This is the sixth Course in Miracles talk,
And this will be on projection and special hate relationships.
The course mentions three types of relationships,
Special hate,
Special love and holy relationships.
In this talk,
I will look at special hate relationships.
In our daily lives,
Our hidden guilt is constantly being triggered.
For example,
Someone pushes into the queue in front of us,
A car forces us to slow down by suddenly cutting in front of us,
A person insults us.
We usually experience,
Quote,
Justified anger,
Unquote,
In these circumstances.
Not realising that the source of our pain is really in our mind,
And nothing to do with the events in the world.
Our ego would automatically advise us to attack back,
Either expressing our anger at the people involved or projecting our anger internally,
Eventually resulting in sickness in the body.
For example,
A headache,
A stomach ulcer,
An asthma attack.
Later talks will look much deeply at this.
To the ego,
Either is satisfactory,
For it focuses our attention onto the world,
Where the problem is not,
And away from our mind,
Where the problem is.
While I was living at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland,
A woman who had been ill for three weeks approached me for a healing session.
She had flu-like symptoms and a persistent cough,
Which kept her awake at night.
During the relaxation stage of the healing session,
As I was holding my hands above her chest,
She began to feel an uncomfortable sensation in that area.
I wanted her to explore this,
As I felt it contained some insight for her.
To help her accept the discomfort,
I asked her to describe what she felt or saw in her chest.
She said that it felt as if there was a closed wooden gate there.
I asked her what she wanted to do with the gate,
Thinking she might gently open it.
Instead,
In her mind's eye,
She took a large hammer and smashed the gate to pieces.
Suddenly she became aware of an intense anger that was focused in this area of her body.
As she became aware of it,
It moved higher up and lodged in her throat.
This caused a coughing fit to occur.
Pursuing the approach of helping her to accept what was there,
I asked her to describe how her throat appeared to her.
She first described it as a hard red ball,
But it suddenly changed into a picture of a tall,
Black,
Ugly-looking monster.
She was very disturbed at seeing this image in her mind.
I knew the picture of the monster was an important messenger carrying information about what was denied in her unconscious.
It was important for her to accept this new picture and not to resist it.
I encouraged her to try and make friends with the image,
But she found this very difficult.
However,
At one point she felt guided to give it a gift.
She saw herself take a golden chain out of her heart and clasp it around the neck of the monster.
As she did this,
Its eyes changed from being cold,
Hard and angry to eyes of love and compassion.
I encouraged her to approach the monster to see if she could touch it.
She was able to stroke it for a few moments only.
At that point the healing session finished.
She had become aware that during these three weeks of illness she had been denying strong feelings of anger.
The following day she told me that her cough had disappeared shortly after the session had finished and the remaining symptoms of her illness had also now gone.
We have both been given a powerful example of the effect of denial.
Her original anger had been internalised,
Creating sickness in the body.
It was here that she thought the problem lay until she undid her denial,
Accepted the pain in her mind and let it go.
The text states,
Sickness is anger taken out on the body so that it will suffer pain.
The ego's constant plan is to reverse cause and effect and keep us from looking at the cause of our distress which is in our mind.
For if we were to return to our mind,
We could also discover the presence of the Holy Spirit and listen to Him instead of the ego.
This is the last thing the ego wants and that would lead to its own death.
Its constant chant to us is that the problem is in the world and not the mind and such is the power of this illusion that we choose to believe its advice.
As we seek to blame the world for our distress by denying and projecting our problems,
Our guilt will only increase.
From some level we know denial and projection is not justified and we must eventually take responsibility for the separation ourselves.
The text states,
Yet projection will always hurt you.
It reinforces your belief in your own split mind and its only purpose is to keep the separation going.
It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them.
In trying to get rid of our guilt,
We only increase it.
The only way out of this circular trap is to open ourselves to the ever-present help of the Holy Spirit in our mind.
We need a shift of perception,
A miracle,
To see the situation differently.
We need to find and uncover the darkness in our mind and forgive it.
Whilst we value denial,
We keep our darkness hidden and make it real.
This is what the Course calls,
Quote,
Making the error real,
Unquote.
When we accept our murderous thoughts,
We can forgive them and,
With the help of the Holy Spirit,
See them for the illusions that they are.
Let's look now at special hate relationships.
Selecting special people to project our unhealed and unforgiving guilt onto is referred to in the Course as the special hate relationship.
