You were at peace until you asked for special favor (T-13.III.10:2).

Tara Singh often writes about the impersonal nature of God and Love. It has become an important concept in my evolving understanding – and ability to practice – A Course in Miracles. We have to get beyond the self in which we are so invested. That self is an illusion. We want to reach the calm center that is God.

To move away from the personal
and touch upon the eternal
is to make right use of the brain.
Whenever the brain touches the eternal
it is grateful.
It is at peace.
Peace is of God.

- Tara Singh, “The Voice That Precedes Thought”

So much of what passes for thought in our lives is time-bound and body-bound. When I think of love, I think of my children and my wife. When I think of productivity, I think of my writing or my gardens. It is not that these things cannot be related to love and productivity. They can and are. They are rich and vibrant symbols of love and productivity. But I forget that. A symbol represents a larger whole. I take the symbol as the whole itself. It becomes mine. It becomes exclusive. When it is just my reality, it is no longer a shared reality. It is no longer of God.

We move so easily away from Oneness! It is the only natural thing there is and yet we have trained ourselves to avoid it. And our training has been very effective. When I ask God for Peace, it is almost always “my” inner peace. Me in this incarnation – a father, a husband, a teacher, in this income bracket, facing this political system. Sometimes I ask that peace be extended to others – but they are always others. The reality of “All that I give is given to myself (W-pI.126) is forgotten altogether.

One of the hardest concepts for ACIM students to grasp is that they – we – don’t want to wake up. We actively resist salvation. We like the separation and we want it to continue. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said this and everybody in the room starts objecting at once. Not me. No way. But it is a repeated theme of the Course and if we are going to end the separation then we have to accept our existing relationship to it.

You are not really afraid of the crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption (T-13.III.1:10-11).

Our sole wish is to obscure God, to obliterate Oneness from all memory.

For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and is this place that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love (T-13.III.2-3).

We want to be separated. That want is expressed in our conviction (and experience) that we are separated bodies with separated histories and ongoing personal narratives. We are male or female. We are alcoholics or drug addicts. Democrats or Republicans. Gestalt therapists or EFT practitioners. Irish or Lithuanian. On and on. Who doesn’t identify this way? Who doesn’t see the world this way?

But that is not how God sees Creation. God’s Creation is not personal. It is not a bunch of separate but equal beings. I love all my children but they are so different from one another. It is not like that with God. And we want it to be – we want to be the special child. The A student. The Prince or Princess chosen to inherit the throne.

That is why we translate the Course in terms of self-improvement, making it a personal journey on which we are a little better today than we were yesterday. That is why secretly – often quite deeply – we harbor the feeling that we’re a little bit better than people who don’t have a spiritual path. Or a different one. Or who don’t “get” A Course in Miracles the way we do.

If we are being honest with ourselves, can’t we see that this is at least a little bit true? And seeing that, can we then accept that even this tiny speck of fear makes the whole of God impossible?

Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome (T-13.III.9:4).

That yearning for specialness is what gave rise to the separation. And our unwillingness to let it go – to experience a love so profound and beautiful that it naturally encompasses the whole of Creation without even a shred of exclusion – is what keeps the separation going.

We are not here to improve. We are here to let go and to be undone.

There is never a moment
when the blessing of God is not with you.

- Tara Singh, “The Voice That Precedes Thought”

Can we see that not as a personal reality but as Reality? Encompassing all without any effort on our part? Without any judgment? Can we look around us and try – even for just a moment – to see as God sees? God sees Unity, a Oneness that is perfect. It is there. We can glimpse it, too, because we are not apart from God. That is the contact we have to make. It is not about us. It is so much bigger, so much more ripe with potential than anything we can even imagine.

To “single out” is to “make alone,” and thus make lonely. God did not do this to you (T-13.III.12:1-2).

If we accept that, then we will naturally turn in the direction of God’s blessing. We will ask for God’s help. When we do, the answer is certain.

For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane. But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there (T-13.III.12:9-10).

Love is in all of us, leading all of us Home. There is nothing special about it.

There are times when we are apt to feel quite proud and righteous – secretly or otherwise – about our progress as students of A Course in Miracles. Peace is prevalent in our heart. We understand difficult Course ideas like “to have all, give all.” The metaphysics are not puzzle pieces but a completed picture. We’ve got it. It’s time for Jesus to give us an A+ and let us graduate into Heaven.

