt and anger, is the quiet stillness of Love in which all dreams end, including the happy dream of being host to that which is all-encompassing and eternal. Today we let a few beams of divine light in to warm us and show the way forward, to the peace that – for a little while longer yet – surpasses understanding.

←Lesson 164
Lesson 166→