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Introduction Franz Kafka, the highly influential German (though born in Prague) writer of the early twentieth century, reflected modern man's sense of despairing hopelessness in an absurd and meaningless world. One of his more famous pieces is the allegory “Before the Law” from The Trial. It tells of a man who stands before the Law, a symbol that can stand for truth or God, the ultimate happiness that is the man's goal. A doorkeeper bars the way and the man waits a lifetime to enter, growing old and senile as his eyes dim and begin to shut: But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never put to the doorkeeper.… “Everyone strives to attain the Law,…how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?” The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.”Franz Kafka's paranoid fantasy is everyone's fear -- hope here is futile -- which explains the great fascination his work has enjoyed for almost a century. All of us, albeit unconsciously, know whereof he speaks, for we recognize our utter helplessness in living in “a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die” (W-pII.13.5:1), a world in which there is no possibility for meaningful change or happiness: Perhaps you think you find a hope of satisfaction there. Perhaps you fancy to attain some peace and satisfaction in the world as you perceive it. Yet it must be evident the outcome does not change. Despite your hopes and fancies, always does despair result. And there is no exception, nor will there ever be (T-25.II.1:2-6).But where does this bleak despair have its source, and why do we persist in believing its patent lies of punishment and death?
One of the axiomatic statements of A Course in Miracles is that guilt (or sin) demands punishment (see, e.g., T-19.II.1:6; III.2). Since we believe we excluded God from our kingdom (sin), we must believe He will exclude us from His (punishment). The conclusion of the Adam and Eve story in the third chapter of Genesis, the Western world's greatest myth, powerfully portrays the terrifying thought at the core of every person's consciousness. As punishment for their disobedience, the Lord God inflicts pain, suffering, and death upon the world's first two sinners, and as if that were not enough, His vengeful response ensures they will be forever barred from returning to Paradise: He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24).Since a loving Father could never think, let alone behave in such an atrocious manner, the Son's horrid fate can only be the projection of his secret guilt over the original attack on the Oneness of God and Christ, His true Son: The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him (W-pII.3.2:1-4).We, therefore, are the ones who barred God from our special home in the body, closing the door forever to His entry. However, projecting our guilt, it now appears that God has barred us, preventing us from ever finding our way back to Him. Yet, although we can deny our wearying hopelessness, we will never remove its presence as long as our guilt is projected from the mind to the body and its world. In our individual experience, this principle of guilt demanding punishment is expressed in the belief that we do not deserve love or happiness. Unaware of the ontological substratum of our self-hatred, we experience only the frustration of a life of self-sabotage on our health, relationships, jobs, and possessions. Even when our lives appear to work for us according to the world's criteria for success, a gnawing sense of unworthiness remains, nourished by the ego's fourth law of chaos: …you have what you have taken. By this, another's loss becomes your gain… (T-23.II.9:3-4).If we have something of value, it can only be, the ego whispers menacingly in our ears, because we have taken it from someone else. This thought is a shadowy fragment of the horrifying memory of our “original sin” of selfishly seizing from God the Son who was rightfully His. As we read in the manual for teachers, each thought or act of selfishness -- termed “magic thoughts” -- reminds us of our original guilt and the inevitable punishment we deserve at the hands of a God who will never forget our sin against Him: They can but reawaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, “You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten” (M-17.7:2-4).And so we walk this earth, “uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear” (T-31.VIII.7:1), seeking to defend ourselves against God's wrath by shifting the sin onto others, thereby trading their innocence for our guilt. Jesus exposes the puerile insanity of such defenses, however universal they might be: The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting go! (T-27.VIII.8:1-3)Yet this tactic fools no one but ourselves, and therein lies the core of the problem: we can never undo a problem we believe is external to us. Thus, as long as we perceive the problem of guilt to be in another instead of in our minds, the unforgiveness of this self-hatred precludes our ever accepting responsibility for our miserable plight, the precondition for true forgiveness and the undoing of guilt. We thus will not recognize that the mind's decision for the ego's thought system of guilt is the problem, not what the projections of this guilt tell us is the sin of someone else. As we read in the workbook: An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal? (W-pII.1.2)Therefore, if