Chapter 2, VI. Fear and Conflict
by Tom Baker
Lesson: Controlling Fear is Under Our Control
Date: August 16, 2009
A Course In Miracles makes the point early on that our spiritual choice is not between good and evil, right or wrong but between love and fear or, as stated in the previous section, between right-mindedness and wrong-mindedness. Section VI. Entitled Fear and Conflict clarifies our responsibility in regard to fear. We often pray, at least I have, that the Holy Spirit or Jesus take away my fear. Here Jesus seems to say (1) that fear thinking is our responsibility and (2) that if we place our ego and our bodies under his control that he can help us immensely. The saying "God helps those who help themselves" seems to apply to fearful thinking.
"Being afraid seems to be involuntary; something beyond your own control. Yet I have said already that only constructive acts should be involuntary. My control can take over everything that does not matter, while my guidance can direct everything that does, if you so choose. Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents me from giving you my control. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of mind. This removes them from my control, and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels.
I do not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it. You would not excuse insane behavior on your part by saying you could not help it. Why should you condone insane thinking? There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly. You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate yourself from the truth by 'giving' autonomy to behavior. This is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under my guidance. Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it.
It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of mis-thought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.
The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. At that level you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the same. Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear." (T. Chap. 2, VI. Fear and Conflict, pp. 28 & 29).
One of the interesting things about this passage is that the correction of fear is done not by applying a set of rules or even principles in mental solitude, but by asking Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) if the choice you are making is in accord with His choice. This consultative approach is in accordance with the passages warning us about our ‘willingness to be separate.' A further implication is that an attitude of aloofness and even a feeling of loneliness is involved in our remaining to be afraid.
In the session tonight (August 23, 2009) we were concentrating on the final paragraph of the passage quoted above and it fell out of my mouth that Jesus is not really another person but is the person we all really are but "appears" as another person because that's what our ego will allow. The following poem which is buried under poems on my website says the same thing but more dramatically:
An Apostle's Testimony
I cannot say I know him,
he is not like that;
you are known by him
and listen for your name.I have rested in his speech and
allowed his words to flutter in my chest
like expectation.Sometimes he is angry,
his rage tangling in his speech
like flame in a tree.
Then he drops his hands and weeps.
Because of this some say he's mad.
But I think not.
No madman possesses his dignity
or with his possession details
the history of a lie.He touches lepers; reaches
into the teeming crater of a face
and smears his spittle
on what a demon's excrement
has made to rot and stink;
and in the shadow of his withdrawing hand
the face remembers itself as whole.He is a question to us
But he insists that we are, ourselves,
The answer to what he is.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2009