From Journey through A Course in Miracles..Ken Wapnick~ Rules for Decision
The cause of all distress is the choice point we made in our mind against Jesus/HS, which eventually led to the effect of our being distressed, upset, angry, depressed, sick, etc., etc. When we feel the effect, we must return to that choice point in our mind. Eventually the time between the cause and effect will grow shorter and shorter as you progress with the course.
As you progress with the course it does not mean that your life will be all sweetness and light, and that you'll never get upset, you'll never get angry, you'll never get sick, you'll never have attack thoughts, you'll never have specialness thoughts. What it DOES mean is that you'll become more and more aware of them the instant that they happen.
And so even if you choose to hold onto these thoughts, you will at least now know that you're choosing to hold onto them. That's the SOLE PURPOSE of the course. That's why this is called, again, A Course in Miracles. The miracle does NOT make the choice for you, it simply restores to your awareness that you have the choice.
The mind is the cause, the world is the effect. Whenever we have a problem in the world it is because we have forgotten the cause- which is in our mind. The miracle restores to the mind its function of being the causative agent of EVERYTHING we feel. That is ALL the course is training you to do. This is extremely important because if you don't understand this you'll do a massive guilt trip on yourself, because you'll think you're failing this course because you're still choosing your ego.
If this is a course in miracles, the function of the miracle is not to have you stop choosing your ego. It's to have you be AWARE that you're choosing your ego. This is what gets course students way off the mark, as they'll believe that they're choosing the HS when they're not doing that at all. Because they think that's the goal of the course.
The goal of the course is that you choose the miracle- which means you FINALLY understand what you are choosing, and then you learn to forgive yourself for continually choosing your specialness. And if you DO that, what you in effect have done is you've let Jesus look on your ego with you. That's what the miracle is- you go back to your mind, and with Jesus or the HS beside you, you look at your ego and you realize that YOU have chosen it. Even though at that moment you may not want to let the ego go, you will at least know what you're doing! And so you'll end up as a student of this course realizing how absolutely insane you are. Literally. Because you'll realize how you perversely, continually choose your ego and your specialness. But now at least you know you're doing it, which means you can't blame anybody else for it- you can't blame your environment, the person who just raped you, your genes, your bad karma- you can blame NOTHING.
Now you will understand that if I'm upset right now it's because I WANT to be upset right now. I DON'T want the peace of God- I want a piece of the ego's action, I want my specialness- I don't want God's peace. But at least you know what you're doing! And that's the goal of the course- you've successfully completed the course. Because once you do that it's only a matter of time when you realize "this doesn't pay me anymore". That step will automatically happen.
This is what the little willingness means- that you'll accept full responsibility for your specialness, full responsibility for your misery, for your pain- physical or emotional. You'll realize that no one is responsible for that except you. It's not sinful, it's not wicked, it's not evil- it's simply silly. If you can say it's silly, then you're beginning to understand what the HS told you right at the beginning: the tiny, mad idea is not evil, it's not wicked, it's not sinful it's silly. You look at your CHOOSING your specialness instead of the love of Jesus, and you SMILE at the silliness of it. Even as you're embracing it, even as you're defending it, even as you luxuriate in its pain, you will at least know what you're doing-and that's the goal of the course. That takes TREMENDOUS practice because you DON'T want to accept responsibility for it. You want to blame someone else. Even blaming your ego for it! In reality the ego is our own thought, and we are choosing the ego.
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AMEN