we have projected, it is because we wanted to: our “wanted goal.” After all, it is our dream, and so if we experience something, we must have desired it and its inevitable outcome of conflict and dis-ease. This is the meaning of the following passage from the text: I am responsible for what I see.This has been frequently misunderstood by students of A Course in Miracles to mean that we are responsible for everything our eyes see. Yet Jesus often reminds us that eyes do not see (e.g., T-28.VI.2:1; W-pI.92.1). When the Course speaks of seeing or perceiving, it refers to the mind's interpretation of the sensory data our eyes report. In other words, we need to understand the purpose for our reactions, which is either to awaken us from the ego's dream of separation, or to root us in it still further through reinforcing the belief that the world is real and can affect our inner peace. Over a century ago in The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud spoke of dreams as being wish-fulfillments. Jesus expands on this notion by teaching us that our separating experiences in this world -- sleeping and waking -- fulfill the basic ego wish: Perception seems to teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. It is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you wanted to be true (T-24. VII.8:8-10).This wish is to keep the separation we stole, but not to be held responsible for it. When we thus project our first and secret dream of victimization -- that we are the murdering thieves -- it gives rise to the projected world's dream of our being stolen from and murdered: The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away.…Yet was it started by your secret dream, which you do not perceive although it caused the part you see and do not doubt is real. How could you doubt it while you lie asleep, and dream in secret that its cause is real?In other words, we want to feel banished from Heaven, with the door forever closed to our return. And this desire -- the source of all suffering -- is the problem, not the perceived banishment. Many years ago I was seeing a young man in therapy. When his girlfriend of several years, with whom he was madly in love, broke up with him, he was devastated. Week after week he would bemoan his painful fate, until one day while replaying the hurt of the relationship's end, he described his pain as “exquisite.” That broke the log jam of self-indulged victimization, and he was able finally to let the girl go and resume his life. Indeed, he was quite right. His pain was exquisite in its pristine attraction. As long as he was able to attribute his suffering to his girlfriend's decision, his ego was safe, hiding the mind's insane decision for a life of suffering behind the hurt and anger of a lost external love. All the while, the mind's guilt over its decision to separate from love lay unknown and therefore uncorrected. The question remains, however, why would we ever want to feel so terrible? Why not simply open our eyes from the nightmare and return to the home we never left? After all, we remain at home in God, though we dream of exile (T-10.I.2:1). The wrong-minded answer is totally illogical except from the perspective of the ego, which is the part of our separated mind that likes being separated -- special, unique, autonomous, and free. This part knows that if the mind's decision maker recognizes its mistake and chooses again, the individual self will disappear into its own nothingness. And so it conceives an ingenious strategy of convincing the decision-making Son -- another part of the split mind -- that God will punish the sin against him. The mind, then, becomes a battleground. If he does not escape from it, his terrible fate will be sealed. Thus it is that God's Son -- all of us -- leaves the mind and enters the world of the mindless: the physical universe of time, space, and separated bodies. The ego's secret wish is now understandable: It convinces the Son that he can keep his separated self but avoid God's wrath by splitting off his sin and projecting it onto others. And so the inner world of sin, guilt, and fear is projected out, but now the sin and guilt belong to another, while the fear remains with us, attributed to external causes. Thus do we retain our separated state, but with no responsibility for it, nor for the pain and suffering that inevitably accompany this self. Therefore how could we not feel guilty since not only do we accuse ourselves of the sin of selfishly abandoning and then destroying Heaven so we could exist -- at God's expense -- but this selfishness is compounded by our then falsely attacking others for our sin. We live as bodies, desperately seeking to offset our guilt in the search for the homes of special love and hate relationships that the ego tells us would bring peace and comfort; yet we never find safety there, for our unconscious guilt precludes our ever finding the key that would unlock the closed door of Heaven. We read in Lesson 182 of this underlying experience of doomed pursuit for what we shall never find:
We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell (W-pI.182.3).Finally, collapsing with the exhaustion of a life spent in futility, searching for the open door that will take us home, we call out for the help that is beyond our little reach and limited understanding. Jesus' response heralds our return to sanity and love.
