ARCIM

Daily Lesson 72 ~
March 13

Taking offense or holding grudges, grievances or resentment is an attack on the Divine’s Plan of Awakening.

While we have recognized that the ego’s plan for “salvation” is the opposite of the Divine’s Plan of Awakening, we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on the Divine’s Plan in a deliberate attempt to render It inaccessible to you. In this subterfuge, the Divine is assigned the attributes that are in reality those of the ego, while the ego appears to take on the Attributes of the Divine.

This sleight of hand corresponds with the ego’s fundamental wish, unconsciously given it by its maker, which is to replace the Divine in your mind. In fact, the ego is the embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish that seems to surround the mind with a body, apparently keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to limit and imprison it. This extreme limit on communication cannot be the means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is.

Although by associating you with a body the attempt to keep the limitations that a body would impose is obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why taking offense and holding resentment, grievances and grudges is an attack on the Divine’s Plan of Awakening. But let us consider the kinds of things that you are apt to take offense of and hold resentment, grievances and grudges toward. Are they not always associated with something a body does? A person says something that someone does not like; they do something that displeases another; they “betray” their hostile thoughts in their behavior. What a person is is not what is experienced when grudges, grievances or resentment are held toward or offense taken of another. On the contrary, resentment, grievances, grudges and feelings of being offended are exclusively concerned with what another person does in a body. Taking offense or holding grudges, grievances or resentment does more than fail to help in freeing another from the body’s limitations. These judgments actively attempt to hold the other to their body by confusing it with them, and mistaking them as one.

Herein is the Divine attacked, for if Its Child is a body, so must the Divine be as well, for a creator wholly unlike its creation is inconceivable. If the Creator is a body, then what must Its “Plan of Awakening” actually be? What could It be but the only thing that makes sense to the ego: the annihilation of the thing that is the focus of all resentment, grievances, grudges and feelings of being offended, i.e., of the body? In this insane twisting of the Divine’s Plan of Awakening, by presenting Itself as the Author of Life and not the bringer of death, the Divine thus becomes a liar and a deceiver full of false promises, and offering illusions in place of Truth. This is the ego’s sense-making process that is offered to your mind beneath the level of conscious awareness.

The body’s apparent reality makes this view of the Divine seem quite convincing to those who want to believe the ego’s “logic.” In fact, if the body were real it would be difficult indeed to escape this conclusion given the other distorted premises presented. And every offense taken and grudge, grievance and resentment held insists that the body is real. They miss entirely what you and your sisters and brothers truly are. They reinforce your belief that you and your sisters and brothers are bodies, and condemn them for it by attacking them. And your resentment, grievances, grudges and taking of offense assert, however hidden it may be to your consciousness, that their “salvation” must be death, projecting this attack onto the Creator, and holding the Divine responsible for it.

To this carefully prepared arena, where angry beasts of the imagination seek for prey and mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. “You are merely a body. Very well. Let us accept this fact, the one thing that cannot be denied, and make the best of it. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers. Take the little you can get while you can get it. The world gives nothing but misery, but the body gives pleasure. Its pleasure, being the opposite of the misery the world gives, is your salvation. Anything else is a waste of the time you could be enjoying the little you’ve been allotted.” This is the universal unconscious belief of the world you look upon, however shrouded in denial and darkness the belief may be.

Some hate the body, and try to hurt and humiliate it. Others admire the body, and try to glorify and exalt it. But while the body stands at the center of your image of yourself, in any context, you are attacking the Divine’s Plan of Awakening, and holding your resentment, grievances, grudges and feelings of being offended against both the Divine and Its Children, that you may not hear the Voice of Truth and welcome It as Friend. Your chosen savior, the ego, takes the Divine’s Place instead. In this delusion it seems to be your real friend, and the Divine, if It exists at all, seems to be your enemy.

