6. The Crap in the Gap
What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? (T29.I.9:4)
What in the world is the Course talking about when it discusses the gap? Think about it this way…
We started out one mind.
After the Big Bang we ended up looking like this.
The circles represent our seemingly individual separated minds. We have forgotten that we are really one mind. The space between our seemingly individual separated minds is the gap. Without the gap, without our belief in the gap, we would be the one mind.
We have filled the gap with “toys and trinkets”; bodies, sickness, death, war, and differences where we play our game of specialness, separation and individuality. Everything in the gap, our whole false universe, is for the purpose of making specialness, separation and individuality seem real. This is the battleground where we have forgotten we are mind and think we are the body, which like the gap, we made to have the experience of being special separate individuals.
Like the gap, the body seems to be a fence around the mind, keeping the mind from extending outward. Like the gap, the body seems to imprison the mind. Because we believe the gap and the body are real, the mind stops at the seeming barrier, the gap or the body. This stopping of the mind’s natural function, extension, is what causes all physical symptoms of sickness. The mind in its natural state extends love forever and forever and forever. Stopping the mind from doing this causes dis-ease.
Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds, and does not arrest itself in its extension. This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind’s function. (T8.VII.12:6)
Remember, the gap and the body are not real. They are part of an illusion we made up so we could experience specialness, separation and individuality. They serve their purpose, seeming to stop extension. Without the belief in the gap and bodies, we would be the one mind. The gap and the body are hallucinations that seem real because we willingly abandon our reason and sanity.
The following quote talks about the tiny spark surrounded by the gap or the body. As the gap and the body become less dense, as we believe in their reality less and less, the light becomes more intense and the gap shrinks and the body fades. How do we do this? By filling the gap with forgiveness instead of separation, specialness and individuality.
Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God still shines. You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can let yourself be wakened. You can overlook your brother’s dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams. And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. The darkness cannot choose that it remain. The coming of the light means it is gone. In glory will you see your brother then, and understand what really fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart. There, in its place, God’s witness has set forth the gentle way of kindness to God’s Son. Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto you. (T29.III.3)
In conclusion, we are not living in a beautiful awe-inspiring expansive universe. Much like the prisoners in Plato’s cave we are living in an abyss, a chasm that we have filled with crap. We are in a deep dark closed off space thinking we are not. To awaken we must get that the crap is crap. It is valueless. We are not trapped here forever. If we decide to use the gap and the crap in it, including the body, for the purpose of forgiveness we can find our way home.
All idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. (T30.IV.1:8)
Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.
Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made. No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God can have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. What could God’s plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself? (T30.IV.7)
Further Reading: The Closing of the Gap (T29.I)
THE UNDOING OF FEAR (T28. all)