Chap. 3, V. Beyond Perception, VI. Judgment and the Authority Problem
by Tom Baker
Lesson: VII. Creating versus the Self-Image
Praying to my Creator
Date: November 29, 2009
As a priest one of the main things I did was pray. In fact I was surprised how much I did pray. People were constantly requesting that I pray for them or their loved ones, all the sacramental rituals such as mass and baptism and confession had prayers, most often asking for God's mercy, and then there were my own rather desperate prayers for help, guidance, and courage since much of the time I did not fully know what I was doing. I also figured out that the one way to have privacy, outside of going to the toilet, was to kneel down in the church and pray. Prayer provided a kind of sacred boundary that allowed me to be alone with myself and, of course, God. As a therapist people, especially in extremity, ask me to pray for them, I assume because they know that I used to be a priest. For Catholics and perhaps for others, once a priest always a priest. In the metaphysical, new age world prayer is something of a problem. We no longer are begging for God's mercy and there are no real rituals that need prayer. When new age people talk about prayer they most often report praying to angels and often for immediate needs like a parking place or for patience in traffic. Most new age prayer seems to take place in the motorized temple of the automobile. People are much more serious about meditation. Yet, A Course In Miracles, in a sense, reinstates the importance of prayer when both in the 11th principle of miracles in Chapter One (page 3) and in the section in Chapter 3 entitled Beyond Perception it states that prayer is the medium of miracles:
"Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer is the usual sense becomes utterly meaningless." (Chap. 3, V. p. 45).
One of the people in the group asked who is the forgiveness for. Am I praying that I be forgiven or am I praying for help in forgiving another or, to take it one step further, am I praying that another forgive me? He cited the Lord's Prayer in which we pray that we may be forgiven our debts or trespasses as we forgive others their debts or trespasses. I think the Course would say that in essence I am asking for God's forgiveness of myself which means, of course, that I would accept, feel, recognize, and believe the love God has for me despite my transgressions which I have come to think have caused God to withdraw His love. While I might believe consciously that God holds nothing against me, my largely unconscious egoic thinking is convinced that God is seriously angered and implacably offended at my transgressions and will mete out horrible punishments unless He forgives me. In Catholic theology Jesus' suffering on the cross is the "payment" for my sins and opens the way for God to forgive me. That is how Jesus "died for our sins." In the Catholic act of contrition (statement of sorrow for my sins) the penitent says to God "I am most heartily sorry for offending thee" and hopes by his or her sincerity and amendment of his or her ways to avoid God's "just punishments." According to the Course God is not even capable of being offended, but the horrifying idea that he could be has come to be an obsession with us and constantly fertilizes the ego notion that we are separate from God and are our own creations. Thus the process of accepting once again the love of God must take place on the ego's terms so we ask for God's forgiveness and, at the same time, practice the "knowing" that God has and always will love me by affirming, as we do in Lesson 50, the "I am sustained by the Love of God." We are saying to God, in effect, "I know intellectually that you have forgiven me but, so often, it doesn't feel like it so bear with me as I ask you to forgive me." On an interactive level with one another we can say almost the exact same thing: "In my spiritual head I know that I love you as a precious soul, but it feels like I hate you right now so I must forgive you or, rather, ask to see you as the Holy Spirit sees you." This is the miracle; that I see you with the divine knowing of the Holy Spirit. In the state of consciousness we are in now, our perception does not match our knowing. The Holy Spirit helps us cleanse our perception from fear and guilt so it more closely resembles our divine knowing.
