Does A Course in Miracles Teach That I Require a Holy Relationship in Order to Awaken?
I do want to ask you in what A Course in Miracles means by Holy Relationship. In one single area of the book it discusses “entering the ark” together, and it almost sounds like you’ll need another specific person to be able to awaken. Therefore, I think I approach each new person with the expectation that maybe THIS could be the partnership that reflects enlightenment if you ask me, and I in their mind! Am I taking this too literally? Or do you really have to have another to help you awaken?
I appreciate your time so much and thank you for the help if you ask me and others. I thank you and I thank God for you. Namaste.
David Hoffmeister: Thanks for the openness and your willingness to look deeply at what is underneath these topics and issues. A Course in Miracles teaches that the split mind contains both the problem (the ego) and the Solution (the Holy Spirit). When they’re brought together, only One remains.
The body and the entire world are always the focus of ego’s perspective, for it seeks to create real problems and struggles on the planet and to avoid the inner Healing Correction of the Holy Spirit teacher of teachers. The ego’s distorted world is the item of identity confusion, an outpicturing of the belief that it is possible to create an identity which God did not create. The ego is this identity problem and it had been Answered or forgiven by the Holy Spirit the instant it seemed to arise. That one problem could be described as an authority problem or a confusion in who’s the writer of Reality. Your head that believes in the fact of the time-space cosmos has a get a grip on issue, for it believes that it can make itself. This ego mind also thinks it is 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 of the unveiling:
“A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I’m in competition with God.”
This really is the start of training the mind to forgive, for the focus is brought back to the mind, back once again to thinking, and taken away from the body and the world. Anorexia, weight issues, body image issues, and interpersonal relationship issues are types of projection, of seeing the problem where it is not: in the world. Your head 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 manage the script or the body, is an endeavor to manage the past. The Holy Spirit teaches that yesteryear can only be forgiven or released or viewed as false—not fixed or controlled or changed.
Exactly the same ego dynamic is underneath interpersonal relationship struggles of power and control, of wanting to repair or change a person or a self-image. Personal relationships may seem to sail happily along for awhile, the make-believe self-concept IS the non-public perspective and thus is definitely on shaky ground. Decisions are continuous. The Holy Spirit is really a decision. The ego is really a decision. Atonement is your decision that ends all decisions, an acceptance of the changelessness of Mind. The ego is your decision to trust 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, as it believed it’d discarded the Kingdom of Heaven. The planet was created up instead identity. The sleeping mind is split on your decision of identity. The Holy Spirit says, “This world is not Identity. This world is 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.” As the mind is split it is 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 are able to never go back for God will punish you.”
Thought-form associations seem to become a substitute identity. The ego mind appears to be identified with the body, with family, with environments that appear to surround it (i.e., I’m an American, Japanese, I’m male, I’m female, I’m from a rich family, from an undesirable 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 of the construction. Your head is quite 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 extremely important (i.e., you are a person 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 kids, you’ve an excellent intellect, you’ve such a heart, you help serve so many others, you’re a good team-player, on and on). This part of the self-concept says that you’re a person and you’ve all of these positive attributes that basically make you an invaluable and worthy person, which 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 could be: you’re never as great as you believe you are, you’re not such a good team player, such a good provider, so good in bed—all the things 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 parties (the positive and negative) of thinking are real, the Holy Spirit is perceived as a good threat, for the Holy Spirit contributes to the experience of forgiveness or the realization that none of the tiny images perceived as separate have any reality.
When 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 is able to appreciate my talents and skills and abilities, appreciate my personhood. I’ll avoid those negative influences on the planet and those negative people. I’ll find someone else or join an organization where individuals 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 endeavor to 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 offer a false witness for clinging to the ego as identity. To the ego, past associations serve to offer personhood some sense of stability and consistency and value. Yet, the Holy Spirit demonstrates past associations offer nothing of value, for they were created by the ego to deny the facts of God’s Love.
Holy relationship emphasizes and reflects Content (right-minded thinking) and has an awareness of the meaninglessness of form. As the ego’s believed relationships will seem to be specific, yet each one will present a way to release the belief in specifics. Divine Mind is Abstract and Universal. Forgiveness is the bridge to the remembrance of Christ and God, Divine Abstraction. Thus the Holy Spirit teaches in A Course in Miracles:
“When you meet anyone, remember it is really a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you’ll treat yourself. As you think of him you’ll think of yourself. Remember this, for in him you will see yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they’re given another chance at salvation. Don’t leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I’m always there with you, in remembrance of you.
