Christ is a Collective

I The Next Buddha

I don’t remember when I first read Michael Bauwans’ “The Next Buddha Will Be a Collective: Spiritual Expression in the Peer-to-Peer Era.” It was written in 2007; I doubt I saw it until at least 2012. I liked the title.

Bauwans suggested that society is evolving away from an historic emphasis on the individual and towards an emphasis on “distributed networks with peer-to-peer (P2P) based social relations” (35), such as online communities with a concentrated focus whose members came from all around the world. Bauwans believed this evolution had the potential to create new orders of power based on sharing rather than hoarding. “In a distributed network, the peers are free to connect and act, and organizational characteristics emerge from the choices of individuals” (35), rather than through top-down institutional directives.

For Bauwans, these networks reflect a shared intentional stance that community is at least as fundamental as the individual (35), and that consciousness evolves as an effect of this stance. “Truth, then, becomes a matter of integrating, encountering, and exchanging with others and their worldviews, so as to look at the world and its subjects and objects from a variety of viewpoints, each illuminating reality in a different way” (Bauwans 37). For the individual, reality is always partial but when we join intentionally, the nature of our access to reality expands.

Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them (MT 18:19-20).

Bauwans’ emphasis on the creative potential of new technological modes of communication is less convincing to me than the overarching concept that community-building matters more than individuation (indeed, in some ways, technology has been fracturous for community because of the way it highlights the psychological prerogatives of the individual (see, e.g., literally anything by Wendell Berry, Thoreau, Chellis Glendinning etc)). And the idea that community is more vital than the individual doesn’t feel new so much as familiar-but-distant, like a good idea we’ve forgotten but need to remember now.

Thich Nhat Hanh also pointed out (prior to Bauwans I believe) that the next Buddha might not be an enlightened individual – i.e., the lone spiritual hero under a Bo tree or strangling to death on a cross – but rather a sangha, a discipleship, a collective. Enlightenment not as a personal accomplishment but a “community practicing understanding and lovingkindness [and] . . . mindful living” (Nhat Hanh).

Who or what is the individual with respect to this community?

Bauwans was riffing off of a blog post by Helen Titchen Beeth, also published in 2007, entitled “Why The Next Buddha will be a Collective.” It is Beeth’s framing of the idea (communal rather than individual enlightenment) that I focus on here, the better to understand – to awaken to and make welcome – Christ as a collective, not an individual, experience.

II Reading Helen Titchen Beeth

In her essay, Beeth notices that she is naturally party to many rich and fascinating dialogues, all flowing into and out of one another. In her view, these seemingly separate dialogues together inform, deconstruct and create an ever-spiraling communion with a life of its own that naturally transcends (without effacing or occluding) the individual nodes comprising it. For Beeth, dialogue is inherently unified through relationship. It’s not possible for a dialogue to be separate, no matter how distant or distinct they may appear.

Beeth calls these dialogues – and the collectives out of which they arise – “pattern cohorts.” Pattern cohorts are groups of individuals who coalesce around important questions and ideas (e.g., what is consciousness, what is justice, how do we end conflict, feed the hungry). Each pattern cohort is inevitably incorporated in other larger patterns (regional non-profits, NGOs, religions, countries and so on), all of which eventually cash out in what we call the cosmos, and the limits of both our individual and shared understanding.

Because understanding is limited it cannot be dispositive. So the pattern cohort’s function is less to “answer” a question than to explore the space the question opens up in us. What feelings does it provoke? What arguments? What surprises appear? What new responsibilities? The suggestion is that this exploration helps midwife consciousness from its current emphasis on individuation to collectivism. It is collectivism – the whole remembering itself as the whole – which allows for a deeper and more helpful response to the challenges reflected in the questions and ideas.

“[Pattern cohorts participate in] a conscious return to collectivism where individuated, or self-actualised, individuals . . . pool their consciousness in a search for the elusive collective intelligence which can help us to overcome the stupendous challenges now facing us as a species . . . ” (Beeth).

So Beeth sees an evolution from 1) a whole in which the parts are unaware of wholeness to 2) a whole in which the parts awaken to their individuality in wholeness to 3) the parts together awakening as the whole.

