So it strikes me that most people wouldn’t comprehend the course and that includes most Muslims. That’s ok we are told again and again in Gary’s book that there will be a time that non-dualistic thinking will become dominant and what isn’t understood now will be obvious then. That quote above is from the sixth section of chapter 21. The section title is important, “Reason versus Madness”. So in a reasonable world we would deeply connect to our brothers as ourselves. So an IDF soldier and a Hamas Soldier would realize they are both intrinsically connected. Of course we all realize that is never going to happen in our life time . . . No one would say a Nazi soldier identified with the victims he was burning but our unconscious guilt and our one mind does. So though we want to believe in sin, the reasonable truth is we cannot escape our brother and othering him only makes us believe we are both sinful. So let’s return to that reasonable chapter and revisit it:
Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. ²Sin would maintain it can. ³Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. ⁴Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? ⁵And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart from it? ⁶Sin would maintain you and your brother must be separate. ⁷But reason tells you that this must be wrong. ⁸If you and your brother are joined, how could it be that you have private thoughts? (ACIM, T-21.VI.2:1-8)
So sin wants us to believe I can be reasonable and “saved” without a Zionist but reason would say both of us are One. I can’t condemn someone without believing I too am guilty. The difficulty is in remembering when you see someone on the exact opposite end of the belief spectrum to remind yourself, they too are truly innocent. Remind yourself and them of our collective indivisible relationship and innocence. If I deeply believe they are sinful, then I deeply believe I am. So those Nazis that took life, those Russians fighting in the Ukraine will come back in some form complementing what they couldn’t accept in this incarnation, which is that everyone is innocent. I’ve always thought that in historic Palestinian lands there have probably been both Muslims and Jews that reincarnate as the other for as long as they have existed. More likely then not they reincarnate as the other when they really dislike and even hate the other. That strong opinion, that strong feeling that disturbs our peace, is also what’s called sin (our unconscious belief in our own guilt) and makes us believe this world is real. As long as we believe one person is sinful, then we will believe we are sinful. No exceptions. The course is nothing if it weren’t consistent and that’s how you know it’s truly loving. If we aren’t consistent in thought we aren’t truly loving. I can’t think and say contradictory things. It’s like using pleasantries in front of you then speaking badly about you behind your back. Our inconsistency is taxing on our hearts, we know right away something is off, love was not expressed.
So if I watch the news and see the world is a sinful place, that’s a signal I believe I’m internally sinful. I believe the devastation in Gaza is real, and not a nightmare humanity and I are undertaking together. So, how can I be truly useful? I forgive what I see. I forgive all the evidence piled up in my face that death and destruction are more valid than my own thoughts. The physical is a consequence, not the cause. I return to the cause, which is my mind and continue to forgive because I, along with any Courser watching the news, need to hold humanity and remind us, breaking our essential Unity is IMPOSSIBLE no matter how hard we try. We are all eternally innocent despite playing Children’s game’s with Knives.
5. Undermining the ego’s thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. ²Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors, although they may well harm themselves if you do not. ³In this sense you are still a baby. ⁴You have no sense of real self-preservation, and are likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. ⁵Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that must go together. (ACIM, T-4.II.5:1-5)