FACIM D2: Fusty Nuts Unite!
Fusty nuts from all corners of the globe are descending upon the Foundation today. I’m predicting more fusty than nutty, but we’ll see. I’ll keep a lookout and if things get out of hand I will be sure to report it.
Dana and George are in L.A. today, so I’m taking care of Rylee. So far this morning Rylee has received four bites of chicken and one tasty treat from the secret jar on top of the fireplace. Who can resist those brown eyes?? Who, I ask?!
Be back later this evening with some notes from class. Please don’t feed the dog while I’m gone.
[10:29pm] In February I really got a lot out of the Narcissus workshop. Probably a little too much, if you know what I mean. I’m not sure if that says more about Ken or about me. (I’m thinking me, if you catch my drift.) Then today Lonni insisted I wear a pin with this phrase on it: “Am I self-centered or is it just ME?” (She was remembering that old blog post where George and I were coming up with tee-shirts that would be funny to wear to a FACIM workshop.) Her pin kinda nailed something that’s been poking at me recently…
When Ken was hitting his special relationship stride during class today, and began to talk about selfishness and self-absorption, I thought, “Why, he’s talking about me.” What else would I think? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me (I could go on)… I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m seeing my selfishness more clearly these days. My self-absorption. My me-ness. My me-hood. My me-ishness. And where I may have shielded my eyes from it in the past, I’m looking at it more now and seeing that it’s not very nice for me or for anyone else. It’s like Ken said in class: “We have to ask ourselves, “How can I continue to live this way? …Why would I want to live this way?”
The idea isn’t for me to wake up tomorrow and decide I will be less selfish. That’s too much like work. Too pro-active. Too akin to fighting against the ego. Too much like “seek and do not find”. The key is to become more aware of my need to be selfish, and to forgive myself for that. Then the “less selfish” motif just happens, without my active involvement. And knowing me, that HAS to be a good thing.
Rylee update: Four more bites of chicken and two more special treats from the secret jar. This in addition to her normal supper, mind you. I know, I know! Let’s just say she has the eyes of an innocent victim perfected.
And now, onto today’s class.
Workshop title: Special Relationships: A Fusty Nut With No Kernel
• Title of workshop is from Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”
• Fusty means: fetid, spoiled, rancid. i.e. special relationships stink and they have no substance.
• Guilt is a problem which demands a solution. Enter special relationships.
• Special relationships arise when we identify with a self-concept which has a foundational premise that something is lacking, something that can’t be fixed from within.
• There are people out there that I perceive have a special something that I think will meet my special need. When they meet that need, we call that special love. When they don’t, the hate which was always there quickly surfaces.
• Scarcity inevitably leads to deprivation. The law of scarcity gives rise to the law of deprivation which says that if I’m lacking something it’s because it was originally mine and someone took it from me… and therefore I am justified in getting it back. It’s an expression of the principle of “one or the other”. The most extreme and terrifying example of this principle is “kill or be killed”. This is not a nice world, because the thought system upon which it is based is not nice. Nice people don’t come to this world. Nice people stay home where they were created.
• This is not to say you should feel guilty. You can’t exist here without special relationships. Don’t feel guilty because you feel you need oxygen or like companionship. Just look upon with the attitude, “Of course, this is what it means to live in the world,” and realize things are not what they seem.
• We hate people we are dependent on because whatever it is we are dependent upon them for, we believe they stole it from us, and are now forcing us to work to get back what was rightfully ours in the first place.
• Content = guilt. Form = anything we do to deny the guilt so we can cover it over so we that don’t feel the pain.
• Not only is there no world (the fusty nut), the thought of guilt in the mind doesn’t exist (there’s no kernel).
• If there is no separation, if nothing happened, then there’s nothing missing in me, and where are my needs? They’re all gone. And where am I? I disappear along with them.
• What is particularly pernicious about special relationships is that they appear to exist between bodies. How could an hallucinating figure forgive another hallucinating figure? It only happens in mental wards. Forgiveness is when your decision maker recognizes it chose the wrong teacher and makes a new choice. I look at my wrong decision and see THAT as the source of my disease, disquiet, discomfort. When you do this, the world becomes less serious. Special relationships in the world are a grand subterfuge to conceal the only special relationship: our decision for the ego in the mind… and it’s nothing.
• The goal of the Course is for us to become lucid dreamers, which we must become before we awaken from the dream entirely.
• I need do nothing = there’s no problem, body, relationship that requires healing or peace. What I need do something about is my mind’s decision for guilt, and what I need is a little willingness.
• It is not necessary for us to get in touch with our desire to be separate from God, but it is necessary — and very easy — for us to get in touch with our selfishness. e.g. “Get out of my way, I’m late.”… “I don’t care about, I just want my needs met.”
• Selfishness is innate in the species because it is innate in the separated mind.
• Infants: I want what I want and I want it NOW, and if you don’t give it to me I will make you pay. Well, we never stop being infants we just become more sophisticated in playing this out.
• We start crying at birth and we never stop, and our tears are always manipulative. They are designed to get us what we want. On the level of the body this is considered “adaptive”, but there is no body. It’s not adaptive, it’s vicious! On the level of the mind it is controlling, manipulative and vicious.
• This shouldn’t make you feel guilty… it should motivate you to give it up!
• If you are using someone to meet your needs, that is attack. And you will believe they deserve to attack you back. The core of the special relationship is that I hate you because I’m stealing back from you what you stole from me, and I will therefore believe you hate me as well.
• You can’t see someone as the same if you see them as having something you want or need.
• The concept of having to be a hard worker comes from sacrifice: It’s always a reaction against not wanting to do it but having to do it or I won’t get what I want.
• The fusty nut = the form that feels so much pain… but there’s no kernel.
• The way out: to realize the special relationship is not between oneself and something else. You can’t solve a problem that’s not here. So it’s deciding whether I want to be an ego or not.
• Every problem is the same, and when you remember that you will be able to return to your mind much more quickly.
• The conflict we feel in the world is always a misplaced emphasis. It’s a displaced expression of being conflicted about which teacher I want to listen to… and in recognizing that as the problem, it will make my life much easier.
• I would rather be mindless and unhappy than be a mind, because if I am a mind I will choose against the ego.
• The end of special relationships is realizing it’s nothing. There’s no kernel of guilt.
• The special relationship is a charade. It’s made up.
• Don’t take anything seriously. It would only be serious if it had the power to take away the love of God from us, and that is impossible. The gentle laughter of the Course is born of the recognition you have NOT taken the peace of God away from me.
• The Course is not written for a body, it’s meant for a decision making mind. To teach a decision making mind that it has made a mistake.
• When we make the world of the body real, we are making the world of the mind a dream.
• I always make fun of Course students because they take what I have been talking about and use it as a way of not being normal. Until one TRULY KNOWS the body is an illusion, you should live a normal life like everyone else, but begin to remember everyone is the same. What I can learn is not that we are all One in Spirit, but that all of us who seem to be in the world are the same. Everyone has a split mind.
• The core of special relationships is differences, so undoing that would mean seeing sameness.
• You don’t have to master the metaphyics of the Course, you can be normal, and normal means not taking your attack thoughts seriously, giving up the perception of differences, and seeing sameness.
• The practice: Notice how often you perceive differences, but realizing you don’t have to judge or attack yourself for your misperceptions. You become aware of your NEED to see differences, and not judging yourself for that is very helpful.
• A quiet mind means quiet to the ego, which means seeing everyone as the same. The perception of sameness is the inevitable result of being with Jesus.
