Correction is of the ego

A person was despairing about the inferiority of his race compared to a particular race in the mate-selection marketplace. He was enraged because of this. I wanted him to stop thinking these thoughts that I thought were poisonous to his well-being.

 

My function is to see the truth in the other, not to make their mistake real. From A Course in Miracles, Chapter 4, Section III, paragraph 8:

You cannot correct yourself. Is it possible, then for you to correct another? Yet you can see him truly, because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not up to you to change your brother, but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.

I must see his racist thoughts as ineffectual because they are not based on reality. Like a dream, they don't move anything. Sure, he might believe in them, but that doesn't affect the truth in me and him, which is of a completely different dimension than the dreamed thought. In what dimension does this truth lie?

The truth is our connection and care for each other, i.e. our compassion, despite our beliefs. I want him to suffer less. The way he chooses to suffer less seems to me to make him suffer more, but if I believe that, I will see more of the suffering. His strategy for reducing suffering is to hate on certain kinds of people. I think his form of hate hurts him. In fact, I hate his hate. It follow then that if his hate hurts him, my hate of his hate hurts me.

Instead of feeding this spiral, I can view his hate as ineffectual as a bad dream. One doesn't comfort a child having a bad dream by shooing the scary monsters away because that reinforces their existence. Better to just affirm to the child that he is safe now in your arms. Affirm that what he truly wants, love, is already his by loving him.

I am currently limited in my capacity to love those who hate, but I continue to try, knowing that their healing is mine. We awake together.