Dear Monk: Worldly Suffering
Dear Monk: What I’m still not sure about is how to view or interpret the worldly illusion, particularly the suffering I see with my eyeballs. That’s where I am still confused about Christ’s Vision. If you can shed any light, I will be forever grateful….
The suffering feels very real to a mind that believes in the reality of separation, but the first thing we must remember is that the world is neutral (T-28.II.10:6). Therefore, a mind that does not believe in the reality of separation does not believe in, nor experiences, the suffering. We all believe in suffering, which just alerts us that we believe in separation, and more specifically, and experientially, the guilt that follows the belief in separation. It’s the guilt that is the suffering, whatever form it appears to take, because “The guiltless mind cannot suffer” (T-5.V.5:1).
So the way you should view and interpret the suffering you see with your eyes is not to deny its seeming reality, but to allow your response to indicate which thought system you have chosen to identify with: the thought system of guilt, or the thought system of Atonement. This alerts you to the need for forgiveness.
Once our mind begins to heal, we still see physical forms of suffering, but we begin to see the unreality of the content (guilt) behind the suffering. So it’s never what our eyes see — if Jesus was here today his eyes would see the evening news — but with whom we interpret what our eyes see. Identifying with the ego is experienced as pain (at once or eventually), and identifying with Jesus is experienced as peace, despite appearances. Appearances are meaningless in and of themselves. Everything we see (interpret) is just a wish fulfilled. Not the form, but the content.
It’s important that we not make the ego an outside entity, so let me reword a couple of things… identifying with the ego really means identifying with the wish for separation, differences, and specialness. It means identifying with the idea that these things can give us something of value. That these are the means to peace, happiness, and fulfillment.
So identifying with the ego, or choosing the ego, or looking with the ego, or choosing the ego as your teacher, really means…. accepting the idea that attack (differences) brings reward. That specialness is preferable to Oneness.
That’s why it’s such an integral part of the forgiveness process to see the cost (lack of reward/pain) of choosing the ego.
This is the contrast the Holy Spirit needs to teach us that we’ve had a mistaken, upside down perception. We’ve believed attack brings peace, and sameness brings sacrifice and pain.
While we believe in duality, and feel like we are victimized by forces outside of ourselves, it is very helpful to personify/anthropomorphize the two thought systems into an ego and Jesus that seem to be outside of us.
Both are split off parts of ourselves… ideas of ourselves. I am guilty. I am innocent. We split off from the guilt because it’s too painful. And we split off from the innocence because it means our dissolution. In the end we’d rather keep a sense of ‘us’, even if that means a guilty self, than to have no self at all. But our tolerance for pain, though high, is not without limit, and so at some point we become aware, however dimly, that there must be another way ( T-2.III.3:4-6).
Once we seek this other way, the Holy Spirit slowly teaches us that the self we give up is not a sacrifice; it is replaced by another self. To make this transition, however, we first move from an illusory guilty self, to an illusory forgiven self. We do this by perceiving the differences/attack/guilt we have projected onto others, and then do lots of gentle, baby forgiveness steps along the way. This is what prepares our mind to give way to Self, or Christ.