Have you been in that space? I have. And it’s okay. It doesn’t make Jesus crave a belt of whiskey. We aren’t loved any less. We aren’t going to be asked to stand in a corner or stay inside while the other students enjoy recess.

But being better (in relation to an earlier version of ourselves) or best (in relation to other Course students) is part of the same old ego game of judgment and condemnation. It’s still attack. The ego lives by comparison, because comparison always finds fault or scarcity or insufficiency somewhere. Separation thinking is separation thinking, even when it’s making us happy.

If we’re lucky, it doesn’t last. We come back to earth so to speak. If we’re honest with ourselves, it can happen very quickly. I walk around sometimes like I’m God’s gift to spiritually-minded people everywhere and then bam! I behave like a child who was just asked to share his favorite toy. I lose my patience with someone. I speak in anger. I indulge in revenge fantasies. And I think: oh my God. I’m the worst ACIM student ever. And I try to slink off to where Jesus won’t see me.

Maybe you are familiar with that cycle.

I am always grateful for the good days. Last night it stormed something fierce and the kids and Chrisoula and I turned off the lights and sat on the big bed and watched purple lightening sear across the rainy sky. It was an awesome, cozy and fun experience. I hope you had some loving moments like that yesterday, too.

But I am more grateful for the falling-apart moments. There was also one of those yesterday. Why am I more grateful for the experience that was painful and difficult? Because it is easier right now for me to see the separation in it. Because in those moments it is clear – as clear as last night’s lightening – that I continue to hold myself apart from God and deny both me and my brothers and sisters God’s divine mercy, grace and love. Thus, pain. Thus, sorrow. Thus, grief.

When I see that – however ugly it is, however much it makes me want to throw up or hide beneath the bed – then I know I need correction. I know that I still need the atonement.

The secret salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this is still true (T-27.VIII.10:1-2).

When I first read those words years ago, I loved them. They seemed so empowering! And they are. But as the journey deepens, I see that they also imply great responsibility. In that light, they are intimidating. Am I willing to look at myself and see not just what I like, not just what is deemed socially acceptable, not just what I’ve decided is compatible with Jesus?Am I ready not to compromise? Not to justify? Not to hedge?

Am I ready to bring all my suffering to the Holy Spirit – however ugly it seems, however insane, however deranged and vile? Am I ready now to keep no secrets from Jesus? It is easy to say yes, but hard to sustain in practice. It means giving up that self-righteousness I talked of earlier, that intellectual confidence. It means trusting that there is light beyond the ego’s interior horror show and trusting too that there is a companion who can help me get to it.

It isn’t easy and it isn’t for everyone. A Course in Miracles is not very warm and fuzzy when you really get into it. It is a demanding and rigorous spiritual practice that will dissolve your ego. That experience is probably not going to feel good. It’s probably going to be painful and scary. It’s helpful, yes. But still hard. Maybe excruciatingly so.

But remember: we are doing it to ourselves. We aren’t victims of anyone but ourselves. So we can undo it, too. With help, we can.

The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive lesson of deliverance until it has been learned, regardless of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer takes away the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain (T-27.VIII.11:2-4).

And so it goes. At home in Heaven, we insist on dreams of Hell. And God waits, longing for us as we profess to long for God. And Jesus nudges us and calls us out of the shadows, promising it’s all going to be okay. The Holy Spirit patiently steers us, unconcerned about the one-step-forward-two-steps-back-and-half-a-step-sideways dance to which we seem permanently addicted.

So we’re getting there, you and I. Together, it is working.

Psalm 46 includes one of my favorite lines from the old testament: Be still, and know that I am God. Even as a child that appealed to me. It reminded me of forests and pastures. It reminded me that God seemed to go with me everywhere.

It begins with a heartfelt recognition that God is intimately connected to the ground of our being. When we are in contact with God, we cannot be shaken regardless of what tempests rage in the external world.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

It is very much a song about the awesome extent of God’s power. On the one hand, he can bring desolation to the earth. On the other, he can end the wars which storm across it. And it offers one simple directive for knowing this all-powerful God: Be still. That’s all. In stillness, we know God.

A Course in Miracles echoes that theme.

Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in his Father’s Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true (W-pI.125.9:3-4).

Stillness and quiet: these are the conditions in which and by which we know God. We don’t have to do anything else. No prayer, no ritual, no formal meditation positions. We merely enter that deep silence and listen in faith. We will know God there. Neither the psalmist nor the Author of the Course equivocate on this point.

