You must empty yourself of everything, including even the longing for life. You must give up everything, including control over your death. Forget about living and dying, and then forget you forgot about it.

You will ask, “what is left? What more do you want of me God? What else can I give?”

And then you will wait for an answer. Like standing alone on a high cliff overlooking the desert at night you will wait. You are not allowed to rush towards the answer; you are not allowed to make demands about how it is given. You have to rid your mind of all anticipation, foregoing even your right to be disappointed.

Even when you have given everything up, you will find you have not given everything up. When you let go and let go and let go and there’s nothing left to let go of, you still have your will. You still have this willingness to let go. Can you let go of even that? Can you let go of letting go? Can you let go of all conditions you have placed before God and Love?

Do you see how this involves forgetting? How it has to involve forgetting? Do you see how it is not a getting but a forgetting and that this is why you resist it?

When you do see this, then even your desire to please God will not remain. And then you will know perfection in a blade of grass, a ray of moonlight, a child’s laugh, crickets on a warm summer night. All the differences in the world will not be able to turn you away from loving everything equally and totally.

This is because what remains when nothing remains is what God gave us in Creation; what remains is the gift, which is being itself. This existence: this this. And it is not a gift, like a diamond in a black box, but rather a giving, continuous and everpresent, eternally freely extending itself as if it were alive and not dead, as if it were beyond the reach of life and death. Not an object but a process; not a process but a law, not a law but the end of the need for law.

This is what we call kenosis. This is the self-emptying of everything, even of kenosis. In A Course in Miracles, we call this “God takes the last step” (T-13.VIII.3:2). We call it coming empty-handed unto our God (W-pI.189.7:5). Most of us intellectualize it, make an idol of it. We make it a thing with which we can be in relationship. I certainly do.

And yet.

It’s not that. It can’t be objectified. It has no ability to even register our existence.

How much of you can you disappear? How still can your mind become?

Beyond God, what?

If we believe that Love is the answer, then our living should reflect this. If we are not happy all the time – if we are scared, defensive, greedy, closed-minded, even to a tiny degree – then we are still not accepting Love is the answer. We like the idea but not the application. It’s not a crime against God or Nature but there is a better way.

If we cannot fully accept that Love is the answer, it is because we are scared. We are scared of losing our self, of losing control, of losing life . . . and that’s not a fear we can really talk our way out of. It’s like quarry jumping – you can’t talk your way through the air into the water. You have to leap.

That’s an imperfect analogy, of course. It’s helpful to talk, share, build community, study, do therapy and so forth. It’s just that the actual experience of letting go of fear is not something we talk through – we live it. We let go – first for a second, then for a minute, then for a week. Then it becomes a practice; then it becomes the focal point of a life dedicated to peace.

A Course in Miracles is a way of doing this – of creating circumstances in which we can face the fear that obstructs our remembrance that Love is the answer and that God is Love.

Fear is not the problem; the problem is not looking at fear. But when we look at fear – when we can say, “I am scared and so I am projecting and spiraling” – that is different. That is healing; that is undoing ego. That’s helpful because it creates the conditions for and of peace.

It doesn’t always feel good to look at fear, especially when it’s deep-rooted and won’t dissolve right away. We want to feel good! But wanting to feel good is a projection – it’s the projection of a self that always feels good, that’s entitled to feel good. And we have to let that go! That, too, has to go. That, too, is a symbol of fear. Only when we are free of projection will we be free to remember that we are Love and know the peace that is our inheritance and the gift we extend to others.

Looking at fear is just a thing we do while there is fear to look at. There won’t always be. And this “looking” and the way in which is it is a form of healing will become increasingly intuitive for us; it will happen more and more without apparent effort or intention. So that’s something to look forward to :).

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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.

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I say not that the body is real or unreal, but that I am not a body, and so the body as such is not really my concern. But what am I then? What is my concern?