What is common throughout that evolution is “the whole,” which I am going to call God. The “stupendous challenges” I am going to call separation and its effects. And collectivism I am going to call a holy relationship giving rise to a happy dream in which we see in the other – and offer to and accept from the other – “perfect freedom from all forms of lack” (T-30.VIII.2:5).

III A Tiny Mad Idea

Every ACIM student knows the story. Into eternity, where all was one, crept a tiny mad idea – “I’m me! I’m not you!” – at which Creation, instead of laughing away, took seriously (T-27.VIII.6:2). “I really am me – I really am separate from you.”

Shocked and scared at the sudden appearance of separation, and wracked with guilt at having apparently brought it about, we fall asleep and dream a dream so dense, complex and all-encompassing that it stops seeming like a dream at all. For all intents and purposes, death and suffering, war and famine, rape and torture – our self-imposed nightmare penalty for daring even to imagine separation – become real.

And all along God – the Unindividuated One, the Creator Itself, the One with No Other to Whom to Compare Itself – goes on unchanged and unchanging, uninterrupted and unbroken.

This is fiction! It is a story designed to help us “see” our separation from one another and the cosmos. It contextualizes the psychology of guilt and fear in a way that makes clear they are distortions of our actual nature. It reflects Beeth’s “whole in which the parts are unaware of the whole” transitioning to – separating into – “parts awakening to their individuality within the whole.”

So the work becomes – our ACIM practice becomes – realizing the next step in which the parts awaken together as the whole.

Heal your brothers simply by accepting God for them. Your minds are not separate . . . He is always accepted for all, and when your mind receives Him the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship” (T-10.III.2:4-5, 3).

This means remembering that our perception of the world and our lives in it are predicated on a misunderstanding. We really are asleep in the sense that our perception is distorted by our insistence that what we perceive is objectively real and our interpretation (our stance) beyond question. The effect of this distortion is a continual self-dissociation which sustains and expands the original confusion or separation. We have not only forgotten the Whole, we have forgotten that we forgot the Whole. In that sense, the separation is as real as anything ever can be.

Imagine you are lost but you don’t know you’re lost. All the things you’d do if you knew you were lost, you don’t do. You can’t do them because you don’t know you should do them. You sort of sense something’s wrong but you can’t say what, and so everything you do makes what is wrong worse, and you never – except once in a while by accident – do anything that actually helps.

That is the separation. That is how you and I live. And that is the situation into which A Course in Miracles appears and says, “there is another way. Let me show it to you.”

IV Holy Relationship

The other way offered by A Course in Miracles has to do with remembering what we are in truth which, in turn, has to do with undoing the internal blocks to that remembering. It is a process, not an event. Critically, it cannot be done alone.

In the framework of A Course in Miracles, “remembering” is not about recollecting or recalling some lost fact from the deep past. It’s closer to the ancient human framework of teaching and learning how to live together in harmony. The Holy Spirit teaches us what peace and happiness are by showing us how to share peace and happiness with our brothers and sisters.

Most of us are quite skilled in sharing with conditions – I’ll give you X if you give me Y. But that’s just bargaining with power. The Holy Spirit is teaching us actual giving, which means “without qualification or condition of any kind.” Actual power is naturally shared – Creation will not have it any other way (T-30.III.4:9).

The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind which thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in what exists within God’s Mind. It is forever One, eternally united and at peace (T-30.III.6:7-9).

Sharing also means having something to give – and knowing what that something is.

Sharing in this way – living together in this way – is an art (knowing merging with craft in and as creation) that we do not know how to do. Or rather, have forgotten how to do. That is why the course symbolizes the Holy Spirit as a Teacher. He teaches us to remember what we have forgotten. We have to learn how to share happiness and peace, in all the many settings and relationships that comprise our lives in the world. It takes time, attention and commitment. It is a practice that by necessity we share. 

The critical element of this learning is our relationship with our brothers and sisters. We do not wake up alone. As Beeth observes, the individual must voluntarily join with others in service of the whole. Only together can we realize the fullness of peace and happiness.

