Does A Course in Miracles Teach That I Need a Holy Relationship in Order to Awaken?
I wish to ask you in what A Course in Miracles means by Holy Relationship. In one single area of the book it covers “entering the ark” together, and it almost sounds like you need an added specific person in order to awaken. Therefore, I believe I approach each new person with the expectation that maybe THIS could possibly be the relationship that reflects enlightenment to me, and I to them! Am I taking this too literally? Or do you really need to have another to assist you awaken?
I appreciate your own time so much and thanks for the help to me and others. I thanks and I thank God for you. Namaste.
David Hoffmeister: Thanks for the openness and your willingness to check deeply at what’s underneath these topics and issues acim. A Course in Miracles teaches that the split mind contains both the problem (the ego) and the Solution (the Holy Spirit). When they are brought together, only One remains.
Your body and the entire world are usually the focus of ego’s perspective, because of it seeks to create real problems and struggles on earth and to avoid the inner Healing Correction of the Holy Spirit. The ego’s distorted world is the item of identity confusion, an outpicturing of the belief that it’s possible to create an identity which God didn’t create. The ego is this identity problem and it had been Answered or forgiven by the Holy Spirit the instant it seemed to arise. This one problem could possibly be described being an authority problem or a confusion in who’s the writer of Reality. Your brain that believes in the truth of the time-space cosmos has a control issue, because of it believes that it can make itself. This ego mind also thinks it’s in competition with God, although this is pushed out of conscious awareness. This unconscious ego thought system is exposed in the A Course in Miracles Workbook lessons, and Lesson 13 contains an excellent example with this unveiling:
“A meaningless world engenders fear because I believe I am in competition with God.”
That is the start of training the mind to forgive, for the focus is brought back to the mind, back again to thinking, and taken away from the body and the world. Anorexia, weight issues, body image issues, and interpersonal relationship issues are examples of projection, of seeing the problem where it’s not: in the world. Your brain cannot tolerate the belief in a battle with God, which means this belief is pushed out of awareness. The deep-seated control issue such a belief entails is then projected to the body and the world. Weight control, like any attempt to control the script or the body, is an attempt to control the past. The Holy Spirit teaches that yesteryear can just only be forgiven or released or regarded as false—not fixed or controlled or changed.
The exact same ego dynamic is underneath interpersonal relationship struggles of power and control, of wanting to repair or change an individual or a self-image. Personal relationships may appear to sail happily along for awhile, yet the make-believe self-concept IS the non-public perspective and thus is definitely on shaky ground. Decisions are continuous. The Holy Spirit is just a decision. The ego is just a decision. Atonement is your decision that ends all decisions, an acceptance of the changelessness of Mind. The ego is your decision to believe that the mind may be separate from God. Once the mind believed that it had separated and built this time-space world, this time-space world of bodies became its substitute identity, because it believed it’d thrown away the Kingdom of Heaven. The planet was created up as an alternative identity. The sleeping mind is split on your decision of identity. The Holy Spirit says, “This world is not Identity. This world can be an illusion.” And thus the Holy Spirit reminds the mind constantly, “This world is not your Home. This world is not your Identity. This world is not real.” Whilst the mind is split it’s hearing another voice (the ego) that’s saying: “You’ve done it. You’ve separated from God. You’d better make the most effective of it and find something of the entire world to recognize with. You can never go back for God will punish you.”
Thought-form associations seem to become a substitute identity. The ego mind is apparently identified with the body, with family, with environments that seem to surround it (i.e., I’m an American, Japanese, I’m male, I’m female, I’m from a wealthy family, from a poor family, I’m Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, etc.) All of these are thought-form associations. And these seeming other persons and places surrounding the small personal self are part with this construction. Your brain is very shaky about any of it small identity, this small self, this little me. So the small me is shaky, and it looks like other persons give the small me reality and importance (i.e., you’re my son, my daughter, you’re my boss, you’re a loving father, etc.) and all the different things that these images seem to be telling this little me seem to be really important. Praise thus seems essential (i.e., you are an individual and you’re a great one!).
Praise and acceptance from others SEEM to stabilize this very shaky thing (i.e., you’re a good lover, you’re a good provider, you’re great with the youngsters, you have an excellent intellect, you have such a heart, you help serve so many other folks, you’re a good team-player, on and on). This aspect of the self-concept says that you will be an individual and you have most of these positive attributes that basically make you a valuable and worthy person, that make you stand out above the crowd. You’re not merely anyone—you’re somebody special. The flip side is criticism, which directly reflects the shaky sense of self. Criticism would be: you’re not as great as you think you are, you’re not such a good team player, such a good provider, so good in bed—everything that are taken as insults to the non-public self-concept). That’s the flip side of the strokes. To the ego self-concept that believes both sides (the positive and negative) of thinking are real, the Holy Spirit is perceived as a good threat, for the Holy Spirit results in the ability of forgiveness or the realization that none of the tiny images perceived as separate have any reality.
Once the criticism seems to come, the ego attempts a substitution. It thinks, “I don’t need this. I’ll go elsewhere and start other relationships with people who are able to appreciate my talents and skills and abilities, appreciate my personhood. I will avoid those negative influences on earth and those negative people. I’ll find someone else or join an organization where people are like-minded and overlook the rest of the world. These new people should me and stroke me and praise me.” The attempt at substitution is an attempt to steadfastly keep up a sense of specialness, a sense of separation, a sense of individuality (a private mind with private thoughts). Those attempts are special love relationships. They appear to reinforce worth and value and to validate personhood. And they provide a false witness for clinging to the ego as identity. To the ego, past associations serve to provide personhood some sense of stability and consistency and value. Yet, the Holy Spirit suggests that past associations offer nothing of value, for they were created by the ego to deny the reality of God’s Love.
Holy relationship emphasizes and reflects Content (right-minded thinking) and posseses an awareness of the meaninglessness of form. Whilst the ego’s believed relationships will seem to be specific, yet every one will present an opportunity to release the belief in specifics. Divine Mind is Abstract and Universal. Forgiveness may be the bridge to the remembrance of Christ and God, Divine Abstraction. Thus the Holy Spirit teaches in A Course in Miracles:
“Whenever you meet anyone, remember it is just a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you consider him you will consider yourself. Never forget this, for in him you may find yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of you.