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. 

Simulacra and Meaninglessness

I thought the language in A Course in Miracles is too verbose and archaic. Then I started reading Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Now that is complicated. I got frustrated reading passages like:

...the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials—worse: with their artificial resurrection in the system of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. (p. 2)

So much ado about nothingness, literally. Exasperated, I pick up ACIM to a random page like a magic 8-ball. The first words that confront me are:

Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? If He had, it has no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can affect its aim, but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. (T.30.VII.1)

Escape the Echo Chamber

The world is merely a story you are writing. Whatever you want to have happen happens. The internet is a prime example of the flexibility of reality. As you search, so shall you get search results. Whatever your political leaning or worldview, you will find the corner of the internet that echoes your sentiments and populates the trenches of the evil other side.

The internet saps your energy because you are the one producing the image you see, but you do this unknowingly, and so you don't notice your energy depleting as you set up the props and puppets that enact the plot you sleeplessly yet somnambulistically wrote. The so-called real world is but a slowed down version of the internet. You eventually find what you subconsciously look for there as well.

If you're tired of make-believe conflicts and making love to blow up dolls, there is a way out. It is to become aware of this constant seeking outside yourself for a confirmation of thoughts you've generated inside yourself. Objectively observe the molding of this sculpture you call yourself by the slings and arrow of outward fortune, which all seem to come from outside yet are your own hands or, more precisely, your own thoughts reacting to the pseudorandom numbers the dark cloud of chaos dances in answer to your rain dance calling for it.

There is a point of decision in which you threw out the peace of nonbelief and began believing things. Perhaps you can remember a time in your childhood when you encountered the thought, "You are a bad boy/girl," and decided it was true. Along with that thought came the promise of punishment from a perceived other to mar the serenity of a mind where thoughts were mere playthings and not the confining walls of granite they were to become. Fight the walls and you testify to their reality while bruising your fists. Deny the walls and you throw away the key while still acting within their confines.

Fortunately there is a window through which you can peek out of this prison and glimpse the endless field of innocence outside. No matter how long you've sentenced yourself to a belief in punishment, there is that hole in the belief that naturally rips apart the entire thought system upon recognition. This is the constructive use of doubt or judgment. You are always so ready to doubt others' ideas and motives; why not apply this skepticism to your own insanity? You are not fundamentally and incorrigibly insane no matter how long you've played at being so. Return to the still point from which you choose all experiences. Rest a while there. And choose again.

The Changeless

How can there be something in this world without an opposite? What is this "changeless" thing that underlies temporal existence?

Let's say it was an observer, a witness. Can we say that the observer is creating with its focus? If so, wouldn't its vision provoke it? The perception of an object changes the subject. The changeless is not the perceiver.

The one thing without an opposite is the existential experience itself, the "I am". There cannot be an "I am not." That concept exists as an artifact of a mind that perceives through contrasting thought.

Why was the mind created when it is fraught? Let's try to live in a world of opposites. Let's see just how far out we get. Do you see its end? It ends in "I am not."

The real question is why do you maintain a fraught mind, why do you defend its way of thinking? Who cares about its beginning? Only the mind seeking to seal itself in a mythical prison.

Meaningless world

The world I perceive has no meaning except what I ascribe to it. It looks like things are good or bad, but this is really just me judging the world according to my prior conditioning and experiences.

I went to the club last night for an NYE party. I've been trying to train myself to enjoy the club scene because I've never felt like I fit in and it still bugs me that I feel like a wannabe after all these years. Instead of letting loose and enjoying the party, I anxiously scoured the dance floor for people who would play a role for me in my story of being cool.

It was humbling (or humiliating) to so helplessly revert to such childish social comparisons. These judgments come from an insecure past that I keep alive because I'm convinced of their truth. Ultimately, though, how absolute can one ego's perspective be? This form I take, this life with its history and learnings, is just one out of many in a long line of attempts to survive on this planet, and even survival is an arbitrary perspective that the ever-changing universe seems indifferent toward.

Meaning is not out there. I write upon the world what I think it means and then lament that the meaning is so full of meanness. I describe the world as uncaring and competitive when it is in fact meaningless. Letting go of my meanings scares me because I believe I would become nothing without them; I would have nothing to live for. I'd rather have a cruel world than nothing at all. Sensing the meaninglessness of the world, I then seal myself in opposition to it by calling meaninglessness itself uncaring and a cruel joke.

But obviously, the world is still here regardless of whether I give it any meaning. It would make sense that I drop the need to attribute to it any good or ill because even calling something good means bad must also exist, albeit elsewhere, and that will just upset me. Maybe when I erase my graffiti on the world, its challenging complexity will dissolve into a simple "this is".

As I look at the dance floor and the social arena, I see classes of people keeping people in and out of their cliques. I see competition for status at the expense of others' feelings. Actually, I'm just upset that I see a meaningless world, and these perceptions are just masking my upset and the scary meaninglessness. I am becoming aware that the world is beyond my complete understanding, and that's okay.

Note: This is an exercise in A Course in Miracles, lesson 12.