Abraham's "Sacrifice" - A New Interpretation

Abraham's "sacrifice" is our "sacrfice," and the word should be in quotes, because, like everything else of the ego, it is not what it seems to be. Of necessity, to the ego sacrifice means giving up something and now lacking it while someone else has it. The concept is based on the Son's original thought of sacrifice, namely the insane belief that, for a separate individual to exist, wholeness, God, must have been destroyed or sacrificed.
Because the horror of that thought of killing off God is so intolerable, the Son denies it, and it inevitably gets projected out into a world of separate individuals, and sacrifice's prototype gets reenacted over and over and over again in all our special relationships. How often does one hear that the "secret to a good relationship" is "give and take."!
For me, Rembrandt's famous engraving depicting the biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice has always been so full of light  and has always given me such immense and profound relief over the idea of letting go of the ego's self will, letting go of the tiny mad idea of separation, letting go of my vision of what tomorrow must be like ("the only son"), which is always another repetition of the past in a different form. For me, that picture represents forgiveness, the light just shines the darkness away, it represents accepting the atonement. But the ego wants us to believe God would now demand sacrifice of us in payment for our sacrifice of Him, as a literal interpretation of the story might suggest. It is sacrifice in the ego's view, for the ego also insanely believes it has something of value to offer us, something "more than [the] everything," that we in sheer terror, believe we have destroyed, never to get it back. (ACIM:T-29.VII.2, T-27.III.4:6) So the son does get to live, which is reminiscent of something Ken Wapnick has said, that in human (spiritual) adulthood, your new life is just like your old life, except without the fear, guilt and anxiety.

The sons of the ego are our projections, and physical children are a perfect symbol of the thought, for parents imagine they live on in their children. But our thoughts might be expressed in art works, or our handy work, as they are in every detail of our life. So, the story of Abraham's sacrifice should not be misunderstood by taking it literally, but rather appreciated metaphorically.  It is the story of us all, who refuse to live in the present, and seek our salvation in our projections, which ultimately are always projections of our guilt, with which we populate our lives and the earth, for they are endless forms of individuality, projected out and continuing the ego's dynamic of sin, guilt and fear, played out in all our relationships. The ego is indeed fruitful and multiplies ad infinitum, and populates the earth but many times zero is still zero. Giving up this hell to gain Heaven could hardly be a sacrifice. This theme comes up repeatedly in the Course:

 What would they see instead? The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the memory of Him springs instantly to mind. And with this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to him as he is to his Father. And all the world he made, and all his specialness, and all the sins he held in its defense against himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the truth about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is the only "cost" of truth: You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever? (ACIM:T-24.II.6)

Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation the ego offered you, and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing.

The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and you.  And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you. (ACIM:T-16.VI.10-11)

 Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do not see them, they are there. Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in. (ACIM:T-29.II.1)

Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the idea of compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation's purpose is lost because it is not recognized. It is denied where compromise has been accepted, for compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would maintain you can attack a little, love a little, and know the difference. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different, and yet the same remain intact, as one. Does this make sense? Can it be understood? (ACIM:T-23.III.3) 

 The ego's projections in thought, including in their physical manifestation as "sons," are nothing but the projection of itself into the future, in order to escape the presence of "God is," and instead to perpetuate itself by its attempts make a in defiance of God. The ego's goal is making the future like the past, and never having to show up for life in the present. To give up that illusion of a life, that substitute reality, is neither sacrifice nor murder, but salvation, and what then reveals itself is that we finally let go of the "tiny, mad idea," of the separation - symbolized by the Ram in the story. The stubborn and often foolish Ram is the perfect symbol for the insane idea that God's Son could "go it alone," possible only in illusions and a dream role in which the Son of God denies who he is in truth. In that thought of going it alone lies the essence of diaspora, and the feeling that we can never go home again - the prodigal son leaves home that way, to go and live in foreign lands, and thereby squander his inheritance.

Yet the story of Abraham's "sacrifice," - and of the prodigal son as well - tell it differently. They are the story of giving up the illusion - Abraham thinks he is going to have to sacrifice his only son, his only hope for a future (the ego always makes it seem its plans are our only hope), yet all he does is to let go of his self will, and the prodigal son recognizes that the only hope for Heaven and happiness is to do the will of his father, instead of squandering our inheritance and striving for the ego's treasures and wasting his life swimming against the stream.

