Choosing Between Two Opposing Thoughts is Hobson's Choice

In the mid-1950’s, a doomsday cult of true believers in Chicago gathered at the home of Mrs. Marion Keech who was receiving mysterious messages in the form of “automatic writing” from alien beings on the planet Clarion. The most recent messages revealed that the world would end soon by a great flood. The cult members convinced themselves that by believing strongly enough in the prophecy, they would be spared, rescued by an alien spacecraft. They demonstrated their commitment by leaving jobs and spouses and colleges and giving away money and possessions.

Meanwhile, a psychology professor, Leon Festinger and his colleagues, had been working out a theory of cognitive dissonance that accounted for the tension that comes from holding two opposing thoughts at the same time. They predicted that the individual experiencing the tension of the dissonance would attempt to overcome it by rationalizing one thought in favor of the other. The word “dissonance” comes from sonare, meaning “sound,” and dis, meaning “to be apart from.” It is a metaphor from music describing unpleasant combinations of notes.

Festinger saw this cult’s belief in the prophecy as an opportunity to study how the cult members would rationalize the inevitable failure of the prophecy. He and his colleagues infiltrated the cult and reported their findings in a book published in 1956 entitled, When Prophecy Fails.

The great flood was to occur before dawn on December 21. On the evening of December 20 the members gathered at Mrs. Keech’s house, expecting a guide to come and direct them to the waiting spacecraft. In his book, Festinger reported the following sequence of events:

12:10 am. Still no visitor. The group sits in stunned silence. The cataclysm itself is no more than a few hours away.

4:00 am. The group has been sitting in silence. A few attempts at finding explanations have failed. Mrs. Keech begins to cry.

4:45 am. Another message by automatic writing is sent to Mrs. Keech. It states, in effect, that the God of Earth has decided to spare the planet from destruction. The cataclysm has been called off: “The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.”

Afternoon, December 21. Newspapers are called, interviews are sought. In a reversal of its previous distaste for publicity, the group begins an urgent campaign to spread its message to as broad an audience as possible.

While I am struck by the phrase, The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light… because I am well aware of the powerful effect of uniting and going inward with a common purpose, I want to continue with the argument that Festinger proposed--Two conflicting thoughts: the world will end, the world did not end. When it appeared that the prophecy would fail, great dissonance occurred, but it was overcome by the new belief that their dedication had saved the world because they spread so much light. And now they would reinforce this new belief by proselytizing their message.

Festinger was inspired to investigate the theory of cognitive dissonance as it presents itself moment by moment in our daily lives, accounting for much of the activity of our “monkey minds.” Dissonance occurs in situations where an individual must choose between two incompatible thoughts, or cognitions. The greatest dissonance is created when the two alternatives are equally compelling. For example, a habitual smoker is bombarded by information that smoking is extremely bad for your health. He finds himself saying, I must stop; I really want to smoke. These conflicting thoughts occur all through the day, producing almost unbearable tension. The rationalizing mind appears to offer some respite. He can rationalize not smoking with these thoughts:

My health will improve.
I will no longer experience shortness of breath.
My lungs will begin to clean out, and in time, will be normal.
I will save money.
I won’t have to put up with nonsmokers’ disdainful looks.
I will be free of being chained to a habit.

If these thoughts are acted upon, they produce a consonance, overcoming the dissonance. The word “consonance” also comes from sonare, and con, meaning “sounding together,” producing harmonies that are pleasing to the ear. But this harmony is only temporary if he is truly unable to stop smoking. And this could be justified in this manner:

Smoking is not really affecting my health.
I can still work effectively, in fact, quite well because I am more relaxed.
Smoking keeps me from gaining weight, and I can eat whatever I want.
I love the moment of lighting up.
I like hanging out with my buddies who smoke.
I’ve been smoking so long, I can’t imagine what it would be like not to.

Whatever side he takes, it appears that consonance trumps dissonance.

(Dear Reader, I urge you now to take a moment, look into your mind, and identify your most recent, or ongoing, attempt to find consonance in the face of two opposing thoughts.)

Thank you.

The only reason for taking such a hard look at this rationalizing behavior is that it is a major preoccupation that keeps us separate from God. We are preoccupying ourselves with thoughts that have no source in reality. Once again, we are caught in “egoland,” hostage to the ego, defending ourselves against God.

When I preoccupy myself, my small self that has no source in reality, with choosing between two alternatives, I have forgotten that this self allied with the ego has established a place in my mind separate from God. I have chosen to be hostage to the ego, yet Jesus tells me in His Course in Miracles:

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. T-31.V.17:7

And yet, I continue to defend my self against God by setting up two conflicting thoughts and spend my time rationalizing one thought over the other. Just look at the synonyms that describe this preoccupation to find consonance: justify, equalize, negotiate, mediate, compromise, bargain, compensate, adjust.

There is a tendency to think the world
can offer consolation and escape
from problems that its purpose is to keep.
Why should this be? Because it is a place
where choice among illusions seems to be
the only choice. And you are in control
of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you think,
within the narrow band from birth to death,
a little time is given you to use for you alone.
T-31.1V.1:1-4

Jesus goes on to say:

Real choice is not illusion. But the world has none to offer.

Although consonance seems to trump dissonance, the truth is that

GOD TRUMPS CONSONANCE.

All its roads but lead
to disappointment, nothingness and death.
There is no choice in its alternatives.
Seek not escape from problems here. The world
was made that problems could not be escaped.
Be not deceived by all the different names
its roads are given. They have but one end.
And each is but the means to gain that end,
for it is here that all its roads will lead,
however differently they seem to start;
however differently they seem to go.
Their end is certain, for there is no choice
among them. All of them will lead to death.
On some you travel gaily for a while,
before the bleakness enters. And on some
the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not
what will the ending be, but when it comes.
T-31.1V.2

Hence, the title of this article--you constantly face Hobson’s choice. The origin of this term is said to be in the name of one Thomas Hobson (1544-1631), from Cambridge, England, who kept a livery stable and required every customer to take either the horse nearest the stable door or none at all. The choice his customers were given was “this or none.” You have no choice in this duality.

However:

There is a choice that you have power to make
when you have seen the real alternatives.
Until that point is reached you have no choice,
and you can but decide how you would choose
the better to deceive yourself again.
(Consonance is deception)
This course attempts to teach no more than that
the power of decision cannot lie
in choosing different forms of what is still
the same illusion and the same mistake.
T-31.1V.8:1-4

The temptation to bargain in the face of self-made conflict is great. All that is required in the face of this temptation is to remember that we are as God created us; we are His most holy sons. We are the Self He created, not the small self we made.

