...the most effective learning situations
are those that contain the most conflict, fear, and anxiety—all aspects of
specialness—because they bring out the mind’s deepest recesses of guilt, which
we now experience as bodies.
Jesus helps us understand that our experiences as
bodies in the dream are nothing but projections of a life we made real in our
minds. And this inner life is itself a defense against the real problem of the
decision maker’s misuse of its power of choice.
Every time we come to Jesus for help, his answer will be that
what we experience outside is a projection of what we have made real inside:
the world is “the outside picture of an inward condition” (T‑21.in.1:5) —projection makes perception. We first look within and see the
ego’s thought system of separation and guilt. Making that reality, we project
it in the illusory hope that it will no longer be in us but in someone else,
thereby freeing us of its painful presence. Once again, all our external
problems and concerns come from the ego’s maladaptive attempts to remove a
problem that is itself unreal.
By choosing to learn the thought system
Jesus teaches us, we have a context in which to place our everyday experiences.
It is most important that we focus on these experiences, and not do a
metaphysical trip on ourselves and think that because the Course teaches the
world and body are illusions, that we believe it. We must begin where we
believe we are—in the body—otherwise Jesus cannot teach us. Thus we need to
focus on whatever goes on in our daily lives. To restate it, the classrooms are
these lives, and special relationships—with our body and those of
others—constitute the curriculum our new teacher uses to instruct us. We
therefore need to see sex as part of that curriculum, whether we are sexually
active or not—not because sex is any better or worse than anything else in our
lives, but because it is such a significant part of our classroom in this
physical world. In this way, Jesus can help us recognize that what we
experience in terms of the body is the shadowy fragment of what we made real in
the mind.
It cannot be said enough that knowing the metaphysical
underpinnings of the Course’s thought system is most helpful, because they
provide the framework within which we can make sense of our lives, giving them
a mighty purpose. What the mind does with sexuality has intention, as with
every aspect of our bodily experience. Until now, the body had the negative
goal of proving that separation is real, the same goal shared by the specifics
of victimization and the pleasure-pain continuum. One of sexuality’s purposes,
therefore, was to prove that something outside the mind gives pleasure and
happiness. A major myth about sexuality, moreover, has been that it will make
us whole and complete—in heterosexual behavior, for example, male and female
come together and become one. Indeed, Plato taught in his great myth that in
the beginning we were androgynous[1] [2]—both male and
female—and then became separated. This kind of thinking, then, becomes the
ego’s justification for finding union through the body. On the other hand,
sexuality can also be the source of sin and guilt, shame and fear, wherein
religions have found justification for their belief in sexual abstinence as a
key to spiritual advancement. Either position misses the point, for true
unholiness and holiness have their locus only in the mind, where the decision
for the ego or Holy Spirit is made.
This underscores the importance of the
line I quoted earlier: “Minds are joined; bodies are not” (T‑18.VI.3:1). What joins you with another person is
not copulation, but shared purpose. This can be expressed in a sexual
relationship or a non-sexual one. It can be expressed anywhere, anytime. As
Jesus says at the beginning of the manual, you may be riding on an elevator
when a child bumps into you, but you do not judge the child (M-3.2). In that holy instant you do not see the
child as separate from you. This is the meaning of joining.
More than anything else, therefore, sex is a classroom of
joining, reflecting the learning that occurs in the mind.
[1]There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous," who was half male, half female. The males were said to have descended from the sun, the females from the earth and the androgynous couples from the moon. These creatures tried to scale the heights of Olympus and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about blasting them with thunderbolts but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating the two bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)
[2]Platonic myths: The Myth of Aristophanes
Once upon a time, there were three kinds of human beings: male, descended from the sun; female, descended from the earth; and androgynous, with both male and female elements, descended from the moon. Each human being was completely round, with four arms and fours legs, two identical faces on opposite sides of a head with four ears, and all else to match. They walked both forwards and backwards and ran by turning cartwheels on their eight limbs, moving in circles like their parents the planets. https://outre-monde.com/2010/09/25/platonic-myths-the-myth-of-aristophanes/
Androgynous beings were mentioned in Shirley MacLaine’s The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit. It’s taken me all these years to find out it’s all fantasy.
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