Reading A Course in Miracles: Cause and Effect

A Course in Miracles asserts that the law of cause-and-effect is “the most fundamental law there is” (T-2.VII.1:4). A is responsible for B, and B is dependent on A (and B may in turn become responsible for C, which will then be dependent on D, and so forth). Cause-and-effect is implicit in creativity; without it, creation as such is not possible.

In this section of the text, Jesus notes that thoughts are causes which yield observable effects. Thus, mind is creative. Yet it is capable of miscreation (T-2.VII.2:2). The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to train us in miracle-minded thinking, which is essentially full respect for the creative power of thought, which enables it to create lovingly.

Thus, in the course, Jesus does not simply eradicate fear. Rather, he teaches us to see clearly how our experience of fear comes into existence (we did it). This clear seeing is what undoes fear, because it reveals that fear is not fundamentally real. It’s a miscreation of a mind that was insufficiently attentive to its own creative power.

This can seem a bit mean-spirited. Why doesn’t Jesus, given his uninhibited communication with God as Love, and power to control both space and time (T-2.VII.7:9) just relieve us of fear? Declining to tamper with it on grounds that the law of cause-and-effect is fundamental can seem overly legalistic, almost as if Jesus were hiding behind a lawyer.

Yet the position taken by Jesus in this section of A Course in Miracles is deeply helpful in at least two ways. First, it places significant emphasis on the power of our thought, and second, it intimates what a helpful and creative relationship with Jesus looks like.

Let’s look at the last point first. In many Christian traditions, the power of Jesus is paramount. He can do what you and I cannot. Nor are there limitations on his power.

In this sense, as a sort of favored child of God, Jesus is superior to other human beings.

A Course in Miracles revises that standard. At best, Jesus is an older brother entitled to our respect and devotion because of his care for and attention to us (T-1.II.3:7). But he is not superior. As miracle workers, we are called not to worship Jesus but to collaborate with him. However, in order to be effective collaborators, we must appreciate the full range of our creative power. We have to bring into alignment with God’s creative powers; we have to “think with His mind” (W-pI.43.3:2).

Thus, when Jesus declines to interfere with what we make with our thought – in this case fear – he is effectively accepting and honoring us as equals in Creation. He is testifying that God does not have favorite children or special children; all God’s children are equal, and their equality and collectivity is what makes them children of God (T-2.VII.6:3). Our holiness arises as a condition of our equality.

Reciprocity at this stage of learning does not mean that we create perfectly lovingly, as Jesus does, but rather that we are willing to grow into the potential Jesus already sees in us. A Course in Miracles exists – we created it – in order to train our minds to create love rather than to miscreate – to make – fear.

This addresses the first point mentioned above: that the course is a curriculum in which we learn to value and to thus correctly apply the power of our thinking. We can choose to miscreate, but we can also choose to create (T-2.VII.3:2). All fear is inherent in the former, and all love in the latter (T-2.VII.3:14). Thus, the basic conflict is between fear and love (T-2.VII.3:15). A Course in Miracles is a means by which to learn how to differentiate between the two and make a better decision as to the one we want to bring forth.

Thus, we are not trying to master or control fear (or hate or jealousy or guilt et cetera). To do that simply reinforces the underlying error that fear is actually real (T-2.VII.4:2). The true resolution of the conflict between fear and love rests on “mastery through love” (T-2.VII.4:4).

That appears to be easier said than done, of course. While we’re here – while eternity is still an idea rather than an experience – we do experience conflict. One way to respond to this is to recognize that conflict – and the pain and discomfort it arouses – are simply signals that we need correction. The solution to fear and discomfort is perfect love which is the atonement. Accepting the atonement in this way is the fundamental correction to all our problems. There is no other solution.

Fear is really nothing and love is everything. Whenever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished . . . The initial corrective procedure is to recognize temporarily that there is a problem, but only as an indication that immediate correction is needed. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay (T-2.VII.5:3-4, 8-9).

Thus, mastery through love starts with the simple awareness of our own need for love, right here in the very lives we are living. Whenever we are in pain of any kind, the only answer is love; whenever someone near us is pain, the only answer is love. The more often and consistently we remember this, the more helpful we are to our brothers and sisters, and the more we will experience love, which is the absence of guilt and fear.

