In this talk on A Course in Miracles,
I will look at one of the two main defence mechanisms of the ego,
Which is denial.
The other mechanism is projection,
And I'll discuss this in the next talk.
Lesson 34 states,
Perception is a mirror,
Not a fact.
And what I look on is my state of mind,
Reflected outward.
The text states,
Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true.
What you project you disown,
And therefore do not believe it is yours.
In the preparation of this talk,
I've been greatly assisted by the scholarship of Dr Kenneth Wapnick.
In particular,
I've utilised some of the ideas and models he presented in his book,
Forgiveness in Jesus,
In explaining some of the concepts in this talk.
This morning you believe you woke up,
The dreams of last night have faded,
And the reality of a new day has begun.
But has it?
We saw in the previous talk that any state outside heaven is not real.
The text states this as follows,
There is no life outside of heaven.
Where God created life,
There life must be.
In any state apart from heaven,
Life is illusion.
After the seeming separation from God,
Our minds split into three parts,
Ego,
Holy spirit,
And the sleeping son of God or decision maker.
The decision maker has chosen to listen to the ego instead of the holy spirit.
The ego thought that the separation is real,
Is believed by the decision maker,
And is projected out by the lens of the mind as an image of the world.
In this analogy,
The screen is our world.
When we fall asleep and dream,
The events and people seem very real to us.
We eat dream food,
Ride in dream cars,
And communicate with dream people.
Our body may become sick and even die.
People may seek to harm us and monsters will appear to frighten us.
But when we wake up,
Our fears are gone,
For we realise it was all a dream.
When we wake up from our night time dreams,
Our desire to remain separate from God is still with us.
Our allegiance to the ego's thought system remains unchanged,
And so we create for ourselves a second dream,
Which is no more real than the first.
In this waking dream,
We continue to act as we did in our sleeping dream.
We believe the circumstances out there in the world affect us.
Certain people and events cause us to be happy and healthy,
While other people and events cause us to be unhappy and sick.
We seem to be the effect of causes that originate in the world.
From this idea comes the deep rooted sense that we are victimised by events we cannot control.
Whilst we believe that the cause of our unhappiness or pain lies outside our mind in a real world,
We shall never know the peace and joy that is the goal of the course.
This illusory world is so convincing,
That without the help of the Holy Spirit we would never wake up.
If we allow him to,
The Holy Spirit will transform the purpose of this world from one of separation,
To that of a classroom in which we can learn forgiveness,
And awaken from the dream into the joyous reality of who we really are.
Thus this world can be used for the opposite purpose to that for which it was originally meant,
Transforming it from a place of despair to one of hope and meaning.
Lesson 70 states,
My salvation comes from me.
The seeming cost of accepting today's idea is this.
It means that nothing outside yourself can save you,
Nothing outside yourself can give you peace.
But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you,
Or disturb your peace,
Or upset you in any way.
The Course is telling us that nothing in the ego's illusory world has the power to affect us,
Unless we decide that it can.
It is obvious that most of us do believe we are victims of the world.
We tell ourselves that if only circumstances were different,
We would be happy.
If only we had had a better education,
Or if our parents had been more loving,
Or if we not have been abused as a child,
Or if only the weather,
Government,
Food etc.
Was better,
Then we would be happy.
We believe that if we could change the world,
We would find the happiness that has always eluded us.
Lesson 71 states,
The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances.
It maintains that if someone else spoke or acted differently,
If some external circumstance or event were changed,
You would be saved.
Thus the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself.
Each grievance you hold is a declaration and an assertion in which you believe that says,
If this were different,
I would be saved.
The change of mind necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself.
Denial If we are to retain our allegiance to the ego's thought system,
We must never question where the real source of our suffering lies,
In our separated mind and not in the world.
Our ego's thoughts maintain a protective wall against the love of the Holy Spirit.
Our constant judgment of ourselves and others maintains this barrier to the illuminating light of God.
