The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops and becomes accomplished, it represents the reversal of the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this; the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite of what it was. (T-17.V.1), A Course in Miracles

As a long time, avid Course student and "listener," I have been led to some insights about the Course that do not fit into models proposed by various established teachers. These insights revolve around a greater understanding of the "holy relationship" and why it is so critical to our Father’s chosen plan for restoring us to Christhood.¹

While it is true that we are participating in a dream, and that our bodies are not real, they are tangible - at least at our current level of our perception. And it appears from the Course that we will have to do something other than deny them if we want to get Home. Indeed, the Workbook says, "The body is the means by which God’s Son returns to sanity."² And the Course says, "The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim."³

Yet we also know that bodies interfere with our spiritual vision. Their seeming "reality" convinces we are separate, despite our efforts to perceive ourselves as one. And their constant demands distract us from our quest for Christhood. Finally their very limitations radically distort our perception. One of the most critical of these limitations may turn out to be one we rarely reflect upon, namely, gender. Even though we know that our Father did not create the world in which we find ourselves, and that in our true state (that is, with restored vision) we would have a shared Identity,⁴ we believe it must somehow be our Father’s Will that we only exist in one or the other of the two sexes. This assumption may be hiding the key to benefitting fully from the Course.

According to many esoteric sources, the split into sexes only exists within the illusion. That means it is indeed of our making, and not of divine origin. This split into bodies that are "polarized" at a basic level, is the reason we perceive a world of dualities. We literally do not feel "whole," and therefore cannot perceive wholeness. Instead, we perceive (and make) separation everywhere (racism, class distinctions, self vs. other). We literally feel "unbalanced," and therefore see (and make) "evil," believing it is the opposite of good, and so on.

In short, we cannot perceive oneness unless we can overcome our bodies’ polarity somehow. Gender unwittingly fosters the desire for separation, which is the ego. How? Indirectly. As we will see in a moment, gender currently pushes us to use our bodies in such a way that we come to fear the love that would swiftly put an end to our (literally) split minds. It is the means by which we keep ourselves soundly asleep within our sadly separated dreams.

We designed our male or female "electrical charges," to imprison our minds. This is a difficult concept for most Course students. They understand their minds have been imprisoned, but don’t see how their gender could be playing a role in perpetually clouding their perception. Instead they seek to go Home alone (which we are told is not possible⁵) by denying their bodies (also not a good idea according to the Course⁶). Or they freely pursue their physical urges while telling themselves this will have no adverse effect on their minds - because "they know they are not a body." This, too, is wishful thinking, for according to the Course we can have either freedom of the body, or freedom of the mind, but not both.⁷

How does gender imprison our minds? We know from the Course that our desire for separation stems from a sense of lack or loss.⁸ The simple truth is that as a member of one gender or the other, we "lack" the communication with the opposing polarity that would let us experience wholeness again. We are each only "half the story."⁹ Worse yet, striving to make our "lacking" selves feel better by means that will never succeed,¹⁰ we currently enter into relationships based on mutual taking, or, at best, "giving to get." Such selfishness swiftly seems to prove that fear should, indeed, be linked with love.

We "seek but do not find." And this impasse in relationships is familiar to everyone - even to Course students united by a sincere, mutual determination to have "a holy relationship." Somehow our relationships continue to foster a desire for separation. Eventually we create distance on some level, even if we remain together as a couple. Course students have the advantage of staying loving, and forgiving each other swiftly. But separation (born of pain and fear) always finds its way into any relationship where the body’s pleasure is a factor.¹¹

Still, the Course tells us that "the ark of peace is entered two by two."¹² So how can we use these bodies - which, by their very design, try to seek relief for their uncomfortable imbalance though pain-producing pleasure - to form relationships safe from fear? There is a way. But first, let us further consider the mechanics by which our design promotes feelings of fear and a sense of loss.

Gender, alone, accounts for a permanent yearning, whether or not one is sexually active. Indeed, the yearning may not take the form of yearning for the opposite sex at all. And seen from its highest perspective, the yearning is, of course, a yearning for wholeness and reunion with our Source - a state in which gender is no longer a factor. That doesn’t mean we can "skip" the body in our return and rejoin our Creator first, however - at least according to the Course. The means are still needed; we have to knit the separation back together from the bottom up.¹³

The challenge is that the yearning is connected to the neurochemistry of a primitive part of the brain known as the limbic system. One of its chief functions is to keep us mating fast and furiously...to keep us going around and around in matter. Conventional sex acts to increase the addictiveness of sex and other addictive substances. Therefore, we are obliged to use our intimate relationships differently, if we would overcome this obstacle and find deep wholeness.

