I wrote about defensiveness and its proximity to projection in my newsletter this morning; please feel free to sign up.

When I become responsible for defensiveness, I project less, and the less I project, the more love and peace become the salient qualities of our shared living.

And, at some point in the happiness that arises thereby, I catch a glimpse of choicelessness and realizes that I have finally reached the beginning – the literal only step – of the journey-that-neither-begins-nor-ends.

Choicelessness is scary. Our conditioning is premised on concepts of free will; the idea that there is always something we can do in any situation to maximize it for our benefit (and the benefit of those we deign to love). An independent functional self is the literal ground of this belief system; neither can exist without the other.

To realize that there is no such self is – to the idea that there is such a self – utterly terrifying. Small wonder we tend not to question it or at least not question it very deeply. It is the void: empty, meaningless, ever ready to devour life whole, leaving nothing. Of course we turn away; of course we try to squirrel away a crumb.

We have to look at the void. But here’s the thing. At some point in the “Void-is-Horror” narrative, the narrative falls away and it is seen at last that the void is not dead; it is not nothing. Rather, it is a generative emptiness, utterly creative, utterly giving. And the love it extends – because it does not perceive differences – is truly unconditional.

This is so far beyond being a good person or a holy person or an awakened person. None of that matters at all. And it is a gift rather than a reward. Our work is not to earn anything, much less deserve anything, but simply to undo everything – everything – that obstructs our remembrance of this all-loving generative stillness.

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. Do not bring with you one thing the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God (W-pI.189.7:2-5).

Are we ready for it?

It is for this moment, this question, that our study and practice of A Course in Miracles is given, and it is to this moment that it endlessly delivers us.

In a sense, to be crucified is simply to be yoked to body in the same way a body can be nailed to a cross. There is no escape, only death. Everything dies, blows away in dust, and is forgotten.

Yet resurrection is a form of remembering. It is a restoration to mind the knowledge of its wholeness, which is not associated with bodies at all, and thus beyond birth and death and the trials in between.

Thus, Easter is neither a day nor an event, much less a holy day or event. Rather, it is a way of thinking for which we are responsible, and for which we choose to be responsible because what else could love possibly want?

I have been thinking lately about my insistence that love assume a certain form in order to actually be love. Jack, my daughter’s blind horse, who I visit each morning with a flake of hay, is teaching me that this is insane. He reminds me that service is the way to end projection, and thus remember Love.

I wrote about the service part of this lesson in today’s newsletter. You can sign up here if you like. The horse part – which is the love part – I want to go briefly into here.

Jack lost sight in both of his eyes last year. Both eyes were eventually removed. At the time, the vet responsibly told my daughter that some folks opt to put their horses down when this happens. Sophia said – how do I put this delicately – “fuck that.”

Jack struggled for a month or so with blindness, and then became so skilled at navigating pasture and run-in you wouldn’t know he doesn’t have eyes. Sophia still rides him. It’s like nothing has changed. It is amazing.

What does this have to do with love?

It is fear that insists life must assume this or that form – a certain man or woman, say, or a horse with intact eyesight – in order to be love. You know, right, full, just, perfect, ecstatic, et cetera . . .

The perfect ideal is the ultimate projection because it can never be met, and thus leaves us forever searching, thus obeying ego’s dictate to seek but never find (T-12.IV.1:4).

Yet life somehow manages to flow without this perfection. It is almost as if life is perfectly whole and safe, and we – through the lie of projection – simply refuse to see this. It’s almost as if ego isn’t even wrong – it’s not even actually there.

It turns out that while eyes are nice, Jack does not need them to live a happy fulfilled life. It is as if the forms he perceived were – how shall we put this delicately – not actually there in the first place.

I mean we know that’s not true but . . . do we?

A Course in Miracles insists that our emphasis on the sensate world – the world brought forth through the body’s senses – is an illusion and thus unimportant. It asks us to consider that the body’s eyes don’t see, its ears don’t hear, its hands don’t hold . . .

Can this be true? Can love be formless? How would we know?

Mornings I usually wake to Jack calling from the pasture. He’s hungry; my function is to feed him. I stumble into chore clothes and head outside in pre-dawn darkness. Chickens natter in the barn as I gather the requisite flakes. Jack waits by the gate, impatient as always. “Ask and ye shall receive,” I say jokingly, and toss the hay.

