By Kenneth Wapnick Excerpted from pp. 237-238 of Volume
One (All Are Called) of the two-volume work entitled
In a section from the text called "The Rewards of God," Jesus sounds like a learning theorist -- "Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain..." (T-4.VI.3:4) -- as he describes his method of helping us to choose him as our teacher instead of the ego. We cite a central paragraph:How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This teaches him to associate his misery with its absence, and the opposite of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth. I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. You have taught yourself the opposite. You are still free to choose, but can you really want the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God? (T-4.VI.5)As long as we cling to the ego's hand we cannot take Jesus'. Indeed, we cling to the ego just because we do not want to take his. Therefore, taking Jesus by the hand means that we have already decided to value his gift of joy and not the ego's gift of misery. He explains further in the text:When you unite with me you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego....I want to mention again that in this passage, as in most of A Course in Miracles for that matter, Jesus is anthropomorphizing the ego, making it sound as if the ego were a person, responding as any of us would. In truth, however, beyond these symbolic words is the expression of the fear of losing our individuality that would lead us to turn away from Jesus and through our attack --on others or on ourselves -- we succeed in protecting our specialness from the threat of Jesus and his peace. As he states in the manual for teachers:
Miracle Studies Navigation Table |