On Islam -- Happy Father's Day

Surrender is the most difficult thing to the ego to understand, because it is totally invested in what ACIM calls fighting God for His Authorship. We want to be original, and we want to be right, but (un)fortunately we are neither. While formal religions have little appeal for me, and Islam is no exception, I've often found solace with some of the Sufi wise men, from the ridiculous, like Mullah Nasruddin, to the sublime, like Rumi, or Tierno Bokar, and I've sometimes found beautiful and profound verses in the Qur'an (my favorite edition listed hereby). But most of all, the very word Islam is what inspires me, and I recognize in it the first step in the forgiveness process as A Course in Miracles teaches it.

Islam means surrender, and the very first step of the forgiveness process in the Course, is really to surrender the arrogance of the ego, and to open myself up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe Jesus could be right and I could be wrong. As long as I stubbornly maintain that I'm right, I cannot ever take back the projection of guilt on others and ask for help. And the miracle lies exactly in the fact that a shift, a change of mind is possible, by asking for guidance from the Holy Spirit and the right mind, in lieu of from our ego, which got us into trouble in the first place. As a refresher here are the three steps of forgiveness, the way out of conflict any time you see yourself getting stuck (again!):

1. "Would I accuse myself of doing this?" I.e. this means to question the validity of the ego's perception that some SOB out there is making my life miserable, and instead to entertain the notion that I might have something to do with it, and that what I'm accusing the other of is, in some different form, a secret self-accusation. Here is an applicable quote from the Course:
   "Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:
   
   Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself. (ACIM:W-134.17:1-5)
   In other words, at this point I've taken my projection back, and because now the problem is not outside of me (where I cannot change it), but inside of me, so that I can now change it. And the way to change it is with a change of mind, what Jesus calls metanoia in the Greek of the New Testament.
2. Now comes the only decision, the only exercise of free will ever, having raised the ego's guidance to doubt, we are now free to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in the process freed ourselves from the ridiculous chains of having to know everything, or, more accurately, having to pretend to know everything, for now we have deferred judgment, and we are asking for Help from the one who does know everything, the Holy Spirit. The point of surrender lies in what the Course calls 'looking at the problem as it is' (ACIM:T-27.VII.2:2) and that passage continues with: 'and not the way that you have set it up.' Thus what we are surrendering is our problem definition, which then opens the way for the solution to arise. The ego would tenaciously hang on to the problem, because this defines its separate identity.
3. Now we leave it to the Holy Spirit. And what we learn subsequently is that it is not a sacrifice to surrender our judgment (or should we say our stupidity?) to Him, but it is the way out of the ego's Hell.

The guided meditation which Gary Renard offers in his workshops and books is also a beautiful way of reinforcing the forgiveness process, by starting and ending your day with a brief meditation in which you visualize a white light (God's Love) which slowly surrounds you, and you lay on the altar as your gifts to him all your childish definitions of what the problems are, and what the answers should be, thus making room for the Answer to show up, instead of continuing to kill yourself with thinking it's my way or the highway. Once you let go of those ego shackles, you can totally submerse yourself in the experience of God's Love surrounding you. This is the way to accepting the sonship, to seeking the second place to gain the first, to realizing that no-one comes to the father but through me - not Jesus as a person, but the manifestation of the Sonship as he realized it, and demonstrated it. The prodigal son, re-becomes the Son, by letting go of his plan for salvation, and accepting anew the Sonship as the only fulfillment possibility. In the end then, it is for the mind to let go of its mistaken belief in the ego, for the ego isn't anything except a mis-thought, a tiny mad idea, that makes us very unhappy as long as we maintain our allegiance to it, and waste our days in justifying it. Happy Father's day.

Logion 42 and Enlightenment

Logion 42, "Be passersby," although it is in the middle of the collection may be the punch line of the entire Thomas Gospel. For to learn the view from "above the battleground" as the Course calls it, is to wake up from the dream.

Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body's offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make? (ACIM:T-23.IV.9)

To get into the fight, means to fully identify with the dream role, i.e. choosing to be asleep. With at least the dawning of an awareness that I'm not my body, that I'm not the role, eventually I can actually play it even better, because I'm no longer so hung up on making it a success, but rather I'm accepting it as my next classroom where I can learn that this is not what I am. That is surely what it means to "follow Jesus," to a "Kingdom not of this world," for in choosing forgiveness, I stop justifying my wrong minded choices, and while I still may make them for a while, they gradually no longer have the power over me that they once had. Very deliberately, the Course states its objective as the achievement of peace of mind, not enlightenment. What the Course is for, is to direct our steps in the right direction, so that like with the old Greek saying that the way to the top of Mt. Olympus is, to make sure every step you take is in that direction, this is what the Course helps us do, to get on the road to Peace. Enlightenment then, is to some time realize that there's nobody there to be enlightened, because we're not even here, that's just a dream we were having. Moreover, as the Course also points out and we are destined to realize sooner or later, we are the dreamer of the dream, and once that sinks in, how could you ever be afraid of all the figures in the dream, because you dreamed them, or be concerned at all for the hero of the dream, once you realize you dreamed him/her too?

Serendipity Strikes - a thought of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

In high school, the Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam (and yes, it was founded in 1328), I had the joy of taking optional classes of Hebrew in my final two years. The teacher was a professor of Semitic Languages at Utrecht, and this was a side gig for him. The theory behind the program was that those kids who might want to go and study theology, could thus prepare themselves, since in Holland it was expected that any Pastor of a church prepare the texts for the Sunday sermon always from the original languages. I noticed that I had a class full of people who, like me had no interest in studying theology, but who vaguely understood that Jesus was not a Christian, so that to begin with it made more sense to study the Old Testament in the orginal language, instead of relying on translations which were often heavily biased by later Christian theology.
After graduation I sort of fell into a hole where I could not start college because I had to do my military service first, though I became a conscientious objector and did civil service instead for 18 months. While I was waiting for my assignment I made myself useful at the old school by collaborating with said Hebrew teacher as his teaching assistant. The program was that we studied Torah in the 2nd year Hebrew class, in which I would discuss the textst on the basis of a commentary by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, while the teacher would discuss grammar and syntax in parallel from a modern linguistic standpoint. I have later had comments back from people who were in that class and loved it. And for me it was certainly the basis for beginning to form more clarity about the fact that Jesus stood in a Jewish context, and that Christianity was a later fabrication, but really an extrapolation, an interpretation, that only cited him in name, but had little to do with his teachings.
Even before my Hebrew studies I had begun to collect Judaica, and read lots of things, and who knows perhaps the first impulse for that was given when at age nine or ten some time my parents had Prof. Martin Buber over for lunch one time, who impressed me greatly. I loved his German translation of the Bible, which he did with Franz Rosenzweig, and by age 16 I had read all of his works. A jewish bookseller, Lampusiak had been following my interest in Judaica, and he sort of became my mentor any time I came browsing his store, and we would have lengthy conversations. Anytime I would want to buy a new book in the realm of rabbinical studies, he would sort of give me his equivalent of a rabbinical exam, before he allowed me to buy the book. When I wanted to buy the commentary on Psalms from S.R. Hirsch at the end of my last year of highschool, he made me come back several times before he was satisfied that I knew enough to read it. Subsequently that summer, I bought Hirsch's commentary on the Pentateuch (Torah), in Amsterdam at De Pampiere Waereld, which was an antiquarian bookseller of world-wide fame. I realized the reason these books were so prized was that they were the last few copies of the original editions that had survived the Holocaust. The edition on Psalms still even had the original binding, but the Pentateuch had suffered the fate of many books during the war, when people tore the covers off, so you could not see the titles, and it was hoped that thus the Nazi's would not see that they were Hebrew books, and pick them up to be burned.
Over time my interest in Hebrew studies lessened. And at one point in time, in 1997, I donated a good deal of my library to the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, at that time in Roscoe, New York. My editions of S. R. Hirsch went along, if nothing else because I knew that Ken Wapnick, being a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn, although gone astray in his mother's eyes, would appreciate them. Then in 2000 when the foundation was going to move to its present location at Temecula, CA, Ken called me and said they could not move the books to the new location, so did I want my books back. Ever since then I've had numerous moves, sold and given away a lot of books, but S.R. Hirsch's books stayed with me and I kept asking around to either sell them to a good dealer of Judaica, where I would be assured they'd find a dignified home, or give them to someone who truly would value them.
Fast forward to June 12th of 2009, and I had some business dealings with a lady with last name - you guessed it Hirsch. So spontaneously, I asked her if she was related. Yes indeed, she was a descendant. And so I asked her, how would she like to own an original edition of the works of Samson Raphael Hirsch. She loved it, and I knew these books had at long last found the loving home they deserved.
It gets even funnier. During the same week I was contacted via Facebook, by a distant niece, daughter of my much-reviled grand-uncle Henri Louis ("Hein"). She grew up in Switserland and lives in Montreal, and during a phone conversation was able to explain to me that the Fentener side of my family were Jewish merchants and mariners in the 16th century. I shared with her that in grade school I was friends with a jewish girl, and her father always cracked himself up, that at any time I always seemed to have several businesses going, and he would slap his knees and say, you've got to have jewish blood! The niece meanwhile seemed to have rather deep insight into the reasons why both artistic and business talents were woven into the traditions of our family and we certainly had a shared interest in the one place where all of this came together in the printing of African cotton by Vlisco, of Helmond, which since ca 1963 is no longer owned by the family, but she and I still feel that it is in our blood somehow, and both seem to have a vivid interest in West African culture.

