7,8,9,,,del 2

We have talked much in this course of your desire to be independent without looking at the condition of dependency that you consider its opposite. To be independent, you feel as if you must rely only on your self. The connotation of reliance on others, or dependence, has taken on a negative meaning specifically in contrast to your desire to be independent. One of your greatest fears is of a condition that causes you to be dependent or to rely on others.

7.2 “Others” are the great unknown of living in the world. “Others” are those who are beyond your control, those who can influence the course of your day or your life in ways you would not choose. “Others” represent the accidents waiting to happen, love that is not returned, the withholding of things you deem important. This fear that you feel in relation to others is as true of those you hold most dear to you as it is of those you would call strangers. It is the very independence of others that makes your own independence seem so important to you. Dependency is not consistent with your notions of a healthy self. What, then is the alternative?

7.3 The alternative is believing in giving and receiving as one.

7.4 First let us replace your idea of others with the idea of relationship that has been so often defined and repeated within this course. In order to believe in giving and receiving as one, you must believe in relationship rather than in others.
7.5 Those you would view as others are separate from you. Those you would view as being in relationship with you are not separate from you. The relationship is the source of your unity. That you exist in relationship with all is a belief that you must now incorporate into living. Further, you must remember that relationship is based on trust. If you are dependent, or supported by others with whom you share a trusting relationship, where is the negativity? Where is the cause for fear? What is the hidden source of your feelings of lack or deprivation? What is the hidden source of your desire to control?

7.6 This source is the ego. Even now, the ego will take every opportunity that arises to prove to you that independence is a far better state than that of dependence. It will work diligently to convince you that any course that tries to take away your independence should be resisted. As long as you continue to listen to your ego you will not understand giving and receiving as one and will not believe in it.

7.7 This is the most difficult belief of all to integrate into the living of your life. Each time another thwarts you, you will be tempted to believe that giving and receiving as one is not taking place. Your previous pattern of behavior will be quick to assert itself and you will feel resentment and claim that the situation is unfair. You will be tempted to withhold as “others” withhold from you.

7.8 Is it not clear how important it is to living in peace that this pattern be broken? Will you live in peace only until some “other” breaks your peace? Only until some circumstance beyond your control brings an unexpected conflict your way?

7.9 There is no function for control in unity. There is no need for it. Relationship is the only means through which interaction is real, the only source of your ability to change that which you would change.
7.10 Here is an idea not heretofore given much attention, the idea of the desire for change. Certainly there will continue to be things within your life that are in need of change. As was stated in the beginning of this treatise, this course has not called you to a static state of sameness, an acceptance of who you are that does not allow for change. But once you have become happier with who you are, you will, if left un-schooled, turn your attention to others and to situations you would have be different than they are. You will want to be a change-agent. You will want to move into the world and be an active force within it. This is an aim consistent with the teachings of this course, but what will prevent you from following the patterns of old as you go out into the world with your desire to effect change?

7.11 The only thing that will prevent this is your ability to go out into the world and remain who you are. This relates to giving and receiving being one in truth in a very concrete way. For to go out into the world with the desire to give, either expecting to receive in certain measure or to receive not at all, is to follow the old pattern, a pattern that has been proven to not have any ability to change the world.

7.12 To proceed into each relationship as who you truly are, is to bring everlasting change to each and every relationship, and thus to all.

7.13 Again I return you to the early teachings of A Course of Love, teachings concerning your desire to be good and to do good. This is not about doing good works. This is about being who you are and seeing the truth rather than the illusion that surrounds you. You cannot, in other words, be a good person in a bad world. You cannot affect change without, without having affected change within. You cannot be independent and still be of service. For as long as you believe in your independence you will not accept your dependence. You will not accept giving and receiving as one if you feel able only to give or as if “others” have nothing you would receive.

7.14 This new attitude, then, includes accepting that you have needs. Saying that you are a being who exists in relationship is the same as saying you are a being who needs relationships. The only thing in this new pattern that keeps you from being needy and dependent in an unhealthy way, is that you believe in giving and receiving as one. You believe, in other words, that your needs will be provided for, thus ceasing to be needs. To deny that you are a being with needs is not the aim of this course. To come to believe that your needs are provided for by a Creator and a creation that includes all “others” is to believe in giving and receiving being one in truth.

