The Transcendent Third Creates Real Relationship---A Course in Miracles 17.5 part 2
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- acim.org/acim/chapter-17/the-...
Bartender says, "Relationships, can't live with'em, can't live without'em." Notice that means death either way. [BTW It isn't a DIRECT quote, Lloyd actually says 'women' not 'relationships'--inclusive language seemed appropriate.] Jack replies, "Words of wisdom Lloyd--- Words of wisdom!." In case you need a refresher, this is Lloyd the demonic barkeep in Kubrick's "the Shining" talking to Jack the guy who is being nudged into getting out the ax to "discipline" the family. Isolated by 6 feet of Rocky Mountain Snow in a haunted resort, Jack Nicholson plays a writer whose drinking weakness translates into spirit possession of the darkest kind. Coming from a demon-apparition, Lloyd gets it right--the ego IS a death cult, with or without a relationship. Calling a trite cliche' 'words of wisdom' captures the ironic stupidity of evil--self-absorbed, fully marinated in righteousness, and yet impoverished of the nuances of truth and beauty. Let's reframe the 'elephant and the 5 blind men' analogy from Indian tradition and twist it toward the Course to explain something about relationships of the holy kind.
There were five men who were asked to describe a holy relationship. The first man remembered his loving mother and said, 'The woman was a saint. She offered me unconditional love such that I can never hope to find it again. This has to be the standard of Holy relationship.'
A second man ran away from his nagging mother to join the circus. He fell into an affair with a trapeze artist 8 years his senior and said, 'You haven't lived. There is an excitement on the high wire that ripples into all of life--the holy relationship is risking your life in the purifying fires of passionate love!'
A third blind man clucked, "A mother's love is precious and I've got to check my imagination when I think about your holy relationship on a trapeze. You are both lost in the weeds. The holy relationship is transcendent, it is far higher than 30 feet up with no net and it is more pure and impartial than the affections of a parent. It is a relationship with God in solitude, prayer and fasting.
The fourth heaved a sigh of frustration, "It's true that relationship is holy when fired by austerities, spiced-up with adventure and combined with the warmth of a loving mother--but there must be instruction and love! One must embrace all of humanity by cutting across attitudes of me and mine. Holy relationship is universal!'
The room went quiet. The fifth man said, "Did anyone notice our friend in the corner?" The other four followed his pointer-finger and saw with amazement an elephant facing modestly away, showing them only its backside.
The fifth man said flatly, "THIS is the holy relationship."
At first disoriented, the 4 other sages cried out, nearly in unison, "You must be blind-- that is OBVIOUSLY an elephant!"
Joanna warned me to explain the point of this spontaneous gift from the 'spirit of apophnia.' The holy relationship IS the elephant in the room AND we don't SEE it because we only see the RUMP of it. Meaning, the 'ass-end' of the holy relationship is with us all the time in the form of unhealed experiences, the unrecognized material Holy Spirit uses to bring us truly holy relationships.
There is the koan of 'the man looking for a donkey while riding on a donkey.' I can be looking right at the face of Christ and not see it BECAUSE I'm looking right at it and KNOWING that I will never be looking at the face of Christ, therefore this can't be IT. This is factory-installed software intended to protect the hardware (body) from misuse (enlightenment). As the Course says in Lesson 247, "Without forgiveness, I will still be blind." STILL be blind--that means until the veil of the illusion is rent through reliance on 'second sight' provided by the agency of God as the Holy Spirit--we are blind. That means not seeing what is there. Like most of the nuances in the text, I can read the words, grasp their meaning, and walk away unchanged. This idea of the holy relationship being ubiquitous but unclaimed due to a willing blindness is a harsh dose of....something. I live in two overlapping worlds, one is joy, peace, abundance and vision--the other is constant effort, maintenance, sporadic pleasures and pains, and inevitable death. To the ego, the former is like watching TV all day and wasting my life--we are here to struggle, here to carve out meaning, here to cultivate love like a farmer in the dustbowl holding his ground. What if it's easy? What if ACIM is actually telling the truth? What if somebody out there loves us, telling us out of compassion, "You are making it all too hard."
I concur with your take on this overall. The ACIM perspective tends to unravel self centered logic for a new vision.
Thank you for being brave enough to venture into aspects together that most of us avoid. So admirable. Bless you both 🎉❤🎉❤
Our pleasure! We both have experienced some bumps and neither of us have a rugged temperament so we wear it on our sleeve sometimes!
It sounds like, to some degree, the holy relationship is inevitable... The holy spirit reimagines all our works. This is a relief!!!
This inevitability seems essential in a well-run creation. There are these physical therapies where a person has to learn to notice and undo a trigger reaction that creates pain...I think connecting into the holy relationship requires that kind of un-training...how to loosen the grip when everything screams to hold tighter...
Demonstrate that you cannot be hurt no matter what is said or done in the relationship and you will see the wholeness that was always there. This takes time to accomplish because all that interferes with this demonstration has to be brought to the Holy Spirit and judged by Him for what they are - nothing. You were never unholy, but the goal of specialness obscured Christ's vision.
I love what you are doing in your videos - having a conversation. It is very helpful.
This is great--Thank-you--and I love the succinct insight--THANKS [!]
Carte du jour
I think I should say 'thanks!' but I'm not sure--but YES! choices are there. This is good in any case so Thank-you for visiting this particular cafe' of ideas!
Phil’s saying the HS is at work at all times in all circumstances which may be true but The Course is asking us to invite Him in to reinterpret our particular take on some particular circumstance.
(I know you already know this…just trying to reel it back in)
Yes! That invitation is like the maypole we sort of dance around on all things ACIM. It can't be repeated often enough that each molecular aspect of our/my experience requires that reinterpretation. Thank-you!