The images you make cannot prevail
against what God Himself would have you be.
Be never fearful of temptation, then,
but see it as it is; another chance
to choose again, and let Christ’s strength prevail
in very circumstance and every place
you raised an image of yourself before.
For what appears to hide the face of Christ
is powerless before His majesty,
and disappears before His holy sight.
T-31.V111.4:1-4

I am reminded of a friend who was a counselor for many years. When she recognized in a client this pattern of rationalizing opposites, she used the term “ambivalence,” from the German, Ambivalenz, meaning “the presence of two opposing ideas, attitudes, or emotions at the same time.” In the face of this dissonance, this tension she counseled, “Learn to bear the tension.” That is, just stand still for a moment, do not choose, and in that moment of standing still, you are allowing for something else to enter in, inviting Christ’s strength to prevail.

This is the way Jesus expresses it in His Lesson 155, I will step back and let Him lead the way.

The world is an illusion. Those who choose
to come to it are seeking for a place
where they can be illusions, and avoid
their own reality. Yet when they find
their own reality is even here,
then they step back and let it lead the way.
What other choice is really theirs to make?
To let illusions walk ahead of truth
is madness. But to let illusion sink
behind the truth and let the truth stand forth
as what it is, is merely sanity. (2)

This shift from insanity to sanity, from illusions to truth, from dreaming to reality, is the miracle.

God’s miracles are true. They will not fade
when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead;
and last forever, for they come from God
to His dear Son, whose other name is you.
W-p1.106.4:4-5

Experiencing the truth of what you are will set you, God’s most holy Son, free from making meaningless choices between illusory opposites.

Walking in Form Informed by the Formless

After extensive, determined mind-training, desiring to see only what is beyond form, we finally take to heart Jesus’ teaching in His unworldly masterpiece, A Course in Miracles, that what we see in worldly form is just an illusion.

We learn to trust that seeing something in form does not make it Real.

It is quite possible to rest in this state of mind of the peace of God, while we walk in form, trusting that the only thing Real is this state of mind.

This is what it means to say,

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(Title, Lesson 201)

As God’s creation, this state is still, peaceful, joyous, loving, truthful, and free of form, formless.

This is our home.

I like the way Juliet Binoche, the great French actress, expressed this in the vernacular today in an interview in a newspaper. "As a child I moved from place to place, and I had to find my home inside myself. When I bring my home wherever I go, I am at home wherever I am."

Slipping into this still state, silent, because the raucous shrieks of the ego have disappeared, we are receptive to hear the Voice for God, speaking to us all through the day.

Now, in this moment, it is quite possible to be still a moment and walk through the illusion, just doing the next thing, feeling totally at home, walking in form informed by the formless.

When you are still an instant, when the world
recedes from you, when valueless ideas
cease to have value in your restless mind,
then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly
He calls to you that you will not resist
Him longer. In that instant He will take
you to His home, and you will stay with Him
in perfect stillness, silent and at peace,
beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt,
sublimely certain that you are at home.
(Lesson 182, paragraph 8)

Please click on the link below to hear Doug Christlieb play the piano and sing his own composition, I will be still an instant and go home.

Click Here for song

A Letter to my Son, Stephen: Learning from Dogs

A few days ago my son, Stephen, 37, called from where he is now living, Aspen Colorado, to tell me of an incident that occurred regarding the three dogs he is looking after for a friend. The dogs are of a mixed breed, Australian sheep dog and border collie, black and white, weighing about 40 pounds each. Sarah, the alpha female, is the mother of Hula, a male, and sister to Haily.

Suddenly, and completely out of character, Sarah attacked Haily, her jaws clamped tightly shut on her throat, drawing blood. Stephen’s adrenaline hit, picking up both dogs by their necks and separating them, throwing Sarah outside, incurring a bite on the arm, and during the melee Hula bit him on the leg.

It was over in a flash, and Stephen went and sat down, his heartbeat slowly returning to normal.

The reason he called me was to talk about a question forming in his mind that, since he is the cause, what is going on in his mind that would make up a world of vicious dogs? Now, Stephen is a serious student of A Course in Miracles. He spent a period of time in residence at Endeavor Academy, and he does the lessons daily, determined to train his mind systematically to a new way of thinking. He had spent enough time at the Academy to know that a “brother” (a resident at the Academy) would often glibly answer his question with, “It’s your mind, Dear One.” Actually that’s not very helpful, if you just stop there.

We talked on the phone for a while, and after we hung up, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind, and I finally grabbed a notebook and began to formulate a more thorough answer to his question. This is the letter that I e-mailed to him.

Wednesday 31 January, 2007

Dear Stephen,

I am so grateful that you are taking a look at everything that happens from the perspective of mind-training. You’re right, a brother is likely to say it’s your mind. Usually, it is said when I am upset, and it pisses me off because it seems so glib, and at the time not very helpful. What, exactly, does it mean, anyway?

It does say in today’s lesson, the inner is the cause of the outer. (Lesson 31, I am not a victim of the world I see) My favorite expression of this occurs in Chapter 21.

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for and receive as I have asked. (T-21.11.2:3-5)

Let’s start with the idea that embedded in your mind is a motion-picture camera. It is located in a few square centimeters in the back of your head where the holographic universe is formed. Now, this camera just does what it does, automatically; it simply records what its lens, your eyes, rests upon, glances at.

No two cameras are the same. You project one thing and another person standing beside you projects another. What is projected is all meaningless. Nothing I see means anything. Now, here’s the deal.

Not only do you see images flooding your mind, but you are hearing constant commenting. This is voice of the ego, lulling you into a constant state of judgment.

What you choose to focus on in the panorama is entirely up to you. This is where mind-training comes in because to an untrained mind, there is nothing to see other than what you are looking at, and how you respond seems to be your only choice. Your ego-mind, your self-concept, is completely allied with what you see. That is, what you see, the world, appears to be the cause, and you are the effect. You seem to be a victim of the world you see.

That’s the value of the Zen idea, “What we are looking for is what is looking.” That is why I always go to state of mind to understand what is looking. Before mind-training, there is no differentiation between the ego state of mind and the world you see. The ego is the director. And what you see is an exact projection. This is an unexamined premise completely taken for granted. This is what the inner refers to. The inner state of mind. Thus, the inner causes the outer, truly.

Much to our surprise, as we persevere in mind-training, we learn that there is another state of mind, in fact, the only state of mind, and this state is the True Self, the Christ mind. For I am still as God created me. Of course, it is a joke of cosmic proportions that we manage to keep our True Selves hidden from our awareness. But we do learn that we have choice. What we end up seeing, then, is either a projection, or a reflection, a projection of your limited self-concept, your ego, or a reflection of your True Self.

