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I'm asking you this question for my husband.
He wants to know -- listen to this.
He wants to know, is there ever a case
when the other person is wrong.
Really is wrong and deserving of your wrath.
Is really wrong and deserving of your wrath? Is there ever an exception to the rule?
Really wrong. And deserving of your wrath?
Well, that's a two-part question.
The first part is yes, people can be really wrong.
But, the second part -- but that doesn't mean that they deserve your wrath.
If they're wrong, they're wrong for the same reason you're wrong,
and everyone else is wrong.
They're wrong because they believe, number one, they are separate from God;
and number two, they could be happy being separate from God.
But -- so what I'm saying is that if one person is wrong,
it must mean everyone is wrong.
Because this is an all-or-nothing proposition.
Either everyone is wrong or everyone is right.
And we are both all wrong and both all right.
Because again, Macbeth is the prototype of all of us.
We all have a thought system of 100 percent hate, cruelty and ***.
We all have a 100 percent thought system of love.
And we all have the power to choose one or the other.
So yes, you're justified in saying someone is wrong,
as long as you include in that, everyone else,
because we're not different.
And it's because we're not different that
one is then never justified in getting angry,
because getting angry is saying "I'm the good guy; you're the bad guy."
And my anger is what's going to witness the fact to you,
the fact that you're the evil one and I'm the good one.
Q: And don't you have to accept the responsibility for bringing that
into your sphere? Into your life?
That got you into trouble once a long time ago, I remember, right?
Q: Yes it did. So I mean nobody just happens
to walk into your life with that wrongdoing.
Yeah, but don't go that way. In a sense, everything here is wrongdoing.
There's nothing right about anything in this world.
The only thing that's right about this world is
learning to change our minds about it.
But it's your interpretation of what's going on with that person.
And you're the only one that's responsible for that interpretation.
So, I'm not responsible for your attacking me.
I'm only responsible for taking your attacks personally.
Q: But you have to accept the responsibility; otherwise, it'll never change.
Yes, but what I accept responsibility for is not what you've done.
I accept responsibility for the way . . .
Q: No, I accept it for my interpretation of it . . . Absolutely. Absolutely right. Yes.
Q: Okay, because you know because that person thinks they're doing the right thing.
That's correct, right. Yes?
Q: Don't you believe in self defense?
Don't I believe in self defense?
It depends on how you spell the word "self."
If you spell it with a capital "S" -- that Self doesn't need defense,
because that Self is beyond anything in this world.
If you spell it with a lower case "s" -- absolutely.
This self has to be defended.
But that self is not who we are.
And by defending that self, what you're doing is perpetuating a lie.
Q: Because whatever you're defending it against you have brought into
your sphere so that you'd have justification to defend against it.
I want to see you as attacking me unfairly
because that's what allows me to put on the face of innocence
and say, you're the guilty one who will be punished.
In other words, the whole purpose of the world
is to prove our innocence by proving someone else's guilt.
That's the purpose of the world.
And so my eyes cruise around all the time, all day long,
all night long, to find the next evildoer or the next victimizer,
so I can then say, "This is the one who's guilty -- not me."
What gets me out of that is understanding,
and first, the understanding comes almost always intellectually,
but then, begin to really see what it means for ourselves.
Understand that we are all One.
And if I accuse you of being a sinner, I must be accusing myself and everyone else,
because we are all literally cut from the same cloth.
The same blood of our guilt flows through everyone's veins.
That's why we have veins; to carry the blood of our guilt.
I just channeled that. That's not bad, though, actually.
Remember, I warned you -- this is a bloody play.
But it's a bloody world. But we are all the same.
That's why Jesus says, and he says it twice, anger is never justified.
My anger at you keeps us separate.
My understanding that we are all one in evil
and we are all One in good.
We are all one in sin; we are all One in holiness.
We are all one in guilt; we are all One in innocence.
And we are not different. We all have the same split mind.
That is so imperative to understand and accept,
otherwise, you'll make no progress with this course.
Q: There are times when I'm very aware
that I'm totally choosing the wrong mind, and I go right ahead and do it.
Like I can see the consequences like you're talking about.
There are other times when I feel like I'm totally blind-sided.
Something unbelievable happens
and I feel victimized by my own thought.
Like I didn't see it coming;
I didn't know it was around the bend;
it happened in the dark of night.
I don't know what the differences are,
and I don't really even know how to work with that.
Well, the point of all of this really is to have that nobility of awareness,
to become more and more aware so that you're not blind-sided.
Most of us most of the time are blind-sided.
We suddenly find ourselves getting enraged.
We find ourselves waking up very depressed.
We find ourselves very, very fearful and we're not really sure why.
All of a sudden, we get very anxious; we get very impatient.
And it seems to come out of nowhere,
and that's because following the ego's defensive system,
we have split off cause and effect,
the cause being our decision to be separate,
our decision to push Jesus or the Holy Spirit away,
our decision to be with the ego, and the effect being
all the pain, suffering, aggravation,
all the ego attacks that we experience, the anger, fear, etc.
And the purpose of the Course is to shrink the gap between cause and effect.
The world was made to be a gap between the cause,
which is the decision in the mind, and the effect, which is the world.
So there's this huge chasm which is the world,
both cosmically as well as individually.
And the purpose of the Course is to bring the effect back to the cause.
So that you could be aware that if I make this choice,
there are going to be painful consequences to me.
And if I continue to make that choice,
it's because I don't care about the consequences.
I want what I want when I want. I want to be king
and if somebody's in the way, too bad.
But if I could do that with open eyes, again, as Macbeth did,
and realize I'm doing this but there are going to be consequences,
in the end, that would motivate you to make that choice less and less.
And so the purpose of the Course, again, can be said very quickly,
to bring the effect back to the cause.
So when the Course says "ideas leave not their source,"
we could also say effects leave not their cause, because it's the same.
The cause is the source and the idea is the effect.
And the more we could shrink that gap between the negative consequences
and feelings and experiences of our wrong choice,
the gap between that and the actual choice,
it will be easier not to make it.
And what enables us to do that is when you ask Jesus for help,
he helps us realize that we're never upset for the reasons we think.
That if something's bothering me about you,
it's really because there's something in me that I've chosen not to look at;
there's some guilt I don't want to look at that I project onto you.
And my anger at you, my anxiety with you, my guilt,
my depression, my pain, my upset, is now a red flag
that tells me there's something amiss in my mind.
There's nothing rotten in the state of Denmark,
there's something rotten in the state of my mind,
and it's a rottenness that I have chosen.
And so my day, then, becomes filled with all these wonderful opportunities
of seeing that everything that I have made real
in terms of my reaction and experience is the effect,
the projected effect, of a decision, the cause, I've made in my mind.
And as I could see that more and more,
I'll be less and less willing to choose the ego,
because I see the pain it's causing me.
It's the guilt that says I have done a terrible thing
by pushing love away that forbids me to look at it,
and once I choose not to look at it, I project it out.
So now I don't see my guilt in me;
I see it in all those evil, awful people out there.
And then I go after them.
So we're the original and only evildoer.
But it's the need to deny that that causes us to project it
and see it all around us and institute a campaign,
whether we do it as a head of state or we do it as an individual,
but we institute a campaign to find all the evildoers and punish them,
which means I'm not the one who will be punished.