This week's questions:
Q #139
Q #140
Q #141
Q #142
Q #143
Q#139: I listened to the tape set Form vs. Content: Sex and Money. It said that you project out from inside your beliefs about money. How do you find out exactly what your beliefs are so that you can change them?
Before considering how you may identify your beliefs about money, a little clarification of A Course in Miracles approach to all of our ego thoughts and beliefs may be helpful first. We want to become aware of them so that we can accept responsibility for choosing them, but not so that we can change them. That would put us in charge of the process of Atonement, a surefire formula for failure. The goal with the Course is that we make our unconscious thoughts conscious, accept responsibility for choosing them, recognize what purpose they serve in the ego’s scheme, and then release them along with the guilt they necessarily entail to the healing light of the Holy Spirit or Jesus. But we don’t want to try to change them! For that would make them real and would involve substituting one ego belief for another.
Do you feel you never have enough? Are you afraid of losing the money you have? Does having money make you feel better or more secure about yourself? Do you save it as a symbol of security and safety against unforeseen dangers and obstacles? Or do you tend to spend it as quickly as you get it and are always in debt? Do you see having money as a symbol of status and success, a measure of your worth? If you don’t have much money, do you try to pretend you have more? Or do you wear your poverty as a badge of specialness? If you have lots of money, do you like to flaunt it? Or do you try to keep a low profile about it? How do you feel about sharing your money with others or giving it away? Are you jealous or resentful of those who have more money than you? How do you feel your parents have been towards you with money? If you are in a relationship with someone else which involves joint management of money and resources, is there conflict around handling it? What is the nature of the disagreements you have and what judgments do you find yourself making about how the other handles money?
As you reflect on your answers to these and other related questions about money that may come to mind, you want then to get in touch with the underlying thoughts, feelings and beliefs that these represent. These may be thoughts and feelings of inadequacy, scarcity, deprivation, limitation, insecurity, fear, victimization, irresponsibility, shame and guilt, pride, triumph, superiority, generosity, power, control, and so on. The important recognition that you want to foster is that these are basic feelings about yourself that have nothing to do with money, or other people, or anything of the world. These are repercussions from seriously entertaining the thought of separation in your mind and wanting it to be true. For the thought of separation is nothing less than the desire to be separate from love, including a willingness to attack and destroy love in order to establish an individual self. And in that process we believe we have destroyed our own value. And so all of the accompanying feelings of worthlessness, which become too painful to hold in our mind and acknowledge, become projected out onto a world of our own making, with many convenient targets and repositories for those feelings, including money. And then those external symbols seem to be the problem, rather than the thought of separation in our mind through which we devalued our true Self. At that point, the ego thought system is well protected from the Holy Spirit’s Atonement principle, which says separation is impossible except in illusory dreams and nothing has really happened to deprive us of the love that we are. But once we understand the ego’s purpose for the world, including money, we can look at all of it differently, and know it is a window to our own unconscious mind. And now we can make a different choice, remembering our true Value as God’s holy Son.
Q #140: I have been studying A Course in Miracles for a few years now and I am aware of the importance of the practice of asking for help. I am also aware of wanting and needing help. Whenever I attempt to ask for help, however, I become aware of the strong specialness component to my asking. For example I am now teaching again after many years of doing something entirely different. I am nervous about doing the job well, and try to ask for help so that I will be able to do a good job but am aware that the main reason for asking is that I want to be special both to my students and superiors. I try to talk to Jesus about this issue but have a lot of difficulty with talking to him and wonder how important it is to be able to have complete conversations with him. They usually seem to evaporate -- maybe I don't really trust that he is there. I would appreciate any suggestions that you have in dealing with this block that I have to this essential tool of the Course.
A: First of all, you should acknowledge yourself for recognizing the specialness thoughts that are behind your requests for help. That is a very big step. And then don’t try to change them. Just allow yourself to see where they are coming from -- a concept of an inadequate self that feels it needs to enhance its status by projecting a good image. It’s pretty clear which voice is speaking at that point. But if you can watch yourself doing this without judging yourself, then you are looking with Jesus at your ego, and this is the kind of help that he wants us to ask from him.