Jesus' answer to our call is to unlock the closed doors of perception, lifting the veil that blinded us to the true problem and its solution. He teaches how the paranoid world of punishment and exclusion is a projection of a thought system of separation we have established as real in our minds: Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that.… Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world (T-21.in.1:1-2,4-7).Jesus helps us recognize that when we accuse another, even Another, of separating us from Heaven's peace, it must be that we are secretly accusing ourselves of this self-same sin, magically hoping we can be free of its wretched stain. Moreover, we expect that God Himself will be taken in by this subterfuge and will see the blood stains of sin on the objects of our projection, and thus punish them instead of us: Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated or in need of anything, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate and damning him to hell (T-27.I.3:1-2).How sad for us to be so blind to love's truth and to our happiness! The pain of resisting love is immeasurable, and were we to remember its illusory cause, its undoing would be instantaneous. Thus Jesus patiently explains to us the origin of our distress, the cause of our belief that Heaven's door is forever closed to us, not to mention our concomitant feelings of personal despair: all suffering originates with the belief we have separated from God, reinforced by separating from each other in the hope that our happiness, if not salvation, comes at another's expense (the aforementioned fourth law of chaos). Since pain's undoing can lie only in reconnecting with those we believe we have attacked and hurt, to open Heaven's gate we must bring all our brothers, without exception. This is the answer to our exclusion -- of God, Christ, and our already separated and fragmented brothers: Christ is at God's altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter. The door is not barred, and it is impossible that you cannot enter the place where God would have you be. But love yourself with the Love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You can refuse to enter, but you cannot bar the door that Christ holds open. Come unto me who hold it open for you, for while I live it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my life and yours, and nothing is denied by God to His Son (T-11.IV.6).Journeying with Jesus, we learn we have merely been mistaken. That is all. The third law of chaos to the contrary (T-23.II.5-6), the Will of God is not that we be banned from His Love as punishment for our sin of separation. Indeed, that is what we need to forgive him for: “… it was not His Will that [we] be crucified” (T-24. III.8:13). Our choosing forgiveness -- our special function on earth -- undoes the guilt that held the insanity of God's wrath in place. With it gone, so too are the locks and bolts that barred the way to Heaven, keeping the door seemingly shut forever. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked will merely fall away and disappear. For it is not your Father's Will that you should offer or receive less than He gave, when He created you in perfect love (T-26.II.8:4-6).Therefore, in order to pass through the door, we must go “together, or not at all” (T-19.IV-D.12:8). Helen Schucman, scribe of A Course in Miracles, had a recurring vision in which she saw herself, bedecked in white, standing by Heaven's gate to welcome all who passed through: “In the Name of Christ, pass through this gate in peace.” Christ's Name is that of perfect oneness and wholeness, and thus all must pass through this gate, or none of us does. As Jesus says in the stirring conclusion to the text: My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your own release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not (T-31.VIII.8:1-5; italics mine).The end of this paragraph provides the right-minded correction of the stern doorkeeper's closing lines in Kafka's above-quoted “Beyond the Law”: “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.” Here are Jesus' comforting words that mark the end of the ego's rule of guilt, projection, and death: To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you (T-31. VIII.8:6-7).Easier said than done, however, since the ego's fear of annihilation remains our own. Therefore, we need to practice forgiveness with great vigilance. All our relationships are part of the classroom in which Jesus instructs us: our obvious special relationships with family, friends, and colleagues; but our relationships with public or seemingly inconsequential figures as well. Whenever we find ourselves filled with grievances of any kind -- slight twinges of annoyance or intense fury (W-pI.21.2:5) -- that is the time to remember our goal to awaken from the ego's dream and return home. With this uppermost in our minds, we recall that we cannot pass through Heaven's door without all people coming with us. At this point the decision to let go of thoughts of judgment and attack is easy, and Jesus' vision of love without exception becomes our own. We hear his gentle voice remind us that regardless of the horrifying despair of our nightmares of separation and punishment, nothing has changed God's Love: “not one note in Heaven's song was missed” (T-26.V.5:4). It was only in dreams that Heaven's door was closed to us, but as our eyes slowly open to the truth, the dream of guilt and attack fades; its place taken by the remembrance of God's non-exclusive Love that has never ceased to welcome us. Forgiveness' role is now complete as all barriers to approaching Heaven's gate have been gently dissolved in the calm and healing light of truth. To recap, guilt over our belief in separate interests is the problem of the closed door, which is undone through practicing Jesus' lessons of shared interests -- the answer that opens the way to God. We have brought the illusions of our delusional thinking to the Holy Spirit's truth, accepting responsibility for our mistaken choice for the ego, which is now corrected by His gentleness. The door to Heaven, closed by guilt, swings open as love fills our minds with its healing light: …keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Him and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, and cannot serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God's temple. Its gates are open wide to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon his Father's welcome (T-14.VI.8:3-8).
Now that the doorway home has reopened, we happily awaken from the nightmare world of guilt and punishment. God was never angry, nor did we ever sin. Our inner world has always been lit by love, and the clouds of guilt that seemed to cast us into bottomless pits of dark despair had no effect on our reality: Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see (W-pI.131.13:2).Thus does Jesus encourage us on our journey home, confident we will achieve our goal, for we have understood we do not walk alone: all the Sonship walks with us, and we gladly give thanks for the light that has returned from beyond the door to welcome our joyous homecoming: We cannot fail today. There walks with us the [Holy] Spirit Heaven sent us, that we might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where we will find the goal of all our searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end together as we pass beyond the door (Adapted from W-pI.131.14).The door is open and we have come. We have come at last! (adapted from T-26.IX.8:8)
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