The Script is Written
Condensed from Awakening Mind
Posted by aplecompte on December 9th, 2009
Life seems to be linear: the past is behind me, here I am now, and I’ve got certain things to deal with in the future. But the Course teaches that the script is written. W-158 The script is past and over. It is like watching a movie. It is not an interactive thing. It just seems interactive as long as it is perceived to be fragmented and to not be over.
During that tiny instant of madness, all of the perceptions that ever could be were spun out. The script is written, over and done. In the Rules for Decision it says there is no way of avoiding what must happen. It is not a question of free will. Jesus says that my will does not have anything to do with this world; my will is in Heaven. My will is complete happiness in my Father’s Will. It doesn’t meaningfully translate to the world. My will seems to be imprisoned while I am in this world. We can’t equate that with choice.
So the question is, "What do I have control over?" The only choice I have is how I look upon the situation, the meaning that I give to the script playing in front of me. I have a choice on how I look at the script; I have a choice between two lenses.
I can look at it through the ego lens, in which case I get mad, sad, fearful or depressed.
Or
I can see it differently, through the Holy Spirit’s lens and experience the miracle that results in peace.
God did not create the world; He does not have anything to do with the perceptual world. "Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists." Form is not real because it occurred during the unholy instant in the past. The past is gone; it is over and done with. There is no reality to the script.
Jesus says we are all in the present; it is all right here – all of it! It is all in Divine Order. But as long as I perceive myself as having different levels with conflicting goals, I can’t see the Divine Order. It is right under my nose. Everything is perfect. I have to call to the Holy Spirit, "Help me, because I am not experiencing that everything is for my own best interest."
Lesson 25 says that purpose is meaning. I do not know what anything is for; therefore it is meaningless to me. Everything is for my own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that my goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what I see is given meaning.
"The script is written" means the cosmos is past. The choice is the miracle, to see the past as over and gone, instead of believing that the future is different from the past. The images are past, and the deceived mind, asleep and dreaming, believes that it lives in the past. Yet Life is Eternal and the closest approximation to Eternity is Now. The Workbook lessons are designed to help me release everything I think I think, and everything I think I see, to behold the Light beyond the veil – the Present – and See with the Vision of Christ.
As I let go of all the meaning that the ego has written upon the world, the Holy Spirit will bless it. "Think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return." W-68 This is a whole different way of looking at the world.
Listening to the Holy Spirit and following that Voice eliminates all conflicts. I no longer have a menu of options. I am following inner guidance as the dreamer of the dream; I am not trying to change or control the script. I flow along effortlessly observing something that has already happened. I’m not looking back and saying “This could have been different,” or “We need to do this differently.” I am also not looking forward, planning, scheming, and straining to get things to go the way I want.
Strain is believing that I am in the dream, that I am a person thinking, “I could be somewhere else” or “this should be different than it is.”
There is no causation in the world. My deceived mind is denying that what I perceive is just a projection of thought. I am doing it to myself. The script was written in an instant, but as it unfolds, it gives the illusion of linear time unfolding. In my sleeping state, my perception is unreliable and continually changing. I must see that I made these toys up, and by giving another purpose to the toys I can see that they aren’t real, that they don’t have any life.
Instead of the tunnel vision of subject/object split, there is a higher way of looking at the world with the Holy Spirit, a non-dualistic way of seeing the whole. If I can get back far enough in the mind to be the observer, I will see that everything is interconnected. That is seeing One thing. That is beautiful, what Jesus calls the forgiven world, the real world, or true perception. It is a way of seeing that is whole, not fragmented.
I get into difficulty when I try to analyze "the script is written." The script in a play or in a movie is a linear story. The problem with analyzing "the script is written" is that time is really simultaneous and not linear. If I ask, "Can I change the script?" I become confused, because it is impossible to understand a linear metaphor. Clarity is simply seeing that I have to forgive the past. I have to let it go. When I forgive, time is simultaneously over.
Time is often represented in a time line of past, present and future. But if I take that line, like a dry spaghetti noodle, and turn one end away from my eye and look along it, it turns into a point! A point is simultaneous. Time is simultaneous; it is not linear. That explains the script metaphor. I can stop trying to figure out linear metaphors and behold the cosmos as whole.
Another way to look at the “script” is as the ego’s history of the world, which includes every lifetime. As a character in this history, I have no control of my destiny; it is already written. The ego’s purpose for the script is to make sin, separation, guilt, attack and death seem real. Whenever I become upset with the unfolding of the script, I am perceiving it from within the script, where I have no choices. But I can choose the meaning I give to it. The way out is to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask to see it differently, to release my identification with personhood, to remember “I don’t know what anything is for,” and to lift my mind above the “battleground” of the script to a place of safety.
The most practical way to look at the world is to see everything as symbolic, completely symbolic like a fairy tale. None of it is real. That brings me peace. Am I willing to open up to the experience that it is all is fiction, all symbols?
The script is a dream. I am the dreamer of the dream. The function of God’s teachers is awareness of dreaming. Lucid dreams are fun. Staying with the awareness of dreaming is the best I can do in the world. With my trust in God, I stay present in the dream now.
As I train mind I begin to notice changes. I don’t identify as a body so I don’t fear things in the world. I am more detached and less defensive. Healing my mind heals the universe.
When I change my attitude and my thoughts, it seems like I change the script. But it is still part of the pre-determined plan. Nothing is really changing. But in terms of symbols, I see many more happy people. Changing my perspective on the world is a shift in mind. When I change my attitude the world is happier, because the world is a reflection of my mind. In the ultimate sense the question disappears because it is all mind.
The Holy Spirit’s purpose is forgiveness. By bringing myself back to the observer perspective, I see that I am not the little self-concept. I am Spirit. Forgiveness is the process of seeing that the ego wrote the script and assigned the characters their roles. Through forgiveness I see that it is all false; I release the characters from the belief that they are responsible for what they did. They are innocent. As I look with the Love of God in my heart, I see a forgiven world and take responsibility for my state of mind. I release the world from all I thought it was, and as I release my brothers, I release myself.
Earlier post If the Script is Written
Tags: Ego, Forgiveness, Miracle, Time, Vision
