Section commentaries are from Robert Perry, editor of the Complete & Annotated Edition (CE) of A Course in Miracles.

Transcription

1 Week 38 Study Guide CourseCompanions.com Chapter 21: Desiring a Sinless World Day 260: VII. The Last Unanswered Question Day 261: Review: Chapter 21 Chapter 22: The Function of the Holy Relationship Day 262: I. The Undoing of Differences Day 263: II. Christ Reborn into His Ancient Home Day 264: III. The Escape from Misery Day 265: IV. Seeing Past the Form of Error Day 266: V. Beyond the Veil Section commentaries are from Robert Perry, editor of the Complete & Annotated Edition (CE) of A Course in Miracles. 1

2 Chapter 21: Desiring a Sinless World Day 260: VII. The Last Unanswered Question I have pondered for years what the army of the powerless (paragraphs 2-5) refers to. I finally realized that the answer is simple: group behavior in this world. If you think about it, groups do behave very much like Jesus description of the army of the powerless. Groups typically feel disempowered (even if they appear to the rest of us to be in power); up against some vague, faceless enemy that secretly holds all the reins and is responsible for their fallen status. Hatred of this enemy is what unites them. As a result, their members only seem to be joined, and what looks like unbreakable loyalty frequently dissolves into irreparable rifts. This combination of internal disunity, a diffuse enemy, and a sense of disempowerment makes for irrational and unpredictable group behavior. As a result, the group tends to go galloping madly after one enemy and then another, each time thinking that this is the big one. I am hoping that particular groups came to mind as you read that, but this is not just those groups; it s most groups. What they don t realize aside from how tragically comical their behavior looks is that underneath it all, the real enemy they are trying to locate and defeat is the Son of God, their own allpowerful identity. Way down deep, that is the Power they fear and have united against. The worldly enemies they fight are only stand-ins for this ultimate enemy. It s a chilling vision, isn t it? We have joined this army, for we share its mentality. We too see ourselves as disempowered by some vague enemy out there and therefore forced to wage war, to sin. That is why the fundamental choice before us is whether we will continue to see our current world or will choose to see a new world. If we want, we can elect to see a world in which there are no enemies, where no one has taken our power, where no one has forced us to sin. That, of course, is the point of those four key questions in paragraph 6. We need to ask ourselves those questions with great sincerity. As we do, we need to realize that ruling (6:8) and being powerful (6:9) are not about the power to dominate others but the power to heal them (8:2). These four questions, in other words, ask if we want to see a world where our healing power radiates without impediment to the dear friends we see all around us. Actually, says Jesus, we have been asking ourselves these questions. We have asked them, for instance, whenever we have questioned seeing someone as an enemy, whenever we have questioned that we are at the mercy of events outside us. In the process, Jesus says, we have answered all but the final question. Why is the final question so hard to answer? It s because it s a statement not of what we want but of what is true. What we want can change. You can desire a world you rule, which rules you not, and change your mind (10:6). Truth, however, is by nature unwavering. It never changes. So to say we want to see the real world because it is the truth (6:11) is to say I want to see it for reasons that are always true. In other words, I am deciding to see it always. Answering yes to the final question means thus renouncing the option to change our mind again (11:5). That s why we take so long before we are willing to say yes to that final question. It locks us in. By signing on this dotted line, we have signed a contract that can never be broken, and that scares us. And so we tend to hold that pen above the paper, hesitating, for a very long time. 2

3 Twice Jesus asks us to consider carefully (9:1) or think carefully (17:4) why we haven t answered the final question. So we should do that. What is keeping us from saying a permanent, irrevocable yes to sight of a world without enemies? Whatever it is, perhaps we can reflect on this: Just as truth is constant and unwavering, so is happiness. We think of happiness as by nature fleeting, being tied to fleeting events. What if it s the opposite? What if happiness is by nature constant? What if it only comes through wishing to constantly see the vision of the real world (13:3), the joyous world in which we have no enemies? What if happiness, in other words, comes from finally saying yes to the last unanswered question? 3

