NEVER STAY ON THE BOTTOM RUNG: How To Accept The Unacceptable
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NEVER STAY ON THE BOTTOM RUNG
How To Accept The Unacceptable
Recently, I was asked for help by a reader, who wanted to know how to handle a difficult relationship situation. In brief, her problem was this: Her husband was an active church member, who often was involved in projects that also included predominantly women from the congregation. Due to a negative experience in a past relationship, in which her partner was unfaithful, this woman was afraid it might happen again. She did not like her husband being around all these women and wondered what to do about it.
Here is the phrase she stated that grabbed my full attention, “How I can change a situation that I detest so strongly? It’s like forcing a person to be fine with eating liver even though they don’t like the taste.”
This seemed like a very good question! How indeed do we “make peace” with the unacceptable? How do we come to a place of acceptance when it comes to something we cannot accept? I had no immediate answer to this problem, and so, as always, I asked the Holy Spirit for guidance. Here is what I received:
Holy Spirit: First, I want you to recognize that your ego is not being asked by the Holy Spirit to like anything. You are not being asked to like any situation you find yourself in, you are just being asked to see it differently;to cease to think about it in the way you are now; to stop making it the focus of your energy.
This is the first major step in returning your mind to peace when such thoughts overtake your mind.
The next step is to realize there is nothing you can do about what another feels, thinks or does. But you can change how you respond to the situation, which will inherently change it, if not immediately, it will in time, if you remain consistent.
The first thing you might consider changing about how you respond to a situation you do not like, is to know that the more you try to “fix” a problem, the more you keep the solution away. What you resist persists. Remember, the ego always needs someone or something to hate. It needs this focus in order to keep your higher Self unaware of Who You Are; for you remain as God created you. You rest in His peace and this is your natural state. So, the ego must constantly invent new targets for your mind to be distracted by; wishes that certain events or people were different, because these people or events as they are, seem to be keeping you from your happiness. The ego does this in order to keep you from remembering the Truth. The ego wants to maintain a feeling of resistance to what is. The ego wishes the past were different and for the future to be under its control. It gives no consideration to the peace of the present moment or the thoughts and feelings of anyone else but itself.
In fact, this is the root of all unhappiness – 100% of all your suffering comes from your ego wanting people or circumstances to be different than they are. This is a state of complete resistance to your present peace.
And 100% of the solution comes from ceasing to listen to the ego.
Yet, despite all that your ego wishes for, you remain as God created you. How did God create you to be? He created you without ego thoughts – without thoughts about separate forms, the world of bodies, and all their related complications and problems. God created you still. He created you as part of His Stillness, resting in quiet peace and deepest, profound joy.
So now, let us turn to any problem you may think you have. How do you solve it? Know this, you are not being asked to solve the problem. That is not your role in the world. The ego thinks it can solve problems through endless thoughts, filled to capacity with anxiety, dread and worry. Yet, all this analyzation is wasted effort. Why? Because even if all your current problems were solved to your egos liking, I promise you, the gap would soon be filled with more. There is no end to the egos taste for disharmony. This is because, if even for a moment, your mind was allowed to be still, the ego knows it would cease to be.
Your problems are inventions of the ego to keep you distracted from your inner peace. That is the only reason you perceive any problems at all.
The only solution is to let everything be. Let your thoughts be still for just a moment, and you will be guided from within as to what to say and do next, if any action is called for. Such guidance will always feel like loving inspiration that brings peace to all involved, and not a solution stemming from control, revenge or anger.
You are not here to solve all the world’s problems. You are here to fix the one problem you have with the world: Why do you see it at all? Herein lies the answer to every problem you have ever had. For the world you see is an illusion. Overcome the illusion, and you will have overcome all your perceived problems.
(End message from the Holy Spirit)
“How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger, nor by opposing them in any way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they contradict reality. They go against what must be true.” (ACIM T.CH22 V.1:1-4)
And what is it that must be true?
“Nothing around you but is part of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to understand all that is given you.” (ACIM T.CH23 Intro.6:1-3)
We are all One, and our happiness comes down to paying attention to how we feel. Do we like how we feel in response to our situation? Is this feeling what we truly want?
If the answer to this question is “no,” then remember that you’re resisting the situation, and are likewise letting the ego rule your mind. You have lost all awareness of our inherent Oneness.
Again, the ego always needs a target to hate – a situation or person to focus on, to divide you from another as it attempts to take control through guilt or fear. The ego wants you to have a reason to feel resistance in order to keep the “drama wheel” turning so that you never stop for a moment and allow stillness to enter your mind.
