Ask: How do I accept someone without giving up on them?
Recently, in a conversation with a friend who is on the path, she wondered how she could accept someone close to her who is clearly steeped in guilt and acting in ways from that guilt that is harmful to their relationships, without feeling she is giving up on any hope that this person will change and grow. During our discussion, she suggested I use this question for this article.
Specifically, she was concerned
with how to go forward with this person with boundaries that protect herself when
necessary but without leaving the relationship, which she feels would be abandoning
the other. As she is a Spirit-centered person, she recognizes that she will at
some point let go of outcomes and attachments, but also that for now she is still
triggered by others’ pain. So, I suggested that she refrain from deciding about
the relationship as a whole and instead take each encounter with this person as
it comes, responding authentically in that moment, trusting whatever that is,
and—this is the hard part—not judging it.
In fact, this suggestion is
simply what comes naturally when you no longer have attachments and are not concerned
with outcomes. You are simply with people in the moment and act as you are
moved. And when you are done, you are done.
Often, spiritual students assume
that if they are Spirit-centered, their words and actions will be gentle and
their exchanges with others will be peaceful. But this is not the case, because
when you are dealing with egos, both your own and others’, it can be loud and
raucous and messy. Sometimes, the only way to break through barriers, your own
and others’, is to get loud, to get in someone’s face, to say things in a way
that gets their attention, and sometimes even your own. In other words, trust
Spirit has you both and that what occurs is necessary, no matter how it looks.
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Comments
When Jesus was working with Helen who was a real hard head, He didn't hold back when needed.
The problem we have in understanding the courses explanation of the separation are many. One is that the egoic mind revolts (often without our knowledge) at the idea of a dream. When we try to understand the separation, the mind will always try squeezing it into a story line that fits our experience as humans not as our true Self. Immediately we begin to doubt the course.
Lesson 158 clarifies this problem. The revelation that the Father and the Son are One will come in time to every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught. “The script is written’ when experience will come to end your doubting has been set.” When this revelation of reality will happen has already been set.
The final chapters of the text urge us to begin the transition from thinking of ourselves as bodies to that of mind.
a gift universal in application
With this explanation we can now view the atonement as it was meant to be understood. Without time and infinity.
It is the son of God now as ego in the first dream. Observer but not participant.