Eventually, you reach the sins. You make contact with material that’s so bad even God turns away. I hail from a long line of sufferers, folks who destroyed themselves rather than face the possibility God doesn’t love them. They died bravely but forsaken, hard deaths I don’t wish on anybody.
Paradoxically, looking at my unworthiness in the eyes of God required humility. I had to stop emphasizing status in the world, and I had to let go of the interior emphasis on blaming others. It was the only way to get close to the interior monstrosities. I don’t understand why.
And it’s funny because “stop emphasizing status in the world” and “let go of the interior emphasis on blaming others” are really good tips for living in holy relationship. When we commit to living that way, when we make it a practice, we really do begin to perceive others the way God perceives them. Our shared holiness becomes a vibrant symbol of love.
Looking at my sins was hard but it was easier when I was also percieving in others – in their relationship with the world – the broad outline of God’s Love for them, which was total and unconditional. And I understood – at first intellectually only, but then in an inegrated and coherent way – that I could not be excepted from that Love. God’s Love for you was proof of God’s Love for me.
So the gaze at myself as a sinner was joined to the gaze at myself as an innocent child of God, beloved of their father in heaven. Is that clear? The problem and the solution arose together (and in relationship).
People in our circle don’t like the word “sin.” I’m often having certain lines from A Course in Miracles tossed at me, especially those reminding me that sin is an “error” not a moral wrong or ethical violation. That’s absolutely correct in ACIM terms and, in the context of the course, very helpful.
But the course is a beginning (think of it as an entry-level exam that allows you to begin a course of study and practice) that adapts itself to the student. Self-study means there’s going to be a lot of personal variation. The word “sin” is not foreign to me and – in other circles where I sometimes move – my “story” is pretty fucking grim. I can’t even handle all of it. One way or the other, that needs to be responded to.
When I began to reach that desolate country (The Country of Sin, the Land of the Forsaken), I realized I was not alone. And to realize you are not alone is also to realize that the ambit of God’s Love includes you, whether you want to accept that or not. Non-acceptance is an option! But denial is not. Do whatever you want with God’s Love – that’s the nature of God’s Love – but don’t pretend it’s not love.
So that becomes the work then – going to the places (within and without) that you believe love won’t go, maybe can’t go, and so are yourself terrified of visiting. But honestly it is a great relief to face the ghosts, name the monsters, and map the haunts. You realize how much effort goes into sustaining the illusion of “places where love won’t go.” You see the illusion. You see the collaborative nature of it, the way we are doing this to ourselves, together.
In the Country of Sins I was neither alone nor unforgiven. In the place that love doesn’t go, love was waiting.
This is my witness.
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There was something you said I needed to be reminded of. It hit the nail square on its head –
‘The course adapts itself to the needs of each individual, so that what works for over here may not over there, and vice versa, and that is not a crisis but rather very consistent with the course learning goals’.
In my experience, one of the most valuable tools the course has pointed to that I can use to heal the past of chronic suffering, is rather than harvest it, (which personally magnifies is pain), is to drop those thoughts all together. They become non-existent if you can believe that. It has taken loads of practice. No, I do not look at this as any form of denial. I’m not pretending that my past never happened (as the course suggests), but use high levels of concentration, clarity and equanimity to remain inside the Holy Instant so that I am only able to benefit by moving in one direction instead of two. The course has helped me forget them by unlearning the old habit of psychoanalysis.
Just over here selfing again.
Sara, the old woman who loves her dog Maggie.
Thanks, Sara . . . Yeah, one of the things that’s increasingly clear to me is that the course is a beginning, and not even really a path, but an actual “course,” and its application looks really different based on our individual learning goals, challenges, material at hand, et cetera.
Don’t harvest the chronic suffering . . . I love that image. In my relationship with Jesus – poeietic and poetic both – there is often the very clear sense that “we don’t do anger anymore” or “we don’t do blame anymore.” And there actually seems to be a choice, as if one really can decide that “anger is never justified” and “attack has NO justification” (T-30.VI.1:1-2). Not just as a good idea but as a thing one can actually do with their body – decline to hold space for anger, blame, worry et cetera.
And I don’t think that’s just fulfillment but actually meeting the condition of the Country of God, the Country of Love – we actively seek to bring forth the world of love and forgiveness that we all want. And that work somehow reveals our shared innocence, the way we are in this together, which is, of course, the sweet spot of salvation, such as it is for those of us at this stage of the learning.
Thanks again for reading and sharing, Sara – I appreciate it.
~ Sean
P.S. I love this. Your writing is eloquent. It’s so raw and tempts me to open the old wounds.