A fellow Course student recently forwarded a link to this superb video from Ken Wapnick (Hopelessness on the Journey: The only way out_Excerpt from “A Course in Miracles” Workshop):
Like so many others, I find Ken’s videos profoundly helpful, and this one, in particular, seems to not only clearly provides an amazingly terse summary of ACIM’s non-dual metaphysics but covers a wide range of topics – and HS’s solutions! – including hopelessness and ego’s devious and insane strategy of self-sabotage based on unexamined, unfounded, unconscious guilt which seems to merit punishment, sacrifice, and suffering. This video also shows Ken’s playful, humorous nature (unlike some of his monologues which don’t reveal that quite as much).
This video ties in well with Ken’s excellent – and timely! – book From Futility to Happiness: Sisyphus as Everyman and “The Real Alternative” section in chapter 31 of the text (T-31.IV) which encourages to keep trusting Holy Spirit even when our situations seem most bleak and despairing … most uncertain, lonely and fearful:
“There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go beyond it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is not the lesson in itself. The lesson has a purpose, and in this you come to understand what it is for.” – T-31.IV.3
Here’s the description of the Futility to Happiness book:
The Greek mythic figure of Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to a life of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to have it fall back down to the bottom, there to begin his labors again. His life of futility mirrors our life in the body and the hopelessness inherent in pursuing any meaning in the world. The first part of the book addresses this view as presented in A Course in Miracles, summarized in the idea that we can never be truly happy in the world because it is not our home. The second part discusses the transition from futility to happiness in the context of the Course s offering of another way of looking at our seeming fate, reflecting Camus important essay on Sisyphus, which he ended by stating, We must imagine Sisyphus happy. Through a change of mind brought about by changing our inner teacher from the ego to Jesus, our lives of futility are transformed into opportunities for unlearning the ego s thought system. A purposeless life of inherent meaninglessness thus metamorphoses into a meaningful classroom that leads us to the Heaven we never truly left. As with the other books in this series, The Practice of A Course in Miracles, From Futility to Happiness is presented as an aid in applying the Course s principles of forgiveness more meaningfully to our everyday lives, that they may become increasingly happy and less futile in our experience.
I also see where Tim Wise draws his inspiration for his reminders that we “go peace” long before we “go poof” – We only choose to (finally) drop our personal identity of the silly, suffering, seemingly separate self at the top of the ladder, long after we’ve abandoned the thought system of separation.
Inspired by this video, I just added some (long overdue) video sidebar features on ACIMblog.com with featured videos (following Susan Dugan’s lead on her excellent website, ForaysInForgiveness.com, with selected YouTube videos from:
- FIP (Foundation for Inner Peace)
- FACIM (Foundation for A Course In Miracles)
- SFACIM (School for A Course In Miracles)
- ACIMblog
I will be updating these sidebar videos regularly and also will tie into featured books and other media.
Thanks, as always for your support and encouragement! So very appreciated! :-)
“You and your brother are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertook apart, and that led nowhere.” – T.18.III.8:5