. . .and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.

I, the mechanism of decision, am always in a position to decide between seeing either through the eyes of the ego, the self-concept, or through the True Self, the eyes of Christ. I can choose crucifixion or resurrection, separation or salvation. In every moment, I can ask only for help to let go of, to forgive, the state of mind of the ego that is in alliance with the camera showing me a meaningless world, an illusion, a dream, a holographic universe that simply does not exist, in spite of its apparent solidity.Images seem solid.

I am seeing vicious dogs attacking each other. I am the cause. What’s going on in my mind that would present such a world to me. “It’s your mind, Dear One.” Yes, but, the real meaning of the inner causes the outer is that you can choose what you want to see. Your awareness of the inner state of mind is either the truth of what you are; or the falsity of what you are.. The choice is to see with the ego’s eyes or with Christ’s eyes. Through the eyes of Christ you always see only the reflection of your peaceful state of mind. You look through the images to peace. Now, you can’t actually see peace; it’s more of a feeling, a slipping into another frequency. Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body’s eyes at all. The mind is its only source. (Lesson 30.5:1,2)

In this state of mind, there is, of course, no ego-commentary. There is only stillness. For I am still as God created me. It turns out that the constant noise of the ego state is a preoccupation that serves as a defense against seeing through the eyes of Christ.

Now you can see that you are definitely on the mark because your mind is trained, sufficiently, to stop and be still and ask, what’s going on in my mind that would cause vicious dogs? Humans around you whose minds are untrained are incapable of asking such a question.

This recognition that what seems natural and real is not so is the miracle.

So, you caused the vicious dogs only in the sense that your camera was running. You took action and did what you had to do. Then you sat quietly for a moment. You became still. (Lesson 155, I will step back and let Him lead the way.) And then you began to formulate a question that would guide you to your True Self, and you asked for help.

“Good onya, mate.”

Now, read Chapter 21, Section 11: The responsibility for sight. It will kick your ass.

Cool.

Love,

Dad

* * *

Last night, Stephen called to tell me the happy, tail-wagging end to this tale. He said that he walked around for a couple of days holding a grievance against the dogs, even though they were all-friendly to him, acting as if nothing had happened, when of course, nothing had happened for them, being blessed by not being egos, having no past to hold onto. So, he sat down with each of them and loved them up and forgave them, laughing at the foolishness of holding a grievance against dogs. They simply remained in their loving presence, reminding me of this poem by Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Come Into Animal Presence.

Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.

The rabbit and the llama and the armadillo are simply present, not having to contend with a false state of mind. They don’t have a choice. They don’t have a decision to make. They are always, already, present, now.

Those who were sacred have remained so.

In this sense, they provide a perfect analogue, a similarity to our peaceful state of mind. Their animal presence is sacred, holy, whole. The title of the poem, Come Into Animal Presence, is an invitation to the reader, an invitation not to be with them physically, but letting them be a reminder to enter into our own peaceful state of mind. Animals do not falter; they don’t have a choice. Only we, observing them, could turn away from our natural presence, deciding for another state:

only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.

What always draws me back to this poem is the word insouciant, meaning “light-hearted unconcern.” I love to walk through the world feeling insouciant, my heart filled with light.

“Lightheartedness” does occur once in A Course in Miracles. It appears in the Manual for Teachers where Jesus is describing to the teacher of God what it means to relinquish the valueless.

Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy lightheartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him, he finds a gift bestowed on him. (M-4A:5:8)

And now I know why I have always liked the name of the main character in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly.

October 5, 1987, Saying Goodbye to my Therapist: We are Always Being Guided

Yesterday, during a conversation at lunch, a friend said that she remembered a story I had told her some time ago about the day I resolutely stood up in the middle of a therapy session and terminated therapy after four solid years, one session each week.

I remembered that twenty years ago I had written an article describing that experience, and I went home hoping to find it. Finally, after much searching, I found on the back of a closet shelf an old box gathering dust, containing several yellowing manuscripts. Leafing through them, I was relieved to find the manuscript, Saying Goodbye to my Therapist. (Not only did I find it, but I found in an envelope in the box the floppy containing the article, having typed it on a Tandy computer).

Gratefully, I sat down and read it, marveling at the earnest, hard work I had done, looking for peace in the midst of pain. But what struck me most was the extent to which I was always being guided. I was guided by dreams, intuitions, insights, the therapist’s comments, bright reflections in the books I was reading, images, events—all characterized by the Jungian term “numinous,” meaning “filled with a sense of the presence of divinity.”

And now, Dear Reader, I invite you to read this manuscript in its entirety, un-edited, without commentary.

Yesterday, I repeated a ritual that I had followed for almost four years, two hundred sessions. I walked into Dr. William Schirado's red Victorian house at 4:25 for a 4:30 appointment on Friday afternoon. I sat on an old, comfortable couch, a bookcase on the left, a fireplace off to the right. At exactly 4:30, he opened the door I was facing. I said "Hi," he said "Hi," and I stood up, grabbing my briefcase, moved to the door, and turned left down a short hallway, and into the session room, a small room, probably eight by eight. I put down my briefcase and sat in a wingback chair. To my left was the couch, to my right an old desk, on the floor an Oriental rug. Across from me Dr. Schirado sat almost motionless for fifty minutes. Behind him were two windows with lace curtains that opened onto a large, fenced-in yard. In his meditative silence, he became a screen upon which I projected portions of my endless mind chatter and on that screen I could see mirrored more clearly my projections. Over the four years I learned to distinguish between the "what is" of the external world and my projections onto the world.

Back in late November of 1983, I had found his name in the yellow pages. At that time, I was voraciously reading Carl Jung, and Dr. Schirado advertised himself as an "analytical psychologist," the brand of psychology practiced by Jungians. It turns out that he is eclectic, and whatever his therapeutic training, he was exactly what I needed. During the first session, nervously facing the deep silence of the therapeutic encounter, I described a recurring fantasy. On a cold night with the sky full of stars, I would take a down sleeping bag and go to the woods, find a giant pine tree, and sleep under the branches, while the woods filled with softly falling snow. He said, "Sounds like you're looking for peace rather than running away from something." He said we could "wonder together" about these images in my fantasies and dreams. Warmth replaced the tautness in my stomach, and I, temporarily, felt safe. I developed the practice of writing down dreams every morning. One time I had a dream about foreigners milling around in his waiting room as I was sitting on the couch. Then, with one of those wonderful flashes of intuition, I realized that the foreigners represented parts of me that were foreign and beginning to surface. In the uncanny rightness of dream imagery, the setting was his office where I was getting in touch with different parts of myself. I began to realize how we develop our personal metaphors.

