Many Forms One Correction
There is no loss
Posted by aplecompte on January 15th, 2010
David Hoffmeister: Today we’ll look at form and content. This Course sentence is probably an idea you’re familiar with: "The only judgment involved is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love." T-14.X.7.
The Holy Spirit sorts all the messages that the mind seems to receive from the outside world into two categories. One is an extension of love, when you feel a warm resonance, like love is being extended to you. And the other one is the call for love: when someone is in fear or believes in the lack of love, then they’re calling for love. If it’s a call for love, then you need to answer with love.
But the ego has a third category, and that is attack. So if you don't perceive love or a call for love and you perceive attack, either you think you've attacked someone or you think someone else is attacking you. Defenses come up because it's misperceived. With this third option, the ego confuses the Holy Spirit's division into two categories.
You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love, or to believe that everything else is nothing but a call for love. You are too bound to form, and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it. T-14.X.7.
You may think that you can see that that's your problem, that you’re confused because you’re too bound to form. So how can you learn more about this distinction between the form and content so you can really start to tune into content? Another way of coming at this is Lesson 161, which helps put form and content in context:
Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear. Thus were specifics made.
Specifics are analogous to form, because form is always specific. Every object that we could name in the cosmos is specific. A book is specifically different than a leg, or a finger is specifically different than a nose. The whole world of specifics is the dream world. But then Jesus says,
And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit, that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. Yet He can use but what we made, to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything.
And then Jesus gives you a glimpse of the end:
One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. W-161
That brings the problem into focus, that you’re thinking specifically, compartmentally. And Jesus is saying that your mind in its natural condition is abstract, without specific fragments and specific thinking in terms of linear time.
That tells you that you are going to need a transformation of your consciousness, a transformation of the very way that you think, in order to come to peace. In the past you may have thought you would just find the right relationship and attain some worldly recognition and that would bring you happiness. But now the Course is letting you know you have to change your thinking, not just think happy thoughts or positive thoughts. You have to learn how to think; to return your thinking to the Holy Spirit so that your perception becomes unified.
You can get caught up studying theories about the mind. The ego loves that too. But the Course is saying to go for the experience; you deserve peace of mind; don’t get side tracked.
The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. Otherwise it will attack the form. If you believe you understand something of the ‘dynamics’ of the ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it. For of yourself you could not understand it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would ‘analyze’ it, thus approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind impressive sounding words, but which lack any consistent sense when they are put together.
The ego enjoys studying itself, so that’s another trap to watch out for. The ego would like to have people memorize the Course and start spouting it verbatim while still hanging onto a self-concept of separation. Rather than intellectualizing, the Course is saying to go into the silence for the experience; still your mind; that’s where the experience is, not in words.
In Lesson 79, Jesus says that as long as you define your problems in terms of forms or specifics, you'll never come to peace of mind, because that’s not where your problems are. You have a perceptual problem that has to be solved, and it boils it down to one correction:
It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve all problems for you. He has not greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the same to Him, because each one is solved in just the same respect and through the same approach. The aspects that need solving do not change, whatever form the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in many forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a special form. It will recur and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for all time and will not rise again in any form. And only then are you released from it. T-26.II.1
That there's only one problem is cause for rejoicing. In Lesson 79 it seems there are layers of obscurity and complexities. It’s like plugging holes in a leaking dam. Whether it’s problems with relationships, finances or your health, each day seems to bring in another wave. You’ve been handling them for years and maybe now the waves are smaller and you seem to have a handle on them. But Jesus says you can get all the waves of problems to stop. Wouldn’t it be restful if you didn’t have to deal with them at all, if you could just be in a place of stillness?
The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you think you have. They are the same to Him because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And when the situation is worked out so no one loses is the problem gone, because it was an error in perception that now has been corrected. One mistake is not more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there is but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and could result in gain for anyone. If this were true, then God would be unfair; sin would be possible, attack be justified and vengeance fair. T-26.II.2
That sentence, "For there is but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible,” implies that if we can get clear about that one mistake, that’s where the release will come. Some of the losses that seem tangible and real in this world include loss of health, loss of a loved one to death, loss of a job. If a bank repossesses your house somebody else gains a house and you lose a house. If there's an award and five candidates for it, somebody gains the recognition and the others lose. Even in arguments between two persons one can seem to end up proving a point or seem to be the right one and then the other one seems to be the wrong one. Two people may want different outcomes and it can seem as if one of them gets his way. Competition, the whole free enterprise system is based on loss and gain.
