Facing Insanity

         When I wrote my memoir (A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens), I struggled to convey the terribleness of the intensely uncomfortable experiences I had as I shifted from ego to Spirit-consciousness. I used words like darkness and disorientation and surreal and even horror but there was a quality to the overall experience that I could not accurately characterize for myself much less convey to others. It was dismayingly unexpected and unfamiliar. I thought maybe one day I would look back and understand. Well, that day came. I now know that I was experiencing insanity.

I also said I knew I was experiencing ego as it really was, without denial or covers, yet insanity never occurred to me. When it finally did a few weeks ago, I felt relief. I finally had the appropriate description for my experiences. I now understand everything I went through.

 

“You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane.” (T-9.VII.6)

 

I am not using insanity figuratively, hyperbolically, or facetiously, as I may have done when discussing ego in the past. In fact, during the process I often described some of my vicious thoughts, copious processing, and attacking behavior to myself as insane because they were intense and extreme and untampered by the personal identity that used to modify them. Yet I did not realize insane was factual because I was feeling ego as it is. I was delusional whenever back in ego (identifying with the person) and I could no longer experience it any other way.

 

“And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity.” (T-14.I.2)

 

What else but a massive delusion is it for the One and Only to believe It is one among many? For All to think It is limited and lacks?

In fact, the first time I had this experience was over a decade ago when a friend of mine was experiencing problems in her marriage. She and her husband were projecting all over each other. (Neither were students of A Course in Miracles.) Nothing I suggested seemed to help her, so I tried to step into her shoes, and I felt I was “going down the rabbit hole.” I simply could not get into her headspace without extreme disorientation. It meant entering a level of delusion I had not experienced in years. Of course, when ego was my unquestioned thought system, I did not experience it as delusional. This experience with my friend was a signal I was starting to come out of identification with a person.

 

“Perceive any part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it.” (T-7.VII.11)

 

Intellectually, I had understood that if the Truth was what the Course says It is—that only God is real—I had to be in a deep delusion to identify with a person. And sometimes I experienced a woozy disorientation with spiritual insights or experiences that revealed the truth of Truth. Yet, I never expected to directly face the delusion and experience ego as insane. But it turns out that insanity was, in fact, the “black box in the corner of my mind” I sensed for so long I would one day have to face. Delusion was the 15% I felt was left between the peace I had and total peace.

I still face the delusion each day but recognize it readily and it is undone, leaving me with peace and happiness. I can look back now and see with what exquisite gentleness I have been brought out of delusion. I was never left alone in it. And I did not face it as a delusion until I had been made ready to do so. Clearly, my Self is Love.

To be clear: The illusion of consciousness was not the delusion. The material experience is illusory but neutral. The delusion was identifying with it and thinking it was my reality. That was ego. I emerge from a delusional consciousness (ego) into a consciousness (Spirit) that is still an illusion but reflects Reality (God), Which is beyond consciousness.

So, truly, I (Christ) was never delusional, nor do I emerge from a delusion. I am none of that. It is all an illusion. But I am represented in this story of the Atonement, or undoing of the perception of separation from God, by Spirit.

 

“The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable realization that all perception is unnecessary… You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world.  That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the ‘you’ who are living in this world? Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it implies no change at all. It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. That is its main difference from everything else the mind can grasp.” (T-4.II.11)

 

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