This is an old question which is amenable to many different answers. If you are reading this, it is likely that A Course in Miracles is a significant aspect of how you go about answering it. Certainly it was – is – for me.

Here is our answer: we are Creations of a just and loving God, in Whom there is no perception and so no differences and so no separation. We are extensions of God, abstract ongoing expressions of Love, utterly alike, utterly one with what extends.

And yet we have forgotten this, and have forgotten we forgot, and so we experience fear and guilt, and the world is broken, and we are without hope of a better way.

A Course in Miracles has a whole mythology around how this apparent separation and resultant grief occurred. At some point, we all want the structural comfort of a story. But stories are just pointers. They point not to themselves but to something vivid and alive.

The lovely thing about A Course in Miracles – what gently distinguishes it from most other Christian practices – is that no story is actually necessary. If we want, when we are ready, we can remember our fundamental Oneness with the Lord right now, and so never feel guilt or fear again.

That is because there is only one mistake, and so there is only one correction. There is only one problem, and so only one solution (e.g., W-pI.80.1:5). The appearance of many mistakes and problems is a distraction; we don’t have to fall for the illusion of multiplicity.

It is given us to see that the one mistake is to believe that we are separate from God. The one problem is believe that this separation is real and has real consequences.

Both instances are healed in the same way: we see that the beliefs are errors. We are one with God. When we see the belief that we are separate as a mistake, then the truth of oneness dawns on us, because it is always dawning on us. It is us.

Hence the popular metaphor of veils (e.g. T-12.I.9:11, T-20.V.7:6). We see as through a veil – draw back the veil and see with utter clarity the real world. We cannot see the Beloved’s face – draw back the veil obscuring it and behold with utter clarity the kind and loving gaze of Christ. And so forth.

Veils are easy to move. However, believing that we are allowed to move them is another thing. Perhaps we are scared of what we will see. Perhaps we are scared of being seen. Perhaps we are scared of violating some rule or law or tradition that says don’t touch the veil. Never touch the veil.

But we put the veil up. We invented every law, tradition, story and concept surrounding veils. We are the one saying “don’t touch the veil that I’ve put up.”

So we can draw aside the veil as well.

It is healing to remember that we are not separate from God, and this healing does not occur in parts or by degrees. The veil is drawn or not. A juncture comes in our practice where this becomes painfully obvious. We are doing this to ourselves (T-27.VIII.10:1).

Yet if it’s so easy, then why not just do it? Why the big production – a massive and often overly-wrought Text, a slim and often vague Manual for Teachers, 365 lessons, this teacher and that teacher and conflicts and choices and . . .

Why?

Well, because the one for whom it is easy is hidden and so doesn’t get to calmly go forth and reclaim its Home in God. In its place is an imposter whose entire existence is predicated upon fear and difficulty. We are Children of Love whose power is such that we can pretend – and even actually believe – that we are children of fear, chaos, lawlessness and death.

But this imposter – this confused, alienated and terrified child – which A Course in Miracles calls the ego – is simply another veil. We hold it with both hands before the Face of Christ; release it and it will fade to nothing before it reaches the floor. Release it and forget it ever existed because in the Loving Gaze of Christ all we will remember is what we are and that memory becomes an invitation to God to draw us back into seamless, endlessly creative Love.

“But it’s hard.” Or, “I don’t understand how to let go.” Or “isn’t it all just words?”

Well, yes. Sure. But can we at least be willing to learn that those complaints and others like them are forms of resistance which arise solely from the one who does not want us to remember God? Scared and lost kids who think they’re responsible for their own safety will say a lot of stuff. We don’t have to listen.

Indeed, it’s better not to listen. We are allowed to gently shush that child, and let them know that we are taking the reins. They can breathe. We got this.

When we learn this – when we take the reins – then we naturally reject the complaints and distractions offered by the childish ego. We quietly say, “no thanks. Not today.”

