Laughing our Way to Salvation

. . . on remembering there is nothing to fear

Fear is a thing that you make. Love is a thing that you are.

there’s a Halloween thing that happens near the end of the post, this works

Most of the negative emotions we experience - jealousy, anger, desperation, anxiety et cetera - are flavors of fear.

This is a way of saying, if we solve the problem of fear, then we solve the rest of them as well.

Fear obscures what you are. Fear makes what is obvious appear complex and distorted. In this way, fear makes the question "what am I" feel big and important, as if nothing else matters but answering it correctly.

That question is an effect of - and a sustainer of - separation.

Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effect (T-27.VIII.6:2-3).

The first answer to the question "what am I" (once laughter is off the table) is: a body. This body.

And literally every thing that happens after - every thought, every relationship, every circumstance - reinforces that answer without ever changing or affecting in any way the fact that the answer is wrong.

If the mind believes the body is its goal it will distort its perception of the body, and by blocking in its own extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering separation. Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but foster illness, because it is not true (T-8.VII.11:3-4).

Set aside for a moment the question of what you are in truth. Ask instead, why did I make fear?

The question isn't theoretical. We can't answer it without actually looking at what scares us.

The first thing that scares us is fear. We are scared of being scared.

I remember an ACIM study group many years ago. A woman had been on a Buddhist retreat; she came back the way you do from that sort of thing. Earlier in the day, while walking, a strange dog barked at her, and she got scared. She was disappointed in herself for feeling fear.

Go slowly with me here. My friend's fear of the dog was not the problem. That was just a body doing a body thing.

The problem - the actual fear - was reflected in her disappointment with herself. She was scared that she was scared.

The suggestion is that the reason we are scared of being scared is because we know at a deep level that there is nothing to fear. At a deep level, we know that we are not bodies. We know that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3). Fear itself is an illusion; it has no effects.

But why should that scare us? It ought to liberate us. Why doesn't it?

It doesn't because the second scary thing is God. The God from whom we are separate because we were willing to consider separation. We fear His retribution and judgment for taking separation seriously in the first place and for doubling down on it through fear in the second.

This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death and protected by its attraction . . . Here is your promise never to allow union to call you out of separation; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from you; - the fear of God, the final step in your dissociation (T-19.IV.D.3:1, 4).

Again, go slowly with me.

This "God" that we fear is not God God but rather a projection of God. It is what an unhealed mind - terrified of looking at the source of its confusion - makes as a defense against looking. But like all defenses, it does what it would defend against (T-17.IV.7:1).

We project a terrifying God because it's easier than looking at the true source of fear, which is that we are doing all of this to ourselves. We are choosing separation; we are choosing projection and denial; we are choosing not to heal.

But we are not doing it alone.

A Course in Miracles is a spiritual path in which healing occurs in relationship - specifically, in the transformation of the special, body-based relationship into a holy relationship in which the relationship itself becomes a site of remembering Christ. We reach what is fearful together, and we learn how to face it together.

Forget not that you can this far together, you and your brother . . . The Guide Who brought you here remains with you, and when you raise your eyes you will be ready to look on terror with no fear at all. But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions (T-19.IV.D.8:1, 6-7).

This looking on our brother or sister is not an invitation to another special relationship - the one who gets us, turns us on, always has our back, will do anything we ask, et cetera.

Rather, it is an invitation to hear the call of Love Itself, in which "the exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body" (T-19.IV.D.5:4).

It is a new way of relating to one another, in which each brother and sister becomes the one who show us the way back to the beginning where we "chose" separation so that we can - with and for them - choose again.

You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do (T-31.VIII.2:3-6).

Here is the thing about the strength of Christ. It is not revealed in trial or conflict, or in wise dispensations or mystical visitations.

No, the strength of Christ - which is the peace of Christ - is revealed in laughter. It is revealed in happiness and all its happy effects.

When we experience anything other than a calm, quiet and sustainable joy - gently laughing where once we cried and complained, where once we trembled in dread - it means that we are using fear to deny love in a ridiculous effort to prove that God is dead (e.g., W-pI.190.3:6).

Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage cries or secret sins with weighty consequences (W-pI.190.4:1-3).

Together, we choose to remember that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. And we live that way, as bodies in the world, in the shared light of forgiveness which "shines its merciful reprieve upon each blade of grass and feathered wing and all the living things upon the earth" (S-3.IV.2:3).

Our lives - and the world in which for a little while longer they do their thing - are transformed.

Fear has no haven here, for love has come in all its holy oneness. Time remains only to let the last embrace of prayer rest on the earth an instant, as the world is shined away (S-3.IV.2:4-5).

You know how at Halloween little kids show up dressed as ghosts or witches? And you pretend to be scared? Because they're so not scary? But playing along makes them happy? And you too?

It's like that. Except we've forgotten we're pretending.

Fear is a thing we make; love is what we are. We've been confused, that's all. Let us choose again - in laughter - the way of joy and peace.

Love,
Sean