This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on Jan. 7, 2017.
What is sin?
I lifted my head from the cradle of my folded arms resting on his desk, flexed my fingers stinging with pins and needles from the weight of it. Hard to tell how long I’d been waiting here in the dark, since last night at least, maybe longer. I must have fallen asleep.
“Long time no see with,” our imaginary inner teacher said, sweeping into his office and flipping on the light, battered briefcase slung over one shoulder. Same old flimsy robes and sandals despite the frigid temperatures out there.
I rubbed my eyes. “You really should bundle up.” I said.
“No kidding?”
“Not that the cold actually causes viruses, but it can weaken your immune system.”
His eyes widened. “We’ve talked about this,” he said.
“I am so not making this up. Well, at least not here on the level I think I’m at, anyway, if you know what I’m saying.”
His brows shot up the way they do.
“Plus, people might think you’re crazy.”
He smiled. “Yikes!”
“Oh, never mind.”
“Why are we whispering?” he whispered back, easing into his desk chair across from me and straightening the folders in front of him.
“I still have that cold,” I said.
“Ah.”
Plus, I’d nearly worn out my voice trying to shout down the ego, even though I knew better.
“How was Christmas break?” he asked
I sighed. Where to begin? Although I had coasted into the holiday season on a wave of merry right-mindedness, buoyed by weeks of benevolent awareness toward everyone and everything, somewhere after mid-December the seeming tide abruptly, dare I say, savagely, turned. And I found myself once more adrift in turbulent waters, thrashing about for my very survival, seemingly gripped by the ego’s overwhelming undertow of sin, guilt, and fear, victim of a variety of menacing, elfin forces beyond my control.
Worse, I knew all too well, as any little s self-respecting A Course in Miracles student would, that this could not possibly be. I could not possibly be upset because of all these nut cases out there, all these demands, obligations, and temptations; there being no actual “out there.” I must have first chosen the inner teacher of fear in an effort to preserve the puny, “special” self I still see in the mirror. To prove I exist—a separate, sniveling, suffering, often swearing Susan–but it’s not my wretched fault.
I knew I could—theoretically, anyway–see peace instead of this by aligning my perception with the inner teacher of forgiveness seemingly sitting across from me now in form but, in truth, merely the always-available memory of wholeness in my mind. The proverbial door to truth was always open. There were no real vacations from my forgiveness classroom except the derelict forays I forged away from the mind, wandering back into the dream again, taking it all so damn seriously. I could have seen peace instead of this, but obviously preferred pain, however excruciating, and hated myself for it.
“I think I need you to play the priest again,” I said, head bowed.
“The priest?”
“You remember–in the confessional. You pretend you’re the priest and I’m the miserable, sinning parishioner.”
“Ah, that game,” he said. He swiveled in his chair and opened the little imaginary, screened window, just like I’d taught him.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” I began, clasping my hands.
“Any time,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to say anything yet.”
“Sorry.”
“OK, let’s start over. Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
He busted out laughing.
“Hey, father, get a grip; I’m suffering here, remember?”
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat, did his best to look serious, no easy feat for the bearded wonder. “Go on,” he said.
“I’ve been identifying with the body again,” I breathed.
“How do you know?”
I thought of my daughter driving home from college for winter break over a treacherous pass in a snowstorm, how I’d sat at my desk for hours paralyzed with fear. Now and then torturing myself by tapping into the Department of Transportation web cam focused in harrowing detail on the blizzard that left cars inching along one lane of a normally three-lane highway. As if I could will her to stay on the road; keep other vehicles a safe distance away through the sheer power of my X-Ray vision.
I thought of the unrelenting work demands that left me feeling breathless as I tried to keep up while also meeting the expanded holiday schedule of social obligations that seemed to completely deplete my fragile, introverted nature. I thought of a special relationship that appeared to have once again trampled my boundaries (as if), leaving me apoplectic, head in danger of spinning around like someone possessed, the toll indulging in red meat, butterfat, sugar, and wine seemed to have taken on my physical well being, the virus that left my throat raw, head pounding. I thought about the way I kept conjuring imaginary, idyllic ghosts of Christmases past, how sinful I felt, having made healing my mind through applying this Course in my life my highest priority, and yet, apparently unable to accept the benefits.
How did I know I’d been identifying with the body instead of the mind? “Sin seems real,” I said.
“Ah.”
“And I’ve been dealing with this one alone,” I said, eyeing the ego’s noxious fumes in my peripheral vision. “And it isn’t pretty.”
“What one would that be?”
“I see what you’re saying,” I said.
“You always do.”
“If there is no sin, there is no guilt. If there is no guilt, there is no ego. If there is no ego, there is nothing to fear. But I’ve been acting like there is again. Acting like my sinful choice for the ego thought system in my seeming daily life just like my sinful choice to believe the ‘tiny, mad idea’ that I could separate from our one Self and Source in the seeming beginning had real, sinful effects. Harshly judging myself for siding with a nasty idea that seems to have a life of its own but in truth has no life at all. It’s like it says in the second part of the workbook, 4. What is Sin?:
Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. They are ‘proof’ that what has no reality is real. Sin ‘proves’ God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.” (Paragraph 3)
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” he said.
“Ha! The trouble is a part of me I’m not consciously aware of is still afraid that because love was truly slain, only this substitute, sinful, mortal self exists. And while it’s no great shakes, it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing, of being cast into the primordial goo. It’s the unconscious nature of all this that makes this damn Course so hard to learn, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“But it’s not a sin, just a mistake.” Suddenly, I believed my own words. My self-worth did not hinge on what I did or didn’t do, on all my human foibles, but on my uninterrupted union with an all-inclusive Love that never has and never will fail us. My sinlessness was guaranteed by God, an eternal innocence hard-wired into our true and only nature.
The funk of the last few weeks abruptly lifted. Like the Grinch poised at the top of Mount Crumpit catching the chords of that enduring Who song wafting up from Whoville, my heart expanded, grew light. I wasn’t going to need any penance, after all. No one was guilty here. Dah who dor-aze!
“Maybe I’ll just stay here with you from now on,” I said.
Jesus continued to smile. He really didn’t make a very good priest at all. “Where else could you possibly go?” he asked.
He had a point, God bless him. He always did.
“How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long?” (Paragraph 5)
NOTE: A Course in Miracles uses the character of Jesus as a symbol of the part of our one mind that remembered to laugh at the “tiny, mad idea” that we could separate from our true, non-dualistic nature or would possibly want to. By choosing Jesus as our inner teacher and learning to forgive ourselves when we’re unable to, our belief in the ego thought system’s illusion of differences and separate interests is gently undone for us. We gradually become more kind and loving, recognizing that choosing the inner teacher of fear hurts while choosing the inner teacher of kindness yields peace that defies understanding and includes everyone and everything in its warm embrace.
Susan Dugan’s books – Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness – are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches online via Zoom on Tuesday nights.