September 2, 2009

• Denial Is Not A River In Egypt

  For me at least Hitler has been one of my favorite ways of looking at the ego thought system, and somehow I just managed to finish the major biography in about six months. It took me about six years to read the first quarter of it, and then I suddenly read the remaining three quarters in six months. For good measure I then plunged into Richard J. Evans' history of the Third Reich. Having grown up just after WWII, and in Rotterdam where the results were still very visible all around from the original bombardment during the German Blitzkrieg-invasion in 1940, and the town was being rebuilt still when I went to high school. I had to bicycle for about 40 minutes through the center city, where you could still always see the charred outer walls of the remaining old buildings, while the inner city was all new construction. And there were endless stories at the dinner table of how my parents and their parents survived under the occupation.

  I note here that this is one thing the Thomas Gospel does not give us, the full view of the insanity of the ego thought system, although it will touch on the fact that the (ego-) world resists what Jesus has to teach. So this is also why  Pursah in Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe, makes it very clear that the Thomas sayings are just little vignettes, not the full thought system, but that A Course in Miracles clarifies the whole thought system. And the Course in turn spends a lot of time teaching us how the ego system works, and teaching us how to look at it with forgiveness, which in the end means not taking it seriously at all. So The Mouse that Roared is in the end a better analogy for the ego than anything else, it turns out to be just totally ridiculous, which we do not see as long as our denial protects it. Hence the Course consistently advocates that it is looking at the ego with Jesus (forgiveness), not with judgment, which ultimately deflates the "power" of the ego, and thus enables us to choose once again, for the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus advocates. What the Course calls the little willingness, is that willingness to consider that Jesus was right and we were wrong. Until we are willing to see that, we continue to be impressed by the ego's antics. And we all have that little Hitler inside, for that is all the ego is, it is the one true slave driver, who keeps us in bondage, and the external oppressors we experience in the world are only the reflection of that inner choice, for if we were free inside, we would not be impressed. Jesus was the example of that, for he knew there was nothing to be defensive about, since he was no longer buying into the illusion that there is anything at all of value here.

  To come back to WWII for a moment, which is full of interesting lessons of how the ego works, the German magazine, Der Spiegel, just published an excellent series of articles under the title Why Wasn't Hitler Stopped, at this time which is the commemoration that the Polish Invasion is now 70 years ago, paying special attention to how appeasement enabled Hitler to do what he did, and how at many times in the run-up he was all bluff. The French could have easily wiped him out in the annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine, etc. It is interesting to see how with the growing distance there is more and more willingness to see the mistakes that were made on all levels. That also tells you that it will take several generations before people will get honest about the wars being fought today. What often gets too little attention are experiences of grace such as the stories of Corrie ten Boom and her sister, and also Victor Frankl's experiences. In the end the story is always a form of resurrection story, in which spiritual renewal is born out of the destruction. The way out lies through the fear, for the fear is maintained in power by running from it. That seems counter intuitive, but it's always through. The answer is not bravery, or bravura, but forgiveness, that is the only thing which takes the air out of the balloon, and we have nothing to forgive but fear itself (pun intended - it was just a silly mistake).

  • 9:34 am
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