Sean Reagan

A Course in Miracles

November Notes on Gratitude

by Leave a Comment

November frost on mostly empty gardens lingers past noon. Bare maple trees scratch deep gray skies. At night I listen to owls on the other side of the river and by day wait for whatever the cold and early dark of winter will bring.

The mind turns to gratefulness.

Who will teach us how to give thanks? Not what we give thanks for but literally how to give thanks? For assuredly, we do not know. One need only give attention to the world – that grim picture of an inside condition (e.g., A Course in Miracles preface xi) – to see this is the case.

I thought aloud about this in yesterday’s newsletter. You can sign up here, if you like.

In The Voice that Precedes All Thought, Tara Singh wrote that “there is something that words cannot communicate / but the spirit of gratitude can” (5).

Recently I was part of a team-building gratitude exercise that relied heavily on language. We talked in very specific ways about gratitude and took notes on the who, what, why, where, when and how of our gratefulness. We shared aloud.

The wordiness was not wrong but it did obscure the deeper dive to which gratitude calls us. This “dive,” says Singh, is a form of interior listening.

The listening within silences thought,
having received what is beyond thought.
If we could listen then we come to silence.
Thought has a place,
for there is the precise and factual thought
that carries the silence with it.
It has the ability to silence.
And one is grateful and appreciative (10).

The emphasis shifts from the external world, which is merely an image made by our projected fear, to the pure light of God, which includes all things, and thus softens our resistance to the end of differences that are the sine qua non of time and space.

Gratefulness does not know a lack.
It trusts in the Will of God
and leaves God’s things to God.
It knows that
for what you are grateful you will never be denied.

All else is duality, fear, and selfishness,
bound to the body and its sensations (11).

It is easy to be thankful for family, shelter and food. It is easy to see how these things are not given to all of us equally, and to work to resolve the inequity. This is human and there is nothing wrong – and much right – with it.

Yet we are called to a deeper awareness of reality. We are called to be witnesses to the one life beyond all appearances, the God-lit clarity of our shared being. This is a gift to us; it is not a thing that we earn or gather or merit. In truth, it already is given. We are simply to busy to notice.

Busy-ness is a form of fear. It doesn’t matter if it’s bending the knee to the demands the world makes or to the psychological demands that we make. All of it merely postpones peace. Busy-ness is the opposite of the stillness in which love recollects itself in us as a present reality shared with all life. We remember our perfection, which excludes no body and no thing, which is how it is perfect.

Gratefulness is the natural effect of this state and, paradoxically, its cause.

When you are in a state of gratefulness,
nothing is external to you.
Gratefulness does not judge
because it sees the One Life (8).

This peace can be known by us in a very real and tangible way. It is neither a future state nor a mystery. It arises when we are humble enough to realize of ourselves we can do nothing and willing enough to remember that with God, all things are possible.

Our remembrance is a gift to us for which we give thanks but, because it knows there is only one life, it is also a gift that we give to the world.

There is nothing arrogant or prideful in this! We can only extend the gift because we see clearly that the separated self is not real and is thus not responsible in any way for the “One Life.” Truly, nothing is at stake.

Your life is blessed then
and your heart sings songs of adoration
of the perfection of God (6).

I wish you much peace and joy this coming week, and thank you for sharing this path with me.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 113

by 5 Comments

I am one Self, united with my Creator (Lesson 95)

Salvation comes from my one Self (Lesson 96)

Conflict arises in separation. Indeed, it is the essence of separation, the means by which it functions. Somebody has something we want – a piece of pie, a dollar bill, a pretty hat – and so we become covetous and greedy. We plot. Or else we are worried that somebody wants what we have, and therefore we have to make a plan for its defense.

Aggression and violence, offense and defense, winning and losing, and sacrifice and suffering all come into play when we believe that separation and its effects are real. When separation is the way we see the world, grief is the only outcome we can depend on.

