“One of the keys to progressing on our journey home is the discovery that, despite its slippery cleverness, there is one thing the ego cannot pervert to serve its own means: our failure to make a big deal about something.” I’ve been savoring the FACIM.org FAQs, reading them sequentially after sporadic skipping around through them for a few years, and found this superb ‘bottom line’ wisdom at the end of FAQ #956. I’m noticing more and more that I can afford – from above the battleground – to not make a ‘big deal’ out of my personal circumstances – when I’m willing to look with our Inner Kindness Teacher at my investment in the specifics and outcomes… and laugh gently at them! :-) Here’s the full FAQ text of number 956:
“Q #956: I understand that I really do not want the peace of God, and that I need to ask Jesus to help me look at this fact without guilt or judgment. Yet my life still seems to be one conflict after another. I am aware that I do not want to let my specialness go and I ask for help with this. But I just seem to be stuck in the victim mode. What should I do?
A: One of the things studying and applying A Course in Miracles does for us is to reveal just how deeply split our mind is. On one hand, the Course helps us see that despite our vastly differing scripts, basically everyone’s life (with very few exceptions, such as Jesus’) can be boiled down to three rather miserable acts: we are born, we struggle, and we die — hardly a storyline any sane mind would choose for itself, and certainly one in which we are a perpetual victim. On the other hand, the Course tells us that we have the power to change this experience — that by changing internal teachers, we could see peace instead of this (W.pI.34) . If we believe that we have this power — and part of us must, or we would not be drawn to the Course — then it is natural to wonder why we do not just make this internal shift, feel better, and get on with it.
But the Course answers that question when it tells us that “No one who sees himself as guilty can avoid the fear of God” (T.30.VI.4:4) . In other words, we will be afraid of God (and of the internal shift that would bring us closer to Him), as long as we have any guilt left in our mind. And as long as we retain any belief in the reality of our physical existence and of this world, our mind will contain guilt — the unconscious conviction that we stole our existence from God and deserve to be punished for it. This is why our journey as Course students can seem so slow, difficult, and filled with setbacks.
While we have found clever ways to disguise this fact, our entire lives up to this point have been elaborate schemes to keep us in the victim mode, precisely so that we will never return to the peace and Love of God, which we perceive as our greatest threat. As we begin to do what Jesus asks of us and question every value that we hold (T.24.in.2:1) , we start to feel how desperately we do want to return to God’s Love, and how much we have suffered in our seemingly separated state. Yet it takes time to undo an entire thought system and we cannot expect the ego to just give up without a fight.
So your experience of being stuck in the victim mode, while undoubtedly painful, is certainly not unique, nor is it really the problem. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the fact that you still fear God’s Love and your mind’s ability to choose it. Thus, you do not need to do anything about it. Rather, you could just view it as helpful information. In fact, whenever we find ourselves feeling like victims, we can simply notice it and say, “Aha, I am still scared and that is all right.” In this way, we will be practicing the forgiveness with ourselves that will ultimately loosen the ego’s chokehold. One of the keys to progressing on our journey home is the discovery that, despite its slippery cleverness, there is one thing the ego cannot pervert to serve its own means: our failure to make a big deal about something.”