That sounds lovely in theory but can easily become confusing and even dangerous in application. It’s easy to dismiss as impossible or Utopian; it’s easy to scapegoat and abuse. There’s a reason Jesus was executed on a cross outside Jerusalem and it wasn’t to fulfill a divine promise. Before Love looks salvational, it looks scary and dangerous. Hence (in the context of the dream) the necessity of understanding and application. Understanding without application is sterile, and application without understanding loses direction. But together they become a light that makes clear our identity in and as Love.

It is in the context of embodiment that we have to learn – and teach – that we are not bodies, and it is in the context of a world, broadly defined to include the cosmos, that we have to learn – and teach – that there is no world.

But how?

Beeth points to the work of Morel Fourman on soul families in order to deepen our understanding of what it means to join in the sacred way implied by knowing each other as “brother” and “sister” (language that is fundamental to ACIM even as its application is regrettably sexist).

The soul family . . . is here to steward creation of a new form of civilisation. This new form of civilisation mirrors the most divine aspects of human consciousness in the larger systems and structures of human community and society . . . it reflects timeless values of love, cooperation, stewardship, a society which fulfils the promise in the words ‘as above, so below’ (Fourman).

This is the work that Jesus instantiated two thousand some odd years ago and which we – together, in the ways that we can be together – continue. The historical shift from Jesus pointing to the practice to a practice pointing at Jesus is unfortunate. Our work is to up-end and recreate the original practice.

Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing . . . Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God (W-189.7:2-3, 5).

In ACIM terms, this means giving attention to whether our relationships are holy or special. For me, for a long time, that boiled down to a simple question: is the relationship about you or about me? If it is about me – what I can get, how I can benefit – then it is special. But if it is about you – what I can give you, share with you, relieve for you – then it is holy.

There are good and valid reasons to make my living about you. There’s more flow in your life, and I let go a lot of egocentrism, which brings more flow to my life.

However, the emphasis on you – as helpful as it is – still leaves the separation intact. It’s definitely more loving and service-oriented – it definitely aligns with our “happy wakening and joy of life” (T-27.VII.9:4) – but it does not undo our mistaken belief in separation.

What undoes our belief in separation is realizing that relationship is not about the individual but the collective. The relationship itself is the point. What can we give to it rather than what we can we, individually, extract or gain from it? On this view, the relationship naturally subsumes our separate interests which makes it possible to set aside the high stakes nature of the personal, and thus experience from a new – a more open and holistic, a more holy – place our natural communion with God.

Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father is to know your own. For it is your will to be like Him, Whose Will it is that it be so. God’s Will is that His Son be one, and united with Him in His Oneness (T-11.I.11:6-8).

The suggestion is that holy relationships are about co-creation – specifically, the co-creation of holiness, in order to produce circumstances in which what is One might perfectly remember Itself as Itself.

I accepted the binary paradigm of me-and-you for a long time. I worked very hard to shift from me-centered to you-centered thinking. But Beeth intimates an interesting and helpful evolution. What if it is no longer about me or you? What if the tired duality of self and other – of and/or altogether – can just be set aside?

What if it is about us? About what we are together? And what therefore comes forth through us? What grace awaits our union in order to make itself manifest?

V Happy Dreams

In any coherent sense, each one of our relationships (with a person, a flower, a lake, a principle) reflects – is a fractal of – our relationship with God. In turn, our relationship with God reflects – is a fractal of – our relationship with the Whole (even as it exceeds (even as it must exceed) our human understanding). To be in relationship at all means being aware of ourselves in all our humanness and being aware of the divinity that our humanness reveals when it joins with others (broadly defined to include places, animals, ideas, et cetera).

Wholeness, says Beeth, can be “approached only when we can simultaneously hold the paradoxical perspectives at both ends of the spectrum.” That is, it seems like the individual is not the whole, and that the whole cannot be divided into many parts. But put “seems” aside. Loving both (the whole and the part) – neither resisting nor favoring either – is what gently translates our nightmares into happy dreams. It sugars out in a form of living together that “gently translates our nightmares into happy dreams.”