Thus, a miracle worker lives in a state of readiness – an ongoing openness to Atonement, to accepting love instead of fear, and thus extending love instead of fear.

It is imperative to remember that this reflects a change in thinking, which is internal. In terms of cause and effect, it means giving attention to thought as cause. Yet note that we do did not create ourselves (T-1.V.1:8). Thus, our thought – which is causative – has its own cause, which is God, or love. Thus, to become miracle-minded is to think with God the thoughts that God would have us think, because to think them is to be with God.

Actually, “Cause” is a term properly belonging to God, and His “Effect” is His Son. This entails a set of Cause and Effect relationships totally different from those you introduce in miscreation (T-2.VII.3:11-12).

Rethinking cause and effect along these lines can facilitate the change of mind that is the miracle.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 16

I have no neutral thoughts.

Lesson 16 of A Course in Miracles is a wonderful opportunity to make contact with what a Zen Buddhist might call call “monkey mind.” Where recent lessons have asked us to bring up particularly frightening thoughts, this one asks that we make no discrimination whatsoever. It asks us to recognize that all thoughts are equal because none of them are neutral. All thinking is creative, causative, gives rise to world and self.

For me, giving attention to thought in this way, means entering a literal alphabet soup of ideas, images, stories, song fragments etc. Monkey mind! It is always astounding to me how crazy that interior space is – busy and buzzing, like a hive of bees.

Actually, a hive of bees isn’t a bad metaphor. I tried my hand at beekeeping a few years ago. It didn’t go well but I did learn a lot about how bees work. I remember when we opened them, the hives were intensely – almost frantically – alive. Bees were coming and going, hovering and landing, crawling in and out of the brood comb. It looks utterly chaotic – yet each bee knows precisely what it’s doing. It has a job and it attends to that job. Each one matters.

That’s the point of this lesson: every single one of our thoughts is powerful and effective. We can’t disregard one of them, no matter how minor or insignificant it appears. There’s no such thing as “idle thoughts” (W-pI.16.2:1). All thoughts cause some effect, yield some result. There’s no such thing as one that doesn’t.

Critically, there is no shade of gray there, either – every thought either promotes truth or foments illusion.

Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false make theirs (W-pI.16.1:4-7).

This is itself a frightening thought! If we can’t control our thoughts – and, right now, we cannot, apparently – then we are doomed, no? Indeed, this lesson doubles down on the importance of recognizing thought’s power.

. . . salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible (W-pI.16.3:1-2).

Lesson 16 is not aimed at bringing thought under conscious control yet. Its objective goal is simply to encourage us to begin to give regular attention to thought and to accept and appreciate the fact that they’re not neutral. All thinking begets form at some level (T-2.VI.9:14).

This is one of the early lessons in which the scale of the healing contemplated by the course begins to come into view. If each thought – no matter how wispy, no matter how faint – creates either Truth or illusion, then we are going to have to radically alter the way that we think. Radically alter it. 

We might start to wonder what’s going to happen when we cease to tolerate mind-wandering – that is, when we stop just letting our thoughts run rampant. Offering them to the Teacher of Love in order to align them with Love . . . what happens when we do this? Can we do it? 

Hopefully, as we practice these early lessons, we begin to recognize the importance of giving attention to how we think and how that thinking is not separate from the world in which we live. A Course in Miracles is an invitation to be salvation-minded on a second-by-second basis. Separation is a problem in thought; and so its undoing occurs there as well.

The only problem we have is our perception that what we are can be – and in fact is – separate from God. Lesson 16 is observing that this perception is made by a powerful mind. The separation feels and appears real because the mind making it go can move mountains and construct universes. It’s when we appreciate this – when we gain respect for our creative powers – that we begin to move more forcefully and helpfully in the direction of remembering God.

Thus, everything that shows up when we practice this lesson – the despair, the hopefulness, the quitting and starting again, the optimism, the curiosity, the annoyances – are all grist for the mill of Forgiveness. Of the many thoughts that fill my mind during this exercise, quite a few are related to A Course in Miracles itself. When am I going to wake up? When is Jesus going to come and take me by the hand? Why is this so hard?

Lesson 16 asks us to honor those thoughts with condition or qualification. They matter. They don’t matter in and of themselves; rather, they matter because the mind giving rise to them is powerful beyond measure. 