The antidote to this gri situation – the only truly effective one – is to realize that separation is an illusion because we are “one Self,” united with our Creator (W-pI.113.1:1). We are healed when we remember that “serenity and perfect peace are mine, because I am one Self, completely whole, at once with all creation and with God” (W-pI.113.1:2).

Our experience of bodies and the world they inhabit – and the cosmos giving birth to both – is that we are separate, and that our joining is always in pursuit of shared interests and can be broken off at any time. We have friends, tribes and peers which necessitate opponents and enemies.

But A Course in Miracles offers us a more radical way of seeing experience: as a unity in which there are no differences but only sameness.

In this light, our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include salmon, Ginkgo Biloba trees and snowflakes) become reflections of a fundamental equality that can only beget peace.

Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is a belief in differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. And here is sight of differences transformed to vision. Reason can now lead you and your brother to the logical conclusion of your union (T-22.In.4:1-5).

It is this vision – born in the holy relationship, itself born in our willingness to no longer suffer nor contribute to the suffering of others – that allows us to see clearly the fulfillment of God’s perfect plan for our salvation (W-pI.113.2:2). Our “Self” is not the personal individual with its family history, its career, its hobbies and its goals but rather the unified Self extended in Creation. We have no enemies – only brothers and sisters who long for the peace and joy of reunion as intensely as we do.

Thus, today’s review allows us to deepen our willingness to join with one another in bringing about the end of conflict. This is not done through negotiation or compromise. Rather, it is accomplished by giving attention to the underlying unity established by God. There is only one Creation, endlessly extending. Are we ready at last to perceive it? To place nothing before it?

Are we ready now to receive the Gift of God by remembering that Creation cannot be separate from its Creator?

←Lesson 112
Lesson 114→

Remembering the Playfulness of God

by 7 Comments

Someone asked me recently if I could say for certain that God has given us the answer to all our problems and we have ignored it.

My answer is: yes, with a slight amendment. “God had given us the answer to all our problems but we have forgotten it.”

The difference in framing is nontrivial. “Ignore” postulates a self who chooses to ignore helpful advice from authority. I am saying we are more like little kids who forgot to brush their teeth so their parents have to remind them.

Choosing to ignore helpful advice from authority figures sets up conflict – somebody wants to help us and we blow them off. It’s like a teen-ager saying, “no, I’m not going to brush my teeth – what are you going to do about it?”

My model proposes a gentler correction coming from the authority figure – sort of like a parent who reminds their child to remember to brush their teeth. And then let’s pick a book for bedtime, etc.

In other words, good parents don’t take it personally when 4-year-olds are forgetful. They just cheerfully correct them. They just want to be helpful.

We aren’t ignoring God’s gift so much as forgetting God’s gift. And God is happy to remind us.

If we stay in the “ignore” model – the going head-to-head model – the best-case scenario is that God throws up His hands and says okay, find out for yourself what happens when you don’t brush your teeth. Which is one thing if we’re talking about dental hygiene but another for, say, drinking and driving. Or going to war.

There’s a better way which is: trust your Creator. Trust Creation.

I mean that literally, by the way. You did not make yourself (T-10.V.5:3). What did?

If you go into this question deeply – if you seek your Creator, if you seek the site of Creation – you will see that what created you is Love and it created you like itself and that this creation is eternal.

And when you remember this you will never be lonely or unhappy again.

The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers and sisters, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him (T-10.V.7:6-7).

How easy is that? All we have to do is look with peace upon one another!

But to know this – to live it as our practice – we have to go deeply into the experience of remembering and reconnecting with our Creator! This means that we have to find out what God we are projecting because the God we project is what hides our actual Creator, whom we can only know in the absence of projection.

Are you scared of being punished? Do you think suffering is meritorious? Do behave well because you want or expect a reward? Do you hate Republicans/Democrats? Libs/fascists? Do you secretly – or not so secretly – think you’ve got something other people don’t?

It can be hard to answer those questions honestly.