Our Zen Buddhist brothers and sisters are very skillful with this understanding and practice. Roshi Philip Kapleau said that “everything is One” that is of course “not a numerical one.”

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness . . . The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms . . . (Thich Nhat Hanh Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life).

In happy dreams, we accept the end of separation and all its effects by becoming responsible for creating together the conditions in which we can accept the end of separation. In another essay, Beeth calls co-creation a form of cooperation with the Divine that necessarily begins with cooperation at the level of the world and the body.

When we say ‘co-creation’, we aren’t talking about just humans co-creating together, but an enlightened human collective consciously co-creating with the powers and intelligences of the cosmos. It is a numinous experience of our evolutionary potential as a species (Beeth).

Thus, it is not our personal responsibility to end war and famine, undo racism, bring forth universal healthcare and basic income, and stabilize the climate or whatever. But it is our responsibility, together, to become coherent, to unify in ways that facilitate the extension of happiness which must include safety, wellness, abundance and freedom. The larger problems will be undone when we realize whatever next steps and connections our relationship exists to bring forth. The form coherence takes is always intimately personal and it cannot be divined in advance.

Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and all that you believe must limit you (T-25.VII.7:1-3).

Peter Maurin, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker, suggested that together we can create “a new society in the shell of the old,” a society that excludes nobody and provides equally for all. But we have to let the old one go! And we have to join with those who will work with us to risk the vision and application inherent in creating a new one.

“Letting go of the old one” doesn’t mean (does not have to mean) calamity and crisis. It doesn’t have to mean destruction. It can also mean – Beeth argues that in fact it does mean – the restoration of peaceful and happy cooperation with what is. We can collaborate with one another and, in doing so, collaborate with God to restore to awareness our identity in and as the Undifferentiated Whole. What else could cooperation mean?

When that is the case, the new world – the happy dream – appears naturally and effortlessly.

VI Christ is a Collective: The Happiest Dream of All

Beeth calls her essay an “attempt to hold space” for all the “awakening collective Buddhas.”

I love and revere the Buddha. I have loved and revered him since tenth grade when a friend shared The Gospel According to Zen with me. Reading it was a hurricane wind that blew away my childish perceptions of God as an Old Man In Charge of Everything, leaving an open vista in which to imagine something new and expansive, formless and creative, and loving in ways barely imaginable. Buddha pointed to the potential for joy and harmony in that vista, which I wanted and needed very much. I still want and need that. But, for me, Jesus pointed to justice through disciplined creativity and a willingness to take risks in a zero-sum, winner-take-all game that for him ended on a cross outside Jerusalem.

I didn’t want the cross but I absolutely wanted the justice. It was (and still is) very clear to me that justice and love are not separate (e.g., T-25.VIII.8:3).

So a big part of my life story has been about seeking a way to realize the radical justice envisioned by Jesus without losing the joyful generative stillness of Buddha. In a lot of ways, that search led me to A Course in Miracles which – by opening my eyes to mind/body dualism and forcing me to take a stand with respect to it – dissolved (that is the verb) the search.

Beeth teaches me that I don’t need to resolve the apparently disparate ideals represented by Jesus and Buddha. Rather, I need to learn how to be in relationship with you. Together, we will co-create a new world in which joy and nonviolence unite to transform the Place of the Skull into a Bo tree, and the Bo tree into the present moment presently constellated. Peace and happines are our inheritance. The question is, are we ready to claim it?

The next Christ will be – indeed is already waking up to itself as – a collective. Salvation rests in realizing every relationship as Christ awakening to Christ. Our apparently personal and invidual lives will transform accordingly. What must we do to be Christ together? What has to change in us personally and collectively? What has to be our practice?

Most important of all: will you help me find it?

A Course in Miracles Lesson 239

The glory of my Father is my own.

A major stumbling block for many of us is false humility. We think by making ourselves small that we are acknowledging God’s greatness. It’s true that we are called to be servants! But what enables us to adopt that posture of love is a full-hearted and open-minded embrace of what we are in truth.