It is in this lesson that I sometimes catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the chatter of monkey mind, the crazy chaos of the hive. It’s like staring into an ocean which is murky and crowded with fish and all of a sudden – for just a moment – the fish clear and a beam of light sinks into the depths and you’re peering into a beautiful bottomless crystal, the light swimming in the current, and it takes your breath away.

And then it passes and you’re back to the lesson, back to singling out this or that thought and reminding yourself that it’s not neutral. It’s okay. Nothing can withstand our efforts, our determination to reach God, to remember God. Because our mind wants that deep down is all the promise we need that it will occur. Hold onto the lesson that show you the light, let them give you that extra push. Then keep on, bent on salvation, the only job we’ve got.

←Lesson 15
Lesson 17→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 15

My thoughts are images that I have made.

Few lessons in A Course in Miracles are as confusing or troubling as Lesson 15. For one thing, it’s a flat-out strange idea for most people – we only think we think the thoughts we think and we only take them seriously because they show up as images to a body. Therefore, we conflate spiritual vision with the body’s considerably weaker seeing. It’s conceptually confusing. What are we supposed to do?

And of course the second reason this lesson throws people are the “light episodes” themselves.

Ah, the ACIM light episodes . . . the bright white frame that surrounds familiar objects, proof that we’re finally advancing up the spiritual ladder. We’re leaving behind the less-advanced students, getting closer to God who loves us a tiny bit more than the others . . . Or we’re freaking out because we’re not seeing the lights. What’s wrong with us?

Set the light episodes aside. They’re a sideshow – and an optional sideshow at that – to the more important work of the lesson. We are learning how to work with our mind here. We are training it to perform miracles, to align it with God and to embrace right-mindedness so gracefully and gratefully that error of any kind simply fades away like smoke in a breeze.

To do that, we need to come to terms with the gap between “seeing” – which is what our bodies do – and real vision, which is the natural function of our minds as miracle workers.

This lesson encourages us to look closely at the apparently dense material objects that surround us and recognize them as images. It is reminiscent of the work we did in Lesson 7 and Lesson 4 (and earlier lessons). We believe the physical world that is revealed to our senses is the real world. Yet this is merely conjectured form into which content – love or the call of love – is poured.

Two key ideas then are presented in this (and related) lessons.

First, we have to begin to see beyond form to content. A good model for this is how the course reframes traditional interpretations of the crucifixion. In Special Principles of Miracle Workers he notes that when he asked God to forgive the soldiers responsible for his execution he wasn’t talking about the execution itself but rather the wrong-mindedness symbolized by it. The suggestion is that the particular form that the error takes does not matter, but the underlying thought process giving rise to it does. We have to begin to get in the habit of looking – of seeing – beyond the forms, or images, that our thoughts construct.

The second idea in this lesson has to do with cause-and-effect. We tend to believe that we are victims of the world – outside influences act on us, driving our behavior. It seems logical enough, right? But A Course in Miracles asks us to consider that the exact opposite is what’s true – that we look inside, decide what kind of world we want to see, and then project it outward. Nothing happens that we haven’t specifically asked for. We are not passive victims but powerful actors playing at passivity.

Hence, those images that we see – the world we experience – is really just a proxy for the internal struggle between salvation and separation. And it can’t be “fixed” or “healed” out there because that’s just images on images on images – it has to be handled on the inside.

Lesson 15 – which includes the important caveat that its fundamental idea is likely to sail right over our heads (which is okay for now) – is a big step in helping us to develop this new perspective on love and healing. In terms of thought reversal – seeing past form and reversing cause-and-effect – it’s a lot to handle in just one day of application.

This is one of the lessons where lingering may not be a bad idea.

One other thought. This lesson includes a critical subtext: take your thoughts seriously. They matter. They are powerful. Your power of thought has literally made the world you see and hear and touch. It implicitly testifies to our extraordinary capacity for Love and for healing calls for Love which we are only just beginning to appreciate. If this lesson feels significant – and it should – consider that it’s merely a prelude to the gentle insights and inner peace to come.

Now about the lights. Human experience is such that we make the spiritual far more mystical or even magical than it needs to be. We feel awe in the presence of channeled texts. We believe that psychics of this or that stripe can provide us with otherwise inaccessible information. Please understand that I am not knocking channeled texts or ascended masters.  I’m cool with psychics. I own Tarot cards. I think crystals are pretty. But I’ve been lifted by non-channeled texts, too. Psychotherapists have been more helpful than psychics. And so-called ordinary stones and plants have been dear allies in learning. As I continually grow closer to the healing contemplated by the course, so-called psychic experiences – communing with the dead, knowing the future, being healed without allopathic intervention, et cetera. – begin to feel more natural, more . . . just the way things are.

