Miracle Hour: Special Relationship, Guilt and Forgiveness

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In today’s program, I consider a topic described in A Course in Miracles: the special relationship. This is a form of relationship based on guilt, and holding onto condemnation. I explore the topic from the angle of traditional religion, A Course in Miracles and Gestalt therapy. I discuss the damaging effect on our relationships with ourselves and others from Christian dualism, asceticism and the equation of sex with sin.

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Dear Friend and Listener:

In this rerun program, I return to the theme of the “special relationship” — the relationship where guilt becomes a substitute for love. This is connected to the theme of forgiveness, and how and why that’s productive. This edition begins a series on A Course in Miracles, sex and relationships.

I examine two sections of the ACIM text dealing with this topic: “The Two Pictures” from Chapter 17, and “The Forgiveness of Specialness” from Chapter 24. Here is a section from the latter:

It is not you who are so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed. But specialness is not the truth in you. It can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on nothing never can be stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze.

Finally, I quote from an article of my own about holistic self-love and healing one’s inner wounds, which you can read here. In future episodes, I intend to address more thoroughly the relationships between ACIM in its various versions, religion and sexuality.

As usual, this 59-minute broadcast, created for the Pacifica Radio Network, is accompanied by music from Vision Quest. This edition also has music by Woody Guthrie. You may listen to past episodes here.

Lovingly,