A big breakthrough occurred a few months after beginning therapy. I was preoccupied with the question, what stance do you take towards the world so that you can always maintain your balance? I was thinking in terms of images from the martial arts, hence the metaphor "stance." Walking down the street after lunch one day, "processing is taking a stance" popped into my mind. You process your way through events and that, in itself, is taking a stance. For me processing meant making a connection between an event in the outer world, and my emotional response to the event, and the connection between my response and similar responses in the past. It meant being very attentive to images clustered in the response. My focus shifted from the "what is" in the external world to my response to it. With the focus on my response to events, the question of control over external events no longer was an issue. I felt more in charge of my life.

Then, as usually happens, just as I thought I had it figured out, I was tested. I experienced a sudden, shocking job loss. I was told at what started out to be a routine lunch that I was being terminated. I left the restaurant in a daze, drove aimlessly for a couple of hours, and went to see Dr. Schirado. I just walked in, no phone call in advance. The only time I ever did that. The timing was right; he had an open slot. I numbly walked in, sat down, and tried to piece together what had just happened. He said, "Raise the stakes." I said, "What?" He went on to say it is as if a god in charge of processing said, "So, he thinks processing is the key, that is my area, I'm going to raise the stakes because he took some of my power." That was a powerful image, and I now had a way of looking at the situation. I learned that even in pain and in suffering, I could find a perspective. Focusing on what was going on in me was the lifeline. No one could take away my responses, and in those responses was the key to empowering myself. I started a journal that day. I filled it with dreams, ideas, excerpts from books and articles. I call these journals, "Raise the Stakes," and I am writing this draft in journal twenty-one.

I had been coming here now for almost four years, 4:25 Friday afternoon, the week is over, the weekend is about to begin. Let's review the week. Now in the last session, I was thinking about the second time I went skiing. I was visiting a friend in Denver, and we went to the mountains. We went to the bunny hill first, and I remembered how to snowplow. Then my friend showed me the stem turn. That is, if I am angling to the right down a slope and want to turn left, I put my weight on the inside, or left, ski, shift my body to the left, raise the right ski, and bring it down parallel to the other one about two inches apart. If I am angling to the left, I put my weight on the inside, or right, ski, shift my weight, and so forth. After a few minutes of practice, he said you're ready, let's go, and he took me up 5,000 feet. I learned a lot coming down. After I made it to the bottom, he said let's go to the top, 10,000 feet. The image that day was that processing is like doing a stem turn. Knowing how to turn, I felt powerful because I was ready for whatever conditions the mountain presented. Who has the power, me or the mountain? Going down a dangerous slope, lined with trees, drop offs, and other skiers, could I hold onto my personal power and turn as the conditions required, or would I give my power to the mountain and wipeout? If I could maintain my balance and confidence and center,, I could hold onto my power. To this day that image is helpful when I start to give my power away in a tense situation.

Now I was in the waiting room for probably the last time. I went over in my mind the words carefully--I am going to "discontinue" therapy for an indefinite period of time. To say I was going to "stop" was too final, too abrupt at this point. But I was surprised that I was beginning to feel resolute. There was a rightness about it. I realized that for the last three sessions, I had been mostly recapping situations had already processed. Today's session could have been more of the same. Then I recalled that recently I had been marveling about a decision that Mr. J. Krishnamurti made in 1929. A young enlightened man in India, he was thought by his followers to be an incarnation of Jesus. At the age of thirty-four, he was the head of the Order of the Star, an organization that he been founded eighteen years before. He had thousands of followers. On August 3, 1929, in the presence of three thousand members of the Order, he announced his determination to dissolve the Order. He did this with no fear of consequences. He just walked away. Even before I began thinking consciously that it was time to discontinue therapy, I kept thinking about the resoluteless of this act. On a deep level a shift had been taking place.

I had also been thinking about a passage in an interview with Ken Wilber, a man who has single-handedly developed a unified theory of levels of consciousness. He was describing the moment of moving from one level to another in the hierarchy of consciousness growth.

It's exactly like an apple falling from a tree. The apple gets riper and riper, then suddenly falls. And it falls completely--half of the apple doesn't stay behind. But notice that the apple has to go through a very specific process of growth and development to get to the point that it is perfectly ripe and ready to fall. It does not go from a seed to a fully ripe apple in an afternoon. Its growth is stage-like, its falling is sudden. 1

The passage first struck me because it seemed to affirm my spiritual practice. Day to day, I seemed to be moving at a snail-like pace, but looking back over the four years, I could see definite movement. The daily practice of reading, meditating, processing, writing in my journal, and studying dreams seemed to be paying off. And in the waiting room another meaning emerged. I knew that the image of the falling apple was telling me that it was time to drop. I felt resolute and a certain excitement.

During the session I was groping to understand what it meant to top therapy. I said that the ghosts were still there, and that it was not a matter of exorcising them. It is just that I had brought them from the darkness into the light, and they were not nearly as frightening as they were in the shadows. He said that I would not want to lose them because they were a part of me. I would not be me without the ghosts.

Sensing that probably twenty minutes remained in the session, I started talking about a book I had just read to fill the time. A long silence followed, and then he said, "Do you have anything else to say?" I knew that to the end he was saying absolutely the right thing at the right time. I realized that if I were discontinuing therapy there was no need to fill out the hour. But, as always, it was my choice, and he was gently helping me see that. I said, "Yes and no"--"no" there was no more to say just to fill the hour, and "yes" there was something else to say.

"I feel gratitude to you for our work together. I feel sadness that it is over," choking up I went on, "I never felt a wrong tone. You were always on the mark." I was silent for awhile and realized that it was my choice again. Standing up, I said, "That's it." "Fair enough," he said, standing up. As we had done almost two hundred times, I went to the couch to write out a check, and he went to the desk to write out the bill. We stood up, and I gave him my check, and he gave me his bill.

"I personally feel that you have done a lot of honest, hard work, and I am grateful that we were able to work on it together," he said. My eyes filled with tears. I shook his hand and said, "Thank you." I went to the door, opened it, walked down the short hallway, opened the outer door, turned, and instead of saying, "See you next week," I said, "So long." He nodded and smiled. I walked out, and he closed the door behind me.

