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Chapter 3: Oneness and Irreconcilability

8. Judgment and the Authority Problem

Whenever anyone decides that they can function only in some of the roles that they have properly undertaken to fill in life, that is, that have been assigned to them in the Plan of Awakening, but not in others that have been so assigned, they can only be attempting to make a compromise that will not work. In such a case they are merely deceiving themself in limiting what they believe they are capable of, and they owe themself greater respect. There is nothing as tragic as the attempt to deceive oneself, because it implies that one perceives oneself as so unworthy that deception is more fitting than Truth.

Either you can function sufficiently in all of the roles in life that you have properly undertaken to fill, or you cannot function effectively in any of them. This is a decision requiring total commitment. You cannot make inappropriate level distinctions within this choice—i.e., picking and choosing which parts you are or aren’t capable of. You are either capable or not. This does not mean that you can do now everything that is possible to do, but it does mean that you are either totally miracle-minded or not, knowing that Spirit can do through you whatever is asked as you trust all things to It. This includes the miracles that I ask you to do or assist in for and with me. This decision is open to no compromise whatever.

When a person decides out of fear, from being previously hurt or afraid, that they cannot do something in any of the roles they have properly undertaken to fill in life, they are acting as if universal laws apply to everyone except themself. This is not only arrogant but patently untrue. Universal laws must apply to everyone by definition, including the law that states that you can do everything that Spirit or I ask of you.

Descartes engaged in a very interesting self-teaching procedure, and one from which he himself learned a great deal. He began with doubting the existence of everything except himself. He insisted that his own existence was not open to doubt because this was the one thing he could be sure was really there. He then rebuilt his entire thought system on the one premise, “I think, therefore I am.” It is noteworthy that he arrived at accepting the entire system he originally doubted solely on the basis of this single piece of knowing. There was, however, a distinct shift in his own perception. He no longer really questioned the reality of what he perceived, because he knew he was there. This is the meaning of the statement, “Here I am, Creator,” in the prayer presented earlier.

A therapist, teacher, parent, or other miracle worker is unlikely to be effective unless they begin with being there. From that point of knowing, all things become possible in accord with Divine Will.

The concept of what is known as the Final Judgment was discussed previously in some detail. After this Final Judgment or ultimate Evaluation of the results of all your creative activity outside of Heaven by you with Spirit’s Help, judgment will have no meaning and will cease to exist. This is symbolic only in the sense that everybody is much better off without judgment. When I said, “Judge not, and you shall not be judged,” it merely meant that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own reality.

The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of Peace. Assessment is the process on which perception rests, but has nothing to do with knowing. We covered this before in terms of selectivity and its obvious prerequisite, assessment. Judgment always involves rejection of some sort. It is not an ability that emphasizes only the positive aspects of what is judged, whether the thing being judged is perceived as being in or outside of the self. Regardless of its perceived location, what has been judged, found wanting, and rejected remains in the individual unconscious because it has been perceived.

Watson, the founder of Behaviorism, had a very relevant notion of the unconscious in this connection, comparing it to the process of physical substances entering the stomach, at which point we become unconscious of what happens to them. However, because he didn’t look for mind but only behavior in the people he observed, he dropped the unconscious as officially out of accord with Behaviorism. He was right on both counts.

One of the illusions from which human perception suffers is the belief that what is perceived and judged against, or rejected, has no effect on the perceiver because it hasn’t been selected to enter the mind through the senses, that is, to enter the consciousness through the unconscious where it has been recorded in the individual unconscious. This understanding of the process of perception – of rejection not affecting the perceiver – cannot be true unless one also believes that what a person’s judgment rejects in the selection process doesn’t actually exist or no longer exists after it has been rejected. People evidently do not believe this or they would not in the first place have judged against what they then reject. Both sides of perception – what has been selected by the mind to enter consciousness and what has been rejected – are equal in the experience of the unconscious, because both have been engaged by the mind. It does not really matter, in the end, whether a person judges their perceptions “correctly” or “incorrectly.” Either way, they have placed their belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment other than the Final Judgment and true Evaluation, because it implies the belief that Reality is yours to choose from, to select and to reject.

You have yet to experience the tremendous Release and deep Peace that comes from meeting yourself and your sisters and brothers and everything surrounding you totally without judgment. If you consider all that has been said in this Course about what you and your sisters and brothers are, you will realize that judging anyone or anything in any way is really without meaning. In fact, Meaning is lost to you precisely because, and whenever, anyone or anything is judged by you.

All uncertainty comes from a totally fallacious belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need judgment to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself. It is a particularly faulty guide to rely on because it is a closed system of each mind that appears to be open. What you do need to organize your life and yourself is Guidance that is from outside the realm of illusions.

