Writing this, and reading this, is difficult as it goes against everything the world has taught us since the illusion of our birth into this body, and at some level we are very loyal to this world which we love as our own creation. Please take this article slowly and try to see beyond the symbols of death and destruction that this unfortunate Walmart shooting casts before us. In order to begin to understand, we have to look at these events simply. The world screams the opposite, that we must consider an infinitely wide range of factors that we cannot possibly comprehend. This is its recipe for failure.
Our original separation from God’s mind resulted in deep unconscious levels of guilt. Unable to withstand this guilt, we projected it outward into the creation of this world, a world of duality, death, and destruction. In order to perceive and interpret it and ‘prove’ it real (perception previously being unnecessary) we developed five senses to filter the world through. Each attests the undeniable reality of this world. Being eternal beings…we created ‘death’ that we might know that we have triumphed over the eternal. Now we have a world, five senses to view that world, and a motive to kill and die. Is it any wonder we do just that? But wait… the world doesn’t actually exist, except in our wrong mind.
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. ACIM L132P6
The son of God is one, not many. We all share one mind, although from our perspective we’ve split it into 7+ billion individual minds.
You are the world and the world is you. Your consciousness is not yours, it is the ground on which all human beings share and think. You are actually not an individual. Krishnamurti, Public talk #1, Calcutta India Nov. 20, 1982
But were not twenty plus people gunned down in a Texas Walmart? Yes they were… at least in the perception of our wrong-minded world of duality. But in the real world of God’s reality this is simply an illusory dream of death and destruction, and nothing has happened. What makes it seem more real and compelling is that not just one, but many people were ‘gunned down’. Notice the first of the 50 principles of miracles:
There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.
The ego maintains an exact opposite ‘order of destruction’ – convincing us that the more people are murdered or the bigger the explosion or cataclysm or tsunami or whatever.. the greater the horror.. the more real it is, and the greater our grievance against God. How could we possibly forgive God for allowing this to happen to innocent people?
These ‘orders of difficulty’ dilemmas are difficult to overcome as our thinking is virtually entirely based on evaluating and judging events based on how big or small or important or non-important an event was. Can we see this as just one of the many tricks the ego uses to mesmerize us? In reality, probably thousands of people died today from one cause or another. The fact that twenty one died at Walmart is regrettable, but not unique. I’m pointing this out so we can get some space to see how our minds are literally built to see focus on differences and extremes of anger and attack and react to them, insisting that the killer be ‘brought to justice’ and punished. But the course states:
No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.
You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. ACIM Workbook L152 P1/P2
The course states that the concepts it contains are ‘simple’, and so they are. But that doesn’t mean that they are easy to accept…as their acceptance means that we must die to the world we see.
Accepting the course means literally a complete reversal of thought. Twenty plus people today were gunned down at Walmart it what appeared to be a horrific random attack. They suffered, and their families will suffer, at least in the dream we are in. And since we are in this dream and since we cannot immediately step out of it, at least most of us, we have to accept that this shooting has occurred and that people died. But if we stop at that, we are caught endlessly in the world and will never escape it. In order to escape it, we have to begin to reverse the thoughts that created and maintain this world of illusion.
We can begin do that by not judging events, but rather turning that function over to the holy spirit. The holy spirit would teach us to see any attack, not matter how grievous, as a call for love, to be responded to appropriately. This doesn’t mean that we overlook the serious nature of what has happened today and take steps to prevent it happening again as long as we are in this illusion, but it does mean that we forgive by overlooking the events. When we focus on the perceived ‘sin’ in others we overlook their holiness. ‘Holiness’ means to be ‘whole’, or one. Remember the Krishnamurti quote above? We are all one. Thus in order to see the holiness in ourselves we must see it in others…. even in those who act out dreams of murder.
A Course in Miracles defines forgiveness as seeing that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred, in spite of it’s apparent reality. The power of forgiveness lies in seeing that there was only a mistaken perception, which can be overlooked, and so the mind remains at peace. Jesus says that true forgiveness merely waits, looks and judges not. It does not pardon sins by making them real; rather it sees there was no sin.
The Walmart shooter projected his guilt outside of himself then sought to ‘kill’ it. If we project our guilt onto him and then seek to ‘kill’ him by the death penalty, we are perpetuating the same cycle. Politicians have already responded to escalate the cycle by calling for the death penalty for ‘hate crimes’. They, not you, will decide what a ‘hate crime’ is. And the beat goes on….until we step out of it. You and I.
Can we look past the apparent sequence of events and see this person as a brother, not fundamentally unlike ourselves, who was desperately unhappy and asking for help? And his violent act as a futile call for love? For most of us this is hard to do. But if this world is based on the projection of attack then the way out of this world requires the willingness for this type of complete reversal of thought. If we accept that we are of one mind then we are the Walmart shooter. Can we forgive ourselves?
Do we really want out of this world?