MAN IS NOT WILLING TO LOOK ON WHAT HE HAS DONE TO HIMSELF.... (Following paragraphs omitted entirely from FIP editions) Withdrawal is properly employed in the service of withdrawing from the meaningless. It is NOT a device for escape, but for consolidation. There IS only one mind. Dissociation is quite similar. You SHOULD split off or dissociate yourself from error, but only in defense of integration. Detachment is essentially a weaker form of dissociation. Flight can be undertaken in whatever direction you choose, but note that the concept itself implies flight FROM something. Flight from error is perfectly appropriate. Distantiation can be properly used as a way of putting distance between yourself and what you SHOULD fly from. Regression is an effort to return to your own original state. It can thus be utilized to RESTORE, rather than to go back to the LESS mature. Sublimation should be a redirection of effort to the sublime. There are many other so-called “dynamic” concepts which are profound errors due essentially to the misuse of defenses. Among them is the concept of different levels of aspiration, which actually result from level confusion. However, the main point to be understood from this section is that you can defend truth as well as error, and, in fact, much better. The Atonement actually began long before the crucifixion. Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the separated ones, but they could not withstand the strength of the attack and had to be brought back. Angels came, too, but their protection did not suffice, because the separated ones were not interested in peace. They had already split their minds, and were bent on further dividing, rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into their minds turned against each other, and they established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits which they produced. Not being in their right minds, they turned their defenses from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely. It was essential to introduce a split-proof device which could be used ONLY to heal, if it were used at all. You know that when defenses are disrupted there is a period of real disorientation, accompanied by fear, guilt, and usually vacillations between anxiety and depression. This course is different in that defenses are NOT being disrupted but REINTERPRETED, even though you may experience it as the same thing. In the reinterpretation of defenses, only their use for ATTACK is lost. Since this means they can be used only ONE way, they become much stronger and much more dependable. They no longer oppose the Atonement, but greatly facilitate it. Their egocentricity usually misperceives this as personally insulting, an interpretation which obviously arises from their misperception of themselves. Egocentricity and communion CANNOT coexist. Even the terms are contradictory. Man is not willing to look on what he has done TO HIMSELF. Every instant [it is] creating, and ALWAYS as you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say, “Don’t give it a thought,” you imply that [if] you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. And [this is] true enough. On the other hand, many other expressions clearly illustrate the prevailing LACK of awareness of thought-power. For example, you say, “Just an idle thought,” and mean that the thought has no effect. You also speak of some actions as “thoughtless,” implying that if the person had thought, he would not behave as he did. While expressions like “think big” give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you do not really think that you will. ~ACIM Urtext
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 04:43:05 +0000
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