The only way to end the cycle is to stop the ego’s influence altogether. This can only be done by looking directly at the drama. In other words – pardon my language here – by calling out the ego’s bull crap.
Remember, you are not anyone’s jailer. What if, in this woman’s case, her feelings towards her husband changed and she wanted to leave him? Would she want him to hold her in a relationship against her will, or to be allowed to leave peacefully?
So it is with all our relationships; the most loving thing you can do, is to allow others the freedom to leave if they wish. Allow them then, in your mind, through your thoughts, to be free. Cease to wish anything was different about them at all. The ego will always want assurances that love will not walk away; we each have an intense fear of abandonment. This is due to the initial mistake in thinking we could ever be separate from God. We think this is what’s happened to us in our relationship with Him, and so it becomes the root of all our relationship insecurities.
Call the ego’s bluff and let love walk away if it wills. I guarantee you’ll discover your personal power instead of fear. Being’s someone’s jailer is exhausting and self-debasing. You don’t like how this version of yourself feels.
Will your partner cheat on you? Who knows? But don’t live in the past letting past experiences be your guide. And if your partner does cheat and leave you, then so be it. You want someone who enjoys your company, and wants to be with you. Why would you want to try to hold onto someone who doesn’t want you and become their jailer? The only thing a jailer makes us feel, is the desire to escape from them.
It all comes down to The Golden Rule as given by Jesus: Do unto others, as you would have done to you; treat others as you would like to be treated.
Happiness truly is as simple as following this single rule. Do not forget, you cannot control what another says, thinks or does. You can only control how you respond to them.
Again, you are not being asked to like any situation. That would mean the Holy Spirit is trying to thusly control you. Rather, you are simply being asked to look at things another way; to cease to think along the path you’re currently on.
Once you cease to focus on your problems through the lens of your ego, it will lose all its power over you and you’ll be free. This is what you truly want. You do not enjoy suffering – agonizing over someone else’s actions, over which you have no control. You are not an evil dictator; demanding others behave as you desire.
Who you are in truth, is someone who gives only love. And when you align with love, a new world will open up to you. Your problems will seem to solve themselves in new and unthought of ways. Your world will make a dramatic shift into peace, for you will have changed the foundation on which you based your thoughts about it.
“The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived.” (ACIM T.CH25 VII.5:1)
“Perception is a choice of what you want yourself to be; the world you want to live in, and the state in which you think your mind will be content and satisfied.” (ACIM T.CH25 3:1)
“And It (the Holy Spirit) must use all learning to transfer illusions to the truth, taking all false ideas of what you are, and leading you beyond them to the truth that is beyond them.” (ACIM T.CH25 I.7:5)
“The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself.” (ACIM T.CH27 VIII.10:1)
So how do we get into the predicament of ego-thinking to begin with? What change comes over our mind so as to precipitate our descent into pain and suffering? Why do our minds end up going down such a dark path?
It can be explained through A Course In Miracles as having descended down the ladder of thought through, “The Laws Of Chaos.”
ACIM T.CH 23 II. The Laws of Chaos
“The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others.” (2:1-2)
This first law is where our mind takes its first misstep downward into false ideas. It is the wrong thought that we are separate and have separate ideas of what happiness is, each tailored to our own ego’s desires. This where we first deviate from The Golden Rule. If we no longer see others as one with us, we therefore will no longer desire to treat them as we would like to be treated. The ego’s “golden rule” is to try to control others before they can control us. It is to do unto others first, before they can do unto us. It is the first thought straying away from our Union and into separation.
“The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshiper of sin (separation), is that each one must sin (be separate), and therefore deserves attack and death.” (4:1)
This second law is the belief we are indeed all bodies, and as separate bodies we are incapable of ever being One. And these separate people who do not do what makes us happy, must be wrong by their actions, and are also deserving of punishment for displeasing our ego. And being bodies, we will all one day die as the final punishment for what we are.
“This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son’s belief in what he is, and hate him for it.” (6:5-6)
Here we have assigned our beliefs to God; we think God Himself shares our belief we are separate bodies and not at One with Him. We believe He shares our belief we deserve punishment and death for everything we have done while pretending to be bodies.