4 Day 261: Review: Chapter 21 I. The Forgotten Song. I am blind. When I look at the world, I see only my projections and inferences. The fact that I am not seeing what s really there is shown by how much I stumble over things I didn t see. I can afford to let go of the world I see, because in my mind is a distant memory of home, like the notes of a forgotten song that once meant everything to me. This memory will then awaken vision in me, and I will see the endless light of the Son of God. II. The Power of Decision. To have salvation and peace, all I need to do is give the Holy Spirit the little gift He asks for: my acceptance that my perceptions, feelings, goals, and external happenings were chosen by me. I have enshrined on my altar the mad idea that the world, which I made, forces all these things on me. This reversal of causation is the same error as believing that I, whom God created, could detach from Him and turn around and create Him. III. Faith, Belief, and Vision. To pursue the goal of sin, I changed primordial certainty into faith, belief, and perception. I seek the goal of sin by limiting my brother to his body and striking a bargain in which I agree to sacrifice for him if his body will sacrifice for me. I need instead to pursue the goal of holiness. I do so by sending my faith, belief, and perception past my brother s body to his holiness. I thus set him free from his body and my demands. IV. The Fear to Look Within. The ego approves of me being afraid to look within and see sin. Its real fear is that I will look within and see no sin. When I joined with my brother, I detached from my ego and began identifying with the other part, which has been waiting since time began to join my brother and be free again. By identifying with it, I now can look upon my ego dispassionately and consider that there really is no sin in me. This makes my ego very afraid. V. Reason as the Undoing of Insanity. I have let the ego s voice direct my selective perception. What I see has convinced me that I am a tiny, vulnerable self at the mercy of the world. If instead I let God s Voice show me the world through vision, I will see the other self in me, which sees miracles as natural. This other self uses reason, which reasons from God s premises. Reason is so lofty that my current mind is incapable of it and my ego doesn t even know it exists. VI. What Reason Tells You. Madness tells me that my mind is cordoned off inside a solid wall (the body). This implies that thoughts in my mind don t influence other minds and that my perception of my brother doesn t influence my perception of myself. Reason, however, tells me that this is false, because minds are joined. This may seem to place a heavy burden on me, but it s my salvation, because now I can save my brother, and his gratitude will then save me. VII. The Last Unanswered Question. I have joined the army of the powerless, which seeks to kill the enemy it thinks made it weak: the all-powerful Son of God. Instead, I can choose to see a world in which I have no enemy, no one who made me powerless and forced me to sin. To really choose this world, though, I need to choose it because it is the truth. Since truth is constant, this means renouncing my right to change my mind. This is how I choose constant happiness. 4

5 Chapter 22: The Function of the Holy Relationship Day 262: I. The Undoing of Differences As we enter Chapter 22, which is really the last chapter that focuses on the holy relationship, we find this little gem of a section about the very heart of the holy relationship. We are such social creatures; we all have our networks of relationships. How is it, then, that even in the midst of togetherness we remain so painfully alone? Jesus has a simple answer: differences. We see other people as different from us. Perhaps the first difference we see is that they have what we lack. They possess the secret ingredient that can fill our empty heart. As universal as this perception is, it leads inexorably to a need for sin (2:1), a need for predation in our relationships. After all, isn t You have what fills my emptiness inside exactly what the tiger feels? And we know what that leads to. Thus, even while we tell ourselves that we come together to love, the reality is that we come together to take, to rob (2:6), to steal (2:7). As the reality sets in that our partner has come to do the very same thing, we settle into an icy separateness. In that separateness, He has what I lack slowly becomes He does what I would never do. We see sins in him that seem incomprehensible to us (1:5). How can he try to take from us in that way? What is he thinking? What he is thinking, of course, is the exact same thing about us. The two of us just helplessly watch the logic of differences play itself out, until the only logical thing is to leave. Haven t we all been there? Relationships seem doomed to start in differences and end in differences. That is why the holy relationship is so priceless. With just one person we at last see sameness. We look at this person and realize You are me in another body. He, then, is not someone to greedily possess, but someone to happily encompass. We already feel whole inside, but wouldn t it be wonderful for that wholeness to reach out and encompass someone else? Why wouldn t we want our wholeness to expand? We now have no need to take from him. Given that he is the same person in a different body, taking from him would be our loss. But we do have a need to genuinely give and joyously receive, realizing that by our giving we gain and that by our receiving he gains. We also have a need to rejoice. We have finally been released from the prison of differences! We at last get to experience real closeness. This closeness is not just a good feeling; it is a transformative power. For in the brightness of its shared space, we actually can t see sin anymore. Sin, as Jesus says here, is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself (1:4). Thus, when we join our minds, our private perceptions of sin automatically vanish. We stop seeing sin in the other, and our bright shared space forgives the sin we secretly believed was in ourselves (1:7). Our relationship now plays out a completely different logic, the logic of sameness. Rather than growing further apart, we get closer and closer, as the sense of sameness between us deepens and all our former boundaries fall away. And rather than our differences breaking us apart, the mounting sameness between us can no longer be confined to the boundaries of this relationship. For here in this spot, Heaven has set foot on earth, and who could dream of confining Heaven? And now the sameness which you saw extends, and finally removes all sense of differences (4:7). We realize that it s not just the two of us who are the same; everyone is the same. And with that realization we see the golden circle of endless light that Jesus described in The Forgotten Song (T-21.I.10). We see the Son of God. 5