When you engage in knowing, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables Recognition to replace perception. People become very fearful of everything they have unconsciously perceived and refused to accept. They believe on the unconscious level that because they have refused to accept it, they have lost control over it. This is why what has been rejected may appear in nightmares, or in pleasant disguise in what seem to be happier dreams. While the sheer amount of the content of perception that you have rejected, by far the vast majority of all perceptual content, makes it impossible to be brought into awareness, it does not follow that it is dangerous. But it does follow that you believe you have made it dangerous in your own mind by judging it.

When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone it is because you have judged them as laughable. When you feel put down or put yourself down or feel foolish, you are especially prone to putting others down, if only because you are likely to find it hard to tolerate feeling put down when you perceive that others aren’t being put down. All judgment makes a person tired because it is essentially disheartening. Although your Self is not capable of being tired, you are very capable of wearying yourself.

The strain of constant judgment – the continuous judging of your sisters and brothers and yourself and all things as perceptions, and then assessing these perceptions according to the various criteria by which you accept or reject them – is virtually intolerable. It is a curious thing that any ability that is so debilitating should be so deeply cherished. But there is a very understandable reason for this. If you wish to be the author of your own reality, which is totally impossible in any case, then you will insist on holding on to judgment. To do so you will render all things as perceptions outside yourself, including yourself as a body. You will also use the term judgment with considerable fear and believe that judgment will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it does happen to be used against you by others, it is due only to your belief in its effectiveness as a weapon of defense on behalf of what you believe to be your own authority.

The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When people have an “authority problem” it is always because they believe themselves to be the authors or creators of themselves, and resent that they have to project this delusion onto others and convince them to share in this fallacy. They then perceive the situation as one in which any number of people are figuratively and sometimes literally fighting for the validity of their own authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those who believe they have usurped the Power of the Creator, the true Author of Reality and of all Children of the Divine. This delusionary belief is very frightening to those who have accepted it, but hardly troubles the Creator at all. The Creator is, however, intent to undo it, not to punish Its Children, but only because It knows that the belief makes them unhappy.

In their creation, spirits (minds) were given their own true authorship as creative beings capable of creating like their Creator. However, some of these true authors chose to separate themselves from their Author, or Source, at which point they preferred to become “anonymous” authors themselves. The word “authority” has been one of their most fearful unconscious symbols ever since. Authority has been used for great cruelty because, having thrown away the Certainty of their own true authorship, the separated ones believed that their creation by their Creator was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it seems meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves.

The dispute over Authorship in the sense of creation has left such uncertainty in the minds of human beings that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. Despite the apparent contradiction in this position, given their existence, it is in one sense more tenable than the view that they created themselves. In its doubt, at least this position acknowledges the fact that some true Authorship is necessary for real being to exist.

Only those who give over all desire to reject can know that their own rejection is forever impossible. No one has usurped or ever could usurp the Power of the Creator, but many have temporarily lost access to this Power, which is the Source of their own creative will. Fortunately, when something is lost it does not mean that it has gone. It merely means that the person who has lost it temporarily does not know where it is. Existence as real being does not depend on your ability to identify it, or even to know where it has been lost. It is perfectly possible to behold the world without judgment and merely know it, at which point it will have been found. What will be found is what this Course calls “the Real World.” By knowing this, you are not doubting Reality’s truth at all or rejecting some Part of It to seek to find another.

Peace is a natural Heritage of the spirit. Everyone is free to refuse to accept their inheritance, but they are not free to establish what their inheritance is. (This is a broader application of the statement that free will doesn’t mean that human beings get to determine the courses they must master in the school of life.) The problem that everyone must decide is the fundamental question of their own authorship. All fear ultimately comes, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial or rejection of the only true Authorship. The offense is never to the Creator, but only to the deniers themselves. Through such denial a person throws away and temporarily loses access to the Source of Peace. By doing so they can only view themselves as shattered and in pieces. This strange perception is an authority problem. It is also the basis, whether male or female, of the unconscious anxiety of being castrated by a jealous god to prevent future threats to its power, an obvious projection of terror based on the belief in having committed an unforgivable sin. Viewing oneself as consisting of fragmented pieces and fearing castration are fundamentally the same error resulting from the authority problem.

No one can find Peace until their own authority problem is resolved. But the Truth is still that there is no problem about this in Reality. All the separated ones feel that they are imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of their own free will, they must regard their will as if it were not free, or the obviously circular reasoning of their own position would be quite apparent.

Undeluded free will must lead to Freedom. Judgment always imprisons because it believes that it has shattered Reality into the pieces of perception, has separated segments of this delusion according to highly unstable scales of desire, and then has accepted some of these pieces and rejected others. Wishes are not facts. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. However, no one really believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of: “Seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven,” say: “Will you first the Realm of Heaven,” and you have said: “I know that I am, and what I am, and I will to accept my own Inheritance.”