But listen. The problem is projecting – the actual act of it. What is projected is not the problem. There is no right or wrong projection – they’re all neutral. Once we start projecting we’re as lost and confused as we’re going to get, regardless of the projection’s content. You can project a kind father or a murderous despot and the problem remains the same because they are both projections.

So we become responsible for our projection of God not by finding a better projection but by finding out what God actually is – as in, right here and now, in this actual moment, this very Holy Instant.

If you know what God is, then you don’t have to project anymore.

In my experience – and my study of others’ experience in this area – God is gentle, loving, patient and kind and we are like unto to little kids to Him – totally innocent, totally safe, totally happy. Punishment, sacrifice, suffering and conflict need never enter into it. Really!

Of course I mean we are “little kids” with respect to God. We are women and men in the world and in our experience. But what happens when we live as the grown sons and daughters of that Loving God? What do we do? Who do we do it with and for?

What does our living in the world look like when we know we are the one creation of love?

That is a radical life.

Those are fun questions to answer! All our egoic dysfunction and its mad premise of separation dissolve in the answer. It’s not that we become “one” with God – a kind of silly frame, really – but that we become love itself, actual expressions of love.

Therefore, don’t be stressed. Be playful. And the joy you feel will be God’s joy in you.

You and Your Perfection

by 14 Comments

You are enough. You are okay – you are more than okay.

I don’t mean that in an ACIM-theological way – like saying, yeah, the embodied egoic you sucks but the real you is enough.

I mean rather that when you’re out walking and pause beneath a tree, the tree is grateful. I mean that when you walk at night the stars shine brighter. Large bodies of water miss you when you are away from them too long, and the forest paths you walk are grateful for your feet.

You are enough. You are enough.

Nothing is missing in you; nothing is misplaced in you.

Nothing is forgotten in you; nothing is bereft.

Accepting this is the beginning of remembering God-as-Love. It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s an awkward embrace of your own self – exactly as you are this moment. Nothing is missing – not even the nagging sense that something is missing is missing.

I love you – and you are perfect – because that is how you and the love forever extending itself in Creation are remembered in love. Not by finding fault, or repenting, or improving over time. Nothing to learn or acquire. Just a real, honest-to-God moment of self-love.

When we truly realize we are lovable – when we no longer resist love – then we have something to give to our brothers and sisters. Our lives become altars at which love is forever being blessed and offered. Right now this is so. In you, right now, it is so.

Ending our Spiritual Identity Crisis

by 4 Comments

In The Voice that Precedes Thought Tara Singh writes that we either “avoid the crisis or we act.”

The crisis is spiritual; it is the crisis of identity; we do not know what we are in truth, and so continually project illusions of identity, which brings us to grief, and the world too. All thought is projection, and we are unwilling to become responsible for it. We are “much too tolerant of mind-wandering” (T-2.VI.4:6).

To become responsible for thought – to end projection, and to stop insisting on the illusion of separation – requires attention and commitment. It must be intentional. It must be active. If we do not come to it in that spirit, then we will not remember how little is actually asked of us (T-18.V.2:5). We will be overwhelmed and distracted. We will give up.

To become responsible is to see the crisis of mistaken identity clearly, resolve to become responsible for ending it, and then act accordingly.

The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge you threw away . . . Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love (T-6.III.4:3-5, 8-9).

The alternative to responsibility is avoidance. Avoidance means we refuse to give attention to the crisis; we step around it; we look away. We do this by projecting and believing in our projections. We tell ourselves there is no crisis, we already know what we are and how to live – just look at our house/marriage/job/body, we’ve got it all under control, we’re right and they’re wrong, et cetera.

These lies may allow us to avoid the challenge and consequences of actively facing our spiritual identity crisis, but they do not end the crisis.

And until the crisis is ended, we cannot actually know peace and happiness. We cannot remember that we are love (T-6.III.4:9).

There is only one mind and it does not have parts. Thus, there is only one Will and it does not will multiple or conflicting outcomes. This can be easily perceived yet most of us go our whole lives without even a glimpse of it. We go on and on as if there are billions of separate minds, each governed by a separate will, each driving a separate body to war and death. We refuse to see the one mind and the one will, the one life beyond all appearances.