When we acknowledge the God’s glory is shared with us, we are not elevating ourselves over and against our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include maple trees, whale sharks and mosquitos). We are making a statement about all Creation. God does not play favorites or, if you prefer, God has only one Child and we are, together, it.

This lesson makes clear that the opposite of humility is gratitude. When we realize that we are not separate from our Creator, and are radically equal with all Creation, we do not become power-hungry Lords or tyrants. We become deeply, almost mystically, thankful. All problems are solved in this light, all hurts and grievances healed. Of course we are grateful.

Gratitude is actionable. It is a feeling, yes, but it’s also a foundation. When we act from Love, we always act in ways that bring forth the Atonement, which can only be brought forth in relationship. The world becomes an interlocking network of relationships, all nurturing and feeding into one another, and our job is to render our node in that system holy.

Holiness means that we live in reality with open eyes and open minds. We do not deny ourselves. We are not afraid because we trust God and know that God trusts us. We serve our brothers and sisters by refusing to burden them with projections of fear, nor do we accept their projections. We undo interior blocks to our awareness of Love so that we can serve with as much clarity and integrity as possible.

This is the practice of holiness.

The happiness that living this way – living the practice of holiness – begets is hard to describe. It is not contingent on the right arrangement of external circumstances. It liberates us from the external by fundamentally rearranging our understanding of cause and effect. It restores to us the power to refuse separation and thus reconnect with what it truth we could never leave nor be apart from.

All this sounds too good to be true but “too good to be true” is a defense. It’s an idea we use to keep ourselves from truly partaking of the creative power and glory that is ours because of what we are and what reality is. So the work, then, is not merely to accept or reject the idea – anybody can do that – but to bring it into application.

The question is: if you do, in fact, share God’s glory, then how shall you live today? What will you do? What will you say? How will you respond to what appears?

The prayer in this lesson uses the metaphor of light to describe God’s presence in, to and with us. And it suggests that when we give attentin to this light we remember that we “are one, united in this light and one with You, at peace with all creation and ourselves” (W-pII.239.2:3).

That is a promise! It is a promise that if we accept our nature in truth, and remember our creative abilities, that we will also remember we SHARE those abilities with all Creation. We will be restored to collaboration, and our happiness will not be constrained or restricted in any way.

That is our practice today: to remember the glory of God and to accept the memory speaks to what we are as well. Indeed, we can only remember it because it reflects what we are in truth. What else but gratitude could possibly suit us?

←Lesson 238
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A Course in Miracles Lesson 238

On my decision all salvation rests.

What I really enjoy about this lesson is the idea of God trusting me with his kids. I’m being flippant but you know what I mean. We spend a lot of time on “trusting God” and here we reverse that. God trusts us.

What I find amusing in a low-level frustrating kind of way about this lesson is the way certain sentences end up so convoluted by pronouns that they effectively lose all meaning, e.g., “You would give your Son to me in certainty that he is safe Who still is part of You, and yet is mine, because He is my Self” (W-pII.238.1:5). Huh?

But what I think is most noteworthy in this lesson is its one-sentence title: on my decision all salvation rests. Why that? Why here and now?

With respect to trust: A Course in Miracles typically personifies God as a superior male, the Father to end all fathers. Though it uses “Kingdom” quite a bit, it never uses “King” or “Ruler” or anything overtly militaristic.

I appreciate that! It is consistent with everything we know about the historical Jesus, whose emphasis was not on Rule but rather collaboration with a Loving Father whose patience, gentleness and kindness transcended our imagination.

And so in that spirit, I am grateful to consider a father who trusts me. As a father and a son in this life, I understand the role that trust plays in establishing and nurturing healthy relationships, and the way its absence undermines wholeness and happiness. I think the course is being very pro-family here, very pro-functional family.

With respect to the overly-dense sentences . . . I know, I know. If you go through them carefully, taking note of what’s capitalized and what’s not, they eventually parse into meaningful nuggets. Do I think Jesus spoke that way? No I do not. Do I think that ACIM sometimes indulges semantic density as a kind of juvenile pretension to intellectuallism? Yes. Yes I do.

Is all that merely opinion and therefore not worth the pixels comprising it? Of course it is.