In short, we create a further sense of lack by pursuing the sexual desire that gender inherently possesses. Our desire for union is, literally, "the call to return," but we currently misuse it. Out of sheer ignorance, most of us believe sex cannot hurt us. And, indeed, heartfelt union unmistakably does always benefit us. Still, as any responsible account of spiritual sexuality reveals, conventional sex inevitably leads to feelings of loss, loss of "self," resentment, irritability, etc. With these feelings comes fear of love and, ultimately, a desire for separation (emotional, physical or mental). Without realizing it, we are creating unions of bodies that only appear to be relationships, and are not. We are, as the Course says, using this "unholy instant" between bodies to worship death and create despair.¹⁴ Why? Because the DNA inherent in our design mindlessly seeks to replicate itself, thus keeping us recycling through matter indefinitely. When we let biology rule us, it pits the sexes against each other, leading to uneasy truces.

So what does the Course suggest we do differently? The Course, first of all, is advocating that we learn to forgive (the selfish actions biology has urged us to take) so completely that we joyfully unite more than mere bodies again. And that we keep on forgiving. Forgiving anybody and anything shifts our neurochemistry toward balance, and opens the heart and melts away the deadly desire for separation we have spent a lifetime (or more) painfully training ourselves to prefer. Forgiveness dissolves the projections of our own past fears that currently distort our vision. Yet it may turn out that the goal of all forgiveness is to free us from the past for a reunion with our original other half.¹⁵

Though this concept is anathema to most Course students, we certainly know that the Holy Spirit is going to use special relationships to move us into the "happy dream" from which we can catch our first glimpses of Home.¹⁶ To be sure, those special relationships will first have to be converted into holy relationships. But this the Holy Spirit assures us can be done with ease, though "the way is different."¹⁷

To do it we will have to learn to use our bodies and relationships differently,¹⁸ and as a means to a totally different goal from our former goal of seeking comfort within the dream. The Holy Spirit says It can teach us "ancient new ideas," we have merely forgotten,¹⁹ which will enable us to develop the abilities we need to find our way out of the illusion. This, it says, is the best that can be done for us in our present muddle.²⁰ We must crawl before we can take wing again.

What should be the new goal of our relationships? Learning to think as one mind with our brother, or communion. Nor is this an intellectual exercise. It will happen only as the result of a series of experiences of the holy instant.²¹ When we ultimately achieve the qualitative shift in vision they enable, we will be restored to our original status as co-creators, we will overcome death, and, best of all, we will truly be headed Home.

The holy instant is not simply a joyful feeling of being transported beyond the body, as most Course students believe. (Though "much of what happens" then happens in the holy instant.²²) The holy instant is a melding of minds.²³ Nor is it experienced only with Jesus. It is experienced with a brother still suffering from the same limitations we are.²⁴

Now what might Jesus be talking about that would involve a different, but "ancient" form of union between bodies and that would heal our minds of the desire for separation? First let’s go back closer to the time of Jesus for a clue that may bring into clear relief the answers the Course already contains.²⁵ In the 1940’s a gospels came to light in upper Egypt. One is called "The Gospel of Philip." It (and "The Gospel of Thomas," found with it) is in accord with the Course on many more points than it aligns with traditional Christian doctrine. Indeed, the parallels are striking (we are not condemned sinners, Jesus did not "die" to atone for our sins, we must return to Christhood while "here," not after death, etc.). According to scholars, the content of these gospels is very old. Some even believe that the "Gospel of Thomas" predates the material in the gospels which the Church ultimately chose for the New Testament. As you may already know, this highly-selective editing process occurred long after Jesus’ "departure."

The "Gospel of Thomas" says Jesus taught that you enter the Kingdom of Heaven "when male and female become one and neither is male or female anymore." "The Gospel of Philip" says death came to Adam and Eve as a result of their separation - because they united incorrectly (for earthly ends). It also says that death can only be overcome, and the Christ reborn in us, in the Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber, through chaste union.

How could separation between the sexes have caused death? Well it appears that Adam and Eve maintained a sort of "functional androgyny" until they began using each other for individual, earthly goals. Prior to that point, they thought as one mind, thanks to a psychic link between them. Their spiritual vision also functioned. In short, they were still in the Kingdom.

They did not fear each other until that link broke. When it did, they not only separated; they lost the spiritual vision that accompanies wholeness. They "fell" more densely into matter, lost each other, and so felt that something was missing.²⁶ Stuck in their respective genders, their imbalances grew to the point where, today, we believe we prefer individuality (ego) to union of minds, even if we still like sex.