And so the crisis of identity goes on, and we remain unhappy and destructive, forever exploring with one another the many forms of fear, hate and conflict. Don’t kid yourself: whales choking on plastic, kids starving in Sudan, and ice melting in the arctic is you and me and we are not well.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The one life is easily seen, if we will simply stop insisting that life is equivalent to the form in which we perceive it.

Life is an expression of God. If you see only what is limited by a form bracketed in time – a whale, kids kicking a soccer ball in the dust, polar bears adrift on shrinking ice floes – then you are not yet looking at the one life.

The one life is the ground from which all appearances arise and into which they return. It is kin to a void, an emptiness, yet it is also generative. It is feminine more than masculine, more fecund Goddess than semen-spurting God. It is more earth than rain. It created us as love, and so love is what we are, when we are not confused about what we are.

To give attention to the one life restores to mind the knowledge of one life, and in this way our spiritual crisis ends, and healing restores to mind the conditions of both infinite and eternal peace.

Distinguishing Between Illusion and Hallucination

by 12 Comments

A hallucination is, I can put my hand through a chair because it’s not really there. There is no chair.

But an illusion is, something is there but I am not seeing it. I’m seeing something else. I see a chair but it’s actually atoms. Or information. Or Jesus teaching me how to forgive the world. Or an angel accommodating my mistaken belief I’m a body. Whatever.

Illusion is upended perception and we are doing it to ourselves.

Here’s a way to go into this.

A chair is real in that bodies can sit in it. To the body – which is physical – the physical world will always be real. This is not a problem at the level of the body! Your body is not stressed about being a body – how it functions, what’s next, how to solve being hungry, how to die.

But I suggest that that view of the chair is illusory. Because when we look at a “chair,” we are really looking at love.

How, when we look at a chair, are we really looking at love?

Because love is relational: it brings two together into one. Me and you, me and a dog, me and a blueberry pie, me and you and twilight on Mount Ascutney in Vermont.

So when we look at a chair, we think we are seeing wood set up in a way that somebody can plant their butt on it and rest. But really we are looking at a vast network of relationships – each one of which includes us – and all of which are love!

What are some of those relationships?

Consider the chair-designer who communicated with the chair-builder who communicated with the lumber store who communicated with a lumber distributor who communicated with a lumberjack who communicated with chainsaw manufacturers . . .

Each node in that sentence has its own nodes. How about the lumberjack cooperating with the folks who taught him how to cut down trees safely and efficiently? Or the tree in relationship with soil and sunlight? Or how the mass of the earth allows trees to fall when cut down – not float away into space?

Each relationship is premised on other kinds of relationships. The chair-builder’s body is made of cells which are made of molecules which are made of atoms which are made of quarks and they all have to work together cooperatively for the body to work, let alone society, let alone the cosmos.

Can you see this? Really see it? All these nodes and the relationships between them? Try! If you look closely enough at the chair it will take you all the way out to the beginning of the universe and all the way down to the most infinitisimal levels of matter.

And then you are just looking at a chair again. So simple!

And yet.

When you come back from your journey through the cosmos – all those levels, cellular and social, atomic and personal – you retain your awareness of relationship. In that way – through relationship – everything comes back to this chair. In relationship, we abstract a world. But all there really is, is relationship.

And all relationship is really love because love is cooperation and coordination in lawful service of creation. That is how everything comes into being. It is literally what the cosmos is. And you and I are not separate from the cosmos, much less each other.

When you look at a chair, you look at love. Don’t get hung up on what’s real and what’s an illusion. Just look; just give attention. See the one relationship that lives both in and beyond all appearances, and feel how it includes you, and know that this – this this – is love.

This is a way of thinking about the world and the body, and relating to the world through a body, that eventually allows us to remember the Stillness – the Unspeakable Perfection – that we sometimes call “God.”

Recent Posts

Recent Comments