We will attempt today to step aside from these meaningless attacks on awakening. We will try to welcome true awakening instead. The ego’s upside-down orientation and related perspective have made peace of mind inaccessible to you. You have perceived yourself in a body and have believed the Truth to be outside you, locked away from your awareness by the body’s limitations. Now we are going to try to perceive this differently, and clearly. The Light of Truth is in us, where It was placed by the Divine in our creation. It is the body that is outside of who we are, and is therefore Spirit’s Concern, not ours. To be without a body is to be in our natural State. To recognize the Light of Truth in our mind is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our holy Self as having nothing to do with bodies is to end the attack on the Divine’s Plan of Awakening, and to accept It instead. And wherever this Plan is accepted, It is accomplished already.

Our goal in the two longer practice periods today is to become aware that the Divine’s Plan of Awakening has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this goal, we must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack the Divine’s Plan, even unconsciously through the false beliefs we secretly accept as true, we cannot understand what It is. We are therefore attacking what we do not recognize. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside, and ask what the Divine’s Plan for us is:

“What is awakening, Creator? I do not know. Tell me, that I may understand.”

Then we will wait in quiet for for the Divine’s Answer.

We have unconsciously dismissed the Divine’s Plan of Awakening as unrealistic without waiting to hear what It is, for we have accepted as a fact that we must be bodies. We have shouted our resentment, grievances, grudges and feelings of being offended at the world so loudly that we have not heard the Divine’s Voice. We have used our defenses and negating thoughts and emotions to close our eyes and stop our ears. Now we would see and hear and learn.

“What is awakening, Creator? I do not know. Tell me, that I may understand.”

Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will find. We are no longer asking the ego what awakening is and where to find it. We are asking this of Truth. Be certain, then, that the Answer will be true because of Whom you ask.

Whenever you feel your confidence wane and your hope of success flicker, repeat your question and your request, remembering that you are asking them of the infinite and eternal Creator of Perfection, Who created you like Itself; Who has been waiting patiently to give you Its Answer since time began.

“What is awakening, Creator? I do not know. Tell me, that I may understand.”

The Divine will answer. Be determined to hear.

One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for today, since they will be somewhat longer than usual. These hourly shorter periods should begin with the statement:

“Taking offense or holding onto grudges, grievances or resentment is an attack on the Divine’s Plan of Awakening. Let me accept Its Plan instead. What is awakening, Creator?”

Then wait a minute or so in silence, preferably with your eyes closed, and listen for the Divine’s Answer.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 4: Discerning the Ego’s Terrain

 

3. Alteration and Alternation – How the Mind Makes the Ego

One may ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. This is a perfectly reasonable question. In fact, in some regard this is the best question that could be asked. However, there is no point in giving a historical answer, because the past does not matter in human terms, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. An abstract answer about how the ego arose would not help in escaping the errors that the split mind that made the ego is still making. Abstraction in its true meaning of Universality does apply to Knowledge, because Knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to Its Understanding. Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.

Perceptual distortions are not abstractions. They are merely confusions. Each split mind makes one ego – or mindset for framing the world based on lack and helplessness – for itself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, as well as one that they project on everyone they perceive, which is equally variable. The interaction of these egos is a process that literally alters both, because they were made neither by nor with the Unalterable. It is particularly important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction between egos takes place in the mind as when it involves physical interaction. Said another way, thinking about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is physical interaction. There could be no better example than this of the fact that the ego is an idea, though not a Reality-based one.

The present state of many people is the best concrete example that can be given of how the mind could have made the ego. Many people do experience real knowing at times, but when they give this up by choosing to focus their attention on illusions, it is as if they never had it. This willfulness is so apparent that one need only perceive it to realize that it does happen. If this throwing away of Knowledge and forgetting that one ever had It can occur in the present, why would it be surprising that it occurred that way in the past? All psychology rests on the principle of continuity of behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, but hardly to something that occurs with such persistence.

How did the ego arise? Because some Children of the Divine focused their attention on it as an idea. And the focus of attention on this idea is what perpetuates its continuance wherever and whenever it is experienced.

Effective teachers share their own ideas – those ideas that they have made their own – which they themselves believe. Otherwise, they cannot really “profess” them, in the sense that this term was discussed previously. As also mentioned previously, effective teachers use all teaching devices with the aim of rendering themselves unnecessary. An extreme example may be a good teaching aid, not because it is atypical, but because it may come across more clearly than something typical. The more complex the material, the clearer the examples should be for teaching purposes. The dramatic also holds interest precisely because what is emphasized dramatically becomes so apparent that it can be readily conceived and perceived. With these teaching devices in mind, it may be helpful to use the common present (rather than historical) state of mind touched on above as an example of how the mind can weave unreal thoughts, while fully recognizing that it need not work that way.