If we are to find peace,
We must question the counsel of the ego as to the origin of our physical and psychological suffering.
We created the ego's thought system as a direct challenge to God's creation.
The ego is born out of competition and hate and thus contains these traits within itself.
It too wishes to survive and in turn has no love for its maker,
The sleeping son of God.
The text states,
You do not love what you made,
And what you made does not love you.
Being made out of denial of the Father,
The ego has no allegiance to its maker.
In its desire to be autonomous and take the place of God,
The ego uses two powerful mechanisms of denial and projection to keep us believing in it.
These ego defense mechanisms keep us,
The decision maker,
Focused on the world.
The illusion is so powerful that we easily feel justified in our victimhood.
The text cautions us to beware the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated.
When we fell asleep in heaven and dreamed we had created this world,
We also allowed a veil of forgetfulness,
As the Course states,
To be drawn over our decision.
We denied to ourself that this is what we had done,
Because we could not stand a memory of our seeming sin against God and the resulting self-hate that we felt.
This deep unconscious sin against God manifests as feelings of unworthiness,
Inferiority,
Or its compensation of superiority,
Lack of self-worth,
Self-hate and self-loathing.
The Course uses the word guilt to describe all this.
We never seem to feel good enough,
No matter how successful we appear in the eyes of the world.
We feel we don't deserve good things to happen to us,
And need to work very hard before we can allow ourselves a little pleasure.
In fact,
We believe deep down that we really deserve to be punished for what we have done to God.
Guilt deserves punishment is the psychological law of the ego.
This was graphically shown to me during a period of my life when I was listening to the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Incidentally,
His teachings have many parallels to the Course,
Especially in the area of thought.
He teaches that it is our ego-thinking which blocks the awareness of who we really are.
I had been attending Krishnamurti talks in England and Switzerland for 12 years,
But I had never spoken to him.
It was very difficult to get an interview with him,
And I had never thought even to try.
One time,
After listening to one of his talks,
I went to the meal tent and helped myself to some food.
I was walking inside the tent when I suddenly found myself a couple of feet away from Krishnamurti.
He was quietly sitting on a chair,
Eating his food.
I had not been thinking of him,
And at that moment was taken by surprise.
He looked at me intently and maintained his somewhat serious expression.
As I looked at him,
I spontaneously felt love and appreciation welling up within me for this man,
But I did not move or say anything to him.
His face suddenly changed and broke into a beautiful smile.
His eyes filled with love,
He put his plate down,
Stood up,
Opened his arms and moved towards me.
Here was the realisation of my dream.
I was about to meet the man I most admired in the world,
And what did I do?
I turned and walked quickly away.
I could not take that love.
I felt I did not deserve it and would be overwhelmed by it.
When I reached the end of the tent,
I took a furtive look back.
He was talking with another person,
And I knew it would be pointless to try to speak to him again.
Now I prayed to experience the love of Jesus,
But am I ready for that?
Obviously not,
Or I would have accepted it.
We always have what we want to have,
Which is mostly sin,
Guilt and fear.
I still prefer my ego to Jesus,
But I am also aware that the days of my allegiance to the ego are numbered.
I will go home,
As will everyone else.
The time it takes is up to each of us to decide.
The text states,
Tolerance for pain may be high,
But it is not without limit.
It is not without limit.
Eventually everyone begins to recognise,
However dimly,
That there must be a better way.
As this recognition becomes more firmly established,
It becomes a turning point.
Later that day,
I was walking in the grounds of Brockwood Park,
Where Krishnamurti teaches,
Thinking about what had happened to me.
And then I was moved to look up,
And the second floor of the building at the end is where Krishnamurti lives,
And there he was,
Hanging out the window,
With the same beautiful smile,
Waving his hands to me.
I looked up,
And being at the safe distance of a few hundred yards,
I waved back to him.
Later,
When I was to study the Corsi Miracles,
He told us that our greatest fear was the love of God.