And as the gold flake lands on still-frozen earth, I hear in the recess of my mind – the cave of my heart – Jesus say “ditto.”

Am I not blessed? Is the gift not given? Shivering in the New England cold, wordy and unwise but not unhappy? Listening to a blind horse munch hay? Sun rising, chickadees singing? Who is serving who?

Beloved: how much longer must we pretend we don’t know?

Spring is coming. The chickadees are more voluble; crows linger longer on the thawing compost. The horses call for their morning flakes of hay earlier and earlier, sunlight cresting eastern hills where the river turns.

I am sufficiently embodied to be deeply happy about this. And sufficiently right-minded to know it’s okay to say that to you.

Most of the weekend was given to writing about this line from A Course in Miracles: “It is sure that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living, and use them for any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to live with guilt rather than die of it” (T-16.IV.4:5).

It’s part of a relatively complex analysis of how we use special love relationships to avoid looking at hate, and how not looking at hate is the whole reason we’re so confused about what love is. Good stuff. I mean hard stuff, but . . . also good.

The idea was I’d write about this for today’s newsletter, but after seven thousand words and about as many rewrites it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. I went to bed a wee bit consternated, woke up at 5 a.m., and wrote today’s newsletter in a hot second.

What works? What helps? What flows?

You can sign up here for the newsletter if you like.

One thing about special love relationships is that they’re hard to notice. We are wired and conditioned to integrate them into our living without realizing that’s what we’re doing, much less why we’re doing it. We call them holy relationships. Or just love. And continue on our not-so-merry-but-at-least-a-little-merry way. It’s not a crime against God or nature.

But everything – without exception apparently – has to be raised into the light of inquiry, lest we hold onto some shred of illusion and from it build yet another cosmos in which suffering and loss abound. As the Buddha might say, were I not so smitten with Jesus, just how many times do you want to ride this carousel, son?

In the newsletter this morning, I ended up musing on the right/wrong binary which – while not entirely irrelevant to happiness – often obscures a much better question with respect to happiness, to wit: does this (whatever this is) help? If yes, press play. If no, shuffle onto the next jukebox and see if that one has any songs for dancing, making love, singing at the top of your lungs while driving down the interstate . . .

What does all this have to do with the afore-mentioned quote from A Course in Miracles?

Maybe nothing.

Maybe I’ll get to it in a future post or newsletter.

The thing is, what’s challenging about that quote is that it asks us to share the very thing we are most afraid to share. What is that? Is it sex? Praise? Attention? Love? A story about what our Dad did?

If we can answer that question quickly, then we probably aren’t answering it honestly. The easy answer is the one that’s given so we won’t see the real answer.

What feels so precious – makes you feel so vulnerable – that even thinking about giving it away to just anyone is tantamount to death?

I know what the answer is for me and – this is the whole point of this post – I don’t want to share it with you. I’m too scared. Which is why I wrote the newsletter I wrote, and also why this post dances with truth but only at a flirty distance. The loving embrace of the slow dance – that beautiful intimation of our shared oneness – remains . . . what? Do you know?

Anyway, I hope you will not stop twisting by the pool with me.

I sent out a new newsletter, reflecting some thoughts on salvation that arose from rethinking Lesson 76 (which builds to what are, for me, the course’s most helpful pair of lessons, 79 and 80).

The overarching idea is that salvation is not found in the world and doesn’t apply to bodies, but is found rather in the mind which thinks it is not saved but can be. The question is always one of shifting our attention from the body towards the more abstract levels of spirit. This is not easy to do, but it can be done, and we can become better at it in time. Certainly, it is the means by which we remember our true identity and begin to live in actual peace and joy.

You can sign up here if you like.

So far 2021 has been about looking closely at the ACIM Workbook again, which I have not been through in an applied way for many years. In dialogue with others – both in a formal study group, public comments to shared work, and 1:1 emails and conversations – I am consistently helpfully reminded of Tara Singh’s gift for enacting the fundamental insight that “the course is meant to be lived.”