All God’s gifts – literary, psychic, healing, teaching – are given to all of us in equal measure. It is a function of the separation that we believe otherwise – and perceive otherwise. Needing light episodes is just another way of glorifying the body’s experience in the world – no different than sex or imported Belgian chocolate or walking your dog at 4 a.m. so you can stargaze. They don’t really matter. If you’re not having them, consider the possibility that you don’t need them – that you have already accepted the truth of Lesson 15, that you are already committed to trading sight for vision.

Above all, don’t allow them to become hallmarks of good or advanced students. Like all our experiences in this world, they are just another illusion. Do the lessons, study the text, practice forgiveness. What’s given is already yours; you will remember it for all of us in time.

←Lesson 14
Lesson 16→

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Reading A Course in Miracles: Special Principles of Miracle Workers

We might consider this section a sort of adjunct to the Principles of Miracles. Yet the focus has shifted somewhat: from what miracles are to what miracle workers do. In a sense, this section is an early exposition about application. Miracles are shifts in thinking that facilitate love rather than fear; here is how we live in order to bring them forth consistently.

Thus, the focus is on deepening – on expanding – our conceptual understanding of both miracles and how to work miracles.

From time to time, students wonder if the “Jesus” who narrates A Course in Miracles is literally the historical Jesus – the follower of John, the itinerant sage of lower Galilee, executed in Jerusalem, whose life, death and resurrection are the structure of Christianity.

Set aside for a moment your answer to that question. Set aside whether having an answer to that question even matters. This section enunciating the special principles of miracle workers, is one of the most fascinating combinations of the historical Jesus and the ACIM Jesus. And it does so through the image of the cross and the idea of crucifixion.

In the text, Jesus clarifies what he meant by asking God to forgive the Roman soldiers who were executing them (as recounted in Luke 23:34).

The statement “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” in no way evaluates what they do. It is an appeal to God to heal their minds. There is no reference to the outcome of the error. That does not matter (T-2.VI.A.16:3-6).

A traditional reading of Jesus’s statement is that the soldiers are behaving in a cruel and unjust way which violates the humanity they share with Jesus. What does one do when another misbehaves? They forgive them and/or ask God to forgive them.

In a sense, Jesus is being the “better” or “bigger” man.

But in the understanding of A Course in Miracles, Jesus suggests the soldiers need forgiveness not for what they do but what what they think. Their minds are unhealed because they believe in an external world in which what they do to another person is not also done to their own selves. What they are doing – crucifying Jesus – isn’t really the point. The specific action one does under the influence of wrong-mindedness is never the problem. Rather, it’s the wrong-mindedness itself, the confusion about what is real.

Thus – again, while elaborating for ACIM students what it means to work miracles – the narrator of the text overlooks what is arguably the most significant historical events in human history. The soldiers could be teasing him for wearing cheap sandals for all he cares. The issue is entirely a question of right vs. wrong-mindedness.

Two things are happening here. First, we are being introduced to the radical and unfamiliar concept of forgiveness in A Course in Miracles. Forgiveness isn’t about judgment with respect to the external world at all; it’s about the mind with which we choose to see that world.

Second, in being asked to revise our understanding of crucifixion, we are being instructed that forgiveness without correction is “an empty gesture” (T-2.VI.A.15:3). Thus, a special principle that miracle workers embody and practice is that forgiveness is “not about judgment at all” (T-2.VI.A.16:2). It is about the injunction to “be of one mind” (T-2.VI.A.17:1).

Thus, this section makes perfectly how utterly radical the conversion of the miracle worker must be. If Jesus could be of one mind with those who tortured and killed him, then who can we possible exclude from our own living and loving?

That is, if the external event we know as the crucifixion – the hideous suffering and death of Jesus on a cross – cannot impede love, then what does? What external event or individual can we possible place us in a posture of refusing to love?

Indeed, the miracle worker is literally called to cooperate with Jesus – by remembering him in this specific way – in bringing forth love (T-2.VI.A.17:2).