Raymond H. Comeau

October 5, 1987

ENDNOTES

1. Catherine Ingram, "Ken Wilber: The Pundit of Transpersonal Psychology," Yoga Journal 76 (September/October, 1987) , 45.

Shiners 1: Catching Bright Reflections While Reading

Lately, I have been collecting vivid passages from books, magazines, and articles on web sites that catch my eye. I call these passages “shiners” because they remind me of an experience I had while walking to school and crossing a fairly-high bridge over the Rocky River when I was in the eighth grade.

I remember stopping and looking at the dark forms of the bottom-feeding fish. Every once in a while, one would turn on its side, suddenly shining brightly, reflecting off its silvery scales the bright sun.

Just as the fish caught the sun’s reflection so did these passages catch the reflection of my Christ-mind, the part of me, the part of you, Dear Reader, that is still, eternal, peaceful. Here is how Master Teacher expressed it recently in a Session at Endeavor Academy, “Peace is a moment of the entirety of you.”

Here is a example, a passage from an essay in The New Yorker.

If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my life, I am most surprised by those moments when I felt as if the sentences and pages that made me ecstatically happy come not from my own imagination but from another power, which had found them and generously presented them to me.(Orhan Pamur, “My Father’s Suitcase: The Nobel Lecture, 2006,” The New Yorker, 12/25/06- 1/1/07, p. 86)

Here is another passage from Owen Waters’ book, The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness.

The ultimate truth is to be found within, yet the study of a variety of sources of information helps you to reawaken and remember your inner truth. Your intuitive sense is your guide as to what material is most appropriate for you at any particular time during your personal development. p.112

I read a book like this and just let it wash over me, and if it holds my interest, I just sail along looking for shiners, looking for new ways to express my direct experience of my Christ-mind.

* * *

The most important thing about coming across shining passages is the recognition that what we see outside has its origin inside. What we see echoes what we are. That is why this passage caught my eye.

The dolphin produces high-pitched clicks that bounce off any object in its path, whether a fish, rock, or man- made object. By listening to the echo and estimating the time it takes to come back, the dolphin can determine the size of the object and how far away it is. Although similar to SONAR, the dolphin’s method is far superior. SONAR uses a single frequency, while a dolphin emits clicks ranging from low to very high frequencies. For instance, the bottlenose dolphin can detect metal as thin as 13 thousandths of an inch. ((Bill McLain, Do Fish Drink Water?, p. 3)

For the dolphin it all begins with a click. For man, it all begins with the interpretation of a glance. What we see in the glance, we take to be out there. When, in fact, we put it out there in the first place by our interpretation. What we see begins and ends with thoughts in our brains.

Here is a passage from a 24-minute film, The Holographic Universe: The Secret of Matter.

At the instant of seeing, light clusters called photons travel from the object to the eye, where they are focused on the retina. Here rays are turned into electrical signals and turned into neurons at the back of the brain. The act of seeing actually takes place in this center of the brain. All the images we view in our lives are actually experienced in this dark place of a few cubic centimeters.

By interpreting the interaction of particles with our sensory apparatus, we make up an entire world. This next passage is from a short story, demonstrating again the author’s intuition of what is really going on.

How could he fail to love someone so strangely and warmly particular, so painfully honest and self-aware, whose every thought and emotion appeared naked to view, streaming like charged particles through her changing expressions and gestures? (Ian McEwan, “On Chesil Beach,” The New Yorker, 12/25/06-1/1/07, p. 103)

* * *

Recently, I have been inspired by reading accounts of Near-Death Experiences. (www.near-death.com/) These descriptions help me express what it feels like to slip into the state of mind of the peace of God. These accounts also help explain this passage from A Course in Miracles.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

(Lesson 199)

In this state of mind of the peace of God, I am the stillness of God’s creation.

“Peace is a moment of the entirety of you.” Master Teacher.

In this NDE account, Kimberly Clark Sharp sees herself above her body in the operating room.

That's when I saw my body for the first time, and when I realized I was no longer a part of it. Until this moment, I'd only seen myself straight on, as we usually do, in mirrors and photographs. Now I was jolted by the strange sight of me in profile from four feet away. I looked at my body, the body I knew so well, and was surprised by my detachment. I felt the same sort of gratitude toward my body that I had for my old winter coat when I put it away in the spring. It had served me well, but I no longer needed it. I had absolutely no attachment to it. Whatever constituted the self I knew as me was no longer there. My essence, my consciousness, my memories, my personality were outside, not in, that prison of flesh.

Grace Bubulka also finds her Self hovering above her body.

I just remained there with a sense of hovering for what felt like forever. It was really only for seconds or minutes I suppose but time did not make any sense. Time did not seem to apply. It seemed irrelevant. It was unattached to anything, the way I was. Time is only relevant when it is relative to the normal orderly sequential aspects of life. So I was there for a moment or for eternity. I cannot say but it felt like a very long time to me. I was aware that I was separate from my body yet somehow I continued to exist. The part of me that existed did not have anything to do with my body. I was completely comfortable and no longer in any pain. All of the distress I was in while lying in my hospital bed was gone. I felt like I was bobbing about in a warm bath. The level of joyous anticipation I was feeling was indescribable.

At this point I had no insight into what any of this was about. I did not think I was dead. I knew I felt like a spirit or a disembodied person. I knew that the real "I" continued to exist in the absence of my earthly body. I had a sense of heightened knowing, of peace and of assured expectancy.

During this experience, time had no meaning. Time was an irrelevant notion. It felt like eternity. I felt like I was there an eternity. No remnants of the tunnel remained. There was no cloud or fog. The light was pure and all-good. I needed nothing, I wanted nothing. I was in communion with all the light around me. The specks, the others and I were all part of the light that existed forever. I felt I had an infinite sense of knowing, of understanding it all. I was completely at ease.

I felt as if I had returned to something I knew before. It was as if I had come home. I had come home to the beginning of not just me but the beginning of all eternity. This is so hard to explain but it seems so important. The only thing this compares to in a way is the way it feels when it is a beautiful warm night and you look up into the clear starry sky.

You are as certain of arriving home
as is the pathway of the sun laid down
before it rises, after it has set,
and in the half-lit hours in between.
Indeed, your pathway is more certain still.
For it can not be possible to change
the course of those whom God has called to Him.
Therefore obey your will, and follow Him
Whom you accepted as your voice, to speak
of what you really want and really need.
His is the Voice for God and also yours.
And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth.
W-p11.Epilogue:2

I am now more inclined to call these NLE’s, near-life experiences. When you walk around thinking you are a body, you are, actually, dead. When you come into the awareness that you are not a body, you are free. You have experienced Heaven on earth, and you can offer this awareness to your brother, literally raising the dead to life, true awareness of the peace of God.