Stillness and quiet, of course, are more than being sure that the television is off. They mean something different than just not moving. The truth is that we can come to sacred stillness on a busy city street – horns honking, engines blaring, sirens wailing. We can come to it while walking or dancing or kneading bread dough.

It is a quality of attention, a way of being present to what is. It is our ability to maintain a devoted concentration on our desire to know God. When knowledge of God is our sole objective, the externals – be they soup that’s a tad too cold, a breathtakingly beautiful sunset or a violent hurricane uprooting trees – become irrelevant. They cannot reach us. We are in the stillness that is God. We have become that stillness.

He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. His Voice is closer than your hand. His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as he (W-pI.125.7:2-4).

This is the secret that renders relationship with God practical and accessible. God is not a mystery to be unraveled by priests and scholars. God is not a gift given to few Holy saints secluded in convents and monasteries. You yourself are the peace for which you long. It is inside you as a condition of your being. You are not – you never were and you never can be – apart from God. In stillness, you remember this. In stillness, you accept it.

It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you (W-pI.125.8:1).

Sean isn’t God. The you you think that you are – this body, this personality, this history – isn’t God. Rather, the stillness inside us – the deep center from which all peace springs – is God. It is there waiting for us. It never changes. It saves us from the world and it saves us from the mortal self in which we have so long been deceived.

So practice that stillness. Make it your present reality. Every second in its presence is transformational. The separation ends. You know you are forever Home.

It bears repeating that Truth, or Reality, requires nothing from us. It is. It requires no input, amendment or seal of approval from the limited physical personal self with which we identify. This is not especially difficult to grasp conceptually, but bringing it to application is another thing entirely. We might say that all of our problems – general and specific alike – stem from our inability to let Truth simply be.

The Holy Spirit will undo for you everything you have learned that teaches that what is not true must be reconciled with truth. This is the reconciliation the ego would substitute for your reconciliation to sanity and peace (T-13.XI.11:1-2).

The notion that we have to do something – anything – is deeply ingrained in us. Call it the evolutionary action of the brain, call it the ACIM ego, call it crazy. We just don’t want to accept that we’re not driving the proverbial bus. And even after we come to terms with our ineptitude at managing life, we still tend to slip into well-intentioned activity. I have to pray two hours a day and do yoga and avoid carbohydrates and drink only organic hemp milk and study the Course and . . .

On and on it goes. And all the while, Truth or Reality or Heaven is there for the asking, there for the blessing. It is our frantic searching for answers and our frantic efforts at self-improvement that obscure it. In and of itself it’s not hidden or difficult.

It is important to see our busy-ness for what it is: an attempt to take over the role of God. It doesn’t matter whether we’re doing it unconsciously or consciously or viciously or with sincere compassion. There can only be one bus driver and it is not us! Every other possibility simply postpones salvation.

You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven (T-13.XI.2:2-4).

Really, what we are talking about is our investment. It is not that doing yoga or shopping only at the co-op is itself wrong. It is that we think they are right. That’s the trap. When our goal is Heaven – when our investment is in salvation – then it doesn’t matter if we’re stuck in a line at the gas station or holding hands with someone we love in the moonlight. It’s all the same.

Jesus pointed it out long ago and we are still learning, still trying to live it. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

So we have to check ourselves. We have to be confident that our focus and energy is rightly aligned. We have to ask what we are after – glorification and preservation of the personal self or salvation? The one is an endless circle that leads only to despair. The other delivers us to Heaven.

And yes. It’s hard. One step forward, two steps back. But it’s here the metaphysics can be helpful. If we can accept – or even just be willing to accept – that salvation is already accomplished, then it’s a bit easier to surf the apparent swells of our daily existence in the world. We aren’t alone. We aren’t inventing spiritual wheels.

Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep your from it, or it from you (T-13.XI.7:1-2).

That is our treasure. And it is well worth our investment.

For a long time when I “looked within” I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on an area in the vicinity of my physical heart. Maybe sometimes the brain. It was as if there was a little pinprick of light buried deep in one of those organs and that light, that spark was God. The harder I looked within, the tighter I scrunched my eyes! I’m not saying it was entirely fruitless – well-intentioned prayer never is – but for me there are better ways. Over the past year or so I have brought to bear a new way of looking within and it has nothing to do with my eyes or my heart or my brain. It is called service.

If we want to wake up, we have to begin where we are and with what’s available. Salvation is like being stranded on a desert island. You wish you had a boat or a radio but you don’t. So you start by learning how to harvest coconut milk. You build a hut against the weather. You wait and you pray and you wait some more. Isn’t this beach just wonderful?!