6 Day 263: II. Christ Reborn into His Ancient Home I think we do feel like the person described in the first four paragraphs of this section, but we don t draw from that feeling the same conclusion that Jesus does. According to his description, we peer through our eyes upon a world we just can t figure out. Things constantly happen for no rhyme or reason. Good people fail, while bad people thrive. Life proceeds like normal and then a natural disaster strikes and abruptly turns normalcy into tragedy. The people we love are a hundred percent real, but in an instant they can be gone, apparently becoming unreal. None of it seems to make any sense. In this strange place, we don t seem to make much sense either. Who are we? What are we doing here? What is the purpose of our existence? It feels like we are a feather floating senselessly through a senseless world. We seem to be a stranger who aimlessly wandered in and will one day just as aimlessly wander off (1:7). Why, we wonder, is God doing this to us (4:5)? What is the secret behind this existential mystery? This description fits our experience to a tee, does it not? But it doesn t fit us. This is not who we are, these are not our eyes, and this is not our world. What this actually describes is not us, but our ego (2:1). Our ego is the stranger that looks through the eyes of its fleshy home and then uses its brain to try to understand the world thus shown. Our ego is the floating feather. The fact that we feel like that feather and that we are so caught up in using our brain to figure out this crazy place shows just how completely we believe that we are the ego. That sense of self we carry around inside that s the ego. We have another way of seeing, which the Course calls vision. Vision does not use our body s eyes and it is not interpreted by our body s brain. It is so natural to us, it fits us so well, that we don t need to decipher it, as if we are cracking some secret code. We understand it instantly, effortlessly, and completely. It bypasses the eyes and the brain and goes right in. Actually, Jesus says, the Course s teachings are like that, too. Just as vision is our natural sight, so these teachings are our native tongue (7:6). Now, obviously, they don t seem that way. My brain never works so hard as when it s trying to understand the Course! Yet this is where Jesus metaphor of the infant comes in (7:3-7). Right now, I m like an infant. I hear my native tongue, but I don t yet speak it. I have vision, but I m very new to it and it s not yet functioning reliably. In other words, as an infant, my faculties of hearing and seeing are still new, still developing toward the smooth, consistent functioning they one day will attain. There is hope in the image of the infant, for infants, of course, do grow up. According to Jesus, I am in this hopeful place because my brother and I joined in a holy relationship. Again we need to think back to Helen and Bill s joining in June of What allowed them to join? It was that they saw each other through vision (10:6). On that pivotal afternoon, they looked at each other and, rather than seeing a combatant who threatened their fortress, in each the other saw a perfect shelter, where his Self could be reborn in safety and in peace (10:8). Have you ever seen that in someone else not because you had just met the person and were projecting all your fantasies onto her, but because you knew her shortcomings and saw that perfect shelter in her anyway? This is what happened with Helen and Bill. Each of them saw the other as the perfect warm and safe manger in which the Christ in them could be born. This was vision, their first real instance of it. Here is the first direct perception that you have made (11:1). And this allowed Christ to be reborn into His ancient home (9:6). 6

