Be Hurt No More

Question: Could you speak about relationships? The Course talks about special and holy relationships. Can you briefly describe what they are?

David: Relationships seem to be a difficult undertaking in this world. They seem to be a mixture of love and hate, attraction and repulsion, joy and misery. Jesus refers to special love and special hate relationships as destructive, selfish, possessive, and exclusive. These are ego-based relationships that are songs of praise to their maker. Holy relationship is a metaphor for a special relationship that has been given over to the Holy Spirit for His purpose of forgiveness. Holy relationship is a healed relationship that reflects wholeness and completion.

Beyond all metaphors, one might say that the only real relationship is one of Spirit, of God and Creation, of Father and Son. As the only real relationship is given by God, the holy relationship is learned of the Holy Spirit. As the "scarcity principle" is undone by the Holy Spirit, the sense of lack, inadequacy, weakness, and incompletion that is typical of the special relationship is replaced in the holy relationship by joining, extension, appreciation, and acceptance.

I like to speak of the special relationship in the past tense, for as with everything of the ego, it is history. If we recall the metaphysics we have covered today, the sleeping mind became so terrified of the light that it attempted to hide from God in a world of form. Believing it had torn itself from Heaven, it attempted to set up a body-world self as its "new" identity. It attempted to forget about its Identity as Spirit. As it became identified as a body, it was shaky about this "new" identity because, though it had tried to forget the light, deep down it knew that it was making this world up and that God could and must be remembered. Being uncertain and afraid to go back to the light, it looked for an "external" solution -- other bodies with which it could "join" to find happiness and completion. That was how the so-called "co-dependency" of special relationships began.

As soon as the mind believed it was out on the screen of the world, it sought outside itself to alleviate the guilt and fear and loneliness and emptiness it felt within. It looked for other bodies to be its friends and companions. Associations with the "right people," the sleeping mind's God-substitutes, took on great importance. The whole world became one giant special relationship, because everything that the mind associated with on the screen was set up to be a God-substitute. And the reason why special love and special hate relationships are never completely satisfying and never bring lasting peace and happiness is because there can never be a substitute for the Love of God.

The holy relationship can only be experienced now as a reflection of the Love of God. It is analogous to the real world, complete forgiveness, or healed perception that I spoke of earlier. As one realizes the impossibility of personal judgment, one also realizes the impossibility of special relationships of any kind. Holy relationship, then, is not personal in the sense of bodies relating to one another. It is symbolic of a universal wholeness, a state of mind that can only give of its complete perfection. The concept of "getting" something in return for something else is utterly meaningless in the present moment. Right now, there is only rest, contentment, and fulfillment.

To be continued . . .The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours.
You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost.
This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart.
This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked.
No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack.
Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness.
Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return"
(T.28.VI.4; italics added).