The Bastards Don't Deserve It... Forgiveness that Is.

That is Gary Renard's frequent joke, and an important one, for just like Logion 13, it is an important lesson in why Yeshua's teachings are not very popular in the world. Never have been. We want to hang on to our identity, and to do so we must maintain conflict, for personality and individuality are thoughts of hate, that must be fed by maintaining a suitable list of enemies. And so the justification of our righteous anger comes so natural, that we really get blindsided time and again, by those seemingly so honest feeling that it is impossible to forgive, and we do not want to know that we're only killing ourselves with it, that it is the choice for the crucifxion. Hence the Course also says:

Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. (ACIM:T-4-in.3:7-11)

Forgiveness completely flies in the face of our justified anger, and that is also why the temptation is so great to want to improve on ACIM, and become an "important teacher," rather than learning it yourself, and teaching by learning the Navajo way. The only way to do it is to do it. That is the shortcut (with thanks to Ken Wapnick for that remark). In short the way to be an ACIM teacher in reality is to know you don't matter at all, and it's all a comedy.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is. (ACIM:T-pII.1.4)

As a little side note, also the speeches of Dutch Queen Juliana in 1952, including when she spoke to the American congress, on her interest in a way out of conflict on a global level, in the concept of the Third Way, which was on her mind in those days, is an example of how the message of peace, the mere thought of it, is anathema to the world. In her case, it would appear that quite possibly her husband, Prince Bernhard, even hatched a plot to have her dethroned, and put his daughter Beatrix on the throne (then just turned 18), all to the greater glory of Lockheed and mutually assured destruction. He of course more than anyone seems to have turned Holland into a banana republic, or rather, an armsdealing republic. It is a story that has not yet been fully told, but some day it will, and it makes for a nice reflection of what the world does really believe in, and why it is the Course says, that the world was made as an attack on God.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone. (ACIM:W-pII.3.2)

And again this ties in closely to another theme that runs through the Thomas gospel materials, namely the notion that these are the teachings which Jesus dispenses privately, he did then, and he does now. For only in the forgiveness moments, in the miracle, do we individually become teachable because it means we surrendered our judgment, and so we listen for the first time in a long time. And then quickly we forget it again, because we are deadly afraid of it. So it has nothing to do with the teachings being secret, or Jesus secretive, but it has everything to do that we remain outsiders of the mystery of forgiveness unless and until we practice it, and therein lies the meeting with the Master, that Internal Teacher, who is available to us whenever we really ask his Help, in complete surrender of our own judgment, and constant urge to be right and know better.

ABCs of Forgiveness with Gary Renard

In this case at the Treehouse annex to the American Book Center (ABC!) in Amsterdam, Holland on May 22nd, 2009.

Here is the Femke's blog, she being the lady who organized this wonderful event. Funny to be speaking in my own country in English! And it was lovely to do this in direct succession to Gary, so it flowed smoothly from one to the other, after all my work is based on his.

