ACIM Lesson 198
Only my condemnation injures me.
1. Injury is impossible. ²And yet illusion makes illusion. ³If you can condemn, you can be injured. ⁴For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. ⁵Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. ⁶Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
© A Course in Miracles – Foundation for Inner Peace
My interpretation:
At first glance this lesson seems impossible…the alleged fact that ‘only my condemnation’ injures me. This is one of the many course lessons that require full belief in core course concepts. The first sentence is telling…’injury is impossible’. Of course it’s not impossible, every day we see violence through injury in our world. But the course author tells us that everything he says is true, and if we accept the challenge of stopping forcing these concepts into our framework and accepting them in his, then there is no reason for them not to be ‘true’. We have to accept that what’s true in our earthly reality (injury) may not be true in God’s reality. Injury IS impossible if we remain as he created us… not as bodies / avatars born of the ego to prove this worlds reality to our guilt-stricken minds, but as spirit which does not know time or injury. And while ultimately injury is impossible… when we see what we think of as ‘others’ and condemn them (and wish for their injury), the illusion we are creates an illusion of injury to them. But as we are all one (a critical course concept) we are in fact operating within one brain and injuring ourself. In a way its like a dog biting its own tail. Giving and receiving is a law, if we give it we receive it.
This concept is so simple we cannot fail to see it, although we reject it with all our might. In a world of bodies, it does not seem to be true. I can injure you, or you me. Again we need to look at the deeper principle that thoughts create actions, and when operating from that level it makes more sense that the illusion of a thought to injure released into the ether can return to injure us.
Those concepts are not hard to see, but very hard to accept, mostly out of our unwillingness to see or accept them. But to me the next step is harder yet.
The course puts forward the concept (which is unique it seems to me) that when we actually see what is happening, that our condemnation injures us, and ‘lay it down’ as valueless, unwanted, and unreal, that is ceases to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. This is truly a radical theory, which goes against everything we’ve ever learned.
The course is saying that if we willingly, having seen the truth, lay down a weapon, it will cease to have effects against us and any damage done will be undone. If I’m not wrong this is essentially saying that if energy is willingly withdrawn, that energy will dissipate or transform into something else. Throughout the course this type of of miraculous effect is repeatedly mentioned, for instance in the concept that giving is receiving. Our rational, intellectual minds are unable to grasp these concepts, which originate from beyond the laws of this world. The question remains… can we willingly give up judgement and condemnation in order to experience freedom from injury?
Do we have any real choice? I think the direction is clear, although I hesitate to take it. Being defenceless seems like a dangerous thing to do, perhaps until we do it.