7.15 Giving is not only about choosing what good and helpful parts of yourself you will share with the world. It is also about giving the world the opportunity to give back. It is about recognizing the constant and ongoing exchange that allows needs to be met. It is trusting that if you have a need for money, or time, or honesty, or love, it will be provided.

7.16 Trusting is not a condition or state of being that you have heretofore seen as being an active one. Your attitude toward trust is one of waiting, as if an active stance toward trust would be distrustful. You will often say that you trust when what you are doing is hoping for a specific outcome. Real trust is not a trust that waits and hopes but a trust that acts from who you truly are. Real trust requires the discipline of being who you are in every circumstance and in every relationship. Real trust begins with your Self.

7.17 How often have you hidden thoughts and feelings because you question whether they are legitimate thoughts and feelings? For some of you this answer has changed greatly over time. But for many of you, you have become less, rather than more forthcoming about your thoughts and feelings since taking this Course. You have done so out of a desire to be truthful, a desire to not express thoughts and feelings unworthy of your real Self. You may have increasingly denied thoughts and feelings you would judge as negative or bad. Or you may have, in your desire not to judge others, kept yourself from speaking up in instances where you previously would have stated an opinion. While these modes of behavior, in themselves, are learning aides that prepare you for acting with the certainty you seek, they again are not to be confused with the true aims of this course of study.

7.18 Who you are cannot be denied in favor of who you “will be.” Needs cannot be denied as a means of having them cease to be. You who are beginning to realize that you have much to give, realize that you have as much to receive and that receiving does not imply that you are lacking!

7.19 The discipline required to be who you are is a discipline that requires trust in self and honesty in relationships. Does this mean that you are required to express every thought and feeling that comes your way? No, but this does mean that you bring the thoughts and feelings that arise to the place within your heart that has been prepared for them. You do not deny them. You bring them first to your Self, to the Self joined in unity at the place of your heart. From this place you learn to discriminate, to separate the false from the true, for your ego thoughts cannot long abide in the holy place of your heart. With truth and illusion separated, you develop the discipline to express your true Self, as you are now. This is the only way the Self you are now has to grow and change. This is the only means the Self you are now has of giving and receiving as one. This is the only means available to you to replace the old pattern with the new.

7.20 The recognition that giving and receiving occur as one is a precondition for your recognition of the state of unity. As with the recognition of your accomplishment, the acceptance of the belief that giving and receiving are one in truth changes the function of time as you know it. There is not a period of waiting or a period of time between giving and receiving. There is not a time lapse between the recognition of needs and the meeting of needs. It is accepted that giving and receiving occur in unison, thus further collapsing the need for time.

7.21 While, as stated previously, this belief will at times seem difficult to put into practice, and while your recognition of receiving and of needs being met may seem to still take time, this belief builds on that of the already accomplished through experience. As you experience giving and receiving being one your belief will become true conviction. Your ability to recognize giving and receiving as one becomes an aspect of your identity and is accepted as the nature of who you are in truth.
chapter 8
the Belief: No Relationships are Special


8.1 In order for this learning to come to completion, you must put into practice the belief that no relationships are special. Your loyalty must be totally to the truth of who you are and not continue to be split by special relationships. While your love relationships will provide a rich learning ground for you now, they must also now be separated from all that would continue to make them special.

8.2 The one you come to know through relationship is your Self. This is the learning ground on which you now stand. All that prevents you from being who are within your relationships must be let go. All that will complement who you are must be received. Thus the nature of many relationships may be required to change. Remember that there is no loss but only gain or you will feel threatened by what you will imagine to be loss. Remember too the practice of devotion spoken of within the Course, for in this practice is the truth separated from illusion.

