Thinking With God Chapter
by Tom Baker
Lesson: Chapter 7, VIII. The Unbelievable Belief and Lesson 51, review of lessons 1-5
Date: November 30, 2008
Occasionally I find something in A Course In Miracles that brings me to a new, simple place of understanding in respect to this teaching. Last summer the message of the crucifixion, "Teach only love, for that is what you are" refocused me on the central message of the Course.
Jesus taught love under conditions of hatred and savagery, conditions completely opposed to love, so that even at the moment of greatest confusion we, and Jesus, were rooted in the truth of our being. I began to think of this phrase as the mission statement of the Course and the anchor of my consciousness: As I teach, share, extend love, I ground myself in the truth of my being. Then, studying the Characteristics of God's teachers for the retreat in October, I saw that trust was the most important characteristic to cultivate, more important than insight or humility or patience or kindness or even stillness of mind. Trust in God, a truth sprinkled about in religion and ethics and even engraved on our money was at the very center of how the Course teaches us to relate to God. Yet this is not a trust in the abstraction of God but in the world by seeing everyone and everything through the eyes of love. And this trust would be in the world because the teacher of God would trust in a power in him but not of him (or her) and by this power perception of the world would be changed from threat to forgiveness: Trust in the power of God and see the world without attack or defense or judgment; see the world with the eyes of blessing and you are safe.
First, teach love to know you are love, Second, trust in God's (the Holy Spirit's) vision, seeing with the eyes of blessing, and third, my newest and hardest insight: we have been trying to think without God. All of the thoughts of which I am aware are thoughts I am thinking all alone in the vacuum chamber of the ego's version of my mind, what Eckhart Tolle refers to as the incessant noise of thought. I have normalized a pandemonium of thoughts that are private and secret and over-personalized and called them "me." The Course is not simply teaching us to think like God, it is teaching us to think with God. This is stated at the end of part VIII of chapter 7:
"The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally part of you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness has no limits because being is infinity." ( T. Chapter 7, VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, p. 131).
Because we identify so closely with the body and are so convinced of our deep down badness, we take our essential aloneness for granted and even defend it against the love of others, allowing only a precious few to be exceptions to the ego's rule "You are not worthy of love." Even those exceptions, the ego reminds us in the form of our memories, are only temporary since everyone will abandon me through treachery or forgetfulness or death. This belief in our eternal aloneness, the real hell that we all know about, is what the Course refers to as the unbelievable belief. Our oneness with God and everyone and everything is so much a reality that it is not a belief but the basic experience of our true minds. However, until we experience that oneness we practice the belief through the workbook, and very early on in the workbook:
(4) These thoughts do not mean anything.
The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call 'my' thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made my thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that my thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them be replaced by what they were intended to replace. My thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the thoughts I think with God. (W. Lesson 51, review of lesson 4, p. 83).
The Course teaches us that when we do not defend our thoughts (trusting God), especially when they are thoughts of attack (see lesson 26), we can hold them lightly, release them and let them go. We will practice defenselessness in our thinking (lesson 153) and take seriously that there is no cruelty in us or in God (lesson 170). As our minds clear we begin to experience the Now and feel the wonderful connection with everyone and everything. We more deeply and constantly want the peace of God (lesson 185) and conclude that there is no peace except the peace of God (lesson 200). We are willing to think with God in more and more circumstances, teaching only love, the experience of which reinforces the rightness of thinking with God.
Continue with chapter seven and look at the workbook lessons I have noted and look for others that link up with the theory explicated in the text. Next time I will concentrate more on Lessons 51, 26, 153, 170, and 200 in order to fill out concretely what thinking with God is about.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2008