More and more I learn that “understanding” A Course in Miracles, while nominally helpful, is hardly the big deal it’s made out to be in some circles. Understand it or don’t understand it, you are still loved by God. You are still being guided back to Heaven. What counts is our ability to bring the principles of the Course into application – and that is very very difficult. For me it is. If we are being rigorously honest with ourselves – a prerequisite for awakening – then we have to see how hard it is for us to be kind, to be gentle, and to be entirely without motives. The human brain, which modulates our life in this world, is wired for survival. It is very good at this. We are always thinking about how to get more for ourselves and how to protect what we already have. We are always dividing the world into us and the other. The deeper you go, the clearer this becomes.

A Course in Miracles will undo all that. It will undo it in a profound way. Personality will literally end – the lovelessness of I’m special and you’re not. I’m this and you’re that. Loving one’s children more than the neighbor’s children and caring more for those children than those half a globe away . . . . that kind of special love would disappear. Trusting God completely means that the impulse to survive is over. We don’t have to take thought for tomorrow. There’s nothing outside this moment. But how many of us are there?

It’s not enough to know that’s the goal. It’s not enough to be really eloquent is writing or preaching it. Words are just shadows of the direct experience of Truth. As my practice deepens, I find myself asking Jesus: how do I get past myself? How do I let this “me” go?

His answer is almost always some variation of “serve somebody.”

I know it’s a truthful and helpful answer because of how quickly and utterly I resist it. “Uh, I’m not actually a servant. I’m more of a prince. A marquis maybe. Service is so . . . menial. I want the grandeur of Heaven and I’d like it in worldly terms.”

We are always asking Jesus if he has any other plans! Isn’t it true?

But knowing the futility of resistance, and being committed in my own stumbling way to waking up now, I try to heed. I try to serve. And I learn that service begins in willingness. It begins in asking Jesus for specific guidance: who needs help, what kind and when? Remember the beginning of one of the earliest prayers in the text?

I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me (T-2.V.18.8:2-3).

So it is our function to serve. Set aside the metaphysics, the chatter about happy dreams and nightmares, the personality of this teacher and that one. Right now you believe you are here in this world and it is a world in which many of your brothers and sisters are sad and hurt and lonely and confused. To serve them is to love them. It is to bring the love of Christ, which is your inheritance, to them. Your awakening is intimately related to their awakening. You hasten both when you let Jesus use you to help others.

It is always amusing to see how much progress “we” make when we forget about making progress and focus on somebody else. Maybe it’s listening to a student who needs somebody to empathize with their difficult home life. Maybe it’s a child who really really needs an adult to make a puzzle with her and do it without talking or rushing. Maybe it’s the neighbor who needs a hand mowing the lawn because she’s got a sick kid. Maybe it’s your office mate who needs somebody to laugh at his jokes. Maybe it’s the old cat who needs extra patting. Maybe it’s the waitress who needs somebody to say, “you’re doing a great job and we’re in no rush.” Maybe somebody needs you to pray for them.

One thing I’ve learned, there is no shortage of opportunities to help others once I let Jesus call the shots. I just say, “Jesus, you’re better at this servant thing than I am. What do you want me to do here?” And bam! We’re ready to go.

And do you know what happens when we serve? We turn within. We see inside.

Looking within is unrelated to physical sight. It is also unrelated to space and matter. Instead, it is a way of directly experiencing Love. We say “looking within” and we are really talking about experiencing our Christ nature. Service undoes the focus we place on our selves – as bodies, as personalities, as special people. We tend to our brothers and sisters and as they are healed we are healed because we are actively loving.

Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. And as His Son loves Him (T-13.X.10:1-3).

Can we come to that service that is an extension of God’s love? It is devoid of personality and has no taint of self-righteousness to it. It flows effortlessly because it is not really from us. Rather, it flows through us as trusting and obedient followers of Jesus. It is kindness offered for no other reason than that divine kindness is continually offered to us. We retain it – we enlarge its healing capacity – by giving it to others.

“I am the Lord’s servant,” said Mary, when she asked to bear God’s son. You don’t have to believe literally Luke’s gospel to see the willingness, the faith and the trust that is implicit in her words. Let it be our statement, too, as students of A Course in Miracles, as followers of Jesus. The need for servants is great and the call to serve goes out all the time. Would you answer? How will you answer? Salvation resides in our Yes.