7 If you have such a joining, imagine that the infant Christ has been born to the two of you and as we speak is sheltered under the roof of your relationship. If you really had the baby Jesus living in your house, what would that be like? Wouldn t you expect to, in a sense, grow up with him? Wouldn t you imagine that, as his innate innocence and wisdom began to show, they would change you? Wouldn t you expect his way of seeing the world and his disposition toward reality to rub off on you? That, says Jesus, is exactly what happens in a holy relationship. The infant Christ is born into this relationship and that infant carries in Himself your sleeping vision, which now awakens as he grows, and speaks to you your native tongue, which you now learn and remember. If we have a holy relationship, then, let s not let it become to us routine and anxiety-ridden, just another rickety shack in a homeless world. Let s see it as Jesus does in this section, as the perfect manger, the ancient home, into which Christ Himself has been reborn and in which He will teach us everything we have forgotten over the eons of separation. 7

8 Day 264: III. The Escape from Misery I think Jesus in the first paragraph is absolutely right: We do see illusions and disillusionment as the only alternatives (1:2) and as each being the solution to the other (1:4). It s a cycle we all get stuck in. We see salvation in some promising person or situation and we get high on hope, but then at some point we inevitably come crashing down. We realize it was all illusion, and our disillusionment now feels like the antidote. It protects us from future crashes and wraps us in the cold comfort of being realistic. Eventually, of course, this comfort ends up being too cold, too empty, and we begin wishing for another exciting source of hope to come our way, and the cycle starts over. Which should we choose? The movies tell us to choose illusion; experience tells us to choose disillusionment. Jesus tells us that, however different they look, they are both the same (1:3). They are both miserable and they are both illusion. We need, therefore, to step off the endless merry-goround of illusion and disillusionment and make a completely different choice. That choice is truth, but this truth is not the hard realism of disillusionment. It doesn t tell us to accept the little that life offers and stop moaning. Real truth offers us eternal joy, joy that can never, ever turn to sorrow (3:3). If we thought such joy was possible, wouldn t we rush to lay hold of it? How, then, do we do so? We see eternal truth in our brother, which means we see our brother as being absolutely sinless. There is, however, one caveat. Because truth and illusion are fundamentally different, and because the mind is by nature consistent, if we cherish and defend one perception of sin out there, we have made all illusions real (4:4). And faith in innocence is faith in sin if the belief excludes one living thing and holds it out apart from its forgiveness (4:7) Our first reaction to this, of course, is that the bar has now been set way too high, so that we can never reach salvation. How can we see literally no sin in anyone? That s impossible, we tell ourselves. Yet that isn t our voice saying that; it s the voice of our ego, which is always only too eager to tell us that salvation is impossible. Our own true voice has a different reaction: If the idea of seeing no sin anywhere comes from God, then its attainment must be more than possible (5:6). I must have the means for reaching it and I must be able to use those means. Therefore, this lofty goal must be entirely within my reach. Can you hear that second voice within you? It s probably soft, but it s almost certainly there. Jesus is telling you that This is a crucial period in this course (6:1), in which you have to distinguish between those two voices and choose only the second one as your own. Can you see yourself doing that? It s time, he says, to stop trying to avoid this one decision (7:1). We ve been attempting to mix truth and illusion, trying to be both a savior and a judge (8:5). We ve been thinking that we are standing in a neutral space between Heaven and hell, weaving our own beautiful tapestry with threads of both (8:1-3). Yet we are kidding ourselves. We re just in hell. Isn t it time to make the choice to get out? It probably seems like now isn t a good time. Just look at what s on your plate right now. But time you made, and time you can command (8:9). Time can t force you to wait another hour to make this crucial choice, for time is under your command. There is no better time. Jesus here revisits an earlier teaching. Our belief that the world we made which includes time has the power to turn around and enslave us is in essence the same error as our belief that the mind that God created can detach from Him and turn around and oppose Him. It is the meaningless idea that 8