And, again, to “bring forth love” is simply to be of one mind with the other, which the course refers to as “right-mindedness.” Hence this critical directive with respect to our own behavior.

Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion (T-2.VI.A.13:3-4).

And a few lines later:

Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails correction. Without this it is essential judgmental, rather than healing (T-2.VI.A.15:3-4).

Thus, miracle workers – which is what we are by virtue of our study of A Course in Miracles – eschew judgment altogether in favor of the right-mindedness modeled by Jesus as he met his death. It was not his death he wanted to fix, nor the behavior of the soldiers killing him. Rather, he wanted to heal their minds from the confusion that the external world has either meaning or effect.

In other words, healing takes place at the level of mind, which is created through God, and has literally no effect on the world it makes by believing in the possibility of separation from God.

The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns . . . A clear distinction between what is created and what is made is essential. All forms of healing rest on this fundamental correction in level perception (T-2.VI.A.11:1, 12:1-2).

I want to touch briefly on the crucifixion and how we think about it with other folks in our living, especially those who aren’t studying A Course in Miracles.

I have friends, family members and colleagues who are Christian. They reflect a broad spectrum of Christian belief and experience. I don’t believe any of them would willingly entertain a conception of the crucifixion that sets aside the historical event in order to emphasize healing at the level of mind. For them, in varying ways, the cross is how Jesus redeems us all. It is the very essence of Christian identity. There are plenty of variations on this theme, but most Christians would argue that setting aside the cross as a “last useless journey” (T-4.in.3:1) is silly at best and heretical at worst.

So why does A Course in Miracles want to undo this idea? Why does it so utterly upend this traditional image?

I think it goes very forcefully to the general ACIM concept that form does not matter, but content does. It is not what we perceive but rather the mind with which we perceive it that counts. Love does not reside in objects or as an object in the world; it resides at the level of mind.

On this view, Jesus’s trial, torture and crucifixion are simply a vivid and widely-shared example of the guilt and fear that we experience as a consequence of believing that we are actually separated from God. Giving meaning to that event – he redeemed our sins, his blood was shed because he loved us, God loves us so much he killed his only son – is simply another doomed attempt to justify the separation, to see it in a meaningful light.

But the solution is not to translate separation but forget about it altogether. It did not happen. Only in that sense can we fully appreciate what the course means when it states that the cross can be our “last useless journey.”

I suggest – carefully and respectfully – that in this section, miracle workers are being invited to move beyond an experience that is merely religious or theological or even spiritual. We are not making new belief systems to replace old ones; we are not building churches or monasteries. A Course in Miracles is a radical self-study program, one that aims to change us – you and me – as we find ourselves right at this very moment. We are invited to remember ourselves in and as the love that we sometimes call God and for which Jesus remains a helpful symbol.

Symbol – but not idol. Indeed, throughout these special principles that guide the activity of miracle workers, one can almost hear Jesus begging that we not make of him a distant idol, forever enshrined on an instrument of torture. Rather, he wants to be accepted and welcomed as an older brother who knows the way home and is here to share it with us by walking with us.

Turning from this section, then, can leave miracle workers with a deeper appreciation for the entirely radical path we are now walk: miracle workers literally work miracles, transforming their minds from sites of hatred, guilt and fear to a radiant love becoming of those for whom Jesus is liberated and given welcome.

There is nothing else that needs to be done. Indeed, there is nothing else that can be done. And we have at last found the form of the one – if we will let him lead us, let him teach us – that will accomplish the seemingly impossible with us.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 14

God did not create a meaningless world.

We are scared because we believe in a world that does not exist. Reality is hidden from us because we insist that we – and not God – know what meaning is and where it is to be found.

Lesson 14 is the calm reminder that the meaningless world made by the ego and insisted upon by the ego is merely a bad dream. It does not exist, because God does not create that way, and only what God creates exists.

The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist (W-pI.14.1:-5).

Although this is the lesson where the course first introduce the idea that “the world is not real” – what will become a core concept as we progress – here the focus is on the meaning we have given to this illusory world.

We are not being asked to undo the world, but rather to see the way in which the meaning we have assigned it is contrary to the meaning which God gives it.

Thus, we walk through a litany of what frightens and annoys us about the world – its war and starvation, its heart attacks and viruses. We name each of these – we are as specific as possible – and then we say gently that it is our invention, not God’s creation.

