Although the term resistance appears infrequently in A Course in Miracles, it is nonetheless a key concept in the process of students learning the mind-changing lessons of forgiveness that are the Course's central teaching. Indeed, it is the only concept that can satisfactorily explain a phenomenon experienced by most (if not all) students of the Course at some point or another in their work with it. This is the seeming paradox, on the one hand, of consciously and most sincerely attempting to learn, live, and practice the Course principles under the guidance of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, while on the other hand, experiencing the ongoing frustration of not doing just that. Most spiritual seekers are familiar with the famous words of St. Paul, who exclaimed out of this same sense of frustration: "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do" (Romans 7:19). This article explores the issue of resistance in Course students' efforts to put into practice its principles of forgiveness as taught by their Inner Teacher, the Holy Spirit.

As with so many other areas that touch on the process of healing in A Course in Miracles, the work of Sigmund Freud offers us many parallels which underscore the importance of understanding the dynamics of the problem and its solution. Very early in his psychoanalytic work, Freud observed that his patients were not improving, despite the insights he was offering them as to the cause of their neurosis. It eventually dawned on him that the problem lay in the fact that the patients did not want to get better, a dynamic he termed resistance:

...the [therapeutic] situation led me at once to the theory that by means of my psychical [i.e., psychological] work I had to overcome a psychical force in the patients which was opposed to the pathogenic ideas becoming conscious.... This work of overcoming resistances is the essential function of analytic treatment.... (Studies on Hysteria (with J. Breuer), 1893, Vol. II, p. 268; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1917, Vol. XVI, p. 451).(1)

Indeed, in several places in A Course in Miracles Jesus lets us know that he knows that we will experience resistance to his teachings. We present a few of these, beginning with this statement from the "Rules for Decision" in Chapter 31 of the text:

And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself (T-30.I.1:6-7).

Repeatedly throughout the workbook for students, Jesus alerts us to our potential resistance to the radical ideas he is teaching. In fact, in the Introduction itself he states:

Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter.... Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist (W-pI.in.8:1-2; 9:1-2).

One other example from the workbook:

Your mind is no longer wholly untrained. You are quite ready to learn the form of exercise we will use today, but you may find that you will encounter strong resistance. The reason is very simple. While you practice in this way, you leave behind everything that you now believe, and all the thoughts that you have made up. Properly speaking, this is the release from hell. Yet perceived through the ego's eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell (W-pI.44.5).

In the manual for teachers we find a similar statement from Jesus, alerting his students to the fear involved in accepting his teachings; in this case it is the principle that the cause of sickness is found in the mind and not the body:

The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker (M-5.II.1:7).

The resistance referred to in the above passages is directly related to the fear of losing our personal specialness and individual uniqueness, the letting go of which is the final step before one can awaken from this dream of separation.

Resistance -- the unconscious attempt to sabotage what alone will help -- is so surprising as to be almost unbelievable, as Freud himself observed in this clever, quasi-Platonic dialogue with himself, taken from The Question of Lay Analysis, written in 1926:

It will then be your fate to make a discovery for which you were not prepared.

"And what may that be?"

That you have been deceived in your patient; that you cannot count in the slightest on his collaboration and compliance; that he is ready to place every possible difficulty in the way of your common work -- in a word, that he has no wish whatever to be cured.

"Well! that is the craziest thing you have told me yet. And I do not believe it either. The patient who is suffering so much, who complains so movingly about his troubles, who is making so great a sacrifice for the treatment -- you say he has no wish to be cured! But of course you do not mean what you say."

Calm yourself! I do mean it. What I said was the truth -- not the whole truth, no doubt, but a very noteworthy part of it. The patient wants to be cured -- but he also wants not to be.... They [the patients] complain of their illness but exploit it with all their strength; and if someone tries to take it away from them they defend it like the proverbial lioness with her young (The Question of Lay Analysis, 1926, Vol. XX, pp. 221-22).

This phenomenon, which is so clear to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, is not always recognized in discussions of the spiritual life. And yet how could it not be just as present in spiritual seekers as in psychotherapeutic patients, since undoing the thought system of guilt, anxiety, and fear is common to both disciplines? And how could the undoing of this resistance not be among the most significant aspects to anyone's spiritual path, since the ego with which we all identify is the impediment to our progress?

