August 26, 2009

• Tiny, Mad Idea

  First of all, Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler is exemplary in terms of its even-handed presentation. His absence of judgment lets us see how banal the ego really is, in all its insanity. Throughout, you wonder why people gave this nobody their faith, and certainly after the reverses set in, in the winter of ’41, his all or nothing approach became so evidently idiotic, when he always argued “all” but the evidence was showing that he was achieving “nothing,” yet his generals constantly went along with him, despite some grumbling, and so always maximized the disasters. Reading his life this way becomes a sobering reflection on the ego-insanity that drives us all. For if we do believe in the ego, if we do believe we are lonely individuals in a hostile world, separated from God, their source, we always do fall into the conflict of Cain & Abel all over again. That can be dressed up “scientifically” in terms of the “survival of the fittest” and some of that type of rationale was only too evident in Hitler’s approach, but it’s always the same. And the fundamental logic of the ego is always all or nothing. So why our allegiance to it? Why if any clear mind could see that it’s only leading us to perdition? The devil we know versus the devil we don’t? And we continue headlong into disaster? Why? Why? Why? There has to be another way!

  Once you look past the enormity of the situation, realizing that differences of degree are not material, it begins to make more and more sense why the Course calls the ego a “tiny, mad idea.” And, it is nothing more than that, an idea, a dream, and the mind is thoroughly capable of making another choice:

  Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time. (ACIM:T-27.VIII.6)

  In the context of the Thomas Gospel, Logion 87 reminds us of how much special relationships, the relationships of the ego, which are substitutes for our one holy relationship with God, make us miserable, and keep our soul mired in misery in the world. It is the perfect picture for the criminal cameradery of something like the Nazi “leadership” in Germany, and the world repeats this a thousand times. These are false relationships based on the ego’s despair. Logion 67 reminds us how the ego’s “all” is really nothing. And again, the example of Hitler is only an extreme example, but the pattern is always the same. All the conquerors of the world always end up with nothing, for the world is nothing. And the need to conquer the world permanently pits brother against brother, for it is born from scarcity and will therefore only yield scarcity. Logion 56 reminds us of this in starkest terms – if you’ve conquered (understood) the world, all you’ve found is a corpse. Once you figure that out however, you will transcend the world. Logion 45 reminds us that the world’s logic is always false. War and scarcity only beget war and scarcity, never anything good. Logion 26 meanwhile is always a good reminder that our job is not judging our brother, but rather to remove the “log” from our own eye, for else we can never be of help to anyone. As long as we judge any of our brothers at all, we exclude them however, and we continue to exclude ourselves from Heaven, but oneness speaks of a very different reality:

     If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. The only way it could be justified is if you and your brother were separate from the other, and all were separate from your Creator. For only then would it be possible to attack a part of the creation without the whole, the Son without the Father; and to attack another without yourself, or hurt yourself without the other feeling pain. And this belief you want. Yet wherein lies its value, except in the desire to attack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. It is impossible. And this is so because the universe is one. You would not choose attack on its reality if it were not essential to attack to see it separated from its maker. And thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful.
      Only the different can attack. So you conclude because you can attack, you and your brother must be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. Because you and your brother are not different, you cannot attack. Either position is a logical conclusion. Either could be maintained, but never both. The only question to be answered in order to decide which must be true is whether you and your brother are different. From the position of what you understand you seem to be, and therefore can attack. Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that you have other experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what is natural and true. (ACIM:T-22.VI.12-13)

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