With full understanding of the ego’s transitory nature, the alternation between spirit and ego, with consequent variation between Peace and frenzy, offers a very good teaching example of how the mind makes the ego. It should be completely apparent that any time a person is ego-dominated, they do not remember or know their spirit. In these moments, a person’s universal abilities, which are perfectly genuine and do stem from knowing, cannot help them because they have turned to the concrete world of perception, which cannot be handled universally. Because a person’s ego is not their natural companion, they suffer from its counsel, experienced as intrusions, rather than feeling at home with it. But because they cannot completely forget the part of themself that knows, they are also incapable of unalterable, or stable, or even appropriate perceptual concreteness. This is the nature of every person’s vacillation between the spirit and the ego, as long as this vacillation continues. The result of this dysfunctional and dissatisfying state of mind is a kind of mental “double vision.”

Given that this process is so clearly happening currently in the experience of many, it can easily be understood how it happened in the dim past. But this doesn’t explain why it happens. A good present example is the love that many have for their own offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. This is because they regard their offspring as part of themselves. It is rare for a person to disown something they regard as a very real part of themself. The human being reacts to their ego much like they do to their offspring, and much like the Divine does to Its Children: with love, protection, and great charity. The reaction of the separated ones to the pseudo-self they made is not at all surprising. In fact, it duplicates in many ways the way they will be in relationship with their real creations, which are as timeless as they are.

Regarding the concrete questions of how and why the ego came about, this was described earlier in detail in how and why the separation occurred. The ego, along with perception, time, the body, and all illusions came about as a result of the split mind and its mis-projection, the separation, and are all aspects of the same error that caused it. They are all resolved through the Answer to the split mind and the separation, which is the Atonement.

The question is not how a person responds toward their ego, which until it is relinquished will be with some type of affection, but only what they believe their true being is. Again, belief is an ego-function, and as long as your origin is open to belief at all, you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. That is why I said to my followers of old, “You believe in the Divine, believe also in me.” As long as belief takes the place of knowing, belief can apply to me – or to any brother or sister who has completed their part in the Atonement – in place of the ego, because I am an example of what is possible for you, and am thus the teacher of the split mind that made the ego, teaching this mind by my example how to become whole again. When teaching is no longer necessary, you will merely know the Divine and yourself.

Belief that there is another way to perceive and to live that is not ego-determined is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self. Some have this idea but are merely confused by it. Some are more capable of a long-range view, which may help with the problem of mental double vision. As was touched upon previously, it can be extremely fortunate, temporarily, that the particular strengths those working together toward awakening will each develop and use are precisely those that the other can supply now. This utilization of strengths to supply strength to a brother or sister temporarily lacking it is a key principle of miracles. Many who will be pillars of strength are still quite weak, and many who will be of great help are clearly in need of help. What better plan than the complementary sharing of strengths in connection with shared needs could have been devised to prevent the intrusion of the ego’s arrogance on the outcome?

Shifting, through effective teaching and true learning, from the foundation of the thought system that the split mind has adopted as the ego to the foundation of spirit must be perceived as painful by the mind that cherishes the ego, even though this is anything but true. Babies scream in confusion and anger if something dangerous is taken away from them, even though they may well harm themselves if it is not removed. The Celestial speedup has placed some students of awakening in the position where the shifting from their false foundation of understanding and perception to the only true one must be painful due to the speed with which it needs to take place. Many of these students aren’t by any means prepared, and in this sense they are similar to little ones. They have no sense of real self-preservation and are very likely to decide that they need precisely what would hurt them most. Whether they know it now or not, however, they have willed to cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become both harmless and helpful, two attributes that must go together. Their attitudes, even toward this, will at first of necessity be conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. This will not last. Be patient awhile, and remember what was said before, that the outcome is as certain as the Divine!