06.02.06
0403 - Why a simple course appears to involve so much time and struggle
Posted in the Branch at 10:45 pm by Linda 
Print This Post
from Issue 004 — Nov 2001
Course students often experience the fact that the Course process can seem to take so much time as problematic. This is often felt as a fear that, despite our best efforts, nothing is happening. Nothing but the apparently endless turbulence of our personality reacting to problems perceived to be inside or out. There have been numerous times in which I have heard earnest Course students express their dismay: “If this Course is so simple, then why can I not have the answer now? I am tying to do what it says but I am still not peaceful. It just does not seem to work in my case.”
So why is it that regardless of the issues which seem to confront us we do not tend to feel peaceful now? There are many responses that could be given to this, but I would like to explore one in the context of looking at means and ends. I will primarily be focusing on material from the section “The Consistency of Means and End”. (T-20.V11.)
Jesus addresses himself to the struggles we undergo in seeking to bring this Course into practice. The “great discomfort” he alludes to in this section (T-20.V11.1:5) brings to mind the descriptions of the experience of his students in the Development of Trust section of the Manual for Teachers: “…this need not be painful (undoing), but it usually is so experienced…this is always somewhat difficult…it (relinquishment) will engender enormous conflict. Few teachers of God escape this distress entirely (the belief that one is called upon to give up the valuable)…And now he must attain a state that may remain impossible to reach for a long, long time.” (M-4.1.A.3:2, 4:2, 5:2-3, 7:7)
The Course makes it very clear, however, that all this discomfort need not be. The reason we experience the discomfort is because, having accepted a change of purpose for our lives and relationships, we are not leaving the means for the fulfillment of that purpose to Spirit. Contrary to all the agonising and effort that seems to be needed to put into practice the ideas of the Course, Jesus makes it perfectly clear that purpose and means are provided and cannot in fact be separated. What is required from us is that we simply accept what is given. Jesus can therefore say:
“This Course requires almost nothing of you. It is impossible to imagine one that asks so little, or could offer more.” (T20.VII.1: 7 –8)
Immediately after saying this he goes onto examine the real reason why we resist acknowledging, let alone accepting in all simplicity the means provided for learning this Course. Our struggle with the means in fact conceals our ambivalence about the purpose of our lives and relationships. I quote excerpts from paragraphs 2 and 3 of the same section.
“If you are not (willing to accept the means) let us admit that you are inconsistent…How can one be sincere and say, ‘I want this above all else, and yet I do not want to learn the means to get it?’…And when you hesitate, it is because the purpose frightens you, and not the means. Remember this, for otherwise you will make the error of believing the means are difficult.” ( T-20.VII.2:5,7, 3:4-5)
Truly learning this Course requires absolute honesty and healing can only occur if we look at what we are up to. If we have been studying the Course for sometime, and at times find we go through periods of considerable difficulty in relation to it, then we need to look honestly at the resistance we must have in accepting the goal of forgiveness and holiness as the only one we want for our lives. This honest perspective on our difficulties is far healthier than trying to blame the Course.
The reader might recall that the periods of discomfort described in the development of trust section of the Manual all occur within the context of the teacher of God sorting out the valuable from the valueless. Indeed one could describe the Course altogether as an ongoing exploration of what is valuable and valueless, terms that could be interchanged for real and illusory, meaningful and meaningless, true and false and so on.
The struggles we have in endeavoring to apply this simple, direct and wholly consistent Course thrive and have their being in our unacknowledged and unhealed effort to have, do or become something, as well as practice forgiveness. It is the “as well as” that always trips us up. Conflicting goals must necessarily lead to conflicted experience. In other words, we have succumbed to the lure of specialness again and are using some aspect of our world as an end in itself for ourselves, rather than giving it to Spirit to use for us. We have certainly reached a stage in which we see value in doing the Course, but we are still inclined to find value somewhere else. Its purpose is not the only value we hold.
The good news for all of us is that the wholly benign Course teaching fully expects us to make these errors (always with the understanding, however that they need not be.) Any instant in which we notice what we are up to can become a holy instant if we resign as the author of the purposes and outcomes of our lives (an impossible situation anyway) and use that very circumstance as an opportunity to allow means and end to merge in our awareness. We implicitly acknowledge our helplessness in relation to fixing our lives or ourselves up and ask for help in seeing differently now. In giving up the presumption of knowing what is best for ourselves and being able to organise for that, we claim the peace, which always has been and always is possible now. In fact it is only possible now. Peace is the means and peace is the end. That is the curriculum and in the spirit of that curriculum we are asked to have faith that all we need to learn it will be provided for us.
Once we open up to the healing potential of any and every moment, time ceases to seem like the enemy which we have to control, beat or defend against. In accepting the larger purpose of forgiveness, which includes but also transcends all that we seem to be, all things gently and naturally fall into place.
“Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition.” (T-16.VI.8: 2)
Given that an awareness of now reflects eternity, where is the struggle and what is the rush? In the dawning of the awareness of that which we were always seeking as being presently available to us now, we can at last let go.
“Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us showing us the way. He fails in nothing. He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him.” (W-p2.302.2: 1-3)
©2001 LH