Deep Metaphysics of A Course in Miracles
Relationship Dynamics Revealed
One of the key concepts in A Course in Miracles is the concept of a split mind, and the goal of Self realization is to “return” the mind to Wholeness through transcending the split. In service to the goal of Self/Christ realization, let us look more closely at the metaphysics of the split mind so that through our understanding, we may be Called to abandon the false and rest in the True.
A key principle of A Course in Miracles, as well as of other authentic spiritualities, is that God and His Son or Creator and Its Creations, are One. In other words, they are alike—they are of identical, incorporeal “substance” or Spirit—and they are Whole, Complete and Unified. God and His Son are not two, but One.
In the allegorical metaphysics of A Course in Miracles, the Son believes it has separated from God/Source. It believes it has a selfhood apart from God. By this belief, it has created the first subject-object split: me and God. Now there are two. Since God is Wholeness and Oneness, the Son—by
believing it has separated from God—also believes it has shattered Oneness, that it has attacked Oneness by its apparent separation. So not only do we now have a subject-object split, we have a victimizer and victim split. The Son believes by his separation that he has victimized God/Wholeness; that he has destroyed Heaven’s Unity.
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Because he believes in the victimization of God/Wholeness by which he attained a separate self, the Son now further believes that God is angry and will in turn punish him. This belief induces fear. This scenario is not an actuality but a mythology that the deluded Son believes in. The Course explains it thus: the sin of attacking God/Wholeness, the guilt over the attack, and the fear of God’s punishment and vengeance. So now the perceived subject-object split of victimizer and victim is reversed in the Son’s mind: God is the angry victimizer seeking to punish the separated Son who destroyed Wholeness:
According to this mythology, what was once Unified (top of the triangle) is now split into subject-object, victim-victimizer, innocent-guilty, good-bad (bottom of the triangle). Both sides of this false, dualistic, subject-object split are in the mind. They are only beliefs, assumptions, ideas. This dualistic, subject-object, victim-victimizer, innocent-guilty, good-and-evil “mind” is the “substance” or fabric of the false five-sense world. This dualistic mind is the world. What we think of as a physical world is simply the “outpicturing” of this dualistic, subject-object split. The body is a necessary component of this scenario because it is the perceived subject, and everything and everyone else is the object. When we identify as the body, we are in subject-object relationship with everything that is not ourself. There’s me and there’s everything that is not me. So by believing in the idea of separation and believing it has made a body and a world, the Son also erroneously believes it has created something outside of Infinity, something beyond Eternity, something that is more than Everything.
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The mechanism of the split mind operates in the waking, everyday reality just like it operates in a nighttime dream. In a nighttime dream, you experience yourself as the subject and all of the other elements and people in the dream as objects. In actuality, the dream is one unified creation of your mind. In the same way, the split mind “creates” the entire world. There is no objectively existing world apart from the mind. The world (including the body) is all mind and only mind. The experience of being an objectively existing self/body in an objectively existing world is false.
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Let’s return now to the belief that a separated self has been made, the mind has been split into subject and object or victim and victimizer, and that we now believe ourselves to be a body in a world. In an attempt to assuage the feelings of inadequacy and guilt experienced as a perceived separate self, we assign the victim, innocent, good aspects to ourself as subject, and the victimizer, guilty, inadequate, or evil aspects of the split to others. This is called projection. In actuality, both aspects of the duality are in our mind, but we split off the unwanted side and see it out there in the “object,” particularly in other bodies.
Since feelings of inadequacy and guilt go hand in hand with the delusional belief in a selfhood apart from God, at times, rather than assigning the victim role to ourselves, we assign the victimizer role to ourselves and we victimize others in an attempt to feel superior, or powerful. We either literally or figuratively cut off someone else’s head in an attempt to feel taller. Either way, projecting half the split only serves to keep the split unhealed.
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A Course in Miracles further elucidates the dynamics of the split mind by using the terms “special love” and “special hate.”
In special love we try to steal what we perceive as someone else’s specialness so we can have that specialness for ourselves by our association with the other. We feel innately deficient as a separate self so we want vicarious specialness through association with them. For this misguided attempt at self reparation to occur, a subject and object are required. Another self (the object) apart from me (the subject) is needed so I can get my adequacy and specialness from them. “Name-dropping” or acquiring a “trophy wife” are two obvious examples of this dynamic that are easy to understand. Dating the “bad boy/girl” in order to feel cool by association, or being associated with a particular guru in order to appear spiritual are other obvious examples of the use of this special love strategy, as are a myriad of other overt and covert manifestations of this tactic.