And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils:
Freely ye have received, freely give.
(Matthew 10:7,8)

The Main Thing

The other day, searching through a bureau drawer looking for something else, I came across an old business card I had made for myself long before coming to Endeavor Academy and waking up from the dream through the mind-training of A Course in Miracles, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the tutelage of Master Teacher.

On the front of the card was, typically, my name, address, and phone number, and I turned it over, chuckling, when I saw what was on the back:

THE MAIN THING
IS
TO KEEP
THE MAIN THING
THE MAIN THING

At the time I thought that this was the coolest expression of the highest reaches of my conceptual thought. I can't quite remember how I defined the main thing. It was probably couched in New Age terminology and Attitudinal Healing principles, like the main thing is to strive to keep a peaceful feeling, a cool head, a balance. For example, if you are confronted with a negative situation, you can choose either to go into reaction and stay in conflict, or to go into acceptance and experience peace. It is always a choice--reaction or acceptance, never questioning that the situation itself was unreal, made up by a self having no source in reality.

I probably tried to express this attempt at self-control by quoting the beginning lines of a poem I favored at the time, Rudyard Kipling's IF.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,. . .

To keep your head is an expression of acceptance.

I can vaguely remember expressing this while smoking pot with my friends, and of course my memory is vague because, unlike Clinton, I did inhale. I think I remember my friends nodding in assent, saying things like, “I never thought of it that way,” and “That’s heavy,” and my personal favorite, “That’s groovy.”

I was probably then inspired to quote the last four lines of Kipling's poem because it ends with such a manly flourish.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

And invariably, one of them would sit pondering this great truth, holding onto the joint much too long, until someone yelled out, "Hey, don't Bogart that joint," and we would all laugh, and I would lose my train of thought, take a sip of wine, and begin to get the munchies.

And now, many years later, I am so grateful. enjoying a natural high, finding a place in my mind that is a reference point outside of the dream where I can rest, and hanging out with brothers in this state makes the slightest thing-- eating lunch together, or dancing after Session, or playing cards--, an occasion to look at each other and laugh and say, "There's only one thing to do now and that's party on."

That's because I have come to know that there is no world, and that making up a world in which my false self can choose this over that is a meaningless child's game, bringing not peace, but pain, because resolving the duality by choosing this over that only perpetuates the illusion.

I have come to know truly what the main thing is and how to express it simply.

Recognize that the self I made has no source in reality
and
ask the Holy Spirit for help to forgive this unreality
in order to
experience the reality of my True Self.

Relinquish the self I made
and
accept my Self as created by God.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

If I were now to make a business card, it would simply say on the back:

THE MAIN THING
GOD IS

Merry Christmas.

You are the mechanism of decision: With a glance, you make up an entire world: Part 1

From October 21, 1965 to October 10, 1968, Helen Schucman, the scribe of A Course in Miracles, wrote down the words of an internal voice, Jesus, the timeless voice of resurrected mind. (Master Teacher, Jesus is Speaking) These words constitute the Text of the Course.

At this point Helen had no idea that Jesus would dictate anything else. But over the next few months, she began to think that a Workbook would follow. From May 26, 1969 to February 18, 1971, she dutifully listened to Jesus speak to her the words of the Workbook. As Jesus says in His Introduction, The Text provides a theoretical foundation for the Workbook, a framework to make the exercises in this Workbook meaningful.

TheWorkbook is divided into two main sections, the first (Lessons 1-220) dealing with the undoing of the way you see now, and the second (Lessons 221-365) with the acquisition of true perception.

The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. (W-p1.Intro.1:1,3:1,4:1)

Where do you think Jesus begins this monumental task of mind training?

Jesus begins His lessons by confronting a truth that you take to be self-evident--that seeing is believing. You see in the world what you believe is there, and you believe it is there because you see it. This circular reasoning is your personal declaration of dependence. You hold this "truth" to be self-evident--you believe that the world of matter is external to your mind because you see it out there. This "truth" is buried in the very words we use. In fact, "evident" comes from the Latin, videre, meaning. "to see." The dictionary goes on to say, "Evident implies presence of visible signs that lead one self to a definite conclusion."

Jesus begins by forcing you to confront this premise with the title of His first lesson:

Nothing I see means anything.

This is where the undoing must begin, the dismantling of an entire belief system that you began to construct as a child with the positive reinforcement of those around you, particularly the adults. Here is the title to Lesson 2:

I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.

There is one sentence in Lesson 2 that stops me every time.

If possible, turn around and apply the idea to what was behind you. (1:5)

My God. . . what was behind you! So, I walked into the room, seeing this thing and that thing, and then I sat on the couch facing forward, looking out the window, and what I saw on the way in is not there now; it is not there until I turn around and look at it again!

We are only in Lesson 2, and Jesus is demonstrating to us that an object we believe to be in the external world is there only when we see it, evidently.

What was behind you, Dear Reader, is not there now.

This sentence came to mind again the other day when I watched a twenty-four minute film entitled, The Holographic Universe: Beyond Matter. (You can view it when you wish by clicking on the link at the end of this post.) Here are a few passages from the film relevant to us now, as we are engaged in the great undoing.

Man is conditioned right from the beginning of his life that the world he lives in has an absolute material reality. So he grows up under he effects of this conditioning and builds an entire life from this viewpoint.

At the instant of seeing, light clusters called photons travel from the object to the eye, where they are focused on the retina. Here rays are turned into electrical signals and turned into neurons at the back of the brain. The act of seeing actually takes place in this center of the brain. All the images we view in our lives are actually experienced in this dark place of a few cubic centimeters.

When we say we see, we actually see the effects of the rays being converted into electrical signals in our brain.

We view a colorful and bright world in our brain only as electrical signals.

We see an electrical copy and assume that this copy is real matter.

Perception is a mirror, not a fact. (W-p2.304.3)

You see what you are looking with.

Nothing I see means anything.

In a few cubic centimeters in the back of your brain you make up an entire world with just a glance. That's it. What is captured in that glance is all there is of the evident world. And just because you see it does not mean it exists; it just means that you made it up by the interaction of your visual apparatus, i.e., the electrical activity of the brain and the stimulus of the objects, interpreted by your thoughts.

“Perceive derives from the Latin, percipere, meaning, “to take thoroughly.” We take meaning, thoroughly, from what appears to be external by our interpretive thoughts.

Yet, Jesus tells us, These thoughts do not mean anything. (Lesson 7)

Jesus forces us to focus on the one thing that we can tangibly grasp, a glance.

