III. The Fear of Redemption 1-6
1. You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have between yourself and the Atonement. We have said that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it. Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. You could look even upon the ego’s darkest cornerstone without fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption.
2. Under the ego’s dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed. You realize that, by removing the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer His call and leap into heaven. You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevent you from this. For still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide.
3. In honesty, is it not harder for you to say, “I love” than “I hate?” You associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real power seems to you as your real weakness. For you could not control your joyous response to the call of love if you heard it and the whole world you thought you made would vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded.
4. You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God’s presence, and you would save yourself from His love because you think it would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid it would sweep you away from yourself and make you little, because you believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur. You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.
5. You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love because you did not. You would rather be a slave of the crucifixion than a Son of God in redemption. Your individual death seems more valuable than your living oneness, for what is given you is not so dear as what you made. You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But hatred can, for it enters of its own volition and cares not for yours.
6. You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation. In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion on which the others rest. For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied. Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God’s Son. [1]
Jesus tells us today that what we are really afraid of is our memory of God. We are afraid of Love. The wish to escape love, to attack Creation instead of love creation, the wish to prey upon and devour rather than love and nurture brought about the separation and we actually protect these wishes because we do not want the separation healed. If we removed the dark cloud of guilt that obscures our love for God we would immediately answer His call to love and leap into heaven. But no, we have come to like our savage selves and look upon our savagery as our salvation – not because it saves us from hell but because it saves us from our intense and burning love we have for God and all Creation. This is what we wish to hide, to get away from, to ignore.
We have come to associate love and tenderness with weakness and hatred and fear with strength. The only real power we have seems in the realm of time to be our weakness. Our deep and abiding love for God and His deep and abiding love for us is not something we can control, and when we hear it the whole perceptual world disappears, it goes away, it has no more meaning, it has no more to offer us. This can frighten us – for in that Love, we feel the self we made disappear – who was that? What was that all about? What did those years and all the things that happened in them really mean? The fortresses we have built to keep God out melt away, the areas in our life in which we reserved for that which is not love have no more meaning. Love is irresistible and yet we resist.
In paragraph four Jesus tells us that we have built insane belief systems that we think will keep us from being crushed into nothingness by God’s Love. The ego puffs us up on humanity’s importance, on its great civilizations, on its great religions, and architecture and art and technology. We have amassed stores of knowledge bits, sagas of rebellions and wars and ongoing tales of savagery of which we are so proud. We made a world where Love has no place, which God would destroy. We have made a world to obscure Love, to keep it struck from our conscience and our consciousness – and the deeper we go into the black heart of the ego, the closer we come to the love which is hidden there. And it is this Love that frightens us. This may seem unbelievable to you. This may seem, in your cozy little nest of your daily routines and the going back and forth to work and the causes you support and the love and affection you have for your kids and parents and extended families and friends – entirely untrue.
“I love God and I am not ashamed to say it,” we can say. “It is not harder for me to say, ‘I love,’ than it is to say ‘I hate…” But ask Holy Spirit to acquaint you with your hatred, to expose the hatred that sustains you and sustains me as it sustains the whole perceptual world. For we must look at what we are and become fully aware of what we keep hidden before we can clearly understand that God did not banish us from His Kingdom, but rather we chose – not only to remove ourselves from it – but to devour and prey upon it, to bring death into life, to prefer darkness more than light.
We can accept the ups and downs, the injustices, human trafficking, unfair labor laws, our overcrowded prisons, poverty and starvation, the conflict and uncertainty, the tyrants and oppression of the insane world because this is the world we made. But we find it very difficult to accept Creation for we did not make Love. We would rather be eternally guilty of the crucifixion than to recognize our Sonship in redemption. The Love of God, so freely given us is not as dear to us as the guilt, the fear, the conflict we made ourselves. We are more afraid of God than we are of the ego and God does not abide in fear, but hatred does and so the ego seems to rule.
In closing, Jesus tells us that we must look upon our illusions and bring them out of the hiding places in our minds. They seem real. They seem to have a basis in reality. These illusions seem to stand alone but this is the basis upon which all the other illusions rest – for they do not and cannot stand alone. Beneath them, concealed as long as we do not purposefully seek the truth alone, is the loving mind. The loving mind that needs healed for it has been twisted with lies, delusions, and perversions for so long. The tricks and games of the world cannot heal this mind. The prescriptions, the substances, and the pleasures of this world cannot heal this mind, for here we have the real crucifixion of God’s Son.
We will continue with paragraphs seven through twelve in the next post. In your personal devotional practice ask Holy Spirit to illuminate the meaning of these first six paragraphs to you and show you how the ego has crucified and continues to crucify the Christ in you. Do not lose heart for we must be able to look at our tormenter and abuser square on and know what they are doing to us and how they are doing it before we can willingly and knowingly stop contributing to the crucifixion of God’s Son. Be of good courage that we may walk in the light of God’s Love.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 13 The guiltless world III The fear of redemption 1-6. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 