In his workshops and books about A Course in Miracles, scholar Ken Wapnick often half-jokingly remarked that no-one in his or her right mind would choose to be born into this world. It is, after all, a place where everything is ephemeral. Nothing lasts. As humans in a body, we seem to blossom for a few decades, and then we slowly prepare to die again. Moreover, the body is constantly at risk: germs, floods, or even simple accidents may easily snuff out its life. Many of us feel that we have been unwillingly thrust into this world, and that life comes down to a series of trials and tribulations. The Course itself urges us to honestly admit that deep down inside we know we are an exile here: “Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again. No one but knows whereof we speak.” (WpI.182.1:4-2:1).
And yet many of the world spiritualities assure us that our being born into this particular body, in this particular place on this planet, in this particular era, with these particular parents, is hardly accidental. Details differ among spiritualities, but the overall idea is that you and I chose our parents just before our conception (some say you choose your mother, while the mother chooses the father). And not only that, such ‘incarnation choices’ are purposefully made — by us. What can make this confusing is that our purpose is always twofold, as is all purpose and choice in the framework of A Course in Miracles. From the ego-point of view — that is, the wish to be autonomous and separated from our Creator — the purpose of each incarnation is to seek the best conditions for experiencing individuality and specialness, apart from God. Granted, we may have failed to attain lasting blissful autonomy in our previous incarnation, but perhaps this time we may yet succeed… A Course in Miracles, too, emphasizes that the only reason we choose to remain here in a body in time and space (referred to as ‘a rotting prison’), is that we still hope to be able to find something better than Heaven (cf. T-7.VI.7).
On the other hand, in the Course’s text we read about the memory of the Heaven we believe we left, which, notwithstanding our ego-attachment, is always present in the mind: we can stubbornly suppress the loving call of our Creator, but we cannot vanquish it. This memory of Heaven, this Voice for God, this yearning call for the Love that created us, is called The Holy Spirit in A Course in Miracles. This is not a being in and of itself; He merely symbolizes the Voice of our own true Self. Beyond the frantic shrieks of the petty, frightened little ego, this Voice for Love remains a quiet presence within the core of what you and I are — which is Mind — that can never be lost. We are still free to choose to stubbornly ignore that Voice, insisting that we know what’s best for us; and wile we continue to see any hope of lasting happiness in this world, this is what we usually do, until the pain gets too much and we exclaim in agony that there must be a better way (T-2.III.3:6).
In the Course’s text we read: “Such is the Holy Spirit’s kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made [i.e., the hell of the world and the body], to heal instead of harm” (T-25.VI.4:1). This means that the Holy Spirit can use any situation, encounter, circumstance to shift our lessons in separation to a lesson in forgiveness, and therefore oneness. In other words, the goal of autonomy and separation that we chose in igniting yet another bodily incarnation in time, the Holy Spirit can transform into a helpful lesson that teaches us where lasting happiness can really be found — in choosing love. Many spiritual aspirants have experienced the amazing realization that literally any ego choice can be reinterpreted as a lesson in love. And the more we choose to see and accept such lessons, the more we start to see not only the inherent silliness and futility of the ego – that is, of our cherished individuality, but also that our true Home is attained by our heretofore suppressed desire to choose to accept the Atonement.
As we are all created with free will, the Holy Spirit cannot force this choice on us. It’s up to the part of our mind that chooses, what Ken Wapnick called our decision maker, to either choose the ego’s purpose for our lives (separation), or that of the Holy Spirit (Atonement). This can concisely be summed up as the choice between hell and heaven. This is not a choice we make once a year as a New Year’s resolution; every single moment of our days and nights we choose either fear or love; separation or joining; attack or peace. Unfortunately, most of us still consistently choose the ego, still enamored of the idea of special autonomous individuality. The Course summarizes this situation of consistently choosing the ego as follows: “Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love” (T-26.V.13:1). So the ‘you’ Jesus addresses in his Course is not the ego part of our mind; he always refers to the decision making part of the mind.
The most important choice you and I make, each moment in every hour, in all of the days in our dreamed-up lives in time and space, is a simple one: do I choose the ego or the Holy Spirit? Do I choose fear or love? The situational choices in our lives may seem myriad, but each of these choices spiritually boils down to this simple essence. This is why A Course in Miracles is a mind training curriculum. Of course we all want to experience happiness, but we have confused ourselves about where happiness can be found, and “An untrained mind can accomplish nothing” (WpI.In.1:3). So why not make it a habit of persistently asking yourself from time to time: “What am I here for?” To be sure, the honest answer to this question — that is, to learn the Holy Spirit’s lessons of Love in this dream world, and slowly choose to accept the Atonement — is deeply threatening to the ego, whose counsel we followed by choosing to be born in this dream world in the first place. That is why spiritual enlightenment rarely happens overnight: we are still much too frightened to eventually lose our autonomous individual self.
Choose to learn, therefore, on a daily basis to observe your thoughts from above the battleground of the mind (T-23.IV). Without any judgment, without any condemnation. Be a witness. Be a passerby. And then choose to think, say and do nothing on your own (which is the real meaning of the Course’s statement that “I need do nothing”, T18.VII), but choose to follow the loving impulses of the Holy Spirit, which will result in many more peaceful experiences during the days (and nights!). Remind yourself that while perhaps you chose to be born again into this world to try special individuality one more time, you now want to choose to lovingly employ this very same incarnation to shorten the timespan required to reach the point of fully accepting the Atonement. Realize, too, that this shift in the purpose of life’s journey cannot fail, as the dream of time and space is illusory anyway and its happy ending guaranteed (WpII.292). So why wait for Heaven? “Slavation” (ego) or salvation (Love) is your choice now.
— Jan-Willem van Aalst, June 2023
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