Fundamentally, all the steps of forgiveness are in this story, exactly as they are defined in Lesson 23, namely

• Taking back the projection (would I accuse myself of doing this?)
• Changing our mind (metanoia) by turning to our Internal Teacher
• Placing the future in the hands of God (c.q. the Holy Spirit)

or, in the precise words of Lesson 23:

The idea for today [I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts] introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so. (ACIM:W-23.5)

Last but not least, all of this imagery is closely tied to the many Jesus logia which express the notion that the only way to change the ending is to go back to the beginning, such as Thomas Logion 18, which says: "Fortunate is the one who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death." The whole point here is that the problem is not on the screen, the solution is not in moving the deck chairs on the Titanic: rather, the problem is the ego and the solution is undoing the ego, by working our way back to the original decision point in the mind where we made the choice for the ego, and now would make another choice, pursuant to Jesus' invitation to choose again:

Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His Holiness is yours because He is the only power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His only Son. (ACIM:T-31.VIII.3)

Thus the story of Abraham's metanoia was truly the story of reconciliation in which we realize once and for all that the only thing that could ever make us happy is not getting what we think we want (God is NOT Santa Claus) -- the "only son" represents the continuation of the ego's dream of wish fulfilment --, but to join Jesus in doing the Will of the Father, which is also the true meaning of "following Jesus," as should be clear from Logion 99 of Thomas:

The disciples said to him, "Your brothers and your mother are standing outside." He said to them, "Those here who do what my Father wants are my brothers and my mother. They are the ones who will enter the Father's Kingdom."

 or, in the words of the Course:

Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word. The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone can "hear." Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless. Correction has one answer to all this, and to the world that rests on this: 

You but mistake interpretation for the truth. And you are wrong. But a mistake is not a sin, nor has reality been taken from its throne by your mistakes. God reigns forever, and His laws alone prevail upon you and upon the world. His Love remains the only thing there is. Fear is illusion, for you are like Him.

In order to heal, it thus becomes essential for the teacher of God to let all his own mistakes be corrected. If he senses even the faintest hint of irritation in himself as he responds to anyone, let him instantly realize that he has made an interpretation that is not true. Then let him turn within to his eternal Guide, and let Him judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him. The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition. His sins have been forgiven him, and he no longer condemns himself. How can he then condemn anyone? And who is there whom his forgiveness can fail to heal? (ACIM:M-18.3-4, bolding mine)

Abraham set the example, and it should clear up our confusion for all time:

The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit's main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict. (ACIM:T-7.X.3, bolding mine)

Note: This new interpretation is not so new. The Dutch spiritual teacher Johan Willem Kaiser, whose work I'm translating into English, wrote about this meaning in several books of his, most notably in his The Experience of the Gospel, and in his The Mysteries of Jesus in our Lives. His works date from 20 to 30 years before the Course. Rembrandt in my view could never have portrayed the scene of light that he did, if he did not fully understand that for Abraham the reversal he experienced was a true miracle moment, where the light of the Holy Spirit could shine away the dark despair of the ego.

Copyright, © 2011 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Abrahamic Religion at the Library

Since this blog was started in an explicit acknowledgement of the significance of the publication of A Course in Miracles in the context of the Abrahamic religions, I just wanted to highlight an important exhibit at the New York Public Library, that is currently in progress. The exhibition on the Three Faiths of the Abrahmic tradition promises to be eminently worthwhile.

It is helpful to see these three religions, which have so often been in conflict, as coming from one historical source and expressing one underlying tradition. This is even more the case, when we realize from the Course standpoint how much monotheistic religion has held itself out to be superior to other faith, but is itself understandable only as a defense against the non-dualistic reality of any true spirituality. The point is that the whole Abrahamic religious tradition makes the world very real by projecting a creator God, which is an obvious psychological ploy to reinforce the reality of the manifest universe of time and space, but blame someone else, in this case God. This God is now a god who needs to be placated, for he knows our sin, which is what the religious framework is all about. Abraham himself meanwhile is the very symbol of man living in the separation, which ultimately finds expression in the diaspora.

We see this process of perverting spirituality in the service of the world (Caesar) in the extreme with the appearance of Jesus, and how his teachings, which evidently were completely non-dualistic - as we can now once again understand because of the Thomas Gospel - were adulterated and compromised into the framework of this monotheistic religious tradition, cleverly obliterating non-dualistic thought under the pseudo-truth of monotheistic belief, and reconstructing the teachings of Jesus accordingly. That was the real contribution of Paul as the framer of the religion we now know as Christianity. In the process, the lightness of the forgiveness of sins which was the essence of Jesus' teachings was lost (again).

