This audio features CA Brooks and Bruce Rawles talking – on another segment of her bi-weekly ACIM internet radio program on 12Radio – about a Course concept called “the Double Shield of Oblivion” that appears in the middle of the 5th paragraph of Workbook Lesson 136 of A Course in Miracles (boldface added where this idea is introduced):
“It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. Mistake not this for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do.” – W.pI.136.5
We’re encouraged in ACIM’s curriculum to look at ego’s two defensive shields – the outer shield being the material world of space, time, bodies and all the ‘stuff’ we all seem to be endlessly busy contending with … and the inner shield being the unconscious, yet unfounded fugitive thought system of sin, guilt, fear, victimhood, death and all aspects of insanity that aim at keeping us mindless. We turn around ego’s double defenses by using our bodily experiences with a completely different purpose from ego’s maladaptive intent: we begin to notice – without condemnation – that those experiences are reflections of our interior mental states. This breaches ego’s outer defense shield, the one we swore (to this insane self-concept) we would never do, triggering full alert status when we begin to examine our thoughts objectively, and with kind compassion. Seen through the eyes of our Inner Kindness Teacher (a.k.a. Holy Spirit) we realize that this inner shield of oblivion, protected by ego’s “pay no attention to the unfounded thoughts behind that curtain” mantras, cannot withstand the ultimate appeal of perfect, unchanging peace of Oneness that lies beyond our investment in indivi-Duality.
We also read an excerpt from two consecutive sections in Kenneth Wapnick‘s brilliant work “The Journey Home: The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles“, pages 13-18, where he explains the double shield of oblivion in more detail. Here is another audio about the Double Shield of Oblivion and yet another older conversation with CA Brooks.
