ACIM Drama: A Pep Talk

When I briefly explored one-to-one teaching of A Course in Miracles a few years ago, I found that people were not really interested in the course so much as they wanted strategies for dealing with what was coming up in their lives. Questions about work, family, health, psychological wellness . . .

I thought it would be about working through certain course ideas – the specific language and mythology and so forth – but it was much more in the nature of traditional talk therapy. When this became clear, I stopped doing “teaching.” But still, it was an interesting space, because it reflected back to me my own concerns.

Basically, we all want to be happy and at peace, and our lives are really an intense pursuit of those ideals. We want solutions or fixes – preferably quick, preferably painless. A Course in Miracles can be the solution or fix, but it tends not to be quick and painless. Quite the opposite actually, especially when we really begin to practice it.

Still, that isn’t to say that strategies for responding to what arises can’t be helpful. For example, we can decline to be drama kings or queens.

Whatever is going on around you – big stuff, little stuff, family stuff, professional stuff – just be the person who isn’t freaking out. Be helpful and kind, and remember that helpfulness and kindness often boil down to not interfering. Sometimes we just have to sit or stand calmly by and let things unfold. Sometimes our best contribution is to not make any contribution at all.

Of course we are not always going to be able to do this. Nobody is perfect. We are all human and that means that we make mistakes and get confused. It’s okay. Forgiveness can mean just letting our humanness be what it is without a lot of drama. We don’t have to change anything; we just have to see it all clearly as it is given to us.

Giving attention is a form of being present without actually interfering. It is “to see it all clearly as it is given to us.” Just see what is happening. And remember that part of what is happening is your internal judgments: this is good, that’s bad, I should do this, that person should do that.

Just let all that be too. It comes and goes, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t build a house on what comes and goes, so don’t rest your self on it either. Just let it be. Be homeless. If you are okay in your spiritual homelessness, then you will become a home for others.

It’s a way of being helpful: just being the calm one, not needing to assert anything or become anything or announce anything. People need that, even if they don’t know it’s what they need. They gravitate towards it.

Of course you are going to feel sorrow and fear and confusion and so forth. Those are inner feelings and like everything else they come and go. They are like clouds in the sky, right? The clouds drift and change shape and color, and sometimes get very close and threatening and sometimes are very far away and majestic, and yet the sky is always just there. It is unaffected by the clouds. It holds them all equally. The clouds are dramatic; the sky isn’t.

So the suggestion is to model the sky, and not get worked up about what is happening, other than to just notice it as it happens. If there is some action you need to take, it will take itself for you, and you will just be carried along with it.

That is what the world needs, really. People who are quiet and still, who are not feeding the machine, who aren’t trying to be saviors, who are okay with being the sky when everyone else is cloudy. We can do a lot of good simply by withdrawing from the race to define and then implement goodness.

Goodness – kindness, lovingkindness – is what we are. The work is to get out of the way and let life be. It isn’t even work really. It’s more like not working. It is like we are flailing in stormy seas and hear a voice that says “stop – don’t move – be still.”

And we are like, “fuck that – I’ll drown.”

But then after a while we get so tired we stop flailing, and instantly the seas are calmed, and there is sandy ground right beneath our feet, and we see the chaos and conflict was all in our heads, all imaginary, and that this still calm is our real home, and it’s not a place but a condition, and it is always available, always with us. The drama was on our end; it wasn’t inherent.

So that is a strategy for approaching the world and our lives in it: just slow down, give attention, and don’t be dramatic. Then the so-called work of being an ACIM student – study, inquiry, dialogue, stabilization – can proceed apace.