Formal religion is thus simply a reaction formation against spirituality, which is very threatening to the ego, which must at all cost maintain a faith in the reality of this very dualistic world of time and space. In other words ego has a big investment in sin, and the religions serve to reinforce that belief and rationalize it. Religions have historically served very effectively as the smokescreens behind which the creation of the world is made real by being legitimized as the work of God, never acknowledging that this creator-God is made up by the ego as a substitute for the abstract notion of God as our source in the spiritual sense. Even the gnostics however already suspected that the creator God of Genesis could not be the true God, but this insight has never before been so clearly expressed and elaborated, not to mention made practical and actionable, as it is today in A Course in Miracles.

Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real place in religion. 2 In this world, there is an astonishing tendency to join contradictory words into one term without perceiving the contradiction at all. 3 The attempt to formalize religion is so obviously an ego attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable that it hardly requires elaboration here. 4 Religion is experience; psychotherapy is experience. 5 At the highest levels they become one. 6 Neither is truth itself, but both can lead to truth. 7 What can be necessary to find truth, which remains perfectly obvious, but to remove the seeming obstacles to true awareness? (ACIM:P-2.II.2) 

In this quote psychotherapy is the model for the process of healing which is the substance of recovery from the insane belief in the manifest world of time and space as somehow a foundation of reality.

Once we do begin to fathom the underlying spiritual framework, which is the truth that is our true inheritance, we may come to appreciate that even in the religious literature which has mostly served to attest to the reality of the world, and the importance of the ego - as reflected in all the pomp and circumstance, and idolization of the religions - also often contains the grains of truth that remain in our minds despite our best attempts to suppress it and explain it away.

The fundamental choice we are being taught to make in the Course, is the choice for the 2nd place, i.e. to re-discover our reality as God's son, in lieu of playing God ourselves by granting primacy to the manifest realities which the ego made. In other words "I choose the second place to gain the first,"  means I'm stopping to play God, by accepting who I am as God created me, in lieu of substituting a self-image and a world which I made, and where I play God in opposition to the Will of God. The enabling thought underneath, the thought of separation from God, is what makes this delusional system possible, and drives it on with the energy of guilt. Conversely the idea of forgiveness, so central to the teachings of Jesus, is threatening to the ego because it invalidates the manifest world of time and space as anything of reality, but exposes it as only derivative phenomenon, based on making the sin of separation very real. The lightness of that forgiveness is symbolized in Abraham's story in the serendipetous appearance of the Ram which becomes the willing substitute for what we thought was going to be a sacrifice, but which becomes a mere giving up of our self-will in the separation and the cause of our suffering in the first place. The projected sacrifice we imagined becomes the mere letting go our self-will instead. Not my will, but Thy Will be done.

Since the separation, the words "create" and "make" have become confused. 2 When you make something, you do so out of a specific sense of lack or need. 3 Anything made for a specific purpose has no true generalizability. 4 When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation. 5 The ego has invented many ingenious thought systems for this purpose. 6 None of them is creative. 7 Inventiveness is wasted effort even in its most ingenious form. 8 The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract creativity of God's creations. (ACIM:T-3.V.2)

The story of Abraham's sacrifice in Genesis is a wonderful reminder of the way out of hell for us. For rather than being an illustration that repels us if it is taken literally, we might come to appreciate it as a reminder of the way home. It is the " little willingness,"  to be wrong and happy rather than self-righteous and miserable - the Course asks: "Do you prefer that you be right or happy?" (ACIM:T-29.VII.1:9) And so it is not the literal sacrifice of Abraham's literal son which is the point of this story - we should be mindful that "to those outside all comes in parables," as we are frequently reminded in the New Testament quotes of Jesus. So as long as we believe we are in this world of duality, we still need to learn to understand the parables in order to unlearn our substitution of truth by means of a manifest reality, which has no reality at all, as even quantum mechanics is graphically showing us today.

The point of Abraham's sacrifice is the willingness to let go of our ego's definition of tomorrow (our " son"), and once we demonstrate that willingness, it turns not to be a sacrifice, which our ego would believe it is, but a willing surrender of our stubborn self-will, in the form of the "Ram" which symbolizes the beginning of life in the manifest (substitute) reality of the world of time and space, as does the astrological sign of the same name in the symbolism of the zodiac. Thus, in lieu of the self-of-tomorrow (son), which we made as a substitute for reality, we are again accepting our reality as God's son, in the sense of  "I am as God created me." (ACIM:W-110). This is the path of relinquishing the ego's self-justification of its lies and its substitute reality, which is born from strife (separation), and begets us a life in hell, until we willingly release it, once we see the true cost of maintaining the idols which would displace God from our minds.

