In the last several weeks, I have been focusing a great deal on the interpersonal side of the Course. My basic focus has been on realizing that the other person is a subject in their own right, and that I gain by bringing about their gain.
In focusing on this, I feel like I am swimming against the deepest of all addictions, the addiction to the idol of “me.” We talk about the perceptual realm as being built on the subject-object dichotomy. Think about that. In that picture, I am the subject, and all else is object.
To say I am the subject really says two things at once. It says that I am a conscious, experiencing being, an “I.” And it says that I am the subject of this situation—I am what this situation is about. I am what matters here.
To say that all else is object says that even people are objects, things. And it says that they only matter insofar as they impact the subject—me. Their real purpose for existing is to serve my needs, or at least get out of the way of my needs. Jesus’ early notes to Helen several times stressed that attraction to the body of another makes that person into an object. He even quoted a pun of Bill’s, saying that seeing someone as an object is “objectionable.”
I think this is the guilty secret at the heart of all our psyches, that we alone are the star of this show, and that others are just the supporting cast, who are ultimately not so different from the props. Helen, in what I find to be an extraordinary act of honesty, admitted this:
I have always put me first-it’s been my big mistake….On and off during the day it occurred to me that I have never really cared for anyone else’s well-being and that I don’t really know how. Intellectually yes-emotionally no….Emotional, not intellectual arrogance has been my persisting sin and its extent appalls me.
I never really considered Jonathan [her husband, Louis] (and perhaps not my mother either) as a person in his own right. I have kidded about this by saying, “I have to protect my investment, which is merely part of foresight and intelligence.” The word “investment,” which I really have used in this connection, is much more applicable to a thing than to a person, of course. And yet, that’s somehow the way I feel about it. It’s mine, and I insist on hanging on to it. (quoted in A Course in Miracles: The Lives of Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, pp. 125-126)
Can you relate to this? Notice her statement “and its extent appalls me.” What I have been finding as I’ve been working with this is that, underneath the constant gravitational pull of me and my needs, there is a ever-present undercurrent of being appalled at myself for constantly giving in to that pull. Ultimately, I’m not at all happy with the situation being about me. The fact that I think it is seems to indicate that something is terribly wrong with me. I want to break free of that egoic gravity. I’m not quite sure what that would be like—at times it feels as likely as breaking free of physical gravity—but I am convinced it would be a liberation unlike any other.
I could go on here, but I am convinced that this is what it means to transcend the ego. Unfortunately, so much of what passes for spirituality finds ways to spiritualize this “I am the center of the universe” attitude, rather than dismantle it. The proverb of Course lore, “there’s nobody out there,” is perhaps the supreme example. The ultimate way to turn people into objects is to turn them into illusions. A spirituality that does that doesn’t transform us, it just divinizes what we have already become quite adept at. Rather, the way out is granting so much reality and worth to people that in our overriding focus on them, we actually walk out of the isolating bubble of our ego. How better to transcend the subject-object dichotomy than by turning the “objects” into subjects?