9 thoughts can leave the thinker s mind, be different from it, and in opposition to it (9:3). Does this make any sense? How could thoughts possibly do that? And so, just as we could never leave God s Mind and oppose Him, so time could never leave our mind and enslave us. Which leaves us right back where we started: Right now, regardless of our circumstances, we have the power to throw all our weight behind our own voice, ignoring the ego s voice. Right now, we can decide that the goal of seeing no sin in anyone is within our grasp. Right now, we can choose the endless joy of truth. 9

10 Day 265: IV. Seeing Past the Form of Error I ve been a fan of this section for years, but it s really hitting me today what a devastating indictment it is of physical sight. We so deeply rely on physical sight, to the point where we equate it with sight. Yet look at the things Jesus calls it here: a strange perception (5:6), distorted perception (7:8), this distorted form of vision (5:7). His issue with physical sight is that real sight is about seeing meaning, and meaning lies on the other side of form. Form is inherently meaningless and even inherently illusory. It s really just nothingness (6:1, 6:8). True sight, therefore, must look past it to the real gold. Our physical eyes, however, do just the opposite. They see only form. Watch, he says, how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning (6:8). Thus, they not only block perception of meaning, they give us the impression that the nothingness they see is the only reality. What a strange form of perception indeed! It s as if we are trapped in a permanent Halloween party, where all our friends are dressed up as witches and monsters and ghouls and then forbidden to speak. After a few hours, wouldn t this get deeply frustrating? Your eyes would be giving you all the wrong signals. They would be unable to tell you who these people really were, and what they did tell you that these people are monsters would be totally wrong. This is the very situation you are in now, and it s been going on for years. This, says Jesus, is entirely by design. The ego made physical sight to do just this. Yes, the ego wants you to see people as flesh rather than spirit, but it goes deeper than that. It wants you to see them as sinners. When you look at a body, you also see its behavior. And this behavior is often selfish, inconsiderate, offensive, and even cruel. Due to the nature of physical sight, your eyes now tell that this behavior is completely real. Being real, it leaves a permanent mark on reality. It leaves a scar that will never heal. And being real, it is also durable, persistent; this behavior will always keep repeating. An error that leaves a permanent mark and is itself permanent is a sin. That s what your eyes were made for, to see that, to see sin (5:5-6). Why is the ego so invested in us seeing sin? Because when we see our brother s body as sinning, that seems to compel us to sin in return. Now we are forced to continually sin, and this convinces us that we are indeed a sinner, which was the ego s goal all along. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made (4:7). This is what makes the ego seem truly real. And because our brother seems to make us sin against our will (9:4), we will never see that we ourselves cause sin by our desire to feel sinful (9:6). We can thus never reevaluate this whole game. As a result, we have been stuck in this game forever, being told by our eyes that mistaken behavior out there is real and therefore is sin, feeling impelled to sin in response, and then being convinced that we are a sinner; all the while never suspecting that it s one big artificial game, brilliantly designed to convince us of exactly that. That is the beauty of finally seeing the nature of the game: We can stop playing. How do we do that? According to this section, we use reason to open up vision (1:5). Vision is real sight because it doesn t see form. It doesn t look on form and then try to extrapolate meaning from that. Rather, you could say that vision is the pure seeing of real meaning. True meaning is not a conclusion based on what vision sees; true meaning is what it sees. It sees this meaning just as clearly and directly as the body s eyes see form. Isn t that kind of pure, direct understanding what we have been missing our whole lives? 10

