My Kingdom is not of this world

Perhaps more than any other word of Jesus in the historical literature, this expression became the frequent victim of level confusion, in one of the ego's favorite defenses against Jesus' teachings, in which it always substitutes the concrete for the abstract, the specific for the concept, the thing for the idea.
Plato already understood that the ideas, the mind, is infinite and forever, and cannot be traded for one or another expression of the idea, as much as you can steal a table, but you can't steal the idea 'table'. And therein lies the rub...
In Margot Krikhaar's Awakening in Love, she deals with this issue extensively, and as always in a thoroughly practical manner, particularly in Chapter 10 of the second part of the book. She covers all the variations of ego-distortions, including one of the ego's favorite games, of rejecting the world, pointing out that all such ego-strategies do nothing but make the error real. As a result they make it harder, not easier to follow Jesus to his Kingdom which is not of this world, as in fact they obfuscate the choice by substituting a specific action for the acceptance of the idea.

What makes the ego so upset are notions like 'I need do nothing' (ACIM:T-18.VII), not to mention the level of insult it feels at passages such as these:

It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult, because you insist there must be more that you need do. You find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so little, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now. (ACIM:T-18.IV.7)

It should finally dawn on us that the reason a camel will sooner go through the eye of a needle than a 'rich man' will enter the Kingdom, is simply because you cannot hang on to the values of the world, and seek first the Kingdom all at once. It is one or the other, so as long as you maintain your investment in two mutually exclusive strategies, you will lose your investment. Ask any trader on Wall Street.

The point is that when we do become aware of our own contradictory investments, we should not consult with our ego, but ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit. There is nothing we can do to flick the switch, except flicking the switch, and that means asking the Holy Spirit and not the ego to look at our resistance a different way. Looking at it with Jesus or the Holy Spirit is what will whittle down the resistance, any actions the ego comes up with will only postpone that one choice by always again substituting something that will never work.

Thus the 'other' choice is not doing the opposite in worldly terms, but it is not getting trapped in the choice that never is a choice, by not making the choice by ourselves, but referring it to One Who can guide us out of the maze, exactly because we are then giving our ego the day off. We can always know we've chosen the ego if we are once again engaged in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, and caught up in believing that this time it will make a difference. The ego as always is the magician, Maya, who makes it seem as if the choices it offers are real choices, yet either choice always means we chose the ego - that is the ego's 'gotcha'. The choice for 'another way' and a different teacher, simply means not buying into the ego's choice for two sides of the same coin, but stepping back from buying in altogether by referring the matter to the Holy Spirit for guidance, which means we are withdrawing our investment from the conflicts of the world, and putting our faith in the teacher whose Kingdom is NOT of this world. Whatever we then do on the practical level is done without investment, only because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and thus comes without the hidden price of sin, guilt and fear.

To come back to Chapter 10 in Margot's book once more, in it she shares a visionary experience she had as part of her process, which makes it very clear again that experiences will come to us, in the exact form that is most helpful, to help us along the way. In the process it becomes equally clear why in the end it is inevitable that we all choose for Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as the experience grows that the options the ego has to offer aren't any real choices at all.
Logion 47 of the Thomas Gospel (Pursah version) says:

A person cannot mount two horses or bend two bows. And a servant cannot serve two masters, or that servant will honor the one and offend the other.
Nobody drinks aged wine and immediately wants to drink young wine. Young wine is not poured into old wineskins, or they might break, and aged wine is not poured into new wineskins, or it might spoil. An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment, since it would create a tear.

The Course puts it this way:

The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute. But the outcome is as certain as God. (ACIM:T-2.III.3:9-10)

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

"Awakening in Love" by Margot Krikhaar

I've started some preparatory work on the translation of the book Ontwaken in Liefde, by Margot Krikhaar - the English title of which will be Awakening in Love. It is a remarkable book by Dutch author Margot Krikhaar, about her journey with A Course in Miracle, told in fresh language, evidently born from first hand experience. Her presentation is so personal and completely disarming that it invites us in, and there is much the reader can identify with, but even if not, it invites to self examination about what happened in our own lives at similar stages.

The title is very evocative of the basic message of the Course, that once the obstacles to Love's presence are forgiven all, what the ego imagines will be the destruction of it, ends up being a non event, the loss of what never was and an awakening in Love - enlightenment or resurrection are other words for it - because the only thing left is love, if nothing else because love is an absence, and impossibility, of conflict. After all, in oneness, there is nothing to disagree with, and all our fuss was just a silly mistake.

And, while I was working on translating the beginning of the book, I read a recent entry in her online diary, here: Margot Krikhaar Diary 8/29/2011 (in Dutch). In this entry she relates a probably last visit with her now 14 year old son, last because she is dying of cancer, and saying her goodbyes. In her usual frank style she shares how she still had difficulty dealing with what had clearly been a dysfunctional relationship in her life, because she was never able to really connect with this child, who was more his father's son than hers from very early on. She also shares about her experience of the presence of Jesus as she is looking at all of those issues for the last time, and forgiving them - by literally looking at them with him and then letting them go. And finally she shares how, much later, back home she has an experience of great relief that her mother role was lifted from her, completing yet another forgiveness opportunity in her life.

In parallel, I was reminded again of Prospero's speech in the Tempest:

Prospero:

 Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

 Are melted into air, into thin air:

 And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

 The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

 The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

 As dreams are made on; and our little life

 Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

It is another classical reflection of this letting go, and the experience of the disappearance of the universe, as it is called in the title of Gary Renard's book.

Or, to mention yet another parallel from literature, one might think of Herman Melville's Moby Dick,  which is brilliantly interpreted by Jed McKenna, in his book Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, as being the account of Melville's own spiritual awakening - after all Ishmael, who is the writer of the story in the observer seat, survives the ordeal of the ego's hero of this particular nightmare, Ahab, and merely observes the events, realizing in the end that nothing happened.

It brings to mind the Course's definition of the miracle:

1. A miracle is a correction. 2 It does not create, nor really change at all. 3 It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. 4 It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. 5 Thus it stays within time's limits. 6 Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings. (ACIM:W-pII.13.1)

At this point we might remind ourselves that the Course has set out with the observation that the meaning of love is beyond what can be taught, our job is merely to remove the obstacles to the awareness of love's presence (Introduction), after that, the rest will speak for itself. In this context we can see how the mind who dreamt up all the characters in the play, and all of the stage settings and the story, finally let's them go - and the Course's forgiveness process is merely a shortcut that can help some people to speed up this process, of letting go of all the roles of our false self.
To look at it yet another way, here we may understand the often misconstrued Jesus quote, about the poor chances of a rich man entering the Kingdom. Since he always speaks in parables, what he means is that as long as we take the dream roles in the world seriously, by investing them with meaning, we are holding on to nothing, and it is this that makes us rich by investing in this world, which then prevents us from following him to the Kingdom.
It is the Course's forgiveness process which allows us to forgive first the characters in the dream, and increasingly more and more ourselves for our dream roles, until with Prospero we can let it all go. The process culminates in what the Course terms 'accepting the atonement,' being the full realization that nothing ever happened, and that God's reality (and our own, since we are his son) remained utterly unaffected, and with that we re-awaken in love.

5. The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. 2 Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. 3 And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. 4 Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? 5 Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow? (ACIM:T-28.III:5)

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