And I recognised then the lesson that Krishnamurti had taught me.
I wasn't yet ready for such love.
To stand there in its presence would dissolve my ego,
And so I quickly moved away.
When we separated from God,
If we had turned to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our split mind,
He would have told us to laugh gently,
As the Course says,
At the ego's insane thoughts of separation and autonomy.
But already our allegiance and belief in the ego was too strong.
The ego's counsel made us afraid of the Holy Spirit,
And was he not of God?
And look what he done to God's Kingdom.
We had destroyed the unity of heaven,
Stolen God's creative power,
And left.
In our madness,
We now believed God was angry with us,
And demanded vengeance and sacrifice from us.
This is the origin of all the passages in the Bible,
Which depict an avenging and angry Father who is out for our blood.
No wonder we became afraid of the Holy Spirit in our mind.
He was God's agent,
And not to be trusted.
In our terror,
We could only turn to the ego and ask for its help The ego's reply,
As it always is,
Was to deny and project our guilt onto a non-existent world.
The ego has created an illusory problem,
Separation from God,
And now proceeds to counsel us endlessly on how to solve it,
Through denial and projection.
Our ceaseless busyness and given importance to the details of the ego's world of form,
Makes an excellent smokescreen to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our mind,
Thus ensuring the survival of the ego.
Our very first act was to deny that we had ever had this battle with God in the first place.
The manual,
Question 43,
Describes this first denial as follows.
Forget the battle,
Accept it as a fact,
And then forget it.
Do not remember the impossible odds against you.
Do not remember the immensity of the enemy,
And do not think about your frailty in comparison.
Accept your separation,
But do not remember how it came about.
Believe that you have won it,
But do not retain the slightest memory of who your great quote,
Opponent really is.
This denial is so effective that we believe we have nothing to do with this world which we are born into.
We are not responsible for what we find here,
And feel justified in blaming God when his creation does not work so well.
But as we have seen,
This world is not God's creation,
But the miscreation of the ego,
Which carries its own thought system into every detail of our world.
As the ego's thought system is based on differences,
Comparison,
Separation,
Judgment,
Attack,
Defense,
Murder,
Etc.
,
So must it be reflected in the world.
For as the Course states in the text,
Ideas leave not their source,
And their effects but seem to be apart from them.
Every living thing on this planet must murder in order to live.
We must kill vegetables or animals to survive.
The animal kingdom must constantly spend its time either killing some other life form,
Or protecting itself from being killed.
Kill or be killed is at the heart of the ego's thought system.
The ego believing it has killed God and stolen his power.
This thought system must in turn become projected out as the image of the ego's world.
This world is literally the image of the thoughts in the ego's mind.
It cannot be anything else.
If it is on the film,
It must be on the screen.
Therefore,
It is pointless to change what is on the screen.
We must change what is on the film.
The introduction to the text asks us to seek not to change the world,
But choose to change your mind about the world.
We need to remove the film of separation and attack and replace it with the Holy Spirit's film of joining and forgiveness.
Then the world will appear completely different to us,
Even though its form is still the same.
Now we shall see it through the eyes of the Holy Spirit,
In seeing people asking for love,
Or extending love,
As the Course states,
And nothing else.
This is the judgment of the Holy Spirit which Jesus manifested into this world.
Knowing who he really was,
An immortal,
Formless child of God,
Jesus has no need of defence.
And knowing we were the same as him,
He has no need to attack.
Most of us are far from this realisation,
However,
And the Course warns us not to deny our bodies and our experience in this world.
Lesson 333 states,
Conflict must be resolved.
It cannot be evaded,
Set aside,
Denied,
Disguised,
Seen somewhere else,
Called by another name,
Or hidden by deceit of any kind,
If it would be escaped.
It must be seen exactly as it is,
Where it is thought to be,
In the reality which has been given it,
And with the purpose that the mind accorded it.
But only then are its defences lifted,
And the truth can shine upon it as it disappears.