In our beginning practice with the Course, we usually want to ask Jesus for help with specific problems and concerns in our lives and this is only natural. That kind of asking can be helpful in developing a positive relationship with Jesus in our mind, no longer seeing him as the angry Judge who will call us to account for ourselves on the Day of Reckoning, as traditional Christianity portrays him. But you are already beginning to see the limitations of this kind of asking -- it is fueled by a desire for specialness. That is a major insight and it can help you get more in touch with the genuine help that Jesus is holding out to us -- a help that allows us to look at the limitations we believe about ourselves without judging ourselves or feeling guilty about those thoughts, so that we can look beyond them to the truth about ourselves. The first section in The Song of Prayer pamphlet addresses the steps we take up “the ladder of prayer” as we progress in our practice of asking for help (S.1).
So your conversations with Jesus will change over time, and what you bring to him will shift as you grow into the teachings of the Course. Your present difficulty in sustaining your focus on him is simply a reflection of your fear of him and what he represents, for a part of you knows that he is leading you beyond your ego and the special self you are so identified with. You may find it helpful to dialogue with Jesus by writing down your thoughts as if in conversation with him, addressing him very specifically about what is on your mind and asking him in the process for help in recognizing the purpose behind your thoughts and how to uncover them without reinforcing the guilt in your mind. The process of writing may be helpful in maintaining your focus and exposing your ego thoughts, especially as you become more familiar and comfortable with the process. You may even want to keep the writing as a journal so that you can refer back to helpful conversations when the fear level becomes too high and you can’t remember what you already know -- a common experience when our ego feels threatened. What is most important is not to become overly concerned about your resistance -- it is to be expected. Acknowledging it without fighting it will allow it to dissolve in your mind over time.
Q #141: Not to sound petty or like I'm whining or even that I have any regrets about hooking up with A Course in Miracles, but I have friends who, it seems, will never have to go through all the stuff I'm going through with the Course. This is not this easiest journey I could have picked. It seems like others can move through this journey with ease: they light a few candles, do some yoga, say a chant or two, and they're in bliss central, while I find myself in a scary Godzilla movie. I get centered and the fear goes away; but then it returns, again and again. It seems to be a long movie. But the Course is set up for a year. Will there ever be an ending to all this (like before my death) or maybe just an intermission? Any input will be very much appreciated.
A: No, it is not an easy journey, and you echo the sighs of many other students. Sometimes we just have to lighten up and learn how to sit back and enjoy the show. It is, after all, the undoing of what never happened. It doesn’t feel like that, for sure; but we are simply choosing to watch reruns of the same old movie. When we are less afraid to approach the whole thing that way, and have not yielded to the temptation to deny our feelings, our internal experience will change for the better. We cannot judge where we are in the process, or where anyone else is either; time is part of the ego’s trick to keep us clothed in our false identities. And the sin, guilt, and fear that have turned our minds into torture chambers which we vowed never to go near again, are just silly thoughts that we have invested with tremendous power. We would do well to accept Jesus’ invitation to share his vision in seeing the seeming power of our egos as “not strong enough to stop a button’s fall, nor hold a feather” (T.18.IX.6:4).
Q #142: I have been a keen student of A Course in Miracles for a good 12 years and find it the most appropriate spiritual path for me. Thinking of Jesus and his teachings has become a part of my life, a way of consciously forgiving myself and thus of course others as well. I also accept fully that all pain is some form of unforgiveness (“Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness” [W.pI.193.4:1]). Now regardless of my practice, which is almost on a continual and absolutely unforced basis, parallel to whatever else I may be occupied with, various aches and pains and other ailments do occur at a level which makes me question the efficacy of my practice -- my only choice then remaining the same old magic, usually a pain killer. Even ardently repeating a maxim like “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me” [W.pI.rVI.3:3,4,5] during an attack seems quite ineffective. Is it basically still a very fearful subconscious that is at the bottom of this, or is it the ego taking me for a ride and having me believe that I have forgiven myself more than I really have?
Yes, there is still fear, as well as guilt, buried in your subconscious mind, and yes, your ego will always want to fool you about your progress, but also your lack of progress (T.18.V.1:5,6). All of that is to be expected while you still identify yourself as the body which has the name you answer to. For seeing yourself as a body means you still believe that the separation and its accompanying guilt are real and you still believe you need a defense against that guilt, which is the purpose the body serves. The pain, apparently in the body, is intended to distract you from its real source in the mind. So if you are willing to make the connection back to the mind and see the cause -- unforgiveness -- that is all you really need do.
For a further consideration of issues related to the questions you raise, you may wish to look at Question #128.
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