The Wall of Dissociation

[Inge]

From: "Escape From Love: Dissociating « A Course in Miracles »" Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

1.01 The Wall of Dissociation

I think what's important when you work with this Course, over the period of many
years, is to realize that there's a part of you that's very split off --
"dissociated" is the psychological term. It's almost like there's a <wall>
inside of you that everything that you learned and understand has no carryover
and has no real direct experiential meaning in your personal life. Because it's
like we blindly go on, living lives where we get angry, we get critical, we
indulge our specialness. When we get sick we run to the doctor, we do all the
things that normal people do. And everything else that we learn in this Course,
and study and really swear by, has no effect! It's like there's a part of us
that believes in the truth over here and then there's a part that lives our
everyday lives as bodies, dealing with all the issues that bodies do, and never
the twain shall meet.


I think it's very important, as a student of this Course, you really look at
that honestly because <that> is the problem! Many of you have been with this
stuff for a long, long time and kinda say: "Where am I gonna get it?" or "When
everybody else is going to get it?" And what is really being reflected in all
that is this very strange dissociation that we all practice. It's like the right
hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing or the right brain doesn't know
what the left brain is doing or the right mind doesn't know what the wrong mind
is doing. Whatever that is, there's the split. And I think when Jesus asks us to
be honest, as he does, and he asks us to hold nothing back from him, a very
helpful way of understanding that is to really look at this particular thing,
this <wall> that gets erected. It makes perfect sense why we'd have a wall. This
material is very, very frightening!


"He just said that again!" and it gets said over and over again but it's almost
like it doesn't get trough! At some point you really have to address that in
yourself, which means, you really have to look at not just from an intellectual
point of view but <really> look at and try to feel what it is you do that keeps
this truth. Again, as most of you have heard, over and over again, and you could
recite upside down and backwards at this point, that keeps that truth from, in a
sense, permeating into your life. That doesn't mean it never does, it doesn't
mean that you're not more forgiven than you were in the beginning and less
judgemental, but there's a barrier.


And again, it's very understandable why there's a barrier but "understanding",
in this sense, doesn't really do and that becomes a defence. You can understand
`till you're blue in the face and nothing's going to change! It's very important
to <really> try to feel what it is that stops you from taking words like I've
been saying for half an hour or so and again, you've read over and over again in
the Course, and really let them affect everything in your life because it should
affect and change <everything> in your life!