A Course In Miracles – a curriculum in learning to trust our Inner Kindness Teacher (a.k.a Holy Spirit … the pure non-dual awareness of our eternal all-inclusive innocence) – uses contrast throughout its teaching to undo the belief in separation by motivating us to look at how crazy the ego (false) thought system alternative is that insists on an identity of inadequacy, sin, guilt, fear, and isolation. Quite often, seen from the perspective of Holy Spirit’s gentle, patient exposé of ego’s insanity, we see a great deal of humor in the Course’s parody of the silly, forgivable “who” characters we’ve dreamt ourselves to be, all the while foolishly neglecting what we all are beyond space, time and individuality.
After years of making “smiley faces” in the margins of my ACIM book, I decided it would be fun to collect these bits of humor and share them.
I’ve found that reading the Course aloud in study groups over the last 13 years, the humor becomes more obvious, since sharing together we identify with what we are together in Truth – with Holy Spirit supporting us – instead of our isolated misinterpretations which we took seriously.
Imagine a “Vincent Price voice” when Jesus – without mincing any words – describes in gory detail the insanity of ego’s thought system.
The Jesus of ACIM is like the most infinitely kind version of Rodney Dangerfield or Don Rickles when describing the ego.
“The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, “lighthearted,” distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved and even desperate, but not really afraid. Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?” – T-11.V.9
“Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his “ghost” into a curtain, his “monster” into a shadow, and his “dragon” into a dream he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear.” –T-11.VIII.13
Here are some related words that appear in ACIM and the number of times they appear:
- CRAZY (1)
- SILLY (3)
- TRAVESTY (3)
- PARODY (5)
- MOCK (6)
- RIDICULE (9)
- LAUGH (24)
- FOOLISH (57)
- CHILD (69)
The Aramaic word for “evil” translates as “unripe” (Neil Douglas Klotz) – We don’t condemn infants for not mastering adult skills; so why should we condemn ourselves or each other for being at the bottom rungs of the ladder of Atonement? Let’s be patient, gentle, and forgiving with everyone … including ourselves!
In this video (a sequel* to a related video – Our silly seemingly separate selves: ego lampooned – from four years prior) Bruce Rawles gives a presentation about the gentle humor in the Course as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) series of classes – all of these classes facilitated by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise are highly recommended, including their Monday series for students new to ACIM or wanting to clarify their understanding and/or resume dedicated study and practice of the Course’s wonderfully radical precepts.
This video was recorded Thursday, September 24, 2020.
* Here is a post with the video and more details about a prior related presentation given by Bruce Rawles at the Weekend of Freedom Retreat on June 17, 2016, in Estes Park, Colorado about how A Course in Miracles encourages us to not take the judgments of our egos quite so seriously with numerous quotes from ACIM.