The reward for forgiveness is not in going to heaven when we die but in being released from fear and tension while we live now: "You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers [and sisters] totally without judgment." (T. Chap. 3, VI., p. 47.) Yet there is a hidden problem that stands in the way of forgiving others and feeling forgiven by God. The Course calls it the Authority problem and explains that it is really a problem of authorship: "When you have an authority problem, it is always because you believe you are the author of yourself and project your delusion onto others. You then perceive the situation as one in which others are literally fighting you for your authorship." (T. p. 48). This is the cause of the power struggle human beings have with one another, especially on the level of intimacy. It is rather embarrassing to admit, but a great deal of what we call love is the attempt to get the beloved to enhance or confirm the image I have of myself, positive and negative. In other words, I love you so I can use you to support the image of myself that I made. The problem is that you do the same thing and, in projecting your delusion of authorship onto me, become defensive that I rather than you will make you up. In an ego sense this suspicion is warranted since, by judging you, I am attempting to remake you in my own image. Now forgiveness takes on an entirely new light. In forgiving you I am saying, "Be the one that God created, not the one I would like you to be." In asking forgiveness for myself I am saying, "Let me be the one God created rather than the self image I made up." Lesson 94 has us practice self forgiveness with the succinct affirmation "I am as God created me." If I extend the same courtesy to you I will affirm that you are as God created you as well.
While it seems simple to just let yourself and others be as God created them, it isn't simple at all to establish and certainly not easy to accept. It is neither simple nor easy because in our minds, in the fearful union of mob rule, we have made ourselves, others and God into something else. While it's tempting to simply dismiss this as human insanity, the Course reminds us that "nothing made by a child of God is without power." We all have insane thoughts about ourselves, some depressive ("I'm no good at anything") and some grandiose ("I'm smarter than most people") and these notions are very powerful and not easy for us or those who are impacted by our behavior to change. Our thoughts about ourselves and others are amazingly fixed, even when we're presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. My wife has noticed for years that, despite her constant affirmation of what are in her eyes "my good looks," I insist that I am ugly, even repulsive looking. The image of myself made by my mind is extremely powerful, yet it is supported by little or no external evidence. As something of an authority on anxiety disorders, I am always impressed with how powerful our worries are and how our fears shape our personalities. We often try to feel better by saying we're simply being silly, a version of what the Course calls depreciating the power of our minds. Our minds are not weak but have simply drawn one false conclusion after another until we have thought ourselves into a very lonely corner of the universe, a corner which really is entirely imaginary but feels completely real, just as my worry about being a repulsive looking failure is an unreal but real feeling thing. The solution is to use our minds to bring us back to the beginning, the beginning of what and who we are. That is why the most repeated phrase in A Course In Miracles is I am as God created me. In Lesson 94, which has us practice this phrase, we are told how important this idea is:
"Today we continue with the one idea which brings complete salvation; the one statement which makes all forms of temptation powerless; the one thought which renders the ego silent and entirely undone. You are as God created you. The sounds of this world are still, the sights of this world disappear, and all the thoughts that this world ever held are wiped away forever by this one idea. Here is salvation accomplished. Here is sanity restored." (Workbook, Lesson 94, p. 164).
In the text of the Course we begin to understand how we began to think in terms of self creation and separation from our being one with God and the universe. Yet understanding the problem is not the solution to solving the problem, anymore than understanding why you drink alcohol will make you stop being addicted to alcohol. One stops drunkenness by practicing sobriety. Understanding the reasons behind alcoholic addiction can motivate the alcoholic to practice sobriety, but the solution is in the practice, not the understanding. In a sense we have become addicted to separation thinking and separation living. In the workbook of the Course we are given the opportunity to practice oneness thinking and oneness living. We practice not only forgiveness but also seeing ourselves and one another as holy, a holiness unchanged since our beginning in God:
"Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death." (T. Chap. 3, VII., p. 51)
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Here is a catch to enlightenment. Since we have made ourselves up, practicing and sharing a vision of ourselves as non-made up, as created by Love Itself, will, at least at first and usually periodically, feel like a loss of the self we know and love. This "loss" is extremely disorienting and can lead to all kinds of delaying actions: disease, obsessions, delusions about ourselves and others, and of course, another reincarnation. Yet if we stay the course, it will lead to joy. This is what Jesus spoke of when he encouraged his disciples to die to themselves. It is this little death of the image we have made of ourselves (and others) that brings an awakening in our minds of the Self that waits for us in peace. In this death to the image we made, the only thing that dies is fear, and the Self we are is resurrected for all to see.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2009