Advent Travels: Snakes and Hotel Windows

In the fourth dialogue in Dialogues on A Course in Miracles, Tara Singh asks a good question: what did you do today in which there were no illusions?

Some people say, “the wilderness” is a symbol, a metaphor, a word being a word. The real question is to what does it point?

I can’t decide which paragraph is the opening paragraph.

In the fourth dialogue, every answer someone gives to the question, Tara Singh easily undoes. Students always want to please their teacher. You and I want each other to know we’re serious spiritual people. Insecurity begets a kind of dishonesty; we confuse “ideals” with what’s actually happening.

The wilderness points to something – a work, an undoing, a relationship – that most of us can’t or won’t undertake. It points to something outside the world that we construct together – our hierarchies, our violence, our passivity, our emphasis on differences.

But most of us don’t see that it that way. We’re diligent and serious spiritual people. We write every day. We’ve got opinions about spiritual bypassing and eighties era feminist theologians. We run marathons, we don’t eat meat, we didn’t vote for Trump.

The point is not that those things are bad any more than that they’re good. If they arise from illusions – if they arise from the confusion of what we are in truth – then they’re illusions themselves. That’s all.

What will you do today that has no illusion in it? How will you know?

Tara Singh suggests that if we are honest, then we will recognize that the answer is: nothing. Everything I do is touched by illusion, originates in illusion, grounds out in illusion.

The crisis is not that we’re confused and bound up in the world’s opinions and ideals – i.e., socially-approved expressions of self, other and relationship. The crisis is that we don’t see the confusion or, upon seeing it, immediately fall back into the illusion of self-improvement. I’ll pray more, I’ll take up yoga, I’ll write a daily Advent journal.

It’s hard to just sit with the problem and not do anything.

Is not the actual, for us, the deception of lack, the illusions of insecurity and unfulfillment? That is our actuality. It is something we made. And therefore we can do something about it (Singh 108-09).

What will I do today that has no illusion in it?

If I am honest, and can say “nothing – everything I will today will have some illusions in it, in some way,” then something interesting happens. If I can really humble myself enough to see the problem clearly, then . . .

. . . then I can ask a new question. I can ask a question that doesn’t automatically reinforce the confusion it was meant to repair: in what way is it possible for a Child of God who is separated from Creation to be in a true relationship with their Creator?

Tara Singh is pointing at something helpful – nothing happens until we can be honest with ourselves about the separation. Everything else is just opinions and ideals.

“I’m not in a true relationship with my Creator” – who among us wants to say that? But if it’s our truth – right here, right now – then what else could we say? It’s a myth that truth makes us happy – being honest is hard. It’s scary. The truth liberates us – but freedom . . .

. . . freedom terrifies us.

Sometimes when I’m invested in symbolism and metaphor – and friends I am always invested in symbolism and metaphor – I feel like a mouse frantically cleaning itself while the snake unfurls on the far side of the cage.

I am sorry for the mouse but facts are facts. The snake is going to eat you either way. If we are free, and accept our freedom and the responsibility it imposes, it would create a different response, wouldn’t it?

Forgive us our illusions, Father,
and help us to accept
our true relationship with You,
in which there are no illusions,
and where none can ever enter.
Our holiness is Yours (T-16.VII.12:1-2).

It’s just words. They’re easy to repeat and even easier to interpret in ways that assure us we’re okay, it’s all okay, the snake isn’t unfurling, et cetera. But all they “point” to is more words, more insecurity, more lack.

Which fine. But what are we supposed to do?

Tara Singh said, become responsible for separation. Find out why you are separate from your Creator – who said you were? Why did you believe them? If they’re wrong, how do you know? When we can answer those questions, then we will know how to heal the separation. We are doing this to ourselves – we can undo it as well.

It won’t be easy – snakes and hotel windows abound, Advent journaling abounds – but it can be done. That was Tara Singh’s promise – it isn’t easy but you can do it. It’s not up to me, it’s up to you, but you can do it.

All I can add is that doing this work in community matters. At this point, it may be all that matters. I don’t know what I will do today that will have no illusion in it – probably nothing – but I’m grateful that you won’t leave me because of it. I promise I won’t leave you.

I’m glad you’re here and I won’t leave. That’s where I begin.

Ten / Twelve