This book is a hilarious parable of what happened in the formation of the religion called Christianity from the teachings of Jesus, by Peter and Paul, regardless of whether you believe its tenets in the literal sense. Its conclusions are at least solid on the spiritual level, for they reflect precisely what the ego will do again and again to distort the teachings of Jesus to mean something entirely different. Jesus warned us of that. It is the reason why the Thomas Gospel speaks of the "hidden" teachings in its introduction, indicating that these were spoken to the apostles personally, but on a spiritual level these are the things Jesus is still teaching and has always taught.

In Logion 13 he also warns us of the resistance of the world to his teachings, ultimately warning Thomas that even his fellow apostles would stone him, if he told them what Jesus taught him personally. These types of things have often been misunderstood, and led the world to glorify martyrdom, etc. which was not the point. Fortunately we have A Course In Miracles today, and it completely revolves around having us understand the psychological dynamic of why the ego does not want to hear the teachings of Jesus. That is for me the context in which I say that I read this book purely as a parable for what happened to transform Jesus's message of inner truth, of restoring our relationship with God, to the worldly religion that became serviceable to the Roman Empire a few centuries hence, and for which one way or another Paul (and also Peter et al.) laid the foundation, regardless of whether you choose to accept the specific points of this book. It is what happened in spirit.

The format of the book is a dialog on the David Letterman show, and the parties are a traditional theologian and an author who thinks Paul was a secret agent for the Romans, whose entire purpose was exactly to put the teachings of Jesus on their head, and co-opt his person (now safely dead) in the service of Caesar. It makes a fun read, even if I would personally find that it is way overboard in certain respects. However it is certainly serves to make the point of just how much Christianity turned the teachings of Jesus on their ear, though the gist of this book seems to be that therefore Jesus is not to be taken seriously either, which is where I feel it goes overboard. So I see this book as a magnificent pun, but I don't take it seriously, for coming from the standpoint of A Course in Miracles as well as the Thomas Gospel, and you'll definitely get a chuckle out of these scenes.

One important aspect of the book, which I do take quite seriously, is that it really exposes just how much we are inclined to look back in history, and project into it what we think today. It is almost impossible not to. This frequently comes to light in things like the books of the Jesus seminar, which is doing so much good work in providing a more objective look at Jesus, yet still very often many of the members of this group continue to write as if Jesus were really a proto-Christian, whereas the only sane conclusion is that Christianity was entirely invented after his death, and he was merely bombarded into one posthumously, and proclaimed to be the founder of Paul's religion, when in fact founding any religion was the last thing he wanted to do.

Unfortunately the second half of the book slides into a very common misinterpretation of Jesus, as your normal supermarket variety revolutionary, a sort of an ancient Che Guevara, which is getting tired by now, and a favorite ploy to deny the truly revolutionary teachings of Jesus. Love and forgiveness are far more revolutionary than cheap violence, but the world has a great stake in not recognizing it, so that mis-casting Jesus as a Che Guevara equivalent actually reduces his teachings to a level of manageable threat.

Beyond Awakening & Logion 5

This is a wonderful little book, which for one thing, you could read entirely as a commentary on Logion 5 in the Thomas Gospel, which reads as follows (as per usual, in the Pursah rendering from Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality):

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

In parallel, we may also think of the following lines from the Course:

Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. (ACIM:W-188.1)

In short, this is a good reminder that our journey is, in the Course's words: "It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T-8.VI.9:7)

In Beyond Awakening - which has nothing to do with the Course - author Jeff Foster speaks of this experience in his own words. As he puts it, it is about the utterly obvious. It is about the insight that the idea of a journey, with a destination, is itself part of the ego's smoke and mirrors deception of thinking that the answers are out there, when the only place where there are any answers. This in and of itself brings notions from the Thomas Gospel like Logion 3 to mind, which is another very strong statement that it isn't out there, be it in the sky, or in the sea, for it is within. Also woven through the book is the notion that whatever I'm involved in right now, is at all times my best learning opportunity, which is another central notion of the Course. It is as lucid an explanation of non-duality as you can find today. It is simple and straightforward and to be recommended highly. More words would hardly add meaning, you'll read it in an afternoon, and enjoy it tremendously. It's a "Duh!" experience in the best sense of the word.