Thus we see that an important component of our resistance to learning the teachings of A Course in Miracles is our need to suffer and be guilty, what in the pamphlet Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice Jesus refers to as "the hanging-on to guilt, its hugging-close and sheltering, its loving protection and alert defense" (P-VI.1:3), or in Freud's words below, the "powerful need for punishment":

...the impression derived from the work of analysis [is] that the patient who puts up a resistance is so often unaware of that resistance. Not only the fact of the resistance is unconscious to him, however, but its motives as well. We were obliged to search out these motives or motive, and to our surprise we found them in a powerful need for punishment....The practical significance of this discovery is not less than its theoretical one, for the need for punishment is the worst enemy of our therapeutic efforts. It is satisfied by the suffering which is linked to the neurosis, and for that reason holds fast to being ill....[It is the] "need to be ill or to suffer"...The patient must not become well but must remain ill (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933, Vol. XXII, p. 108; An Outline of Psychoanalysis, 1940, Vol. XXIII, pp. 178-80).

This attraction to guilt in ourselves is central to A Course in Miracles' teachings on the ego thought system, for guilt witnesses to the seeming reality of the separation. The experience of punishment -- real or imagined -- justifies our belief in guilt and therefore reinforces the fundamental premise of the ego's existence. To let it go would be tantamount ultimately to letting go of the belief in the reality of a personal self, and thus we resist doing so, not to mention resist the one (or One) helping us to do just that. Jesus comments on this phenomenon, referring to his own life:

Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are (T-6.V-B.1:5-9).

Needless to say, when we believe we are being attacked, we feel justified in attacking back, and almost always do, literally in self-defense. And so we are led to another significant effect of a student's resistance to A Course in Miracles: the need to prove the Course wrong. Underlying this dynamic is the hope that if it is wrong then we do not have to do what it says and change from our ego's way of thinking. Freud, too, in his monumental The Interpretation of Dreams, remarked on this interesting phenomenon in his patients: the need to prove the analyst wrong:

One of the two motive forces leading to such dreams is the wish that I may be wrong. These dreams appear regularly in the course of my treatments when a patient is in a state of resistance to me; and I can count almost certainly on provoking one of them after I have explained to a patient for the first time my theory that dreams are fulfillments of wishes. Indeed, it is to be expected that the same thing will happen to some of the readers of the present book: they will be quite ready to have one of their wishes frustrated in a dream if only their wish that I may be wrong can be fulfilled (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, Vol. IV, pp. 157-58).

This form of resistance as it is expressed in students of A Course in Miracles, can take the form of arguing with the material, especially focusing on the form as a means of ignoring the content. Readers of Kenneth's Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in Miracles may recall the story he tells there (pp. 255-57) of Helen's attempts to do just that during the early weeks of the dictation. Space considerations prevent its full retelling here, but suffice it to say that Helen used a seeming grammatical error on Jesus' part as a justification for her rejecting the material. She wrote:

This real grammatical error makes me suspicious of the genuineness of these notes.

Jesus' response, greatly abbreviated here was:

The reason it came out that way, is because you are projecting...your own anger, which has nothing to do with these notes. You made the error, because you are not feeling loving, so you want me to sound silly, so you won't have to pay attention.

Therefore, when students of A Course in Miracles are not experiencing the positive effects "promised" by Jesus in his Course, it is not because A Course in Miracles has failed them. Rather it is because of their unconscious resistance to what it is truly saying. When Helen complained to Jesus that she was not being helped by his teachings, he responded in the following words, presented here in the edited form of the published Course:

You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is a not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application (T-11.VIII.5:1-3).

As Cassius said to Brutus:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves.... (Julius Caesar, I,ii).

Or as Jesus so emphatically states near the end of Chapter 27 of the text:

The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself (T-27.VIII.10:1).

It was clear to Freud, just as Jesus makes it clear in A Course in Miracles, that a mere intellectual understanding of one's problem is not enough. Rather, it is essential that the resistance to letting go of the problem be uncovered and looked at:

It is true that in the earliest days of analytic technique we took an intellectualist view of the situation....It was a severe disappointment when the expected success was not forthcoming....Indeed, telling and describing his [the patient's] repressed trauma to him did not even result in any recollection of it coming into his mind....After this, there was no choice but to cease attributing to the fact of knowing, in itself, the importance that had previously been given to it and to place the emphasis on the resistances which had in the past brought about the state of not knowing and which were still ready to defend that state. Conscious knowledge...was powerless against those resistances...(Freud, On Beginning the Treatment, 1913, Vol. XII, pp. 141-42).

