A Course In Miracles Lesson 88

Violence and destruction are not forces of energy.  They are the opposite and are therefore nothing.  The (seeming) event of violence is not creative and therefore not of a lasting, eternal nature.  Reality is eternal because it is creative.  

A Course In Miracles is asking us to consider pain and violence as unreal.  It is not asking us to convince ourselves that something does not hurt when it does hurt.  It is asking us to understand that pain is not real.  Violence does hurt but it does not go on and on.  It is not of a lasting nature.  It is not real in the same way Peace is real.

There is no external force of destruction against us.  If there were, we would not exist.  We would already be destroyed because there would be no fighting or overcoming an external force of destruction.  Since we do exist, the Field in which we exist is of a nature that is conducive to existence.  It is Creative.  There are no other laws beyond the Creative conditions of life.  We exist as part of eternity.  It is not possible to destroy eternity.  It is a force and a power that is unassailable.  Connecting to the eternity within you gives you unlimited ease and resource through whatever you may be working with in the physical world.

We are not subject to any other laws greater that Reality.  No other laws exist and as such, whatever effects we may feel from the temporary events of other conditions are not of a serious nature.

This may outrage those who suffer greatly and who feel overwhelmed by the intensity of how much pain they are experiencing as well as the understanding of how unjust that pain is.  But again, ACIM is not asking us to convince ourselves that pain does not hurt.  That is an insane request.  We are being asked to consider how serious that pain really is in relation to our true state of being.

The story of a man nailed to a cross who was left to die slowly is a story of the most outrageous violence.  The aim of the story is to show that physical pain and mental confusion do not last.  Suffering is overcome in that story to offer a message that it is possible to disempower violence as something permanent.  When the man who survived that ordeal said in the story, “It is accomplished.” He was asking that we let that process of overcoming confusion also be true in our own minds.  Let what he went through and achieved also be understood as an ordeal we have gone through and achieved.  

Because minds are connected, what you achieve is also achieved in this world.  We can learn and grow through peace and joy.  Peace and joy are, in fact, the only way we can learn because there IS nothing else to learn aside from that eternal wellness.  Once we learn of the true nature of reality and understand there are no other real states beyond that state of Grace, we put down the experiences of violence as methods for learning.

There is nothing to learn in pain other than that we do not want it.  Pain and suffering is not a law of the cosmos.  Light does not need darkness to exist.  Light exists without opposite.  But this is not a state we can perceive or understand in a physical body.  The physical body is not an accurate source of information.  The physical body is an expression of one’s state of mind.  The mind is eternal and therefore the mind is free to compose seeming “realities” that are not true or lasting.  True reality enables me to choose for myself what I will believe is true.  But when I am convinced of something that does not mean I am correct in what I’ve decided.  It means I am free to feel correct while mistaken.  I can choose to follow a more accurate path of perception by first understanding that my mind holds tremendous power.  That power is governed by a state of constant Wellness.