Q: Having studied the Course now for eleven years I feel I have come to a point where I am really stuck. I believe the Course aims at letting me, the student, become aware of what I have denied and suppressed in order for it to be healed. I won't bother you with all the details of what forms fear have taken in my life, suffice it to say that I have become painfully aware how much I have hurt myself by choosing the ego over the Holy Spirit. Last week when I pondered the symptoms in my life (esp concerning my relationship to my wife) and translated this to my relationship to God, I suddenly realized what I have (seemingly) done, namely wanting to substitute all of Heaven with this miserable, worthless parody of life in which I find myself judging, attacking, hating and punishing others in the dream which only reinforces my hatred of myself. In my morning prayer I had asked Jesus to let me look directly at the cause of my pain even if it would be painful and boy was this prayer answered. I was immersed in such sorrow and sadness that I cried more than I have ever done in my life and it was not about any worldly "loss" or "sacrifice" in form - it felt like it was the mother of all sorrows (weeping over my innocence I guess).

This, however, is not what I feel stuck about, the "stuckness" is about all the hatred that has come to the surface, and just like the described sorrow concerned my relationship with God, so does the hatred. Certainly, some of my hatred is directed at the shadow figures in my dream, yet I know that even that reflects my wish to make God guilty (Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is always directed against God. T-16.V.2.1).

I wouldn't mind becoming aware of all this hatred if I felt that I could forgive it and leave it behind, but this just doesn't happen - and this very fact makes me even more hateful. I hate myself for hating myself, I hate myself for hating God, I hate God for having to exist in the first place and having to create a Son that can seem to have the ability to separate from Him, I hate my unwillingness/inability to forgive myself, I hate myself for fearing instead of welcoming God, I hate God for seemingly not lifting the burden of hatred from my mind, I hate myself for being attracted to guilt, pain and death, I hate my attraction to specialness, I hate myself for my resistance to awakening and for my pathetic clinging to my ego, I hate God for not helping me with this though I try to be as honest as I can, I hate hearing myself telling me how good a Course student I am, finally approaching the real cause of my pain and saying things like "if the way seems long, let him be content blablabla". It seems like there's no ending to the hatred, it's just layer upon layer and I never get to the bottom. Along with the sorrow comes the wish to die and with the hatred the desire to kill God.

I just don't know how to handle this. Having been an intellectual all of my life, mostly suppressing instead of expressing emotions, I am so sick and tired of all the "cognitive tricks" (like asking the Holy Spirit for help or reminding me that awakening is inevitable) aiming at removing these emotions. Trying to "comfort" myself with ideas from the Course just seems to be defenses against the underlying emotions. Should I just indulge myself in the hatred and the wish to kill God without judging myself for it? Well, I already do but it doesn't seem to help that much. What profiteth it a Course student if he gains all of the intellectual understanding of the separation and its undoing if he awakens not to the experience of Oneness with God?

Any word of advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

Peace.

A: Dear Beloved One

Thanks for writing and sharing what is surfacing in your mind. Hatred is the ego's emotion in wanting to be right about the belief in separation from God and dictating how God must react to this insane belief. The ego is a temper tantrum that demands God grant reality to illusions, furious that God will not grant reality to a nonexistent puff of an idea that wants to rule and control that which is the Eternal Child of an Eternally Loving God. If the mind tries to identify with the ego, with the puff, the illusory emotion of hatred is the seeming result. This hatred IS the apparent result of identifying with ego and denying Christ, yet the emotion can and will be released the instant the ego is no longer valued and taken as one's identity.

As a sincere student of A Course In Miracles you are beginning to see that denial is but a defense mechanism, yet you must also see that there is no partial denial. Deny the Christ as Reality and the attempt has been made to deny Everything, for there is nothing 'outside' the Mind of God & Christ. Denial is total. Just as denial of Christ brings the mesmorism and sleep and dreams of time-space, denial of the belief that error can actually hurt anything is total Awakening.

Once you see the nothingness of the ego there can only be a happy dream of nonjudgment and glee. The full exposure and release of the ego is an experience and not an intellectual 'feat' or 'accomplishment.'

The ego enjoys studying itself, and those who do not attempt to go beyond the words of A Course In Miracles to the actual experience of Atonement will seem to go round and round and round and become stuck on the words. To teach is to demonstrate, and unless one's attitude demonstrates the Truth then there is the ego defense in play of trying to confine the Truth to words. Truth cannot be described or explained – only experienced.

Let the hatred rise to the surface of consciousness. It only SEEMS to be so intense that it will consume and destroy everything that you still value. The Spirit cannot be consumed or destroyed and needs no defense at all to Be ItSelf. Love is invulnerable. Whatever seems to crumble before the Light of Truth was never real to begin with.

Let the hatred rise and do not attempt to protect or deny or hide it. As Grace Slick once sang: "Let the world around us just fall apart, baby we can make it if we're heart to heart."

Only the anticipation will seem to frighten you, yet in the re-translation everything is Born Again, Born Anew in Christ. Christmas is a symbol of the rebirth or remembrance of the Christ within.

Surrender every scrap of control, every attempt to manipulate the world and fix your brothers and sisters, and where is the hatred? Hatred has vanished along with the belief that something 'needed' to be controlled or manipulated or fixed. Only acceptance is Asked, that Christ may recognize Christ. And for this it is only necessary that the last illusion be accepted: forgiveness of what never happened in Reality. Forgive illusions and hatred has vanished. Yet to forgive it must be recognized that illusions are one, for there is no partial forgiveness in Atonement. Either forgiveness is complete or illusions are believed to be real. Which will you accept this Christmas?

I am joined with you in right-mindedness, and thus is hatred impossible.

Blessings of Love Eternally.

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