Relationships and A Course in Miracles: Seeing the World Like School

So… what if we thought of the world as a giant school? I find that thinking of my experience here like that helps me a lot when I find myself in conflict about things in my illusory life – which often (shockingly!) coincides with my being in relationship with other members of (literally) the student body. 

In this realm of higher learning known as A Course in Miracles, I think of the 600- page text as the theoretical explanation, the 365-lesson workbook as the study guide, and the manual for teachers as the handbook for becoming a teacher of God of this particular form of the universal curriculum. 

All three are important components of this complete thought system, yet it is in our interactions with and our thoughts about others that the work of what we are learning is put into practical application. Our relationships in the world are the lab.

Yep, this is where we conduct the science of living experiments – we dissect the frogs (sometimes the one that was supposed to turn into the prince), blow stuff up, grow mold and other gross stuff by letting things fester in the dark, and we sometimes poison ourselves and everyone else with the crazy concoctions we make up. It’s where we test out what works and what doesn’t.

Spoiler alert: here’s what doesn’t work: any thought we have about another person that holds them in judgment and condemnation for anything, or sees them as responsible in any way for our happiness or the lack of it. The End.

That is radically different from what we’ve learned in Judgment 101, where the mean substitute teacher of the ego’s thought system has taught us to do exactly that. It’s the faulty hypothesis we are laboring under – that what another person does or says actually has the power to affect us. That belief is false – it’s based on a projection of the ego – that part of our minds that believes we have chosen to separate ourselves from our Father and one another. It’s the inner bully that constantly says we are guilty.

This is, of course, a ridiculous concept. It’s completely untrue, it never happened, it has no validity; nor is it even possible for us to separate from our Creator or each other, or to be guilty, or for Him to want to punish us. It is the spiritual equivalent of thinking that the world is flat – to like the bazillionth power.

As Jesus advises us,

“Resign now as your own teacher.”

In the philosophy presented in our textbook of A Course in Miracles, there is no “other” person – there is only one mind, one son of God, us; never separate from our brothers or from Him as our Creator. God is perfect love, we are created by perfect love as perfect love for perfect love, and perfect love is incapable of being anything except perfect love. As such, it is neither guilty, nor fearful, nor punishing (because those things aren’t perfect – I hope we all knew that.)

But the ego-mind does not want us to believe that – it does not understand God, love, our perfection as extensions of God, or anything else. The language the ego-mind speaks has one word, appearing as many: fear.

So we harbor this belief, deeply buried in our unconscious minds, that we are guilty and deserve to be punished. Then we do this insane thing where we think that if we punish ourselves, somehow we’ll escape the much more severe punishment that God has planned for us.

So, like if we punch ourselves in the face, slam our hands in lockers, give ourselves swirlies, and otherwise allow ourselves to beat the crap out of us on the way to the Principal’s office, somehow he will have mercy on us and not expel us?

Well, kind of… especially if we say someone else did it to us. But again, it’s like that except times infinity.

In response to this guilt, we made up a world completely separate from God, where we think He can’t find us. Then, we gave ourselves complete amnesia – totally forgetting that we are perfect love. Now instead of seeing our brothers as pure light, joined in Oneness with us – we view each other as separate beings. We see ourselves as incomplete and requiring something from another in order to be whole – and that’s the ego’s purpose for relationships.

Relationships in the world – what A Course in Miracles calls “special relationships“ are the ego’s substitution for the love that we know somewhere on a very deep level we are capable of experiencing. We have the memory imbedded in us of the Love of and for God and our Oneness with our bros. But instead of that unconditional, changeless, constant, pure love that is real, in egoic “special love” we see ourselves as separate and lacking – needing another person to complete us, or validate us.

These relationships often begin with intense feelings of attachment, seeing the person as perfect– such as the way we feel in a new romantic relationship, or with our newborn baby, or the way a young child is attached to its mother. In this way it mimics the love we have for God that we have forgotten.

But being in these relationships does nothing to heal our minds from the unconscious guilt we are carrying, or the belief that we have separated from God, so sooner or later that begins to bleed through and affect the “perfection” we were feeling, and we start to experience the person as imperfect. We see faults and imperfections, we don’t like the way they behave, they don’t act like they once did, we’re not getting our needs met – we say they’ve changed.