Any time we lose our peace and become upset over someone,
We have met a mirror to what is unforgiving in ourselves.
Our ego tells us that our anger is justified and we should attack back.
The Holy Spirit counsels us to look within our mind to the hidden darkness and bring it to the light of the Holy Spirit,
So He can shine it away.
The Holy Spirit constantly asks us to undo our denial,
Bring our projections back to our own mind and ask Him for the help in letting them go.
If greedy people upset us,
There is greed in our own mind.
If angry people upset us,
Then there is anger in our own mind.
Often the form is different,
But the content never is.
Perhaps you have never shown anger,
But are still judgmental when others get angry.
However,
If you look more closely at your mind,
You will find the anger,
Even though it might be tightly controlled and denied.
You may say that people who smoke upset you,
And you have never smoked.
But what does the smoking represent to you?
Perhaps you feel that smokers are insensitive,
Selfish and indifferent.
If you look honestly within yourself,
You will also find these traits,
Even though you express them in a different form.
That's why the text says,
All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty,
And this attempt is the only basis the ego accepts for special relationships.
Anger is never justified.
Attack has no foundation.
It's important to note that the Course is not condemning anger,
And saying we should not indulge ourselves in it.
It simply states that it is not justified.
In using anger,
We hope that our enemy will become guilty,
And admit to being the cause of our distress.
He is now the one with the problem,
And not us.
We all have tremendous investment in anger,
Because we hold the magical belief that it will get us what we want.
However,
All it ever gets us is more guilt,
For on some level we know our attack is unjustified.
We are only attacking in another what we have in ourselves.
To get rid of this increase in guilt,
Our ego counsels us to get angry again.
The ego's vicious circle of guilt and attack is thus maintained,
And our allegiance to the ego is kept alive.
This is not to say that we should suppress our anger,
For this only makes our guilt real.
The Holy Spirit asks us to accept our anger and bring it to Him,
So He may release us from its illusion.
This is difficult for most of us to do,
For we believe the object of our anger deserves our justified punishment,
And our anger gives us the energy to carry this out.
It seems that if we let go of anger,
The quote's enemy will get away without retribution.
Often people cite the Gospels in defence of their anger,
For did not Jesus get angry in the temple,
And turn over the tables of the moneylenders?
However,
The Gospels did not say that Jesus was angry.
Perhaps Jesus chose to teach in bold strokes that day.
More importantly,
Jesus talked directly against anger in the famous Sermon on the Mount.
Our defence of anger is understandable,
Once we realise we believe that the source of our problems is in the world,
And we are innocent victims of circumstance.
Once we drop our investment in anger,
We will also lose our perception of ourselves as victims,
And turn to the Holy Spirit and not the ego for guidance.
The ego sees this as a four-pronged attack upon itself,
And will try everything to make us angry again.
As we return to God,
Step by step,
We must expect these attacks and pray for help.
Anger is a major weapon of the ego,
For it conceals the real source of the problem in our mind,
And makes us focus on the world instead.
An experience which my ex-wife Selyse had around the time of the Gulf War,
In February 1992,
Illustrates our belief that our problems are in the world,
And not within us.
An experience which my ex-wife Selyse had around the time of the Gulf War,
In February 1992,
Illustrates our belief that our problems are in the world,
And not within us.
Selyse was meditating and reflecting on Saddam Hussein,
And on the situation in Iraq and Kuwait,
Wanting to do something to help it.
She felt helpless however,
And asked,
What on earth can I do to help?
A voice in her mind said,
How do you see Saddam Hussein?
Selyse thought about this,
And immediately felt he was cruel,
Controlling,
Attacking and angry.
The voice then asked,
Do you have any of these traits?
Selyse thought deeply,
And admitted that she did indeed manifest these traits at times.
The voice then said,
Fix these things in yourself,
And that is the greatest gift you can give the Gulf War.
She was then shown a picture of Saddam Hussein,
Standing on top of a mountain,
With all the people of the world gathered around his base.
Saddam Hussein was holding a large mirror,
And the light was glinting on it.
He was saying,
Look at me,
You can't see these qualities inside yourselves,
So I am being a mirror for you,
And I have to exaggerate them,
In order for you to see them.
Selyse said she knew in that moment,
That while she or anyone else has any negative quality,
It is always eventually projected,
Onto something or someone else.
