It is helpful to remember that the ego invents problems that cannot be solved in order to distract us from actual healing (e.g. T-4.V.6:6).
When we are trying to solve problems - in our families and friendships, at work or with our health - we are really playing a game called putting off salvation.
It is like Christ comes and offers his hand and we say, "hold on - I've got this untied shoelace to deal with."
This isn't a crime against God or nature. We aren't going to be punished.
It's just that there's another, happier way.
The suggestion is not that we ignore our so-called problems in the world. If the car has a flat tire, change it. If you’re offered a raise, accept it.
Rather, the course suggests we simply notice the temporary nature of these so-called solutions. Since they are all subject to change, they are all illusory, and cannot bring us unshakeable peace.
Reality is changeless (T-30.VIII.1:2). What you and I long for is not an improved life free of problems but reality. We want to know the truth beyond illusion.
Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt and no attack. When truth has come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind. Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating your from all beliefs in the ephemeral (W-pI.107.3:2-4).
That is the firm foundation of peace.
When we search for specific fixes to specific problems occurring in the world, we will find them. Flat tires get fixed; headaches go away. But those "fixes" never reach the underlying problem of our separation from God, which is the only problem we have (W-pI.79.1:4).
Ego is happy to negotiate brief cease-fires in its war on peace, so long as we do not leave the battle altogether. But A Course in Miracles aims at removing blocks to our awareness of Love's presence (In.1:7) and, in doing so, allows us to leave the ego's artificial conflicts altogether.
No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body’s offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground (T-23.IV.9:4-5).
It’s a fact that blocks to awareness of love appear as problems such as broken-down cars, insufficient funds, undercooked salmon, cancer and death.
Responding to them in the form in which they appear is how we learn - in time - that they are simply reflections of our underlying confusion about what we are in truth.
To a body in the world, cancer is a real problem. Medical treatment is a real solution.
But we are not bodies in a world. We neither get cancer nor are healed from cancer.
Ego would like us to forget this. Failing that, it wants us to accept it as merely one possible idea among many with which reasonable people can disagree.
At all costs, ego needs to keep the body central in our thoughts, the key to our self-identity and the meeting space of all our relationships (e.g., T-17.III.2:7).
A Course in Miracles is an invitation to fix the flat tire - or undergo chemotherapy or whatever - while gently reminding ourselves that these experiences are not real but illusions designed to distract us from actual healing.
In the world, problems and their so-called solutions are the same thing. "Solutions" are just "problems" in reverse, the same way flipping a coin doesn't change its value.
Our work is not to resist this conflict, much less try to solve it, but rather to open up to an old way of thinking about it - a way given in Creation. A way that recognizes love without the body. It doesn't reject the body; it doesn't see the body. It forgets the body (e.g., T-18.VII.2:1).
This way of thinking reflects our actual identity as God's creation - not subject to time or space, not capable of being lost or found, beyond separation and unity altogether even.
That is our reality now. When we see ego's "problems and solutions" as anything other than a silly distraction from reality, we allow our awareness of love to be blocked. We don't lose reality; we lose awareness of reality. Which hurts.
And there is - there is always - another way.
Love,
Sean
Sometimes the only thing that helps me get past any difficult problem - an unexpected nasty surprise that first hurts my heart and then sends me scrambling for metaphysical relief - is to first remember my ego wants me to take it very seriously. I try to lighten up and remember that everything is the same (a helpful guy recently provided a useful visual aid of 4 photos of 4 different dumbbells weighing the same). I am soothed to know that no matter what it is - because it is experienced in space/time - it will change or disappear - and if I see it properly (as my own projection) - I have faith and some evidence that it heals on the level where it counts. It is a practice. It is simple. May I be honest? It is hard. It can make me wonder if I can really get anywhere. Am I naive to hope that one day my first response won’t be to gasp in unexpected pain first - but rather to see it, as it is incoming, for what it is - and to smile and keep on loving....