What has actually occurred is that through the use of the psychological dynamic of denial and projection, we have attempted to rid ourselves of the pain of experiencing our unconscious guilt by transferring it onto these relationships in the form of problems, which we can then see as outside of ourselves and someone else’s fault. Our projections are often feelings that we harbor toward ourselves, or toward the other, but that is so uncomfortable that we turn it around as if it is coming from them instead.

The answer to denial and projection, and the unconscious guilt that is at cause of all of these effects – is for us to be willing to have our relationships be made holy, so that we can remember why we are here – which is as the Course tells us,

“Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness.”

W-pI.37.1:2

We do this by practicing A Course in Miracles’ version of forgiveness, in order to experience a shift in our perception of our brothers and thus ourselves. In doing so we then surrender our ego-based relationships to Spirit to be transformed into holy relationships.

The forgiveness process is:

• To acknowledge that we must have chosen wrongly, because our peace is disturbed
• Forgive our brother for what he hasn’t done, remembering that we are dreaming an illusion that the ego mind made up
• Forgive ourselves for believing the dream is real
• Remind ourselves that whatever guilt and fear we are seeing in our brother is coming from us, being reflected from our own mind
• Ask Spirit to change our perceptions and help us see the situation differently, and release it to Him to be healed

As we forgive and look with the Holy Spirit in this way, the fear that has manifested itself as resistance lessens. We are able to view our brother’s behavior not with judgment, but with compassion.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that everything a brother does can be seen as either an expression of love or a call for it – and it either case, love is ALWAYS the appropriate response.

Expressing love does not mean that we have to remain in certain relationships in the world of form, in order to be spiritual, or to be “good Course students”.

Remember, it’s a dream, Peeps. You can choose not to remain in a dream where you to agree to be abused, or mistreated, or in conflict, or continue in a situation that is painful. You can make the decision not to keep buying into whatever the story is that is playing out in your dream.

The healing process is in the mind, not in the world.

But the way you change your experience to a happy dream is not to blame the other person, see everything as their fault, make the dream real, and drop out of love school and become a slacker. That would be following the ego’s “guidance” and there is no love in that.

Love would advise you to be willing to look at the situation honestly, to take responsibility for your own projections, to practice forgiveness of your brother and yourself, to give your relationships to Spirit to be made holy, and then ask for guidance as to what might be yours to do – what action, if any, to take in the world.

Sometimes we are guided to end the form a relationship in the dream takes. We may be guided to stop saying yes to a particular dynamic that is taking place in a relationship.

However, let’s consider the wisdom in the following two brilliant Course quotations,

“Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself as unfairly treated”

T-26.X.4:1

and

“Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before, you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought you.”

T-31.VIII.3:1

We can do anything from a place of love, and that is the litmus test.

If we’re taking action from a place of anger, fear, defensiveness, resentment, guilt, shame, judgment, or seeing another person as weak, needy, or less than ourselves in any way, we are listening to the absent-minded ego-professor rather than the Voice for God aka the creator of this advanced course. Although we may gain temporary relief, these decisions are not made in our right mind, and thus the condition will not be healed and will rise again, perhaps just wearing a different mask.

When guidance is of Holy Spirit, there is a sense of trust, an inner ”yes” that feels calm and sure, never harmful to another, and in the best interest of all concerned. It is knowing that your Inner Teacher is with you, always and forever.

Relationships and A Course in Miracles: Seeing the World Like School

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You get an A+ for participating in school today! Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to look at any relationship in your life in which you are not at peace, and apply the concepts from today’s lesson: the process of forgiveness, examining your areas of conflict along with Spirit, taking responsibility for your own self-judgments and projections, and asking for and discerning the guidance that comes from the Voice for God.

If anything in this class has resonated with you, or inspired you to think about conflict in your life in a new way, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment. I love them and read every one.

We are all the teacher and the student. Thank you for being both for me, as well as my lab partners for today!

I love you.

Kelly

Kelly Russell, The Rock Your Joy Coach

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