From Addiction to Revelation
Collapsing Perceptual Sequential Time
 |
A therapeutic application of your own perceptual constructions... I'm using the term therapy here in the sense that you are sick and can get well. Do you see? Obviously, it begins with the admission of the sickness which is what perceptual mind is. Perceptual mind says, “I am sick because I'm not entirely happy with my circumstance, I am diseased, I will seek a solution.” Isn't that so? That's what it does, it's seeks a solution. |
I have a full admission, and we'll just have a little private meeting here today, because I'm very much aware that there's a therapy being applied to your own association, say, the mind that you bring in here as what you constitute as a human being. You are searching for happiness. You could not not be because the condition that you seek within your own association is for happiness. This isn't hard. It's nothing to cry about, it's a statement of fact.
I understand perfectly well that you seek a relief for the association in which you find yourself in your own self-identity. Why else would you be here if you didn't do that? I'm very much aware that you're doing that. Isn't that so? In a sense that’s a therapy. Quite literally, “What can I do, find, have, or be that will make me happy, that will give me contentment, that will make me feel good in relationship to myself and the things that are around me?” In that sense, perceptual mind is always – a what? A problem solver. Isn't it? See how simple this is. It must be, because perceptual mind construes itself in a temporal judgment association and is a continual condition of solving a problem of its illness, or its necessity to exist. Isn't this so? That's what the mind is doing, and it will do that. And it cannot not do that because that's what it is. It is an association with thought.
Now, can I teach it that it's an association of its own thought? That's the Course in Miracles. It begins with the admission that it is an association with its own thoughts and is reacting in a method that verifies its condition. This is the fundamental teaching of, let's go to the 12-Step Program. Let's consider a mind that feels the pain of its existence to the extent that it can't stand itself. This is incidentally true of all human perception. So let's take it to a form of addiction where to find relief for the pain of the unhappiness that it feels in the dilemma that it finds itself, it sedates itself. It snorts, it drinks, it does anything that it can do because it simply can't handle the pain.
Obviously this temporarily solves the problem because it doesn't address the issue but escapes the issue in that association. Now at this point it really isn't necessary to address the consciousness to my certainty arrived at by revelation that this is actually the human condition. The human condition is nothing but an addiction to a temporary solution to an unsolvable problem. Yet the problem each moment appears to be solvable, and the method by which it is solved is an addiction to the self-association. It cannot not be.
The counseling involved in the unmanageability of a sedative addiction is to acknowledge that the pain cannot be overcome by the continuing addiction. This is literally the manner in which it is done. In that sense we teach that the problem is not solvable. The manner in which we direct the association to that is this: You are the cause of your own problem. If any therapy that does not direct itself at least to the primary association, that it's not what people are doing to you it's how you are reacting to them that is causing your problem, and I don't think anybody here has any real problem with that, that sets up a parameter of self-defense where at least you're willing to participate in the admission that at any given moment the problem can be solved by some sort of release of your own mind in regard to what the problem is, rather than attacking it or defending yourself from it.
There must be some other power that will solve it, I'll turn my will over to that and that will then be solved. Obviously that's the only necessity there will ever be if the consciousness can be continually directed to his evolving certainty that he in fact cannot solve the problem. This is now A Course in Miracles. Very simply, do you see what we've arrived at, and very reasonably, is that, "I can't solve the problem, I feel happy about not being able to solve the problem, now I can admit that the problem is not solvable. That causes me to be very happy.”
Actually what occurs is, and I'll bring this into levels, is that almost all associations, say in addiction therapy, who reach the point of the unsolvability of the problem will undergo an experience in their conscious mind that is revelatory. Quite literally this is true because as the Course teaches, it’s the perceptual association of itself with itself in a time framework that keeps it from being revealed. Do you see? It cannot not be so. If I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, "I can't stand this, I can't do it anymore," I'm obviously then going to have that experience.
Here's the crux of it - I'm speaking now as a whole mind. To the direct extent you continue to undergo these experiences, through the pain that you feel in the determination that the problem cannot be solved, you will complete your process of maturation to whole mind. To the direct extent it is not revelatory, or you retain a tension of self-satisfaction, that is, the problem still is solvable in temporal association, you will undergo a time/death experience. That is, you will you will literally stay in your own body, get old and die. Did you solve the solution? Temporarily, obviously you have solved the solution.
If you believe that I will solve the problem for you in a manner in which you wish it solved, you will seek a therapist who will directly address the problem as you want to solve it in your own mind. He literally teaches you to the extent that you're willing to hear the response. Now, if you come to me and you say to me, "Well, I have this incredible problem, and I'm being beset by these things outside of me, and they seem to be causing all of this, and I can't stand it, and I hate these things, and I hate this world, and I'm going to kill myself," – at that point do I look you in the eye and say you're the cause of your own problems? That's simply a fact isn't it. You are doing this but to yourself. Regardless of how tempted you are to believe something outside of you is causing it, you are causing it in your own mind, and deriving the satisfaction from the pain induced by your determination to keep your self-identity.
That's a statement of fact. I'm not sure that helps a consciousness at that time. Why? His pain is a “fact.” When Jesus handles this in the Course: this is an insane place, it becomes “factually” insane. Do you see? It's contained within itself and continually verifies itself in that association. That's why the necessity is for the revelation, or turning your will and your life over to the care of God, with the admission that this problem is not solvable.
My admonition would be, you're the cause of your own pain. It's not what people are doing to you, it's how you are reacting to the situation. That's a statement of fact. Now, can the specific problem be addressed? The admission that the problem is not solvable in this new association of time, and I'm speaking now of myself, will cause revelation. I will introduce the word “surrender” here. I will tell you flat out from deep experience of intense pain, that this problem is not solvable. That is the direction that you have requested in your thought-form association with me that I direct you to, and I will direct you to that.
The exact difference then between your mind and my mind is the difference between eternity and time. You believe that this problem that is besetting you can be solved in time by a continuing reassociation with yourself. My assurance is to you, from eternity, that this problem can only be solved now by looking directly at yourself in association with yourself, and making the admission that these associations are in my own mind, and I can solve it simply by releasing the necessity for the conflict of my self-identity.
Somewhere I am admitting in our temporal identities that this takes time, aren't I? The question can then arise, how much time does it take? The time that it takes is determined by the consciousness association in his direction of self-identity in his temporal associations with himself. How long will he continue to be guided by the projections of his own mind in association with himself? How long? I will answer that for you. He was but a moment. Yet is time then an invention of a perceptual mind, or the distance between the problem that he is and the solution that he thinks he can find.
Remember that both the problem and the solution are not real. Now you might as well look at this. This will make you feel real good, hopefully. Now, obviously everything in the world verifies the reality of the problem except this association. Yet this is the association that is most fearful to you, because this would be the positive admission that there is no value in you as you have constituted yourself in association with time. Isn't this so? That's all I teach. There is no value in you. What possible value would there be in murder, sickness, pain, death, and all the things that you're determined to associate yourself with in your own mind. My direction is then, that you in perceptual sequential time are giving all of the value that this has - I'm teaching directly from the Course in Miracles book, aren't I? That you're giving all of that the value that you want it to have in your addictive association with the necessity for you to operate under the laws of man rather than the certainty of the will of God.
So bring me your problems, ye who are heavy laden and I will direct you to the certainty that, and we'll begin with the therapy, it's not how you react to the problem, it's how you look at it in the truth of your own certainty that you are the cause of this. Okay? See where that sits with you.
Excepts from
With No Solution, The Problem Disappears – "Happy Therapy"
From The Transformative Series
 |
With No Solution, The Problem Disappears |
