Good Questions 
Questions & Answers

There is nothing I like more than a good question about the Course.  And by "good question", I mean a thought provoking one - a question that makes me reassess what I currently believe and perhaps come to see it in a new light. As a result, we have a very interactive study group of Course students here in Louisville where everyone is encouraged to share their insights and questions. It is also a very diverse group with people from widely varying religious backgrounds so we get a lot of very insightful questions and I've been making a note of them for the last 16 years.

 

Question: The world seems to be going crazy - extreme weather, extreme politics, extreme financial upheavals - and it just doesn't seem to let up. What is going on? How do you see this in ACIM terms? ~Patti R-B

Answer: The key for me is from the original wording in the Urtext concerning external conditions - that
which we see as "the world" - as that unaltered statement is the clearest of all its edited versions. And it reads:

"...external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet. Why should you be at THEIR mercy?"

In other words, what we see as the external world is the manifestation of both the loving and the fearful thoughts of the collective minds that comprise the Sonship. BUT, Jesus tells us here, we are NOT at their mercy! (And notice Jesus makes no exceptions to "external conditions" for droughts, floods, tornados, earthquakes, famine OR massive radioactive leaks!) My own peace comes from taking what Jesus said here literally.

Put in the context by the Original Edition's slightly edited (and more polished) version of this section, we learn how to deal with ALL fear-based manifestations that now seem to dominate so much of the external world:

"Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of external searching. Mental health is inner peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without and capable through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions which proceed from lack of love in others." CH 2 I paragraph 17

(Please note that this OE paragraph is identical to Jesus' original dictation while the FIP version deletes the clarifying word "external" from "conditions" and shifts the solution's active statement, "through your own miracles", to the entirely passive, "through your acceptance of miracles". See CH 2.I.5 in the FIP.)

The ego tells us that we must make a way to ontrol the external conditions in order to find peace. The Course is telling us, on the other hand, that we must address the SOURCE of the external conditions - our own and others' THOUGHTS. How? By seeing every unpeaceful, unloving or conflicted external condition as just another opportunity for authentic healing, not just in my own mind's perception of the situation but in offering a blessing of healing to all other minds, as well.

By recent example, I live on Social Security exclusively (my company retirement pension having been eliminated by a corporate bankruptcy) and the desire of a group of politicians to do away with that income was an opportunity for me to go into rampant fear.

The old me would have been enraged and would have wanted to "make someone pay" just for the threat of doing away with Social Security, but the new "Coursified" me could recognize the fear that rose up immediately so it could be given over to the Holy Spirit. That new version of me claims the safety of "God's economy", that there is no loss - even here - and that, somehow, everything that was happening was not only in my own best interest BUT that I'd also asked for this to happen. BIG diff! With very different results: I didn't add my fearful dream to the collective dream of fear that raged for weeks so I weakened the conflict in general while remaining "above the battleground" personally.

Plus allowing the Holy Spirit to assure me that I am safe and beyond all cause for worry:

"Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more." CH15.I.1

AND NOTHING MORE...because:

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, “My brother, choose again.” He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created alters unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be.

"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ’s strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. The Saviours of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who chose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen APART from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is ONLY what He wills." CH 31.VIII.3 – 4

We are not here to be beyond he temptation to fear but to learn to rise above and beyond it. And we learn BEST from EXTREME EXAMPLES, the Course says. And Lord! Don't we have a lot of those?!? But:

"Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where His gift can once again be recognized as ours. And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone, and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared." CH 31.VIII.9

Let us be glad...for so many obvious lessons coming so quickly. One might even say we were seeing a "celestial speedup" happening right before our eyes, a speedup in our ability to heal and accept Happy Dreams instead of disasters!

I deeply hope that this was helpful to you for I know that it has served me well to just remember that simple claritythat Jesus gave us - though it was obscured for so many years - that we do not have to be at the mercy of the external manifestationsof the parts of the Sonship that still cherish fear!

~*~