In this video recording (of a class facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise) we started with ACIM’s 2nd Workbook Lesson. These early workbook lessons are profoundly simple, yet far-reaching and wonderfully radical in the best sense of the word “radical” because these exercises go immediately and directly to the root of our problem: the mind’s decision to want to believe in a thought system of separation which makes individuality real and then projects that incorrect premise onto an entire universe that seems to reinforce that original tiny mad idea.
“Lesson 2: I have given everything I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] all the meaning that it has for me.
The exercises with this idea are the same as those for the first one. Begin with the things that are near you, and apply the idea to whatever your glance rests on. Then increase the range outward. Turn your head so that you include whatever is on either side. If possible, turn around and apply the idea to what was behind you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible in selecting subjects for its application, do not concentrate on anything in particular, and do not attempt to include everything you see in a given area, or you will introduce strain.
Merely glance easily and fairly quickly around you, trying to avoid selection by size, brightness, color, material, or relative importance to you. Take the subjects simply as you see them. ³Try to apply the exercise with equal ease to a body or a button, a fly or a floor, an arm or an apple. The sole criterion for applying the idea to anything is merely that your eyes have lighted on it. Make no attempt to include anything particular, but be sure that nothing is specifically excluded.”
(ACIM, W-2.1:1–2:5)
We then read about how insane our ego thinking is, constantly trying to pin (project) the blame for our woes on our supposedly All-Loving Creator. If that seems inappropriate or too confrontational to directly assault the ego’s imaginary vengeful schizophrenic god, any suitable specific scapegoat in the world or in our divided ego mind will suffice:
“The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no Father could subject His children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego’s interpretation, not God’s. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it.”
We base our thoughts of attack and the imagined need for defense (of our individuality) on the faulty premise that we exist in a world where we aren’t responsible for our experience, bolstered by the equivalent of terabytes – every second! – of astonishingly incomplete and misleading interpretations of our neutral sensory data. Even in the dream of space-time, we’re basically clueless, let alone when we factor in our overwhelming desire to avoid looking at the contents of our divided minds with gentle, patient, compassionate, non-condemning awareness – a.k.a. with Holy Spirit or any other non-ego symbol that reflects the truly eternally innocent nature we all share beyond the finite nightmare of personhood.
“And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. For this is a course on love, because it is about you. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and you have no function at all in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. As long as it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. Your definition of Heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours. If their reality is questioned, you believe that yours is. For you believe that attack is your reality, and that your destruction is the final proof that you were right.
Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you were wrong?”
A word associated with hell is “torment” appearing twice in ACIM.
We then read from chapter 31 which addresses our wish to stay in our self-made hells (our desire to get rid of peace):
“What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? And what could this give rise to but an image of yourself that can be miserable, and remain in hell and torment? Who has learned to see his brother not as this has saved himself, and thus is he a savior to the rest. To everyone has God entrusted all, because a partial savior would be one who is but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given you to save are but everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet; the unremembered and the not yet born. For God has given you His Son to save from every concept that he ever held.” (ACIM, T-31.VII.10:1-6)
“Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the savior of the Son of God? ²How would you know his holiness while you see him apart from yours? ³For holiness is seen through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within, and thus expect to see it everywhere. ⁴And so they call it forth in everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of him. ⁵This is the savior’s vision; that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see his own salvation everywhere. ⁶He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. ⁷He brings the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is.” (ACIM, T-31.VII.11:1-7)
Here are some additional notes from the class conversation:
We crave contrast (in everything) to keep our egos intact, “safe” from the scrutiny of sanity; this appears to maintain our silly, seemingly separate self-identity, all the while there’s an awareness – however deeply buried – that we’re missing out on a truly fulfilling experience which just might be true happiness – not just sustainable, but eternal and (happily) inevitable. Yet we foolishly defend our misery, claiming that we’d rather be right than happy.
When we’re oblivious we’re mindless and that typifies how we spend most of our time. When we raise the suffering this state of oblivion produces to awareness, we feel we’re in hell, but no split ego mind can deal with this for more than a nanosecond, so we (mindlessly) project this discomfort (unconscious, unfounded guilt) out onto the world. Like the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons thinking his latest scheme (with an ACME dynamite purchase) will now – finally finish off the Roadrunner and provide him with the meal he craves – yet it’s obvious that he’s only sabotaging his own peace as each cartoon episode reveals promptly! Had the coyote read the Course, he’d realize that ideas don’t leave their source (in the mind) and what we do to others we’re really doing to ourselves … the Golden Rule revisited:
“The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself.²No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true.³Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth.⁴Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true.⁵For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming.⁶Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream.” (ACIM, T-27.VIII.10:1-6)
I’m trying to drag my hellacious god into a dream that I made to be hellacious – so that I would have an excuse for my misery. That typically takes the form of keeping my blame-thrower running almost 24/7 at the cost of remaining in an infernal thought system where I believe I’m “uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear.” (ACIM, T-31.VIII.7:1) … This Need Not Be! (ACIM, T-4.IV)
ACIM is unequivocal about the need to trust Holy Spirit’s guidance consistently and automatically:
“Would you want to be responsible for decisions about which you understand so little? ¹²Be glad you have a Teacher Who cannot make a mistake. ¹³His answers are always right. ¹⁴Would you say that of yours?
3. There is another advantage,—and a very important one,—in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency.²Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious.³To follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt.⁴It is the essence of the Atonement.⁵It is the core of the curriculum.⁶The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear.⁷The whole world you see reflects the illusion that you have done so, making fear inevitable.⁸To return the function to the One to Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear.⁹And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you.¹⁰Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit’s guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies.¹¹It is the way out of hell for you.” (ACIM, M-29.2:11–3:11)
To escape from hell, eventually, I must question every value (and self-concept) that I hold. Fortunately, we all have all the help we have in our minds all the time. Our challenge is to consistently avail ourselves of that infinitely kind, harmless, gentle, patient, loving help… until we become completely identified with that Help instead of our wish to stay in hell.
“How else can you find joy in a joyless place (hell) except by realizing that you are not there?” (ACIM, T-6.II.6:1)
Here are 18 more references to “escape from fear” in ACIM. 157 instances of hell, damn (17), miserable (12), cold (8), hot (1), 128 of hide (how we stay stuck in infernal dreams) and 2 of torment as noted above.
We also read the first two paragraphs of The Escape from Darkness. Ultimately, to overcome our masochism, we just have to WANT to stop it.
(This YouTube video recording was made on January 2, 2024.)