That is, A Course in Miracles appears as a feature of the world which we, in our embodied form, encounter, study and practice, all with an eye towards salvation (broadly defined so as to avoid as much as possible the more litigious tendencies of doctrinal religion). We are here to learn how to be happy, and how to bring forth a world in which our brothers and sisters can be happy too. This is a variation of Peter Maurin’s (co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker) insight that our work was to bring forth a world in which it was easier for all of us to both be and do good.

Thus, our practice of A Course in Miracles does involve coming to a better and more sustainable understanding what we are in truth, but it unconditionally also includes an aspect of subtle activism in the service of radical love. We are called to give attention to the “signs of the times” and respond in ways that are harmonious with unconditional love. The cry for love is always going out; the way that we live reflects our response which is itself a reflection of a healed mind, which knows itself only as one.

I don’t know what this looks like in practice for you. Its formal appearance and presentation are less critical than the spirit which it reflects (or, if you prefer, which animates it). When we create in a spirit of love, we cannot help but make the world a better place, and its “betterness” becomes grounds for deepening yet further into our “upstream” explorations into mind, creation, spirit, Heaven, God . . .

. . . All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I am grateful to those of you who stay close to me in my learning. Together we build a little oasis of sanity and joy, a light which by virtue of being shared naturally brightens the self-imposed collective darkness of suffering. There is another way and we are it 🙏 ❤️ ✨

~ Sean

I sent out a newsletter this morning. You can sign up here if you like.

In that letter, I think aloud about the emphasis A Course in Miracles places on awakening others. The course is somewhat unusual in the nondual traditions (in which it is appropriately located) in its focus on our brothers and sisters. In ACIM, the one is the other, and vice-versa, and the project – the method, so to speak – is informed thusly.

Service, as A Course in Miracles sees it, is a surrender of the ego and its body-bound, world-bound framework, in favor of giving attention to our brothers and sisters. The form this attentiveness takes is not up to us; indeed, the surrender that precedes it means that whatever happens next in the world of form can’t be our doing. It is a profound letting go and, as such, also a profound gift.

As we sink deeper and deeper into the ineffable unspeakable essence that is our Source and Identity, that Source and Identity flows with increasing joy through us into the world. We don’t need to understand this, much less explain it. We do need to be ready and willing to give ourselves over to it.

Critically, whatever awakening is, it is not about us. This seems to be the salient insight.

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I have posted a lessons index laying out posts related to the workbook lessons. There are more posts floating around, but this index reflects those which are more care-filled and attentive. I began writing about the lessons a decade ago; my intention and insight have shifted in helpful ways since then. This year has been given to renewing my focus on the workbook, both alone and with others; I hope to update the index accordingly.

*

Finally, I am grateful to everyone who reads and shares here with me. Together we are building a little oasis in the desert of illusion, one where we can all rest and be nurtured on our shared journey to the home we never left.

To say I am grateful is perhaps simplistic but it’s true. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being with me.

Love,
Sean

I sent a newsletter out today which explores the second principle of miracles. Although the early parts of the text can be choppy, the section outlining the fifty principles has always felt clear and helpful to me.

The second principle asks us to look beyond the miracle to its Source, reminding us that what matters is not how the miracles functions in our lives in the world but rather the Source from which that miracle flows, which is always love.

This is an important insight. Healing is not having our problems fixed but rather making contact with our true self which has no problems. This is a simple but powerful way of living that entirely upends our traditional understanding of self, world and other.

It is possible to be deeply and seriously happy, and to know a peace which surpasses understanding.

Feel free to sign up if you like.

Some housekeeping items:

First, it was recently pointed out to me that my contact page was not working and hasn’t for months. If you tried to reach out to me that way and did not receive a reply, please know that it reflects a technical error rather than any deliberate ignorance on my part. I’m really sorry.

Please do feel free to reach out to argue, ask questions and so forth. I am always happy for be in dialogue with fellow students.

Also, lately I’ve been reflecting on a recent dialogue in the comments to this old post, which I keep wanting to rewrite or convert to a post in their own right, but maybe it’s okay to just point to the exchange. I am very grateful for it.

Finally, I scrap a lot of writing when writing here, and recently started a kind of ACIM notebook site where those scraps might find a home. It’s less formal, less polished, less cohesive but perhaps still interesting.

I hope your winter and its various holy days and shifts in light has begun in a quiet and gentle way. I’m so glad you’re here.

Love,
Sean