“The ego values only what it takes. This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. By this, another’s loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself.” (9:1-4)
And here, with the fourth law do we reach the bottom rung of the ladder on our descent into mental darkness. Here is the desire to control others. We desire to take from another what we think they can give us – it is the egoic demand that others behave in ways we feel will make us happy. For indeed, all unhappiness stems from someone else not behaving in the way our ego would prefer. If they do not do as we desire, we become upset, we lose our happiness and they seem to have stolen our peace. Then we attempt to control them in order to regain our peace, by increasing guilt in them through a variety of ways.
This is as low as we can go – the bottom of the laws of chaos. This lowest rung on the ladder is unfortunately where our mind spends most of its time. Here we sit and analyze our problems, situations, and the people involved in endless ways, every possible scenario, all in an attempt to figure out how we can change the situation to suit our liking.
How do we ascend back up the ladder and escape this dark pit of despair?
The answer is simple. Simply reverse the original thought that became undone to begin with. Return your mind to The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would want to be treated: With kindness and unconditional love – all because we know the truth: We are One Love. And we choose this thought above all others; we choose this way of seeing the situation, for the sake of peace with God and our One Self.
For this is what the ego is always after; assurance of love and happiness. Here it actually agrees with God; for the ego too, wants to feel good, though it does not know the correct way to go about it. It knows that somewhere, deep within the body is something that will bring it joy, though it mistakes its joy for other things, such as a wealthy bank account, a desirable body or perhaps some other exterior attribute it finds attractive. The ego always searches for what lies outside you. It has no idea that contained within every single person is All That Is, and it will never find It, for the ego will never look within. The ego lives only in illusions and illusions are entirely outside of you.
The ego thinks all its thoughts and actions are justified in its search, and that it’s not controlling anyone, but rather, simply improving them or the situation. The ego will tell you; you want only what’s best for another, yet all the ego is doing, is turning you into their jailer.
Can you truly know what’s best for someone else to experience? Do you have access to the lessons they must learn and the situations they must deal with in order to grow? Attempting to “fix” someone’s life in order to make yourself feel happy is not the path of Love. Love allows all things and seeks to change nothing, regardless of what comes.
This does not make you a doormat, nor does it mean you agree with the situation or the person you are unhappy with. In fact, to claim your personal power and make the choice for peace above all else, is the highest declaration of independence you can possibly make.
In order to claim your peace, do not take that first slippery step down into the laws of chaos by forgetting you are lord of no one, save yourself. For bodies cannot be truly possessed or controlled. You cannot control how anyone else thinks or feels, and nor can anyone control how you think or feel, except yourself. Therefore, choose to remember only the truth. There is no separation between us. We are One Love and what you do to another, you truly are doing to your One Self. Do not forget The Golden Rule and you will not fall down the ladder into chaos, pain and fear.
However, there still may be times you feel you cannot pull yourself up off the bottom rung. There may be times the pain is too great, the affliction too real or the problem too complex.
Fear not. If you cannot accept your life circumstances as they are; if inner peace eludes you; then perhaps you can at least accept you don’t understand what your role in it is.
For this is a deep statement of truth: You do not know who you are, what your role in the world is, nor how to relate to anyone else in it.
Here is the place where you completely surrender yourself to God, and at long last step aside and let Him lead the way.
Admitting you don’t know anything, is the first major step in letting go – in fully releasing all forms of judgement. And when you release all judgement, you will release yourself from pain and suffering.
Admit you don’t understand, and you let understanding come. To do this, you must cease trying “fix” things your own way. You will know you are successful in this relinquishment of power unto God, by the level of peace you feel upon doing it.
Do not let your mind rest in “bottom rung thoughts,” those thoughts that wish things were different.
These are all thoughts that desire control over outcomes and actions of others.
Yet here is the gentle truth to living a life of peace in this chaotic world; before you can pull into your life what you think you want, you have to arrive at the awareness that no matter what happens, it won’t make any difference to your level of peace. Because as long as it does make a difference, you make it more difficult for yourself to have it. It is only when a specific outcome no longer makes a difference to your peace, does the in-flow of love become so open and calm that you are tuning in to the abundance of All That Is.
Such is the grand paradox of living in this world.
This is why most things don’t come to us until we’re no longer looking for it. This is why change can only occur when we stop trying to change things.
And so, the laws of chaos can be reversed from the bottom up, as follows:
1. You don’t have to “like” anything. What kind of loving God would ask you to “like” the horrors of the world? You will never be asked to be “okay” with heinous crimes, murder, chronic diseases, death and pain. Finding a way to “like” these things is not how you make peace with them. Being at peace does not mean you agree with the way things are, though this misconception has been our great struggle with discovering inner peace from the beginning of time.
