What advice would you offer about perceiving a custody battle in a Course-centered way? Q #823: I am currently in the midst of legal proceedings to gain access to my two and a half year old grandson. We have had significant input in his upbringing until July this year when his mother (not our daughter) withdrew our access to him because my son (his father) has developed a new relationship. I am having enormous difficulty seeing these events in other than worldly terms. How do I need to think about this special relationship in order to get past the considerable pain this is causing me. A: A situation such as you describe can only be experienced as heart-rending and painful while we remain at the level of the world in thinking about it. For the ego-directed mind can only think in terms of victims and victimizers, and those roles can seem all too clearly defined and assigned in our minds as we continue to listen to the ego. But then that is exactly what we all would have agreed to do as we would come together to play out this particular script. And all includes parents, grandparents, and child, as well as anyone else caught up in the tugging drama. Once we have chosen to see ourselves and others as bodies -- which is inevitable once we find ourselves in the world -- the game of assigning blame and swapping guilt must be set into motion. And in order for the game to work, we all must feel, each from our own perspective, that we have been or are being unfairly treated, which then justifies our thoughts of attack in return. This hidden agreement to be victimized, which lies behind all our dealings with everyone else, is explicitly described in A Course in Miracles in The Secret Vows (T.28.VI), where Jesus explains the role of the body in this self-deception: The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return (T.28.VI.4; italics added). It seems crazy when stated so clearly and directly, yet this is what we are all unconsciously engaging in all the time. And why would we accept such an insane arrangement with all our brothers and sisters? To understand the motivation for this insanity, we need to recognize that the real source of the pain we experience in such situations in the world comes from the belief we hold in our mind that we are an ungrateful Child who has lost our love and innocence by turning away from our eternal Father. But such a self-accusation is too painful to hold for long in our awareness and so we have made a world that can disguise the truth of our attack on God so that we can see the guilt outside ourselves. The form of the projected attack will vary across circumstances, but in situations such as yours, it will seem that a child -- who symbolizes our lost love and innocence -- is being taken away from us, it is clearly not our fault, and that is the cause of our pain. And yet everyone caught up in the drama feels somehow similarly victimized and justified therefore in their thinking and acting. This recognition actually holds the key to our own escape from pain. For when we can begin to see that everyone is really the same, ensnared in the same deceptions of the ego -- looking to project their own painful guilt over seeing themselves as loveless, believing that the special love relationship requires that bodies be together (T.15.VII.8:2) -- we may then be able to begin to release the judgments we are holding against the others, which are keeping us separate from them in our mind, which is the real source of the pain. If we could know and accept that the love we want is already present within us, no seeming loss on the outside could have any effect on us. It is important to emphasize that everything we have been discussing here refers only to the level of thought or content, and has no specific implications for what actions you are taking. In other words, it is possible to continue with the legal proceedings you have initiated without it being an attack on your grandsons mother. The proceedings can be a classroom in which you have the opportunity to observe how strong your desire to project your own guilt onto your ex-daughter-in- law may continue to be. And in those moments when you are in your right mind, you will know that it is possible to continue to take legal action without condemning or attacking her for her own need to project guilt and to attack in seeming self-defense, and you will feel nothing but love for everyone who is involved in the court battle, for you will be above the battleground. 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 bodys 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? (T.23.IV.9). facimoutreach.org/qa/questions/questions159.htm#Q823
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 12:20:46 +0000