A Course in Miracles Monk

To be a student of A Course in Miracles is to be a student of the practice of forgiveness, which can be simplified down to three short steps: Identity, Cause, & Experience, or ICE.

(A little ICE can help you cool down when you feel hot under the collar, or reduce the swelling of a hot temper.)

Identity

When you are in your wrong-identity mind (’I am separate from God, and my brothers’) you imagine and experience all the things that come along with separation and attack; namely, guilt, fear, pain, sadness, anger etc.

The guilt and fear you feel for making this choice you project onto your brother. Why? Because your guilt is like a tracking device that constantly bleeps in your unconscious, and you just know on some awful level that God is searching for that tracking device and when He finds it He is going to absolutely destroy whoever is holding it at the time. So, in order to ensure your safety, you hide it on your brother’s person, or body. This is a constant strain, because for some darn reason, it keeps finding its way back to you… sorta like the old hot potato game. Tick tick tick. You always have to find another person to give it to in order to maintain your peace; you can’t maintain your peace because it keeps coming back to you! What a dilemma!

Cause

The obvious remedy, then, is to choose once again to remember your true identity, negating your terrible guilt, and the resultant need to unceasingly play the extremely stressful hot potato game. But how? The way to do this is to see your brother as a beloved Son of God.

“Say what? He’s the one being the jerk in this situation! I’m the obvious victim of his jerkdom. Why not me? Why don’t I, poor, poor, poor me, get to be the beloved Son of God??”

“Well, because at the moment it’s your brother who holds the tracking device/hot potato, and is guilty, evil and in capital B-I-G trouble. Don’t you remember sticking it in his pocket when he wasn’t looking?”

“Oh yeeeah.” Looks around. Whistles.

“Therefore, “To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself is…the way to remember God.” (Text, p.218) I know you’ve read this in the text at least 27 times. This is how you heal your mind.”

“Oh. I thought that was all theoretical mumbo jumbo. Sorrrrry.” Looks around. Whistles louder.

By this point you’ve invited Jesus, if only a little, into your mind, or you wouldn’t even be considering any of this. He will remind you that God is First Cause (stated in the most personal way: Your Cause), and that His Creations – i.e. your brother – cannot be apart from Him. So the reason for guilt (separation) is causeless! You forgive (recognize innocence through right-identity) your brother for what he did not do (separate his identity from God’s / did not take the peace of God away from you). This makes your brother free, and since you are one with him, you are freed right along with him. No one leaves the dream-prison alone; he takes all his brothers with him. You thought forgiving him meant you’d take him out of the prison, but when you forgive him He takes You out of the prison in return for the gift of right-identity you gave him.

The remembrance that You Are Your Father’s Son means you are in union not at odds with God. You are safe, eternal, peaceful, happy, loved, and all the good things that come along with being your Father’s Son.

This also means you are not who you thought you were (a character actor on the world stage), nor is your brother who you thought he was (some other actor on the same stage). This also means that the whole dang play was a farce, not a tragedy as you previously believed and experienced.

And not your typical farce either; the greatest farce of all time – the one where the actors never actually showed up or did anything at all, and all for a tremendous audience filled with fainting onlookers. Now that is funny!

Experience

When you look at your mistaken identity with Jesus, remember your Cause with Jesus, and look at what this means for you and your brother with Jesus, you experience a softening, a release, a letting go. A big, long, happy sigh. You experience Jesus’ mind — your right-identity mind. And it’s a nice place to be. No more guilt seen without nor within. Just a sense of perfection and wholeness, gentleness and safety.

You may find that it only lasts for 2.37 seconds, :) in which case another judgment has come up that says, ‘Tonight, one time only! This time it’s for real, and personal! The show must go on!’ You then get out some more ICE to cool things down, recognizing it’s just the same old stage you’ve already recognized as empty (of guilt) many times over. Are you really going to believe the narrator when he announces the 14,549th play, when no actors showed up for the first 14,548? Are you really going to pay the cost again?

If what seems to be happening on stage temporarily prevents you from offering Jesus a little willingness to see it differently, then forgive yourself for not forgiving it until you forgive it. :) No sense in beating yourself up and down, and black and blue with your wallet in addition to being angered and terrified of the dreadful play you’ve paid so dearly to watch, furious at yourself that you just can’t seem to leave the bleepin’ theatre! When you finally decide it’s not worth it, it’s only a brief instant until you remember you’re not the actor, the theatre-goer, not even the director now… you’re beyond all of those things. You are your Father’s Son.

Until that time, your goal is practice. Practice not being fooled when the same old narrator saunters out on stage in a different outfit, calling himself by a different name, disguising his voice, announcing a different and sure-to-be the scintillating can’t-miss play we’ve all been waiting for. This time with real actors! They will show up! This time, he promises!

It’s not going to happen; it never has and never could.

Learn to deftly forgive and laugh at these vain attempts to confuse your mind. Learn that that’s the ego’s only game: empty proclamations – the only game you ever need to see past, the only voice you ever need choose not to believe. He has a thousand costumes but only one shtick. No matter how loud and insistent his claims, it has always been an empty stage of nothingness. Sinlessness. Rejoice in this.

Soon, when you choose to no longer listen, he and his voice will vanish, and in his place a new figure will appear. It will be Jesus standing there. And behind him all your brothers. As one, they will reach out for you in total love, and you will join them, knowing there is nothing more you could ever want. In their embrace all pain is gone forever, and a flood of joy begins to overtake you, carrying you blissfully into the arms of God and His eternal Love.