11 When vision looks at our brother, what does it see? It sees right past his misbehaving body to his real meaning, which is holiness. And just as seeing his sinfulness led to us seeing ourselves as sinful, so seeing his holiness overturns our judgment on ourselves. As Jesus puts it, the vision of his holiness would show you your forgiveness (8:2) Paragraph 8 is a stirring call to apply all this, to consciously look past the sinning body that we see, looking for the holiness that is really there, and looking in hope, since our brother s holiness is our salvation (8:5). I strongly recommend choosing someone whose behavior you have judged as sinful and reading this paragraph through very slowly, applying everything you read to this person. Use this paragraph to opt out of the deadly game you have been playing for so long. 11

12 Day 266: V. Beyond the Veil I almost feel like starting this commentary with When last we left our intrepid explorers, they were standing before the final obstacle. This section, of course, is a sequel to The Obstacles to Peace (T- 19.IV), which ended with a scene in which the two holy relationship partners were standing before the veil that hangs in front of the face of Christ, which is also the final obstacle: the fear of God. There, however, the ending of the story was that they lifted the veil and passed beyond it to disappear into the Presence beyond the veil (T-19.IV.D.19:1). Here in this section, we have a very different image of what happens after the veil is lifted. Here, the veil not only hangs between them and the face of Christ (1:1), it also hangs between the two of them (1:3), isolating them from each other. The key thing is that they lift it together. After all, the lifting of the veil is the transcending of separateness. Can you really transcend separateness by yourself? Indeed, by themselves, the veil will appear to them as a solid block (1:4), a clear reference to the granite block of sin from the previous section (T-22.IV.5:6). It is only when they reach out their hands together to touch this block that they realize it s more like a thin wall of mist (5:6). And with the veil gone, so is the space between them. They unite with each other and with Him Who was on the other side of the veil: Christ, the holy Self you share (6:8). After all, how could they unite with each and not unite with the Self they share? Back in The Obstacles to Peace, the face of Christ was described as radiant, with the bright rays of His Father s love which light His face with glory streaming from it (T-19.IV.D.2:3). That radiance is what was being veiled. Now, with the veil lifted, Jesus says The love of Christ will light your faces (1:7), as they gaze together on the rapturous sight beyond the veil (2:7). It s a joyous, even ecstatic scene, with faces shining with love and wonder now that the veil has been lifted. Yet here is where we see that different ending that I mentioned above. For the two now take the love that shines from their faces and carry it back into a darkened world that needs the light (1:7), carrying Christ with them as they go. They become His messengers, the bringers of His message to a world that desperately needs it. Their faces become His public face. There is not that much for me to explain about the scene that follows. It is just an incredibly happy scene. We can think of it as having two parts: their mission to the world and their own internal and interpersonal experience. In terms of their mission, they have the joyous honor of carrying Christ s message of hope and freedom to the suffering (5:5), of opening the gates of Heaven to the sorrowful (2:5). They have the privilege of being this world s saviors (5:5). And they are welcomed as saviors. We may picture the world throwing one barrier after another in their path, yet instead, All barriers disappear before their coming (4:3). People see Christ shining from their faces and rejoice (2:6). How thankful they will be, Jesus says, to see you come among them (2:8). The happiness with which people greet them is a reflection of the overflowing happiness they share between them. And think how beautiful will each of you look to the other! How happy you will be to be together, after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone! (2:3-4). I find their method of conflict-resolution particularly inspiring (3:1-3). Typically, a conflict is over when the person in the wrong takes it back, perhaps with some pressure from the person in the right. Here, the conflict is over because the person in the right is simply unwilling to let the person in the wrong 12

13 suffer from the attack he mistakenly launched. He says, in effect, I wipe your mistake off the books, because your innocence is my salvation and our togetherness is my home. Who wouldn t want to be in a relationship like that? What strikes me about this picture is the sheer happiness of it. Even though it is expressed very poetically, it is not difficult to see he is talking about an actual life in the world, a life that would be Heaven on earth. Can such a life be ours? Yes, if we are willing first to step enough outside our ego to join with another human being, and then if we are willing to keep moving past the obstacles our ego throws up, until at last we lift together the final obstacle. Once we do that, Jesus says, this inexpressibly joyful life will just flows naturally (5:1-2). 13