What really stands out here is that the lesson’s title directs our attention not to trust, or ambling pronoun-strewn sentences, but to the decision we are entrusted by God to make – the decision upon which all salvation rests. No pressure!

What is the decision? It is the decision to “heal the separation by letting it go” (T-5.II.1:4), which is also our shared response to the Holy Spirit’s call to joy, given Him by God for our salvation (T-5.II.3:2).

The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other (T-5.II.3:7-9).

When we choose to listen to the Holy Spirit, we are choosing to listen to God, who is not in us because we are in God (e.g., T-5.II.5:5). The Holy Spirit teaches us this by teaching us how to be happy together. Our “decision” really amounts to saying, over and over, “sure, I’ll be happy. How?”

And then we wait on the answer. The answer is always given, because the answer is what we are in truth! But here in the world it takes time to learn this, and then to accept and trust it. But as we learn to accept and trust it, we realize that we are merely reflecting the trust that is already in us.

In a real way, we are what we seek. We already live where and how we want to live. But we have forgotten! Today we take yet another gentle step together in the direction of remembrance.

←Lesson 237
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A Course in Miracles Lesson 237

Now I would be as God created me.

This lesson reminds me of Saint Paul’s insistence that to be Christian was to have one’s value system utterly refactored in the Name of Love. One had to be transformed in a way that was visible to others; it wasn’t just about ideas but rather the effect of taking those ideas seriously.

The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day has drawn near. So let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom 13:11-12).

A Course in Miracles says this refactoring is not something new but rather the remembrance of what is and was always true: we are creations of a loving God whose function is to create as God creates.

I will arise in Glory, and allow the light in me to shine upon the world throughout the day. I bring the world the tidings of salvation which I hear as God my Father speaks to me (W-pII.237.1:2-3).

Indeed, in that same letter to the Romans, Paul used the phrase “put on Christ,” which he characterized as opposite the human body. To be Christ was to no longer “make provision for the flesh” and the gratification of its desires.

A Course in Miracles is less rigid in its dualism (though it still sets body and mind as opposites, with the latter preferred by orders of magnitude). Instead, it suggests that when we “put on Christ,” as Paul puts it, the body’s perception is transformed. Our senses, when given to Christ, reveal a world that “ends the bitter dream of death” (W-pII.237.1:4).

Awakening is not about not having sex or chocolate or refusing long walks on the beach but rather about seeing the form of these things in the light that was given to us in Creation. That light, which is the Vision of Christ, is what allows us to know what everything is for because we know what we are. When we know ourselves, perception is transformed. We are no longer deluded.

That is, our uncertainty about self-identity ends when we accept ourselves as God created us. That is our truth, and that reveals to us our true Self, in and for whom the world is neither a cage nor a battlefield. Instead, it becomes a site of sharing the peace that is in us as a function of our Creator, who does not abide suffering.

Reality is true, regardless of our acknowledgement. It’s like being at the beach. I can close my eyes and say “I’m not at the beach,” and I can even believe myself and convince others. But I am still at the beach. The crisis arises not through what reality is but through our resistance and denial. Therefore, this lesson gently invites us to become open to a new way of being. It is a hearty “yes” rather than a hesitant “maybe” or stubborn “no.”

←Lesson 236
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A Course in Miracles Lesson 236

I rule my mind, which I alone must rule.

What kind of ruler are you?

That is the question behind today’s lesson. What kind of ruler do you want to be? What kind of ruler do you need to be? The mind is a kingdom given to us to rule. How shall we govern? How shall we assert our authority?

Another way to frame the fundamental question is: what is your relationship to power?

It is not an accident that the lesson urges us to serve, rather than to rule. Or rather, that it equates true service with ruling. In A Course in Miracles, true power is found in our willingness to share freely with our brothers and sisters, without fear or condemnation. Always ask: how can I help here? How can I be of service?

In this, the course tracks a long Christian tradition of subverting the world’s ideas about power, leadership and accomplishment. When John and James seek positions of influence in Jesus’s Kingdom, and the other disciples grumble, Jesus gently admonishes all of them.

