Ask Amy: The Script Is Written
Q: According to A Course in Miracles, “the script is written.”* If the script is already written by ourselves, why don’t we all write the perfect script for the illusion – health, money, beauty, etc.?
A: When taken out of context, “the script is written” appeals to human curiosity about fate, destiny, and the possibility of rewriting our lives. It seems to refer to us as people. Many books and movies have been based on traveling to the past or future and the consequences of changing actions and events. But this is the ego script.
Read Lesson 158 and you will find that “The script is written” refers to the end of belief in the ego. “The script is written,” is actually about forgiveness, Christ’s vision and God’s plan for salvation; it is not referring to the fearful ego script based within time and place.
“Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.” (W-158)
ACIM is an exposé of the ego’s ideology. The ego’s secret script deliberately dictates, “Seek and do not find” in order to keep us endlessly consumed in a state of chronic dissatisfaction, be it avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. In the Course, Jesus exposes the self-sabotaging script which the ego has written and buried, and asks us to look at it with him in God’s Light.
At first glance, it does seem perverse that the ego writes a horror story with so much suffering. But scratch the surface and the motivation is obvious: guilt. On a deep, unconscious level, we believe we have attacked God and usurped His throne. Somebody must be punished. The ego’s tale is one of guilt, betrayal, vendetta and death – not love and happily-ever-after.
Beneath guilt is an even deeper reason. The ego needs to keep itself asleep in order to “exist.” Ego survives through contraction and sleep – God’s Mind is always awake and expansive; that is Its natural state. God is the greatest Author and He writes Timeless Truth; the ego cannot outshine God in the happiness department.
“God’s creations are given their true Authorship, but you prefer to be anonymous when you choose to separate yourself from your Author.” (T-3.VI.8:7)
When Jesus says “the script is written” he is referring to the spiritual law that giving is receiving (forgiveness), to Christ’s vision (Oneness), and to God’s plan for salvation (choosing the Holy Spirit as our teacher). These are three ways of prescribing Perfect Happiness and the tools to recognize that we are an extension of pure God-Mind created out of Timeless Love.
“Christ’s vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.” (W-158)
* Recommended Reading:
“The script is written” is from Lesson 158. There is also mention of “the script” in Lesson 169 and Chapter 30, Section VII: The New Interpretation.
This Q&A appears in the Ask Amy column from the May-June 2015 issue of Miracles magazine. Miracles is a well-loved staple in the ACIM community. For a subscription, email [email protected] or call 845-496-9089. To ask Amy a question, email miracles (at) amytorresacim (dot) com