What God did not create is not real and therefore need not be feared. We are shifting our mind from passive builder of nightmares to willing co-creator of happiness.

I’d like to speak a little also to an early experience I had that involves this lesson. It has to do with how the course undid – painfully and abruptly – my concept of God.

When I first discovered A Course in Miracles, I loved it. It fascinated me; it fulfilled me. I was all in right away. Awakening, it seemed, was just a stone’s throw away. I was – as I had always suspected – a favored son of God about to be elevated to His right hand.

Then, one morning while walking my mind just crumbled. Abruptly – like falling into a cold lake – I realized that God as A Course in Miracles understood God was definitely not the God with whom I was familiar. The course was talking about a God that was wholly loving and creative in a real way, albeit a way incomprehensible to human thought.  The God I believed in was an intelligent actor who controlled life the way I controlled chess boards. And he didn’t move pieces to win – he moved them because it pleased him. And sometimes pain and anguish was what pleased him. It was a god of punishment, a god of hate.

The difference between those two concepts of God is a canyon. I couldn’t believe that after all these years – therapy, meditation, Thomas Merton, steady churchgoing, ACIM – that I was still beholden to a God that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It was as if the course had drawn back a veil to reveal the inner horror show that drove me. I hated the course that day.

And so here’s what Lesson 14 does for me: it reminds me that I have not given up completely on the God with whom I grew up. No rational person – given a choice between a cruel and indifferent God and a perfectly loving one would choose the former. But I am not rational. 

For some of us, dredging up a catalog of personal horrors isn’t a big deal. For me – for one simple reason – it was. Because in the deep place we rarely go – where we are so scared to shine the light – I believe that God did create those horrors. And they are lying in wait as punishment for my sins.

Each time I say God didn’t create cancer or war or whatever, a voice that responds, “oh yes he did. You know he made cancer and serial killers and random accidents that kill children. If you deny it, he’s going to get you.”

I know from an intellectual place how sad and pathetic that is. Please understand that! But I cannot deny its existence. Denying it means that it won’t be healed. 

So what do we do? What did I do?

For starters, we own whatever it is that we want to deny or blame on others. We refuse to hide it. We say, “here you go, Jesus. You said there’s no order of difficulty in miracles? Well, I’ve got a doozy for you.”

And then we do the lesson. I just did it. I say to God, “this one? I don’t buy it. But I’ll do it. I’m not going to get anything out of it, but I’ll do it.” I follow it to the T – no more, no less. Tomorrow’s another day.

And there is something in all of that – owning it, being honest with Jesus or whatever symbol of Love works for us – that is peaceful unto itself. That’s all I can say. You face your demons and it doesn’t seem like Jesus or God does anything for you in that moment, but when it’s over you feel . . . normal. You can go home and make popcorn for the kids and play games. You can make a healthy dinner for the family instead of blacking out with booze. One foot after another. One little prayer after another. Something is working.

And then one day you realize those demons are gone, as if they were never real in the place. And you didn’t even hear them leave . . . 

In the years since that dark morning – when I faced the God of my childhood in fear and trembling, unsure of the alternative – I have come to realize that a lot of healing takes place without our knowing it. I have gotten better at accepting this and at showing up, day after day. I often paraphrase Meister Eckhart who said that “the mind with which I know God is the mind with which God knows me.” There is peace and quiet – and even some gratitude – merely in our willingness to be in the process, however we define it. It is not our peace and quiet and gratitude. It is God’s For only what God makes is real. 

←Lesson 13
Lesson 15→

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 13

A meaningless world engenders fear.

ACIM Lesson 13 is the first time in the workbook that we encounter the phrase “the ego” (W-p1.13.2:2). This is a significant textual development, because it subtly introduces the concept that we are not the “we” we think we are. As well, this lesson includes powerful language about our active opposition to God which, as the Author clearly indicates, is likely to cause considerable resistance.

We are again working with the idea that the world we see is meaningless. In lesson 12 of A Course in Miracles, we explored the possibility that this meaninglessness is what upsets us and causes us to frantically impose our own “meaning” on what we see. It also made clear that there was an alternative – that is, God’s meaning.

Lesson 13 is a strong witness for a) why we are not already perceiving God’s meaning and b) why we aren’t likely to experience it any time soon. Understanding this means understanding why we’re now being introduced to the ego as well as the likely cause of our inner resistance to God.