Separation between the sexes does, then, achieve our unhealthy objective of making us feel separated from our Father for it cuts off our spiritual vision. Here’s a second account of this separation. It appears in Thinking and Destiny by H.W. Percival, another book with striking parallels with the Course (which a Course student called to my attention):

The scarcity of Light in. . .human beings is because of happenings, long years ago, when the doers now in human bodies were in perfect bodies . . . in the Realm of Permanence. For each Triune Self to be qualified to [be a co-creator in]. . . the world of time. . .it was necessary for its doer part to take and pass through the trial test of the sexes for balanced union of feeling-and-desire . The test was that the doer should temporarily divide its sexless body into a male body and a female body; that the desire of the doer be in the male body and the feeling be in the female body; that the feeling-and-desire minds should think in unison, and be uninfluenced by the body-mind, which could function only as or for the body senses and would try to make the desire and feeling of the doer see itself as in two bodies instead of as the active and passive aspects of the doer.

As a doer passed the test, the temporary male and female bodies merged and were again the perfect body, but were now permanently balanced in one permanently sexless body; and the desire-and-feeling were inseparably welded in balanced union--by the body-mind being subject to the desire-and-feeling minds thinking in union.

Each of the doers now in human bodies failed to pass that test. . . . They left the Realm of Permanence; they could not see it; they found themselves in the human world of time, among male and female bodies, subject to death and re-existence. . . . and the body-mind compelled it to think of itself [not as a whole, but] in the terms and the functions of the sexes, either as a man or as a woman.

Here the doers in human bodies must continue to re-exist in bodies until they think of themselves as [balanced] doers of immortal Triune Selves. . .

The temporary separation - for the test mentioned - of the doer’s perfect body into a male body and a female body was effected by a projection.. . .So [at first] there were two bodies connected with each other by a magnetic tie, which served as a bridge connecting the two bodies. The desire in the man body and the feeling in the woman body did not at first think and act as two, as being different and separated from each other. Each saw itself in the other, as though in a looking glass. They felt and acted as one, just as there is reciprocal action in one’s hands in whatever one does.

. . .By [exploiting sexual desire for their individual ends, however,] they severed the magnetic tie. [Thereafter] the sexual organs formed. . .[the tie between] man and woman bodies. When the psychic tie was broken and the physical tie was made, [procreation began, and] the bodies were subject to death. (pp. 384-6)

The Course may be preparing us to restore the "magnetic tie," or divinely supplied "bridge,"²⁷ that once allowed us to think with one mind and experience the Kingdom.²⁸ (Have a look at this article for a description of a couple who apparently recreated this tie.) And the choice between the unholy instant and the holy instant may be the critical place where we make our choice between spiritual Vision and continued darkness.²⁹ Far from making the body "real," such simple union between bodies in complete stillness, solely for the purpose of restoring spiritual vision, will finally allow us to go beyond gender entirely and rediscover our shared Identity (not only with our brother, of course, but with the entire Sonship).

In case I have not made myself clear, this is not a "tantric high," achieved by using passionate sex as a drug to open one’s third eye and "bliss out" in a temporary state of "oneness" that is seldom truly shared. Such "trips" are no different, and no more effectual, than the ephemeral "bliss highs" mankind achieves through meditation - or even through using the Course itself as an individual "bliss drug." The true goal is a quiet "melting in,"³⁰ which gradually leads to a permanent shift. And we will know we have made it when we have overcome death. Until then, no matter how holy or spiritual we are, we are still imprisoned in separation. As is our brother.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Course insists the holy relationship and correct use of our bodies are our ticket to restoring perception of our true circumstances, these ideas are often quickly rejected by Course students. More often than not, even very advanced students fail to take the simple step of quietly asking the Holy Spirit if this chaste union, in which the body’s demands are not considered, but are nevertheless overcome permanently, is indeed the "holy relationship."³¹ Perhaps we still have sex confused with sin.

The unthinking initial resistance of many Course students is making it clearer and clearer why Jesus could not have been more explicit in the Course.³² And why he poured so much effort instead into preparing us for deep, fearless union. And into teaching us to ask the Holy Spirit and to listen to insight coming from beyond our egos and their interpretations - even of the Course.

If you found this article interesting, please see our Open Letter to Gnostic Scholars

Also of possible interest: Sex and the Ego

Also see intriguing comparison chart of ACIM, Gnostic Gospels and conventional Christianity (pdf file, 205K)

Return to Source Materials outline

Footnotes reference A Course in Miracles, Foundation for Inner Peace; 2nd edition (1996).