Whoever among you seeks greatness shall be the minister of all, and whoever seeks to be first shall be the servant of all, for I did not come to be ministered unto but to minister (Mark 10:35-45).

For most of us, the mind is an unruly kingdom. It is full of ideas, images, visions and stories that seem to spring up from nowhere. Some we like, others we don’t. We are often anxious or depressed on behalf of the mind’s content. We seem to be doing its bidding, rather than the other way around.

What we want or need seems beside the point. Mind asserts itself over and aginst us, like a child veering between tantrums and boundless play, with no loving parent to guide and care for it. The result is chaos and pain.

A Course in Miracles invites us to reconsider this characterization of mind, and to realize that true power lies is offering the mind – its function and the many forms (ideas, images, visions and stories) it generates to God. That is, we offer the mind to God, through the Holy Spirit, to be used only for the purpose of atonement.

When we do this, we are actually allowing the mind to do the only thing it really can do – which is to serve (W-pII.236.1:5). To become a servant of our brothers and sisters – to teach atonement and nothing else – is not our highest or best function. It is our only function.

When we learn that we can offer our mind to God on behalf of our brothers and sisters, we are effectively realizing that love, not fear, is our true motivation. Thus we are released from suffering, and given the function of salvation.

Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God’s creations (T-1.III.3:3-4).

Thus, our “exercise of power” is really the open-minded and full-hearted expression of willingness to choose the Holy Spirit rather than ego. We ask that our thoughts reflect God’s Thoughts, and then actively seek those Thoughts so that we might follow them to shared happiness and peace.

Sometimes we ask, what are the Thoughts of God? The simplest answer is that they always guide us into relationship with our brothers and sisters, in ways that elevate the happiness and inner peace of all involved. Are you happy? Are you free of conflict? If the answer is yes, then you are thinking with God. If the answer is no, then you’re not.

It is not a crime to not think with God! This is not easy work we are doing, because we are undoing the habituated thinking of decades, in a world that does not support that undoing at all. We have to be patient and gentle with ourselves, as God is with us.

Somewhat cryptically, this lesson concludes by reminding us that our “gift to God” is also God’s Gift to us (W-pII.236.2:3). In a sense, the Course is suggesting that God’s “gift” is the free will which we accept by returning it to him for HIS ends, rather than ours.

This is a fair and helpful characterization! Left to our own logic and perception, we are easily sidetracked into schemes of sacrifice and bargaining, which always lead in the end to shared suffering. Cooperating with God – availing ourselves of Creation – becomes the way that we honor our will. We recognize it is not ours alone but rather is shared with God, and with all life.

To say this is to realize that peace and joy are a shared goal of all of us, and is altogether reasonable. Atonement abides no loss or other cause for grief. Our “rule” is the giving away of everything that obstructs the free flow of Love; our power is the power to serve in God’s Name. Nothing else becomes us.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 235

God in His mercy wills that I be saved.

I am grateful for this lesson’s emphasis on mercy, which is so intimately connected to justice which, in turn, is so intimately connected to Love. God’s mercy is the assurance of our shared salvation, for what God loves cannot be condemned.

Thus, to know ourselves as God’s Child in Creation means remembering that Love is the ground of our being, and its effects extend Love throughout the cosmos.

Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father (T-13.I.6:6-7).

But we forget this! We try to put our own spin on it, mostly because we don’t want to be merciful as God is merciful. We want to judge others in order to exclude them from Heaven. We think judgment is what makes us safe; we think exclusion is how we ensure our personal experience of salvation.

But we are wrong. And the effects of our error hurt all of us.

You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father’s Love. And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him (T-13.X.9:1-2).

When we separate ourselves from the remembrance of our Creator, we open up the world to all kinds of horror and grief. Yet when we insist on remembering God, then we also remember how to create like God.

And that becomes a means to true forgiveness and happiness.

I need but remember that God’s Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His Arms. I am the Son He loves (W-pI.235.1:3-4).

Thus, our prayer today is a prayer that we might remember God’s mercy – not as an ideal but as a fact of our existence. Mercy is a way of being present to ourselves and to one another, so that together we might create like our Creator.

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