A Course in Miracles Monk

Hopefully this post will give you a little sense of what it was like to be here today……

As the morning session began, Ken reminded us of his threat to read the worst section in the Course (this threat had been looming for two days) and that we’d better ask a lot of questions if we hoped to avoid it. Hands shot up all over the room, and his answers took us to the morning break. A lot of very smug smiles were exchanged as we left. Success!

As we settled back into our seats I had a childhood memory. I was 10 years old and it was the coldest day of the winter. My dad asked me to come out to the backyard and help him cut some cord wood. The Canadian wind cut through my winter coat and mittens like thousands of tiny razorblades. My face was already beginning to feel like a broken, spidered windshield. I couldn’t imagine enduring it for two hours, and prayed for a miracle as I dreamt of being back in the house. I stood stiff as a statue, my eyes blurred from tears whipped up by the cold wind, watching through a haze as dad pulled the cord of the chainsaw. Nothing. I made my mind as numb as my toes, trying to pretend I wasn’t really there. Dad pulled the cord a few more times. Still nothing. I prayed I wouldn’t hear the familiar roar of it coming to life. Without even really noticing my own thoughts, a chant had begun in my head, “Please don’t work, please don’t work, please don’t work, please don’t work.” After a few more pulls, dad looked up at me with an understanding smile, and said, “Please don’t work, please don’t work, please don’t work!” I was shocked out of my mental numbness – he could read my thoughts! Then I realized he had been a boy once, too, and hadn’t forgotten.

After another long series of powerful pulls he pronounced it was too cold for the chainsaw. As we walked back toward the house, its windows seeming to glow with warmth. Feeling a great reprieve, I smiled. (Inwardly, my lips were frozen.)

Now, back in the Foundation’s teaching auditorium, I noticed similar thoughts. I was hoping Ken’s chainsaw wouldn’t start. Maybe he had too many other things to get to. Maybe the first part of the morning was the only time he had set aside for that section. Any hope of a reprieve was quickly lost when after we returned Ken said, “OK, open your books to the text, page 410, ‘the attraction of guilt.’” I could swear he was grinning.

Pages rattled, nervous glances were exchanged, people shifted skittishly in their seats, a cacophony of throats were cleared, and great fits of non-viral coughing began. And that was just me.

Ken led with a stiff jab….

• Don’t pretend you’re spiritually advanced. Spiritually advanced people don’t need this Course. This is a remedial course for spiritual infants. You can’t be taught if you don’t think you need to be taught… if you think you know the answer then you won’t avail yourself of the teacher who is the answer. (Did I say ‘jab’? I meant a right hook.)

(I knew it was only going to get worse. I quickly glanced around, carefully noting the exits.)

• If we believe we are a body, we MUST believe we are the thought system (sin, guilt, fear, hate, murder) that made the body. That’s why we’re here. We’re children of hate, not children of love. (I suddenly had a clear memory of my childhood blankey. Where was my blankey now when i needed it?!)

• Your grab bag of guilt is your huge reservoir of memories (this is the ego’s use of memory) of how people have sinned against you, even if it was only 5 seconds ago.

(I quickly and quietly added Ken’s earlier comment about being a spiritual infant to my grab bag. Oh, and all the times he’s mussed my hair. And tried to trip me…. I don’t think he noticed.)

• Why do we reach in the grab bag? Because we’ve made sin and guilt real. And the hungry dogs of fear are kept cold and starving for guilt, so that when I need some they will go out and get it and drag it back, screaming, to their master. The ego. Moi. Identified with the ego, that makes me the master of these monstrous mongrels who are on a savage search for slimy sinners.

(As Ken read this section, his voice rumbled like thunder… it felt like a flurry of blurry punches were raining down on my head… frantic, hunger, savage, bones, skin, flesh, pounce, gorges filled, feed, decayed, rotted, sin, guilt, fear, punishment, pain, death. He apologized that these were the final lines before lunch, – lunch?? I was sure I would never eat again! His grin was wry and sly. And yet gentle as a feather.)

As we broke for lunch, I noticed a distant figure… it was poor Lonni-lu stumbling her way toward me. I caught her just before she fainted. Or did she catch me? It didn’t matter, we held each other up until we made it out into the welcome sunshine.

Ken talked about how we’re all desperately trying to show the face of innocence (so much for my lunch plans)… that we’re civilized, cultured, together, sensitive, spiritual ACIM students… but that nice people don’t come here. We’re ALWAYS on the make. We’re ALWAYS looking for some piece of sin to feast upon. We’re ALWAYS looking to get our specialness needs met, no matter what it takes. No matter who has to be trampled in order for me to get what I want. To get whatever form of specialness I think is my salvation. To acquire the special love relationship I’m on the prowl for… or to find others to support and validate my special hate relationships.

And then he delivered the blow to the solar plexus. The punch that knocks the wind out of our civilized defenses:

“The hungry dogs of fear section is what lies beneath the innocent face of the ego.”

Ouch.

I mean… ouch.

You can just hear Jesus saying, “And now we begin…”

This is the kind of honesty you just can’t get anywhere else. This is the kind of honesty being a student of this Course requires. You can feel the blissninnyhood being peeled off you like an old sticky bandage.

We don’t want to see ourselves like this.

We have to watch ourselves on our savage search for sin, not so we can feel guilty about it, but because, “If you don’t recognize this, how can you let it go?”

Jesus doesn’t see us this way, BUT WE DO, so we have to look at it with him.

Ken said, “Watch yourself finding fault… realize your unconscious thinking is, ‘If I don’t bring back a sinner fast, God is going to get me.’ Why did we invent separate bodies? Why did we invent relationships? So that we could have scapegoats — guilty sinners upon whom we could send out our hungry dogs that we would have something to drag back to God. To pronounce, ‘it is not me who did this (destroyed Heaven, killed God)… but this one… this terrible sinner I have brought before you that i might be saved.’”

I realized, “this one,” to the ego, would be capitalized. This One. To the ego they are sacred. The Chosen One. The Chosen sinner. She or He who would be sacrificed that we might have eternal individuality.

But since ideas leave not their source, we are not able to get rid of our sense of guilt. In fact, it is only strengthened by our sending out our hungry dogs. And so we have to send them out again as soon as they return because it’s never enough. We are addicted to judgment, blame, anger, sadness, sickness, projection, repression, denial, sin, guilt, and fear because we are addicted to individuality.

So we luxuriate when we find a sinner. Luxuriate.

So much for the carefully contrived face of innocence.

Welcome to a course in miracles.

Bon appétit.

With Jesus as our gentle guide, we need to search beneath the face of innocence and look upon what lies beneath — our thoughts of guilt, judgment and condemnation. Our savage search for sin. It is only when we look at these thoughts with Jesus that we can see our true innocence. The innocence that brings us peace… that walks us back from the cold and painful exile of a distant and lonely land, and into the glowing warmth of Home, where we disappear forever into the blazing hearth of God.