Betrayal

"You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. As you teach so shall you learn. If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the Truth in you, and realize that it cannot be assailed. Do not try and protect it yourself, or you are believing that it is assailable." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 6, Section I, 3:1-3, 6:1-2, 6:4-5

"The power of the Sons of God is present all the time. Their influence on each other is without limit, and must be used for their joint salvation. Each one must learn to teach that all forms of rejection are meaningless. The separation is the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this you will believe it. If you will listen instead to His Voice you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 6, Section I, 18:1-5, 19:2

Rejected, hurt, crucified... these are all familiar themes in our lives. If you will be ruthlessly honest, and look without story at your so-called human relationships, you will find that there are none that have been immune from these themes and little dramas. Some were seemingly really big... others were so small as to seem petty. And yet they share the feeling of betrayal by love itself. As if love cannot be trusted. In our imagined separation from God, we believe we can choose to love or not to love... and so of course this means that others can choose to love or not to love us. Scary stuff.

Of course, all of this is based on the belief that we are somewhere separate from Love ItSelf. Some alien landscape where the opposite of love seems to hold sway. A Course in Miracles reminds us: "How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a Fact." (ACIM; Chapter 6, Section II, 6:1-8) Can't get much clearer than that!

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now." The nightmare stories of war and struggle and betrayal, on personal and global levels, are the projections of tormented and deluded minds. We believe we are alone, lacking love, and so we seek it in a million different forms and people and substances. We believe we have to fill a lack, defend against theft and betrayal. We are the separated ones, believing our own insane thoughts in isolation. Thank God none of it is true. We remain eternally in the Mind of God, our True Self.

"Why should you listen to the endless insane calls you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you? Excluding yourself from Oneness is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed. But the time is now." (ACIM; Chapter 5, Section VII, 3: 1, 4-6, 4:1) Yes, we love tragedy. We love stories about sacrifice and betrayal. And this is all our desire to maintain our illusory and non-existent separateness from God. This is the ultimate betrayal... the attempt to somehow cast ourselves from the Allness of Love, to excluded ourselves from the Oneness that is Who We Are.

"Whenever you feel fear in any form, -- and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you, -- be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Forgiving dreams remind you that in Truth you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to worship idols and attack." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 29, Section IX, 9:1-2, 10:1-2