06.02.06
0304 - Experience and Denial
Posted in the Branch at 10:15 pm by James 
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from Issue 003 — Jul 2001
Christmas was to be my mother’s last. Something the family knew, but like most families, did not voice out loud. A slow process, the death of a body. Or so it can sometimes seem.
My mother died in the early hours of a Monday morning. John, my brother, down from interstate, called to let me know. She had died sometime during the early hours of the morning, but John had waited a few hours so as not to wake me. There was nothing to do that couldn’t wait a little while. A short time later I arrived at mom’s house where together with the rest of the family endeavoured to mix the pragmatic with the felt absence. A day that is difficult to describe, as I am sure anyone who has experienced something similar will agree. Later we all gathered around my sister’s kitchen table to discuss the arrangements for the funeral with the celebrant. He asked if any of us wanted to say something during the service. I immediately volunteered to speak. Not having done so nine years earlier at my father’s funeral, I was determined to make amends. Strange choice of words, ‘amends’, as if I had done wrong and needed to correct it. But then, we are students of the Course so our use of guilt laden words should come as no surprise.
The following Tuesday night I shared with our study group that mom had died and that I had been practicing my speech so that I would get through it without too many tears. A little later that evening, one of the group members came up to me to ask about death and what the Course tells us. So I confirmed that death does not exist, that what has not been born cannot die, and that bodies, mothers, sons, everything here, is not real.
They then asked, “but if this is all true, why are you sad, for I see sadness in your eyes?”
Indeed there was sadness in my eyes for I was saddened by this ‘apparent’ loss that I was experiencing. Although I ‘knew’ the Course’s teaching about the reality of this world. Although I ‘knew’ that there was no loss, that nothing in reality had happened at all. I also ‘knew’ that my experience did not correspond with this ‘knowledge’. What my brother was asking was why I was not denying this experience, given that it was not the truth. They were not alone in their interpretation of what the Course can appear to be asking us to do when we first begin to practise its teachings. They thought the Course was instructing us to deny what is happening in the world. After all, the world is an illusion, right?
Yes the world is an illusion, but, and this is a very important but, it is an illusion that we, as experiential beings, believe in. The Course is not asking us to deny the experience of being in this world, for as it tells us early in the text, that this is a particularly unworthy form of denial (T-2.IV.3:8-12). Rather it is asking us to fully experience ourselves in this world so that we can question, and ultimately deny, not the experience itself, but what that experience is telling us about ourselves. For me to deny the sadness I felt would be to deny the opportunity that very experience was offering at this time. This experience, and every other experience I have is, in effect, showing me the evidence of what I could choose to believe about myself and my preference to believe the ‘truth’ of the ego—that we are indeed separate limited beings destined to be born, live a little while, and then die. This experience and my preference for it, far from being something I as a good Course student, should deny, was offering me the opportunity to reach out once more for the hand of Jesus and ask him to help me see it differently. In other words, to choose again. To deny the experience under the banner of spiritual advance would be to completely miss this opportunity and cement one more layer of mis-thought into my unconsciousness.
Things happen in this dream we call the world. Bodies come and go, relationships form and break, people seem to live and die. We do not have to go out and manufacture experiences, we already are! All these experiences and their attendant emotions provides us with a mirror that enables us to see how we really view ourselves, not how we tell ourselves who and what we are. These experiences are all part of the lesson plans we wrote in our attempt to convince ourselves we are not, what we are in truth, but in illusion. And, all these experiences can, if we are willing, reflect to us the error of our thinking and, should we so wish, be offered up for healing and correction.
As you practise the Course increasingly in your life beware the tempation to deny your experiences under a banner of spiritual attainment. In other words do not deny what you experience in the world. See it clearly, own it as your perception, made to teach a lie, and then offer it for healing with no expectation other than it will be done. For it is not the experience or event that led to it, that needs healing, but the thought behind it. And if you deny the experience, you deny the very thing that is offering you access to that underlying thought.