Thus the key to all spirituality is present in one of the foundational myths of the Abrahamic religious tradition, but as always it is taken literally and often explained away in embarrassment, all of which are ways of not looking at what the story really means; part and parcel of the process of metamorphosing the deepest truths of human spirituality into the contentious fodder of organized, formal religion, which always loses itself in its own literalness and fundamentalism, and thus inevitably splits itself into more and more splintered schools of thought, and thus seems to obliterates truth from our mind, until we have to admit it is not working for us any longer, and the time for a spiritual awakening is at hand.



Copyright, © 2010 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

I Place the Future in the Hands of God - Abraham's Sacrifice.

Rembrant's drawing of Abraham's sacrifice.

In lesson 194, the Course reminds us to place the future in God's hands, to shift our trust from the best laid plans of mice and man to the Holy Spirit, which will free us up to do our part, namely practicing forgiveness, and accepting the atonement for ourselves. Here are some passages from that lesson:

Today's idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven's gate; the quiet place of peace, where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!

Accept today's idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received.

In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced or loss perceived. In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne, and worshipped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain and even death itself.

God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They are one to Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world, the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are but asked to let the future go, and place it in God's Hands. And you will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present in His Hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless.

Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant which was slave to time transformed into a holy instant, when the light that was kept hidden in God's Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness. (ACIM:W-194.1-5)

The Dutch spiritual teacher Johan Willem Kaiser, some of whose work I have translated, has written in depth on the meaning of Abraham's "sacrifice," and has used the above pencil drawing from Rembrandt as an illustration. The original story is from Genesis 16:1-18. Evidently this needs to be understood on a symbolic level, and Kaiser approaches it in that vein. So what is my "son," but the self that I want to be tomorrow? The ego's ability to make life, to create offspring in the body, is THE symbol of NOT placing the future in the hands of God, but making it up for ourselves.
Conversely, the notion of preparedness to give up that self-determination, and to "Choose the second place to gain the first," (ACIM, W-328) and thus to embrace again who we are as God's Son, in total dependence of him, instead of usurping his role, and playing "father," (father Abraham), from that little willingness to give up what we wanted the future to be, and accepting God's Will instead, is met instantly with the appearance of an angel, who explains to us that we do not have to sacrifice what's near and dear to us. After all, the only thing that matters is to have the little willingness, which the Course explains as the willingness to entertain the possibility that Jesus is right and we are wrong, so it is the deferment of the ego's judgment in favor of the judgment of the Holy Spirit.



Thus in the story from Genesis, a "ram" is found entangled in the bushes, and we are told to sacrifice that instead. The Ram of course is the perfect symbol for our stubborn self-will, and the tiny, mad idea of the ego's individuality. Very symbolically also the ram is entangled in the bushes, which is a normal phenomenon that happens to us all the time if we set off on our own again, under the ego's guidance. All we're asked to do is to give up that bad habit, which is causing us so much pain. It is our mistake, and our ego's false imagining that we think this is any sacrifice at all.

Generations of readers who have taken this story literally have not known what to do with the cruelty of God, if he should ask us to sacrifice our "only" child, when instead the story reflects nothing but the gentleness of God, once we start seeing through the symbols, and hearing what it says. The symbolism is totally beautiful, and completely in line with the teachings of Jesus in A Course in Miracles, for of course these are spiritual lessons of the ages.

I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear.

Here is the only "sacrifice" You ask of Your beloved Son; You ask him to give up all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and freely let Your Love come streaming in to his awareness, healing him of pain, and giving him Your Own eternal joy. Such is the "sacrifice" You ask of me, and one I gladly make; the only "cost" of restoration of Your memory to me, for the salvation of the world. (ACIM:W-323)

That is the only "sacrifice" that is asked of us, to let go of the fear, which is the reflection of belief in the separation, for only the separated could be fearful. By shifting our faith to the thoughtsystem of the Holy Spirit, we then enter into what the Course calls "the development of trust," trust being evidently the opposite of fear, and in fact the Holy Spirit's eraser of our ego fears.

♠
Copyright, © 2009 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.