2. You are not expected to solve any problems. That’s not your job. It’s God’s, and He will, if you’d just step aside and give Him a chance.
3. But you DO have to agree to look at things in a new way. Your focus must shift in order to stop feeding the ego. This is how you step aside and allow God to step in and lead the way.
4. Your focus must shift into thinking about the Truth. Focus on the inherent Oneness of all things – the truth of our existence as the embodiment of Love. Despite what you may see, this is something that can be felt. It is the commitment to “do unto others as you’d have done to you.” The sincere desire to love others as you would want them to love you, if your places were reversed. This will bring peace to every situation and relationship you have.
5. In this state of peace, you will discover whatever it is you are seeking; whatever it is you think you have lost or are deprived of. For instance, in this state of mind, you will “feel” your deceased loved one, you will “hear” a solution you never thought of, or you will “know” exactly what you must do. This is because, in this state of mind, your mind is at one with God’s, and He is now free to openly communicate with us as One Love.
There is no doubt it is difficult to remember we are not bodies, but when you believe you are a body, you will live as a body, and die as a body.
Believe you are an eternal Spirit – at One with the Son of God – and you will feel Eternal Life everywhere and for all time, as you walk through time.
A Course In Miracles, T.CH23 IV. “Above the Battleground”
“This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose.” (4:6-7)
“Be lifted up, and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different. Here in the midst of it, it does seem real.” (5:1-3)
“Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead of murder. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is not real, and easily escaped.” (5:6-7)
“When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace.” (6:1-3)
“When they occur leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder. And God Himself and all the lights of Heaven will gently lean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where He would have you, and no illusion can attack the peace of God together with His Son.” (6:5-7)
Therefore, be still and listen for The Stillness. You will still hear the sounds of the world; birds will sing, traffic will drive by and voices will still be heard. This is of no concern, and is even welcomed, for by their very presence do such sounds give you contrast with which to compare The Stillness that you feel within.
Do this as often as you can throughout your busy day; still your mind and listen. Allow your mind to empty as you do this, allow your mind to focus on what you’re trying to hear with your ears, which will take you to a feeling of stillness in your heart. In this moment, your mind is free of all distractions, worries and fears, for your whole focus is now on shifting your listening from your mind to your heart.
Now, feel all creation listening to you in return; feel how it is at One with you in this activity. Feel how it recognizes you as part of It, and how It, is a part of you.
You have now moved beyond simple listening – you have moved into a whole other reality that exists within The Stillness of the peace of God.
A Course In Miracles W. Lesson 205
“The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.” (1:2-3)
Bottom line: Get off the bottom rung when you notice your thoughts have moved to a place where you are not at peace. You will know you are there when your mind turns to wishing circumstances or people were somehow different than they are – you have moved into the darkest place the ego can go – the desire to manipulate others to become what you want. This state of mind will not feel good; it will not feel like joy; it will not feel like peace. It will feel like inner resistance, and non-acceptance.
How do you climb back up to the top rung of the ladder; the highest place your thoughts can rest?
You reverse the first law of chaos: the idea we are separate. Therefore, you simply remind yourself we are One, and what you do to another, you are doing to your One Self. Reinstate The Golden Rule! Then, really live it. Reach for the Oneness in everything around you; try to sense it. Keep in mind, while you can use visualization to help you, Oneness isn’t something you see, it’s something you feel. While ACIM may talk about Christ Vision and seeing our Unified Light and Love within every human being, this is actually a state of mind, a place where your mind goes, to take you where you can feel this truth in your heart.
Christ Vision comes from the heart; you do not use the bodies eyes at all.
This is where you must take your thoughts when you find yourself at the bottom rung in egoic thinking. This is where miracles happen and life is transformed from one of hell, to Heaven. This is where you step aside and let God lead the way. This is where you say goodbye to the ego and hello to the Voice of the Holy Spirit.
And then you will have become a bonified miracle worker, for at long last you will understand what forgiveness truly is. You will have forgiven the world and all it contains, for there is no order of difficulty in miracles; all illusions are equally false.
Once you live in a state of forgiveness, you will be truly awake. You will have ceased to live asleep on the bottom rung of thinking.
TO WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION (as narrated by Beth): CLICK HERE
THIS WORK IS FUNDED BY DONATIONS ALONE. THOUGH NOT EXPECTED, IF YOU FEEL GUIDED TO, PLEASE DONATE BY CLICKING HERE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!