The Problem and the Solution

The Course always takes you deeper and deeper at every successive turn, on that longest of all journeys, the proverbial journey from the head to the heart, from conceptual to experiential truth. This time around lessons 79 and 80 seemed to touch me deeper than ever, with their message of how all the seeming problems and decisions on the level of the world (level two in Course terminology) are mere ego ploys to divert our attention from the one decision we need to make, the choice of the right teacher, Jesus or the ego.

Most importantly, in the end the choice is not even a choice, for as we let our new discernment do its work, by looking at the ego with Jesus, and forgiving its silly diversions one after the other, the choice for the ego turns out to be not an option in the end. Who wants a bad copy if you already own the original - love is our natural inheritance as the Course reminds us again and again. The problem is not finding it, the problem is to stop blocking it.

At that point it turns out that all this time that 'longest of all journeys' was really a 'journey without distance to a goal that has never changed,' (ACIM:T-8:VI,9:7) and 'Enlightenment is but a recognition, not even a change at all.' (ACIM:W-188.1:4)

In the New Testament tradition the same issues are addressed in many different ways. I am particularly fond of the image from the Gospel of John of the Samaritan woman with Jesus at Jacob's Well, making the choice between the ego's water that makes you thirst, the projections of thought which merely move the deckchairs on the Titanic, and Jesus' water of the spirit, which will not make you thirst again. She then realizes that all of her special relationships were mere empty shells, and could not hold a candle to the Holy Relationship Jesus holds out to her, which again is the only real choice, and in the end not even a choice at all, because it is the only thing that is.

Another variant is the parable of Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark Chapter 2, here in the KJV:

Mark 2

1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. 2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them. 3 And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. 4And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. 6 But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, 7 Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? 8 And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? 9 Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? 10 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) 11 I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. 12 And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.

Borrowing liberally from the exegesis of J. W. Kaiser, in his book 'Experiencing the Gospel' (not available in English), we might note that Capernaum etymologically is the place of consolation through forgiveness. What comes to him there is one who is wrapped up to the point of total spiritual paralysis in the matters of the world, of physical life. That one is us, it is me, the reader who reads this (for that is the meaning of being taught in parables), and we cannot even get to Jesus but by asking for help, and being lifted up into his presence. We need to get above the battleground with Jesus, before we can see that the problem was not what we made it out to be. In that process we are letting go of our concepts, our definitions of what the problem is, so we can come to look at it anew with his eyes.
Letting go of every attempt to do it ourselves, allows us to be lifted into his presence over all the seeming obstacles of the world. By truly abandoning our definition of the problem, we come to Jesus with the little willingness to suspect that our ego might have it all wrong, then we can truly accept his forgiveness. In the recognition that is born from that, we can arise from the paralysis (NB, the Course points out that the choice for the ego is the choice for the crucifixion, the choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for the resurrection), knowing once and for all that it is spirit over matter, so that we no longer let the world determine who we are, which led to the paralysis, but follow the spirit first, so that the forms we seem to experience in the world serve us on our way home, instead of the other way around, us serving the world, in slavery to the ego, and ultimately in the deadly paralysis of the ego's choice for the crucifixion. Instead, we can now make the choice for the Holy Spirit, for the resurrection, by heeding Jesus' command: Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.

Copyright, © 2012 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Parables

Finding and nurturing the relationship with our Inner Teacher is the central issue in the Course, as it is in the New Testament, to the careful reader: To those outside, everything comes in parables, but to his disciples individually, he explained everything. Here is the quote:

With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything. (NIV:Mk 4:33-34)

The meaning of this teaching is plain and obvious, yet we honor it more in the breach than in the observance, since we usually refuse to "follow him," by taking our troubles to our Inner Teacher. The first step towards ego-proofing this teaching is to once again read it literally, as if some guy named Jesus in ca. 30 CE, said this to a couple of guys he used to hang out with, and who were considered his followers, disciples, and later apostles. In that process we have substituted the manifest content for the latent content, and rendered the message safe for Caesar (the ego), thus preparing the path for something called Christianity to become a world religion. Namely, as long as we see this as a historical event, and something we tell each other, of how Jesus (notice the past tense here:) taught his apostles, we implicitly escape the immediacy of our own choice in the present moment to either follow him (our Inner Teacher), and leaving the interpretation of anything we think we see (the parables) to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, or to continue to do our own thing, with the usual disastrous consequences.

The bottom line is that as long as we are withholding anything at all from Jesus, we are voting with the ego. The whole essence of that process is this:

The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it. Atonement would not be if there were no need for it. You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is hidden from you. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself. Let the Holy Spirit's purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing.

(ACIM:T-15.IV.9)

In short, as long as we do not enter into the one-on-one relationship with our Inner Teacher, as he is referred to in the Course, we are withholding thoughts from him which we would keep, and thereby keeping the ego in charge. The whole idea of the separation (i.e. individuality) is that we could have private thoughts that we would keep for ourselves, so we can determine what reality is, in lieu of accepting God's reality, thus rejecting the "Kingdom of Heaven," and continuing the choice to shatter Heaven in in the delusion that we could and would rather have "something more than everything." Choosing the ego, entails choosing all of time and space, Samsara, as our own substitute reality.

The contrast becomes clear when once we experience the alternative choice for the Holy Instant, for the choice for the Holy Spirit places us in that one-on-one teaching relationship with Jesus, and is a totally different reality than some story about some interesting teacher so many years ago.

No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so. And therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not. (ACIM:T-29.VII.2)

The literal, "form" ( the usual word in the Course), the manifest meaning, is the ego's principal defense against the content, the latent meaning, the upshot, or the spirit of any situation or communication. Any good lawyer knows that the best defense against the spirit of the law, is taking it absolutely literally and following it to the letter, while hiding behind such Pharisaic observance to secretly thwart the content, the meaning, the spirit, and twist it to our own purposes, thereby keeping the ego in charge.

Still we know Jesus' teachings in many areas, at least in a piecemeal fashion. For example:

• Children follow what their parents do, not what they say they do - to the great annoyance of many parents, who like to pass up these healing opportunities, and instead punish their children for their disobedience, and then be surprised when they become little liars.
• In organizational development we know that the failsafe way to diagnose any organization is to look at the difference between what we say we do and what we do do. That Delta (difference) is the clear indicator of dysfunction in any organization, and can be put to direct practical use to address the issues that cause organizations to spin out of control.
• In psychology it's been known for a long time that we need to listen to the latent content of dreams, stories, situations, etc. and that the manifest content only distracts from honestly understanding "What's the upshot?".

In short, at some level we all know how the ego's lies are given power, namely by not examining them, and just like with a magician (aka. illusionist), the manifest story details serve only to make sure we will never understand what is really going on, and thereby we empower the ego (Satan is what the ancients called it) and entrust it with directing the movie which we call our life, in preference to honestly going to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, our Inner Teacher, to ask them to interpret it for us. If we do the latter anything we do will be guided by their love, and will not "accumulate more Karma" but instead will set our feet progressively on the way out of the hamster mill of Samsara. As long as we act on the basis of the manifest content, we continue to add on to the ego's labyrinth, and prolong our suffering, postponing the journey home with yet more convoluted meanderings in the world of form, diversions in the hologram of time and space.

The ego is an absolute master at burying Jesus in the details and ensuring that his teachings are never heard. The point of the resurrection is that we don't bury him, but we certainly do bury ourselves, as long as we continue to reenact the crucifixion, and postpone the resurrection. He did not suffer on the cross, as he had long since chosen the resurrection, but we certainly suffer with the guilt of choosing the crucifixion over and over again.

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