The Remembered Song

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Dr. Kenneth Wapnick and the FACIM Electronic Outreach Program have a collection of 1384 answers to questions sent in from Course students over a period of years. Each day we will post a new question and answer with the kind permission of Ken Wapnick.

Q #1015: What is the difference between looking at resistance and not fighting it and being “unwilling”? I am a bit confused. Should I look at the resistance to doing a lesson and do nothing, or see that I am unwilling and overcome the unwillingness? I find myself at times resisting practicing the lesson because I am into something else. I recognize that I am resisting, but then again am I unwilling?

A: For all practical purposes, resistance and unwillingness are the same; they keep the ego thought system in place and prevent the mind from choosing the Holy Spirit. The important thing is to be aware of the resistance/unwillingness and to acknowledge the underlying fear of love, without judging yourself for it. Knowing the depths of our fear, Jesus anticipates our resistance in the instructions he gives in the Introduction to the workbook: “Some of them [the ideas] you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. …whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required” (W.in.9:2,3,4,5). Implicit in this passage is the message that we should not be surprised by resistance, not struggle against it, not judge it, but simply practice as instructed. Skipping a practice is merely wasting time, delaying the return to the awareness of love’s presence (T.in.1:7). Since time was made as a delay tactic, we have as much time as we choose to take. As Jesus tells us in the Manual: “…it is all a matter of time. Everyone will answer [the call to accept the Atonement] in the end…” (M.1.2:8,9).

When we become convinced by our own experience that resisting love is extremely painful, we will gradually cease to resist. Willingness and motivation will then replace resistance/ unwillingness. We will begin to relinquish pain (the ego) and accept peace (the Holy Spirit). Meanwhile, the only thing to do with resistance or unwillingness is not to deny or fight it, but to wait with the patience of one who knows the outcome is certain (See T.4.II.5).

Amen

Love does not crucify. It only saves.
God’s Son cannot be hurt. Let him not think
That he is slave to time or punishment.
Created out of Love, his shining head
And loving heart can only save the world.
Who but its maker can redeem it? What
Except the Word of truth can liberate
Whom he imprisons? Let him be Himself,
And not one star can lose a single gleam,
Or flicker in uncertain galaxy
Without a purpose and without a cause.
No blade of grass but rises perfectly
From earth towards Heaven. And no sin appears
To hold in shadows whom all Heaven loves.
God does not crucify. He merely is.

In my strict devotion to condemning
All whom I evaluate as beneath me,
I have remained blind and indifferent
To Whom silently shines above me.

When things in our life are going well we’re happy because we’re getting our needs met. We’re getting what we want. But hidden from our awareness is the true reason we’re happy: We think we’ve triumphed over God.

We left Heaven with the adolescent bravado that we could do a better job of it than God. That we could create a better world. That separation would be superior and more fulfilling than Oneness. So in every moment that we feel a surge of happiness because something in the world is going the way we want it to, what we’re really happy about is that we were right. We’re happy because we’ve triumphed over God. We’ve separated and it’s working! “See God??! I told you so! I told you I could do it better! I told you I could make a better paradise than you! I told you I’d be better off without you! I have a healthy body, lots of friends, money in the bank, a new love interest, and the sun is shining and the birds are singing. Life is good!” Separation is good. Not only have I separated, but I’m enjoying it.

It’s the meme Charlie Sheen has made infamous: Winning!

That’s the real source of our seeming happiness. It’s a victory dance over God’s prostrate body. Over his grave. On the ashes outside the burned gates of what used to be Heaven.

Sometimes you’ll see a baseball player hit a home run and point to God to give him the glory, or to say thanks for giving me this ability, or for sending the ball out of the park for me. What would be a more honest representation of what’s really happening in that instant is if the player used his middle finger to salute God instead. That’s what we’re all doing anytime we feel happiness about what happens in the world—we’re thumbing our nose at God.

On the surface, getting what we think we want feels so intensely good, but on a deeper level, in the part of us that calls separation sin, it makes us feel even guiltier, which is why we so often sabotage success, or create problems when things are going well for us in the world. Self-sabotage says that on some level we don’t feel we deserve this happiness because we got it at God’s expense (we have what we have stolen).

So self-sabotage is really just another way of punishing ourselves before God can, so as to mitigate his inevitable and terrifying wrath. What we’re really doing is punishing ourselves for our sin of separation; for our triumph. And for enjoying it. We’re re-living that wonderful-turned-terrible instant when we looked at the tiny mad idea of separation with the ego. Wonderful because we did it! Terrible because, oh no, we did it.

This is not to say we shouldn’t enjoy success in the world, or a healthy body, or a healthy bank account, but we should always question the source of our happiness when it seems to be coming from something outside of us. We can enjoy the things of the world without being invested in them, without depending on them, without taking them seriously, and without making them our salvation.

Recognizing that the happiness we find in the world is the shadow of our happiness of triumphing over God kind of takes all the fun out of it. The good news is, separation was never fun. Believing we are separate from love can never be fun or fulfilling no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise. The world has never been a beautiful nor wonderful nor happy-making place.

As Ken Wapnick says in the workshop, On Death and Dying (disk 14, track 4), “That’s why it’s so important to see the world for what it is… If you don’t see [the misery of triumph] in the world you won’t recognize it’s a projection of your thought system that you’ve made so real in your mind. And if you don’t see it in your mind you can’t choose against it. What are you choosing against if you don’t see it?”

When we uncover the painful source of our worldly happiness we are finally in a position to choose against it, and join with the presence of true happiness in the mind. In that presence we find a happiness that is not of this world: The happiness of joining with our brothers, and God Himself, whom we never left.