The fundamental notion of the Course's view of special relationships is that we are not who we say we are, and specifically we are not the separated individual we think we are, and the special relationships in our lives serve merely to protest that we really, really, really now are who we say we are, which is not to be dislodged until we perhaps start to suspect that "the lady doth protest too much," as Shakespeare expressed it, and we begin to disbelieve the story, and start looking for "another way." In this context there is thus a dynamic of hatred, which must be appreciated to get an honest understanding of the situation. Moreover both special "love," and special "hate" relationships are expressions of that same dynamic of hatred, and belief in differences, which is the non-existent foundation of the ego system.
In this book about the Hemings family, Annette Gordon-Reed goes to extraordinary lengths to discern the dimensions of the Jefferson/Hemings relationship, and I think she does an absolutely incredible job navigating the scarce evidence, and interpolating from a lot of circumstantial information to evoke a picture that few have managed to discern, and which some have taken offense at, namely that there could have been anything like love involved in this scenario. I think her analysis is right on, it just feels intuitively right, and it befits the subtlety and complexity of Jefferson's character that this should have been so. At the same time the ego's bargain is also in evidence, and actually simplifies the analysis.
For again, on the basis of the psychology of the Course, the purpose of the special relationship is to make the individuals involved good and real, and thus to keep them vested in their (false!) identities, not to mention to shut Jesus out as completely as possible. Now I have already spoken in my book and elsewhere on this blog of Jefferson's curious relationship with Jesus, which is an interesting topic in its own right. It behooves us to remember that all of us have a right mind and a wrong mind, and one or the other can play itself out in different scenes of our life. Johan Willem Kaiser, who has been a very important teacher in my life has a very helpful expression for what the Course terms the special relationship. He called it a "duo-self-preservation-effort," and that describes exactly the ambivalent, and even completely contradictory nature of it, which I'm suggesting would make the Jefferson/Hemings relationship easier to understand.
Thus, since bodies cannot communicate, and only spirit can, the special relationship as a so-called relationship between separate bodily identities, characters on the stage of the world (think Shakespeare, "All the world's a stage"), is rooted in the ego's intention to demonstrate that we exist, we are separate, and we are real. It is the most powerful witness to the reality of the ego's world, and it behooves us to remind ourselves from time to time that the truth never needs witnesses, because it is simply true--with or without witnesses that say so. This also means that we thrive by communication failure, and we are scared out of our wits at the thought that communication should be possible, which sometimes shows up in the fear of "losing ourselves," in a relationship, which is merely a cover over the fact that the purpose of a good special relationship is to lose our (true) Self, and reaffirm our (false) ego-self. Therefore, regardless of what happens on the surface, the foundation of the special relationship is the belief in differences, which is how the ego wants to define us. And generally the more the merrier, for the purpose of the relationship is to keep spirit out, and the ego firmly in charge, so the more differences the better it often is. This does not mean that on the surface a relationship cannot appear to be loving, that's just a matter of what kind of a play we decided to be in in this lifetime. At the core of it, the foundation, the special relationship is part of the ego system, and based in fear, hatred and the belief in differences, and ultimately the separation from God. Most of all we can ill afford to be like him (That's why the Christian belief that we should be " sinners all," became so popular). Once we understand this even a little bit, it is also clear why these relationships are sometimes loving and sometimes full of hate, and one can easily turn into the other, for they are merely two sides of the same coin, in reaffirming the belief in duality, which is a fundamental premise of the ego's existence, without which it is utterly meaningless, and thus " out of business."
Therefore all the differences which help define the relationship serve the ego's purpose of keeping differences real, and making our individual egoic in this world a reality, which substitutes for the Kingdom not of this world which J taught about, and keep it safely out of awareness, for that is the process, as is clearly demonstrated in the Thomas sayings as well, e.g. Logion 3:
J said: " If your teachers say to you, ' Look, God's Divine Rule is in the sky,' then the birds will precede you. If they say to you, 'It's in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, God's Divine Rule is within you and you are everywhere. When you know yourself, you will be known, and you will understand that we are one. But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
The ego, or the thought of separation, is invested in us NOT knowing ourselves as who we are in truth, namely the Son of God, and therefore the same as Jesus (i.e. we would understand that we and he are one), as long as we don't know ourselves (i.e. continue to identify with the false self, or ego self), we continue to live in poverty, because we are then invested in the ego's belief in lack. But, we will not take responsibility for that belief and therefore we project our guilt onto others, and believe they have stolen the peace of God from us, and if two people effectively manage to mutually maintain that projection, this is what the world calls a marriage made in Heaven. Through this union we now choose to believe that we regain the bliss of Heaven, never owning up to the fact that we ourselves threw it out to begin with. So as long as two people mutually agree to supplement that lack for one another, that sort of an arrangement can appear to be quite stable at times, or at least until one of them forgets to put out the garbage on time, or something equally silly. In this context then, it can be seen how the ego's nefarious logic, and the strenght of this ego-conspiracy is served, by all differences that play into this, because they reinforce the underlying belief in differences which is the foundation of that relationship. Thus master/slave, black/white, man/woman, tall/short, and any other dualistic dimensions of like nature reinforce the underlying bargain, the bargain to shut God out. In the fascinating relationship at hand there are numerous additional dimensions which make it clear how one gets from the other what they need to reinforce their own role. Specifically, Jefferson had promised his wife not to remarry, and taking a black concubine under the perceptions of the day nicely met that condition, while of course for Sally the possibility of a relationship, even while giving up a shot at freedom in France, achieved eventual manumission for her kids. Likewise for the 'legitimate' children Sally was not a threat, because she could be safely ignored, and could not inherit property, other than what was given to him during his lifetime or explicitly in his will. There are other interesting dimensions, such as in a master/slave relationship, eventually the submissive/slave is in control of the relationship, in subtle ways, and this was from time to time expressed as the master becoming the slave of the slave, because slave-ownership then defined the master as who he thought he was, and a slave-owner without slaves is nothing. The element of bargain was also present in the form of Sally's apparent negotiations with Jefferson in Paris, where she was pregnant just before they were to return to America, and negotiated that Jefferson would free all her children when they turned 21.Therefore, when seen strictly in terms of these categories which serve the two personalities involved in their own view of themselves, it becomes much more clear why a relationship like this could indeed work very well for all concerned, as it reinforced the realities of the chosen roles. After that, the choice if we act this out in a more "loving" way or as a special hate relationship really is circumstantial, and too often one turns into the other, without really changing the dynamic, unless and until at least one partner starts looking for "another way." For Love is only Love in the full awareness of oneness, as suggested above in Logion 3, and Jesus's teaching of forgiveness as expressed in the Course is the most direct path to that living awareness, of which we catch mere glimpses at first (what the Course calls " Miracles"), but which can become our living reality in due course, as what the Course calls "the Real World." Love can only be born from a relationship through quantum forgiveness, Course style, which does lead one (or both) partner(s) to realize that we are one, and not separate, for in the realization that we only project separation onto the other in all of our various accusations and irritations, the awareness of our total oneness is born and only that is love. The atonement is the realization there was no sin, only a silly mistake, and that is when the true love of the Holy Relationship dwells in our heart.
As to Jefferson, it seems clear that besides his amazing intuition of the core of Jesus's teachigns, that he fathomed at least something of the forgiveness process, and the true meaning of love, as is evident from a letter to his daughter about an upset she was having, which is quoted in this book on page 428/9:
Every human being, my dear, must be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and where we to love none who had imperfections this world would be a desert for our love. All we can do is make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two. (Letter TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 17, 1790)
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