8.3 While your dedication to the goal of being who you are may at first seem selfish, it will soon be revealed to be the most sincere form of relationship. Relationship based on anything other than who you are is but a mockery of relationship. The calls that come to you now as signs and demands will not only aid you in your realization of who you are and your ability to live as who you are, but will aid all others. This is giving and receiving as one. What you gain will take nothing from anyone.
What another is able to give you will take nothing from them, and what you are able to give another will take nothing from you.

8.4 These are all calls to know your Self and to act on this knowing. These are calls to truth and but take the form of honesty for a brief time as the truth of who you are is revealed to you and through your relationships to all.

8.5 A new type of acceptance is required here, one not previously asked or expected of you. This is an acceptance that you know your own truth and an acceptance that your truth will not change. As we have said that you are not called to a static acceptance that does not include change, this new idea of acceptance requires further clarification.

8.6 It was said often within A Course of Love that the truth does not change. The truth of who you are has not changed and you are as you were created. Form and behavior are, however, subject to change, as are your expressions of who you are. This distinction must be fully realized here in order for you to accept the truth of who you are and to come to an acceptance of the unchangeable nature of this truth. This is akin to being done with seeking. This is the final acceptance that you have “found” and that you have been found. You need no longer journey onto the paths of seeking. The truth of yourself that you reveal now will not become a new truth as you take a new path. Your path now is sure and its final acceptance necessary. You are the prodigal sons and daughters who have returned home. Your stay is not finite. You are not here to rest and gain strength for another journey in search of something that is not available here. Here is the realm of the already accomplished. This is home. Your expression of who you are may lead you to many new adventures but never again to the special relationships that would take you away from your true Self. Never again will you be away from home for home is who you are, a “place” you carry within you, a place that is you. This is the home of unity.

8.7 How much time will be saved by an end to empty seeking? You have already arrived and need no time to journey any longer. How much time will be saved by an end to the maintenance required by special relationships? When all relationships are holy, you have no need to maintain special-ness.

8.8 Thus again is your learning advanced by leaps and bounds formerly reserved for the angels. You are your own wings, your relationships but the breeze that keeps you afloat.
Chapter 9
the Belief: No Loss but only Gain



9.1 I ask you now to remember a time when you felt from another the desire to help or to meet your needs. Do not think that this desire is not present in all relationships. It is only the ego that stands between desire and the meeting of desire, needs and the meeting of needs.

9.2 The word need and the word dependent are only words and words that would be inconceivable to you in the state of unity before you left it. Now, they are just tools, as are many other means of practice that assist you in bypassing your ego mind. Some practices more commonly thought of as tools might be meditation, exercises of the body such as yoga, or exercises of the mind such as affirmations. These tools are all means of releasing the ego mind and inviting the one mind, or unity, into the present moment. When seen as such, all these tools, including needs, can ignite the combination of learning and unlearning, the letting go of one so that the other can arrive.

9.3 We are now beginning to speak of the second aspect of treasure that was addressed in the beginning of this treatise as something found that is kept secure and cherished. This aspect of treasure relates to your ability to let go. As many of you will find the idea of letting go of special relationships among the most difficult of ideas contained in this course of study, the ability to let go must be further discussed.
When a need is fulfilled, you have been accustomed to having a reaction to this meeting of a need as if it takes place apart from you, or from outside of you. You assign the meeting of a need to a person or system or organization. You as often feel indebted as you feel grateful for the meeting of needs. When your life is running smoothly and needs are being continuously met, you begin to want to hang on to the relationships that you feel met these needs because of their ability to meet them. When your needs cease being met, you believe there has been a loss such as with the loss of a job or loved one or even of the promise of some service. When you think in such a way you believe in loss rather than in the replacement belief that there is no loss but only gain.

9.5 It is perhaps best seen in the contrast implied by the intent to hang on. The desire to hang on to anything assumes that what you have is in need of protection or that it would not be secure without your effort to keep it secure. Inherent in this assumption is the concept of “having” or ownership. How does this relate to “having” needs? By identifying needs in such a way, in the same way that you identify “having” in regards to possessions, you but continue to feel as if you “have” needs even long after they have been met. Since I have already stated that you do have needs this may seem confusing.