Look around you, this time quite slowly. Try to pace yourself so that the slow shifting of your glance from one thing to another involves a fairly constant time interval. (W-p.1.12:2,3)

Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today (I do not know what anything is for) followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye, near or far, "important" or "unimportant," "human" or "nonhuman." (W-p1.25.6:2)

Jesus teaches us to let everything else go and just focus on one glance at a time. This makes the great task manageable.

Here are more passages from the film.

The bird we see is only an interpretation electrical signals in our brain. In reality this bird is not in the world but in our brain. If the sight nerves traveling to our brain were disconnected, we would no longer see the bird.

The only reality we cope with is the world of perceptions within our minds.

We believe in a world of objects just because we perceive them.

Our perceptions are only ideas in our minds, so objects are nothing but ideas, and these ideas are nowhere but in our minds. We are beguiled by our perceptions.

A glance is simply a combination of the electrical interaction between our brains and objects, and our interpretation of these impulses. This involves interpretation, associations, and judgment.

The following cartoon from The New Yorker humorously demonstrates how our interpretations and judgments determine what we see.

You see what you are looking with.

I do not understand anything I see in this room. (Lesson 3)

The point of the exercises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them. It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied. For this purpose one thing is like another; equally suitable and therefore equally useful.(W-p1.3.2)

These thoughts do not mean anything. (Lesson 4)

Merely glance casually around the world you perceive as outside yourself, then close your eyes and survey your inner thoughts with equal casualness. Try to remain equally uninvolved in both, and to maintain this detachment as you repeat the idea throughout the day. (W-p1.33.2)

The arbitrariness of what is seen in the physical universe is a function of the seeing apparatus interacting with the incoming data. This was brought home to me in a recent article in Sunday's Parade magazine entitled, Seeing the World as Your Pets Do. In this case, the number of color receptors in the vision apparatus determines what is seen.

If your dog could tell you what he sees, he'd probably describe a fuzzy world of blues and yellows in the daytime. In dim light, dogs can see more shades of grays than we can. Our eyes are better at discerning colorful details in daylight. We also can see things quite close up while dogs cannot. What makes the difference? Simply put, humans have more color receptors than dogs.

In contrast, your cat, a nighttime hunter, can see clearly in conditions six times darker than we can. Those vertical slit pupils allow a cat's eyes to take in more light at night. Given the type and number of their color receptors, cats probably view the world in a pastel palette and don't see some colors at all. An apple tree laden with red fruit, for example, would appear light-colored with dark apples to your cat. (Parade, October 15, 2006, p. 14)

Here are more passages from the film.

The act of seeing actually takes place in the center in the brain. All the images we view, and all the events we experience in our lifetime, are actually experienced in this tiny and dark place. Both the film you are now watching and the boundless landscape that you see when you gaze at the horizon actually fit in this place of a few cubic centimeters.

When we say we see, we actually observe only the electrical signals in our brain.

The brain is sealed to light and its interior is absolutely dark. It is never possible for the brain to contact with light itself.

You can see what we are up against. We are always only looking at a screen in the back of our heads, viewing our projections, and since we find it self-evident that seeing is believing, we have a lot of work to do. But remember, Jesus is providing us with a systematic mind training.

In Lesson 7, I see only the past, is a summary of the first six lessons.

This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones.

1) It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything.
2) It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you.

3) It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see.

4) It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see.

5) It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think.

6) It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.
All that is required is that we practice with determination and perseverance. Along the way, analogies are useful. For example, We are such stuff as dreams are made on. (The Tempest) Here is another passage from the film.

If we are able to live easily in a dream the same thing can equally be true of the world we live in during our waking dream. When we wake up from a dream, there is no logical reason in not believing that we have entered a longer dream that we consider life. The reason we consider our sleeping dream to be unreal is nothing but a product of our prejudices.

When we begin to experience the unreality of our waking life, we begin to see how much it resembles our sleeping dreams. This analogy is so helpful because when you are lying in bed asleep, dreaming, you cannot very well blame anyone else for your dream, and no one else could possibly be dreaming your dream. It is a a very private affair. Your waking dream is no different. You are going it alone, and you are totally responsible.

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience,
and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for,
and receive as I have asked. (T-21.11.2:3-5)

This is my statement of total responsibility for accepting my declaration of dependence on the premise that seeing is believing.

Good! Since you are totally responsible, you can learn to wake up to the truth of what you are, and that is also the value of the sleeping dream analogy. When you first wake up from a sleeping dream, it takes a moment to shake off the realness of it. But when you realize it was a dream, it is totally gone. The waking dream also fades in the moment of realization that seeing is not believing, and interpretation is not real. When you realize this, you simply shift to another place in your mind that is always, already present. You become aware of a state of mind that is your natural inheritance. When you by-pass, or forgive, the "I" of that interpreter, you become aware of "I" as created by God.

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me. (Lesson 201)

I was created as the thing I seek. (Lesson 318:5)

I remain as God's son, even though I wandered off into believing that what I was seeing was real, and it was simply a projection of my brain, having no source in reality.

God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him. (Lesson 43)

I cannot see apart from God, and I can learn to see with true perception, and that is where Jesus is leading me.

You see what you are looking with.

What we are searching for is the one that sees truly. (St. Francis)

This is truly the secret beyond matter.

We are nearing the end of Part 1. In order to undo the way you see now. Jesus necessarily had to make us aware of the fact that we are now seeing falsely. The good thing is that the way we see now, though false, can be used in such a way that we can learn to see with vision, the acquisition of true perception.

I urge you now to click on the link below to view the film, and I offer this caveat. The last four minutes attributes everything to Allah. Since I am unfamiliar with this tradition, I cannot comment. Rather, I do invite you to read the first four stanzas from the inspiring hymn written by the Swedish pastor, Carl Boberg in 1886, How Great Thou Art.

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power through-out the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Part 2 clearly and forcefully demonstrates how to forgive a glance and learn to see with vision.
To see the film, please click on the link below:

Click here to Watch Video

You are the mechanism of decision: Forgiving a glance and seeing with vision--Part 2

Now we know what we are up against, and it is nothing, simply electrical activity firing in a few cubic centimeters in the back of your head. This is classic problem solving. Once the problem is clearly defined, it can then be solved. Jesus tells us that the problem is the way you see now, and you solve it by forgiving it and acquiring true perception. Your current way of seeing exists for only a moment, and this moment is for giving away. Now that is forgiveness.