How do we remove the resistance?...by discovering it and showing it to the patient....If I say to you: "Look up at the sky! There's a balloon there!" you will discover it much more easily than if I simply tell you to look up and see if you can see anything. In the same way, a student who is looking through a microscope for the first time is instructed by his teacher as to what he will see; otherwise he does not see it at all, though it is there and visible (Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1917, Vol. XVI, pp. 437; italics mine).

This is the heart of Jesus' teaching message in A Course in Miracles: uncovering the ego so that we may see our identification with it. Indeed, this process of looking at the ego is the essence of forgiveness:

Forgiveness...is still, and quietly does nothing....It merely looks, and waits, and judges not (W-pII.1.4:1,3).

In this all-important passage from the text, Jesus illustrates the importance of "discovering and showing" the ego to his students as the prerequisite for healing:

No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected....We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready....The "dynamics" of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.

What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? (T-11.V.1:1,3,5-2:2)

Again, looking at the ego means looking at the resistance, realizing how much we have wanted our ego and not God, and what this desire for specialness has cost us. Only then will we be able to truly move beyond our resistance and find the peace of God.

Finally, it should be clear that the process of undoing this resistance is one that occurs over time, and requires the gentle patience that is one of the principal characteristics not only of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, but also of the advanced teacher of God (M-4.I-A,IV,VIII). Freud clearly recognized this in his analytic work:

In the first place, we must reflect that a psychical [i.e., psychological] resistance, especially one that has been in force for a long time, can only be resolved slowly and by degrees, and we must wait patiently.... One must allow the patient time to become more conversant with this resistance with which he has now become acquainted, to work through it...(Studies on Hysteria (with J. Breuer), 1893, Vol. II, p. 282; Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through, 1914, Vol. XII, p. 155).

And in several places Jesus lets his students know that, in the world of time, the process of accepting the Atonement through forgiveness must occur over time, because of the imagined fear of living without the ego. The closing paragraphs of Chapter 1 of the text, originally meant for Helen Schucman's and William Thetford's study of the material, make it quite clear how Jesus sees the process of study and practice of the Course in light of our fearing what he is truly teaching us about leaving our egos aside (the means) and returning to God (the end):

This is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention and study at some level. Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful study. You will also need them for preparation. Without this, you may become much too fearful of what is to come to make constructive use of it....

A solid foundation is necessary because of the confusion between fear and awe to which I have already referred, and which is often made....Some of the later steps in this course...involve a more direct approach to God Himself. It would be unwise to start on these steps without careful preparation, or awe will be confused with fear, and the experience will be more traumatic than beatific. Healing is of God in the end. The means are being carefully explained to you. Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but to reach it the means are needed (T-1.VII.4:1-5; 5:1,7-11).

In discussing the six stages in the development of trust -- a summary of the Atonement path -- Jesus emphasizes the great difficulty in a student's reaching the final stage (the attainment of the real world):

He thought he learned willingness, but now he sees that he does not know what the willingness is for. And now he must attain a state that may remain impossible to reach for a long, long time. He must learn to lay all judgment aside, and ask only what he really wants in every circumstance (M-4.I-A.7:6-8; italics mine).

In conclusion, therefore, just as it was clear to Freud a century ago, and to analysts and therapists ever since, it should be clear to all spiritual seekers that the best intentions in the world are not sufficient to bring about the spiritual goal of our awakening from the darkness (T-18.IV.2:1-2). Rather, what is required is the willingness to examine -- gently and patiently -- every aspect of our ego thought system that seeks to conceal the light (T-24.in.2:1-2), most especially our resistance to this very light. In introducing workbook Lesson 185 -- "I want the peace of God" -- Jesus says:

To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything (W-pI.185.1:1-2).

A Course in Miracles, happily for us, helps us to discover and reinforce that part of our minds (the right mind) that truly does mean these words, at the same time we are being taught that the other part (the wrong mind) will never bring us the happiness and peace we most truly desire. Thus, by heeding Jesus' appeal to our choosing the right mind over the wrong mind, the Holy Spirit over the ego, the resistance to losing our illusory self is finally undone. And we are free! And we are free at last!

FOOTNOTE:

1. All references to Freud are taken from The Standard Edition of the complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1953).