9.6 In relationship, every need is met by a corresponding need. It is a dance of correspondence.
9.7 All needs are shared. This is what differentiates needs from wants. This is true in two senses. It is true in that all needs, from survival needs to needs for love are literally shared in the same measure by all. The other sense in which needs are shared is in the aspect of correspondence. They are shared because they are known. Every being inherently knows that it shares the same needs as every other being of its kind. Every being also inherently knows that needs and the fulfillment of needs are part of the same fabric — they are like puzzle pieces that fit together. Other beings that share life with you on this planet are not concerned with needs or need fulfillment. Doing what needs to be done in order to survive is hardly the same as feeling that one has a need. Needs are the domain of the thinking being only. Thinking beings share needs because of the way in which they think. That some seem to have more needs than others is a fallacy of perception. Not one has more needs than another.

9.8 What is shared by all is not owned. What all have is in no danger of being taken away. All that you are capable of having you already have as the already accomplished. All that you would give will take nothing away from you.

9.9 This could be restated as the belief that there is no loss but only gain.

9.10 The extent to which you deny your needs or are honest about your needs makes the difference in your connection or separation within relationship. The extent to which you are willing to abdicate your needs in order to attain something is the extent to which your belief in want or lack is revealed. This is the purview of special relationships. The very compromises you are often prone to make in special relationships are but the symptoms of your fear.

9.11 As soon as you are content or self-satisfied, or, in other words, feel your needs are met, the desire to hang on to what you have arises. This is true of knowledge, or what you know, and of who you are, just as much as it is of special relationships and what you might more readily think of as treasure, such as a successful career or inspired creative project.

9.12 As soon as the desire to hang on arises, both learning and unlearning cease to occur. The desire to maintain a state you believe you have achieved and have labeled a state in which your needs are met creates a static level, that no matter how good or right or meaningful, loses its creative nature by remaining static.

9.13 So how do you remain within the constant creative flux or flow of creation without either constantly striving for more of what you already have or for what you consider progress? You need a means of disconnecting this drive that has become instinctual to you. As a being existing in form, you have honed certain instincts over millennia, such as the instinct to survive, in order to carry on in physical form.

9.14 There is no such thing as a static level in unity where creation is continuous and ongoing. You should have no desire to reach such a state and the awareness that you are in such a state can alert you, or serve as a sign, that the ego-mind and its fear-based thinking has momentarily returned. This does not mean that you will never be at rest or that you will be constantly seeking to arrive. As has already been said, you have arrived and rest exists only in the state of unity.

9.15 Because you have not thought previously of needs as tools every bit as valuable as the others mentioned here, this adjustment in your thinking may seem difficult to accept. How does the identification of needs or the dependency inherent in relationships by-pass the ego-mind? They heretofore have not, only because of your perception of them as signals of what you are lacking. Once this perception has shifted, you ego-mind will cease to be fed by these concerns. What is food for the ego-mind is fear and the removal of these final fears will quite literally starve the ego-mind out of existence.

9.16 An understanding of the mutuality of needs will aid you in being honest about your needs, thus allowing them to be met. Then the need to define or to identify them ceases. Your needs only continue to be brought to your awareness as needs until your trust in their immediate and ongoing fulfillment is complete. Once this trust is realized you will no longer think in terms of needs at all. Once you are no longer concerned with needs and the meeting of needs you will no longer be concerned with special relationships. You will realize that there is no loss but only gain involved in letting them go.

9.17 Holding on to what you think will meet your needs is like holding your breath. Your breath cannot long be held. It is only through the inhaling and exhaling, the give and take of breathing that you live. Each time you are tempted to think that your needs can only be met in special ways by special relationships, remember this example of holding your breath. Think in such a way no longer than you can comfortably hold your breath. Release your breath and release this fear and move from special to holy relationship.

9.18 This phase of coming to accept need and dependency is necessary only as a learning ground of experience on which trust can grow. Once this trust is realized you will no longer think of trust just as you will no longer think of needs.

9.19 Ceasing to think in these terms will soon be seen as a valuable ability and a timesaving measure of great magnitude. As these old ways of thinking leave you, you will be left as who you are in truth.