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In the special hate dynamic, a subject-object relationship is also required only this time, in order to assuage feelings of deficiency, the subject attacks the other in order to feel righteous, superior, and good by comparison. In special hate, we invalidate and annihilate the other—either figuratively or literally—in an attempt to aggrandize the false self. The subject judges the other as the guilty one so it can be innocent by comparison.
In any of these scenarios, both sides of the split are in the mind and are played out in subject-object relationship on the screen of images we call the world. There is no escape to freedom; there is no escape to peace; there is no true sense of completion to be found in the employment of these dynamics. This win-lose fantasy is a circular strategy going nowhere. This win-lose strategy is a seek-and-do-not-find strategy. This win-lose game is the maker of time.
Everyone wants a “winning feeling.” This is natural. But in this world, it is believed that I can only have a winning feeling by making someone else a loser. The split mind fosters the belief that my winning feeling is only attainable at someone else’s expense. However, a perceived win-lose is actually a lose-lose because it keeps you locked into the split mind reality and trapped in a false identity with all the fear, pain, lack, loss and death that accompany it. A win-win scenario is a wonderful, truly winning feeling! A true win-win springs forth from a transcendent state of mind which includes a Spiritual point of view based on equality, and on the understanding of the metaphysical principle that giving is receiving.
What passes for relationships in this world is basically usury:
Using others in an attempt to fill a hole left by the belief in a selfhood apart from God/Source. This is what relationships and bodies were made for in the ego’s world. To the ego/false self, the body is to attack with, whether attacking to steal someone’s “specialness” or attacking to invalidate and condemn them in an attempt to feel aggrandized by comparison. Perhaps you recognize these dynamics played out in your relationships past and present. Perhaps you’ve observed that even when you move on from one relationship to another, the same old dynamic is present. That is because this split is in the mind, the universal mind, and is played out in every relationship throughout time until it is transcended through Truth realization. If you move on from one relationship to the next it’s just the old same dynamic, with a different, new face. Ad nauseum does this special relationship dynamic repeat. This is the ego’s solution to its perceived problem of guilt and inadequacy for achieving separation by attacking God!
PROJECTION OF HALF OF A SPLIT WILL NEVER HEAL THE MIND. Projection preserves the split! Projection of guilt and inadequacy onto another gives false credence, reality, and power to guilt! Projection gives the belief in guilt, inadequacy and separation a validity it doesn’t inherently have. If I need to get rid of it, I’m proclaiming it is real and powerful. It must be understood that both sides of this split are in your mind, not just the desired side. The split mind will never be transcended/healed if half of it is seen outside in another. This projection of half the split occurs over and over again whether it be between two people, two groups or two nations, and will potentially occur between two planets, galaxies, or dimensions as long as this split is unrecognized and unhealed. This split mind is universal and impersonal. In other words, it is the same split mind that we all experience; the split mind that “causes” a veil of false images to appear in awareness, blocking out awareness of the True Harmonious Spiritual Universe.
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At this point you may be wondering “why all the emphasis on these dark and savage false self relationship dynamics?” The Course itself instructs us to look squarely at the savagery of special relationship dynamics so that we will be induced to give them up. Shining light on these dark strategies allows us to truly apprehend their utter futility; to learn that they were designed to never provide an actual solution to our perceived problem of separation, but were designed to keep the belief in separation alive, and all of the pain and suffering with it. Seeing this for what it is gives us the incentive to seek for the only true and efficacious solution to the perceived problem of separation which is the forgiveness of all illusions/falsity, and the acceptance of our True Nature as Spirit, One with God, Whole and Complete.
This post doesn’t abandon you in the darkness of special relationships. Firstly, the message of hope and freedom is offered through the Truth teachings in previous posts 1 through 13, and the freeing message of Mysticism will again be revisited in future posts. For interim help with relationship dynamics in particular, see Practical Mysticism Post 9: Dominion Over the World of Images Through Releasing Projections, here on the Practical Mysticism blog.
May the Peace, Grace, Harmony and Freedom of Christ realization be yours. Amen.