In ACIM terms, the ego – while psychologically resonant – is not precisely the ego to which Freud (and others) introduced us. Rather, it is the entire psychological self – id, ego and superego if you like. We construct a false self based on family, culture, history,  memory, body, etc. And then we decide that this fictional construction – for it is, in the end, simply a story we tell – is who we really are. We equate ourselves entirely with that ego – that story, that idea, that construct.

Lesson 13 suggests – as countless religious traditions and spiritual gurus from Advaita Vedanta to J. Krishnamurti to Eckhart Tolle have taught – that the ego is neither who nor what we are in truth.

Thus the question: who are we? Who is it that is asking these questions? Who is it that creates the false self and why?

While I am not suggesting that anyone wear sackcloth, smear their skin with ash, fast until they’re faint, or render their lives a long miserable and bitter exercise in negation, I do suggest that answering these questions should not be taken lightly. They are at the very heart of our experience as human beings in search of meaning. We cannot know peace or joy – we cannot know God – until we have answered them (or, in truth, learned that we already know and are the answer).

Still, asking these questions needs to be a priority. After all, Atonement is a total commitment (T-2.II.7:1).

The ego then is a defensive gesture, a defensive construct. It is the voice that speaks against God, justifying the separation and maintaining it through guilt and fear and hate. Faced with a meaningless world, the ego “rushes in” to supply meaning (W-pI.13.2:3), and all of its images and narratives and excuses and rationales have but one objective: to ensure that we – the we we truly are – never questions its existence and thus never reaches God.

The ego teaches that we are pitted against God in a death match. And – crazier yet – that we actually have a chance of defeating God.

In truth, we neither want – nor could persevere in – such a conflict.

Ego is our default – our learned, our habitual – response to the meaningless world. Seeing this meaninglessness – and reckoning with the fear it engenders – is how we make contact with another, better way.

Our resistance to the ideas in Lesson 13 is likely to be profound. Our ability to think our way out of it is probably going to be very convincing. What? Me hate God? Impossible! I pray every morning and every night. I’ve got a shelf full of books all of which celebrate my love of the Divine. I adore the Lord. Adore Him.

We’re happy to acknowledge a certain difficulty in reaching God, perhaps. We’re cool with recognizing a degree of spiritual inconsistency. But outright conflict?

That’s got to be somebody else.

And yet, do we really know peace? Do we really experience ourselves solely as the Love and Light of God? Or do we catch only glimpses of that Love and Light as we frantically navigate a world of entropy and decay and violence and pain?

We can’t lie to ourselves about this forever. It hurts and it hurts bad but we have to see it clearly before it can be healed. And if we can’t accept that our active resistance to God is a fact, then can we at least consider the possibility that it might be true? That there is perhaps a better way? And that our way isn’t working?

So on the one hand, I think this lesson is enormous – the project of a lifetime. It marks the introduction of a critical concept – the ego – which in turn opens the door to radical inner work, the likes of which most of us have not yet undertaken, or have undertaken only half-heartedly. It makes clear that we have set a false self up in direct opposition to God, and believe we are that self. Our good intentions and sincere beliefs that this isn’t true are just the ego persuading us not to look closely at it.

This is heavy stuff.

Yet on the other hand, Lesson 13 is also simply another little step in the direction of Heaven.  The last sentences of this lesson are meant literally: don’t even think about these ideas right now outside of practicing the lesson (W-p1.13.6:2-3). It’s too much and we’re not ready for it all at once.

Reversing cause and effect – which is the big correction which underlies this and so many other course lessons – is a major principle of A Course in Miracles. Here, we’re simply being asked to consider the possibility that meaninglessness makes us fearful and that we’re apt to respond to that fear in a way that walls God out.

We don’t have to get this all at once. It’s okay if we don’t understand it. It’s okay if we feel resistant to it – or angry about it – or scared of it. All we are ever really asked to offer in these lessons is our little willingness. It is always sufficient.

This is what I find so comforting about A Course in Miracles: it undoes our false beliefs with saint-like intensity yet simultaneously makes clear that we are loved, we are perfect, and that the end is sure so long as we’re willing to toddle along in the right direction. The more we can accept the loving embrace implied in the gentle voice that guides us, the faster and farther we’re going go. We really aren’t doing this alone.

←Lesson 12
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