But the idea that loss is possible and could result in gain for anyone has to be questioned. The Course is saying that the whole world, as you’ve set it up, is based on loss and gain. And it’s based on bodies. Bodies seem to lose and gain. That’s why you have to loosen your mind from the bodily identification and get back to this state called mind, because that’s where there is no loss and gain.
Let’s move to the mental realm. Someone may take a Voodoo doll and stick pins in it to bring bad things to another person. From a psychic perspective it could seem as though someone is being harmed. People say minds can be damaged. Some figures like Charles Manson, Jim Jones, or David Koresh seem as if they’ve brainwashed or damaged people’s minds. Think about the belief that has to be beneath that, that minds can be controlled and harmed. Whether it’s through Voodoo or brainwashing, it’s the idea that minds are vulnerable.
Some private minds may seem to dominating, like those figures I just mentioned and others seem to be submissive, vulnerable minds that can be attacked. It would seem that some minds could gain control and some could lose. The Course says that if you perceive that that’s possible, then there's still loss and gain. In the mind sense, as long as loss and gain is possible, then no peace of mind is possible, because the Sonship gets cleaved into two camps: the victims and the victimizers. So we're working our way toward the Miracle which sees the impossibility of loss and gain.
This one mistake, in any form, has one correction. There is no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. T-26.II.3
Think of the idea of loss. Would loss come from God? If everything's an idea, loss is an ego idea. It’s the corner stone of the fear-based thought system.
There is no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. You have no problems, though you think you have. And yet you could not think so if you saw them vanish one by one, without regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or any attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God in any way. T-26.II.3
Fairness is a good one to look at because in this world justice is often equated with fairness. You could say fairness is equality. Fairness means equal pay for equal work.
But there is a parable in the Bible in which a land owner went out in the morning and hired some people to work his land. He said he'll pay them a for a day’s work. Then he went out at about 2 o'clock and hired some more workers and said, “I'll pay you a denary.” Then he went out about 6 o'clock and hired some more workers and said, “I'll pay you what is fair.” At the end of the day he paid every worker one denary. The workers who came in the morning were not happy that those who worked for just a few hours got the same pay. When I first went over that parable, a friend said, “That's not fair! Those earlier workers deserved more money!” Jesus uses this parable to show that in the Kingdom of Heaven you get the same thing, no matter how long you work at it.
Jesus is saying that the whole Sonship is equal, but there's no equality in form. In form there is not a hope of it. Jesus is saying this about everything in form. As long as you are looking for equality in form you'll never find it.
But you can find it in the Miracle, because the Miracle is the Holy Spirit’s perception and He sees everyone the same. The Miracle can see the impossibility of Voodoo or of cult. The Miracle can see that the idea of a mind dominating another mind is a ridiculous idea. The Holy Spirit is trying to train us because that’s the way you can see there's no guilt. One person may seem to be a mass murderer and another may seem to be a philanthropist leading the ideal life and in the world's eyes there's no equality between these two.
Jesus is saying your perception is messed up. You can’t evaluate; you can’t weigh the scales of justice. So you don’t have to be angry at some and have pity for others; you just need to see the world differently. You need to see how mistaken you have been about everything. The Course is leading us to a very different place than spiritualities that tell you what the good things are in life, who the sacred people are, and that if you do all this you'll get to the Kingdom of Heaven. There are quotes in the Bible about the wicked being gathered up and burned, and people take that literally.
In the wheat and tares parables, the tares would be wrong-minded thoughts and the wheat would be right-minded thoughts. In the end they are gathered up and the one is seen to be illusion and dissolves, and what you’re left with is the fruits, the part that’s edible, the good part. Your thinking is what needs to get sorted out.
Remember it comes back to your lesson. In your mind right now there's a mixture of the wheat and the tares. It seems like ego thinking (tares) has grown in there and that your mind is infested. It still has the wheat, it still has the Holy Spirit’s thought system, but it’s mixed in there. So the Holy Spirit is going to help you sort them out. Then you start to see that right-mindedness is content or purpose. You don’t have to pay attention to wrong-mindedness, to all the forms that your brother seems to make; you just need to get in touch with right-mindedness or right thinking.
Often it gets back to the body. It hurts when you are judging others; and when you are judging your body, that hurts just as much because the shame, blame and guilt get dumped on your body. So admit to the Holy Spirit that you don’t know who you are, that you want help to sort out your mind so you can come to the experience of who you really are, which is mind or Spirit, not body.
"The miracle of justice can correct all errors."
This has been edited from a teaching of David Hoffmeister. The original teaching
