I had just discovered my little dog’s “accident” on the upstairs carpet and knelt on the floor with the stain remover and a damp cloth rubbing away. Kayleigh gazed on from a distance, hanging her guilty little head. I didn’t have to say anything. We had been here before and she knew only too well I was not pleased. But I wasn’t really angry, either. I suspected she had gotten into something at the dinner party we’d hosted the other night and perhaps wanted to signal me to keep an eye on her for the intestinal distress to which she was chronically predisposed. Nevertheless, she cowered in shame, and my heart opened. After all, I knew that look in her eyes all too well, the look we all share over our repressed belief in a secret sin of separation from our source that keeps repeating itself over and over and over again–ad nauseam, no pun intended–here in this dreamy, dream of exile from eternal, all-inclusive Love.
Downstairs, Kayleigh sprinted across the room–skidding on the hardwood floors in that endearing, cartoonish way of hers—and grabbed the baby chick toy she had pilfered from an Easter basket last Spring and added to her stash. Then she sat on the rug by the door, the chick in her teeth, ferociously shaking it and whacking it against the floor to the tune of pathetic, mechanical peeping noises. And I suppose she felt better—temporarily anyway—taking her shame out on the chick like that. Projecting her guilt over and over and over on her toys in an effort to exonerate herself from the “accidents” to which her nervous system was prone.
This got me to thinking about the way in which certain forgiveness scenarios seem to repeat themselves in the classroom of my life over and over and over again. How certain dream figures appear to attack in the same manner, using the same dialogue and body language, over the same issues. Although I apply forgiveness A Course in Miracles style—asking the sane teacher in our one mind for a different interpretation of what’s really going on—and receive the comforting assurance that all is well despite the current, repetitive movie of my so-called life’s twists and turns; a few days or weeks later I find myself watching–and all too often reacting to–the same scene. Once more in need of help from my right mind and once more doubting this Course will ever heal my perception of my most painful projections.
Asking for help from the loving inner teacher in our one mind with this led me back to A Course in Miracles Manual for Teachers, Section 7, Should Healing Be Repeated, wherein we learn that doubt is the ego thought system’s lynchpin, arising from the original belief that we effectively created false selves to defend against the one Self we believe we destroyed.
“The real basis for doubt about the outcome of any problem that has been given to God’s Teacher for resolution is always self-doubt. And that necessarily implies that trust has been placed in an illusory self, for only such a self can be doubted.”
The thing is I want to doubt my true Self. That was our wish at the very beginning and we believe we got what we wished for; forcing us to project the guilty thought of it into an entire universe of fragmented forms, find one of them to hang out in, and begin reenacting the original projection all over whenever the guilt that never goes away once more surfaces in the back of our mind. Of course we doubt ourselves here in the condition we think we’re in, inhabiting separate bodies vying for survival and constantly striving to prove our greater innocence at another’s expense. Of course we are secretly invested in keeping the dream intact, its characters and scripts persistent and impenetrable, its stories invincible. But that doesn’t mean our mind is not healing each time we choose again.
“For a teacher of God to remain concerned about the result of healing is to limit the healing. It is now the teacher of God himself whose mind needs to be healed.”
If I find myself doubting that mind-healing has occurred because of circumstances in the plot of my dream I need to offer my doubts to the part of my mind that remains unwaveringly sure of what I am and what you are. But my mind is split; and although my faith in the stable peace of my right mind is growing every day as I practice the Course’s forgiveness, I still believe this personal identity offers me something. I still want to awaken as Susan, to have my Course and my specialness, too, to preserve that original idea of differentiation no matter the cost.
“One of the most difficult temptations to recognize is that to doubt a healing because of the appearance of continuing symptoms is a mistake in the form of lack of trust. As such it is an attack.”
Although we’ve repressed the original, hallucinated “attack” on our eternally, whole source its guilty residue keeps bubbling to the surface again and again and again until our split mind is completely healed and only the invulnerable, undifferentiated Love of our true nature remains. Until then, we don’t need to worry about the mechanics of our healing or the symptoms of our seeming dis-ease. There are only two choices to make from moment to moment in the dream if we ever hope to awaken: fear/hate or Love; only two teachers to learn from: the ego, or the Holy (Whole) Spirit/right mind. Until our split mind is completely healed and we open our eyes we remain the decision maker, learning to catch ourselves secretly siding with the ego and bringing our guilty choice back to our right mind for translation; the assurance that “not one note in Heaven’s song was missed.”
But even though I know all this and believe it, I can only sing along with that tune in the holy instant, the eternal present in which I join with the right mind’s faith that all is well. Even as the movie of my special relationships rewinds and begins again, I must turn over my doubt that this Course is working to the part of my mind that gently smiles at that question, the part of my mind that knows it has nothing to fear, the part of my mind that knows only Love. That is the practice, and practice, and practice this path calls for. I must learn to side with the part of my mind that can never fail and knows beyond all shadows of a doubt that Love forever prevails in me and you regardless of the details of the dream. And that recognizing my call for love in your seeming behavior and answering that call with a loving refusal to join with it will bring us all home and remove all doubt for good.
NOTE: Hope you enjoyed the interview with Gary Renard, now archived on my Interview page.
Gary Renard will be offering a workshop in Colorado Springs September 24, 2011. For information and reservations, go to: Miracle Promotions Contact: Kathy Scott Perry
[includeme src=”https://www.foraysinforgiveness.com/wp-content/text-files/general-end-note.php” frameborder=”0″ width=”410″ height=”500″]
It’s so important to not give up on our mindful forgiveness practice, isn’t it! I like Gary Renard’s metaphor about how each time we truly forgive ourselves for our projections, it’s like taking off another layer of onion skin; at first we don’t seem to see much change, but each time we’re lighter (a little less onion and a little happier) and also closer to completely undoing our (egoic, metaphoric) onion. So every time I seem to need to keep forgiving the same grievance in my mind, that changed cause is having an impact on my awakening, regardless of the reflection in the outer surreal screenplay of space-time that my senses send as propaganda to me in that dysfunctional thought system. 🙂