To be told that what you do not see is there (true perception) sounds like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to see what is there, and to see what is not there instead. You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. How can this be reversed? For you it is impossible, but you are not alone in this. (W-p1.91.3)

Fortunately there is a plan, and you are not alone. The Holy Spirit provides the bridge between the illusions that you weave in your pea-brain and the magnificence of what you are.

The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth. Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception's tranquil end.

From knowledge, where He has been placed by God, the Holy Spirit calls to you, to let forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be restored to sanity and peace of mind. Without forgiveness will your dreams remain to terrify you. And the memory of all your Father's Love will not return to signify the end of dreams has come. (7. What is the Holy Spirit? 1,4)

To understand exactly how the Holy Spirit teaches us to forgive requires a close look at the mind.

The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy. (C-1.1:1)

Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part (the firing in the brain) as well. (C-1.3:1)

Even though there is only Spirit, we find ourselves referring to the individual mind, so that we can talk about what seems to be going on in our dream.

The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. (C-4:1) This part is called wrong-mindedness.

Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. (C-6:1) And, by now, you know where this is going on--a very, small, dark place in the mind.

Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place. (C-5:1)

To compartmentalize the mind in this fashion makes it easier to understand undoing and true perception. The third term we are going to employ is consciousness.

Consciousness is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. (C-7:3)

This is the answer to St. Francis’s search, What we are searching for is the one that sees truly. You are the one that sees; you are consciousness, you are as God created you. This is what it means to say that you are God's Son. I am the holy Son of God Himself. (Lesson 191) As consciousness, you constantly make decisions about whether to listen to the voice of wrong-mindedness, the ego, or to listen to the voice of right-mindedness, the true Self. That is why consciousness is the mechanism of decision. A mechanism is defined as "a process, technique, a system for achieving a result, responsible for action." This refers to an action of the mind, shifting from wrong- to right-mindedness, or unfortunately, from right to wrong, as well. When you shift from dreams to truth, you are cutting away illusions as if they never existed, and they never did. “Decision” comes from the Latin, decidere, “literally to cut off.”

Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. (T-8.IV.5:7,8)

A word is to the breath as a thought is to consciousness. This means that when you say a word it is carried by the breath, and when you have a thought, it is carried by the consciousness.

This is the consciousness that Jesus addresses in the Course. It is this awareness that often seems suspended between two choices, two voices, the ego’s, or the Holy Spirit’s, thoughts from below, or above. Throughout the Course, Jesus addresses this consciousness by using the pronoun “you.” In fact, the pronoun “you” appears in the Course 17,710 times. As we learned in grade school, a pronoun stands on behalf of a noun. Each time you come across “you,” you have to ask yourself, this "you" is standing on behalf of what noun, what exactly is the reference point?

There are only three choices: 1) consciousness completely allied with the noun, ego, seeing through the ego’s eyes; 2) consciousness standing in the middle as the noun phrase, mechanism of decision; and 3) consciousness joined, united with the noun, Self, seeing through the eyes of Christ.

In the beginning of the mind training, the “you” is allied completely with the ego, unaware that there is another choice. Here is an example. The pronoun “you” is used 14 times, and in each case the reference point is the unholy alliance of consciousness with the ego.

1) consciousness/ego:

As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. You see what is not there, and you hear what makes no sound. Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. (Just as the cow sees the frog as a cow, and the frog sees the cow as a frog, so do you see your self, or Self, wherever you look). Yet. . .God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone. (T-13.V.6)

When you decide on behalf of the ego, you are making up an entire world by cutting away the Truth.

By this (decision) you carve it out of unity. (W-p1.184.1:3)

You see something where nothing is, and see as well nothing where there is unity. (W-p1.184.2:3)

Perception is a mirror, not a fact. (W-p2.304.3)

You see what you are looking with.

In the next paragraph, the point of reference of “you” (10 times) is the mechanism of decision.

2) consciousness/mechanism of decision:

Little child, would you offer this to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you are offering it to him. And he will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is unworthy of him. Yet he would release you from it and set you free. His sane Answer tells you what you have offered yourself is not true, but his offering to you has never changed. You who know not what you do can learn what insanity is, and look beyond it. It is given you to learn how to deny insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace. (T-V.7:1-7)

The Holy Spirit serves as a bridge by helping you decide to overlook, forgive the thoughts of the ego, and join with the true Self. In the following passage, Jesus demonstrates this joining. The reference point for “you” (8 times) is joined with the Christ.

3) consciousness/Self:

Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness, and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your "vision" comes from fear, as his from love. And he sees for you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them to you. He loves what he sees within you, and he would extend it. And he will not return unto the Father until he has extended your perception even unto him. And there perception is no more, for he has returned you to the Father with him. (T-13.V.9)

Dear Reader, all you are asked to do, and it is everything, is to practice becoming aware of your responsibility as a mechanism of decision to decide for God, cutting away from, disengaging from, the ego by asking the Holy Spirit for help to overlook, forgive, the images firing in a few cubic centimeters in a very dark place in your mind, and drawing nigh onto your God, learning to forgive one glance at a time.

Jesus directly addresses “you” as the mechanism of decision in the following passage, asking whether you will decide to be hostage to the ego or host to God?

I asked you earlier, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? " Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit every time you make a decision. For every decision you make does answer this, and invites sorrow or joy accordingly. When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He established you as host to Him forever. He has not left you, and you have not left Him. All your attempts to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, cannot make little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is for Heaven or for hell, and brings you the awareness of what you decided for. (T-15.111.5)

Practice right now. Look up from what you are doing and take one glance. Consider the images and the interpretations and judgments for a moment, and then ask the Holy Spirit for help to let them all go. Now, look up, take a glance and this time simply look through the images, not even interpreting or judging, and experience the holy instant of being in the world, but not of the world, seeing with Christ’s vision, hosting God.

The Holy Spirit looks through me today. (Lesson 295)

Christ asks that He may use my eyes today,
and thus redeem the world. He asks this gift
that He may offer peace of mind to me,
and take away all terror and all pain.
And as they are removed from me, the dreams
that seemed to settle on the world are gone.
Redemption must be one. As I am saved,
the world is saved with me. For all of us
must be redeemed together. Fear appears
in many different forms, but love is one.

My Father, Christ has asked a gift of me,
and one I give that it be given me.
Help me to use the eyes of Christ today,
and thus allow the Holy Spirit's Love
to bless all things which I may look upon,
that His forgiving Love may rest on me.

This is a required Course.

Practice. Practice. I urge you to take 20 minutes right now to read the review of the first 50 lessons of A Course in Miracles.

Just click on the link below.

Click Here For Booklet