For a little while, we might still wait for something to take the place of the ego’s yammering. We might subtly believe it’s our job to replace the ego’s voice with a wiser voice, a smarter voice, a more miracle-minded voice.

It’s not.

Our job is to let go in favor of Jesus and God and that’s it. That’s the work. Game over.

This takes the form of saying politely but firmly “no thanks” to any voice that insists 1) we are yoked in any way to the body’s adventures and misadventures and b) that God is mysterious, complex, inaccessible, remote or in any way apart or other than us.

Just keep saying “no thanks.” And gradually the voices testifying to our weakness and incompetence and valuelessness will subside. And what takes their place is what was always there, forgotten but not disturbed, nor compromised in any way: the Love and Peace of God. And we will know – not think, not believe, not perceive but know – that we are the Peace of God; we are the Love of God.

“Neti, neti” as our brothers and sisters say in a related tradition. Not this, not that – only Love. Thus, be not disturbed by the many veils then for there is only one. Be not disturbed by the many reasons not to see this veil or interact with this veil or draw aside this veil.

Our fear is unjustified because God is just and we are God’s Creation. Love is our shared Home; there is nothing else to learn, and nowhere else to go.

. . . writing in early April, Good Friday, in a world that is falling apart, in which we must learn yet again how to be each other’s savior. Snow falls, turns to rain, then back to snow. We hunker against a hard wind blowing through the valley as we feed the horses and chickens, check on recently-planted spinach and peas, the wintering-over collard greens. Though you are not here, you are here, and my thoughts turn to you constantly. How can I tell you how grateful I am for your patience with my slow learning? Your willingness to play along with my teacherly posturing? God and the Love of God and Christ in Whom the Love of God is made manifest only arise for me because you consent to see them in me. How else could I possibly remember them? In this way, your reading is an act of Love, service unto a brother yet struggling to put it all together. “Hands to work, Hearts to God,” taught one of my older sisters. She also taught that “God is love, and if you love God you will love one another.” So we gather yet again – here in the garden, here in the text, here in the prayer – constructing again a living altar unto Love.

Hugh Gash makes an interesting observation in “Constructivism and Mystical Experience:”

” . . . when there is a mismatch between experience and what is expected, gaps are experienced that reveal an inadequacy in previously constructed ways of organizing the experience.”

Say that I often get irritated when people wake up and come downstairs because it disrupts my morning ritual of prayer, reading and writing. Then, one day, I notice that the presence of others is not disruptive but easily integrates into my morning dance with the sacred, and that this makes me happy – happier than my attempts at solitude.

Why? What happened? What is different this morning?

Answering those questions matters because I want to be happy, and I want to be socially inclusive, and happiness and inclusiveness are related. They are mutually generative. I value my family; I don’t want to be petty and exclusive with respect to our shared space and living. The more welcoming I become, the happier I become. They happier I become, the happier they become. They happier they become, the more welcoming I become. It is a warm and nurturing cycle.

Gash suggests that the gap between my expectation (which is premised on my usual response, my past response) and my experience (which is new) makes clear that the way I have been organizing this particular experience is inadequate, or flawed. I have constructed it in unhelpful ways, and have now learned that there is another – or better – way.

How shall I bring this better way forth more consistently and sustainably?

I think giving attention to this specific question is a form of spiritual living, in the sense that it recognizes something is missing and seeks to find that something and then formally integrate it.

But in order to be effective, this giving attention has to go slowly. It has to proceed with epistemic humility. If I quickly assert that what is missing is “God” or “Love” or “right understanding of A Course in Miracles” or “a consistent meditation practice” et cetera, then I am effectively shoveling the mud of the past into the gap.

Our work is to let the gap be! To let flow through it what flows through it: to see what flows, and to let what flows be what it is, without a lot of intervention and aggression. We have to let what is new be new, which means unfamiliar and surprising and probably a little uncomfortable.

This is not easy to do. And, that, too, is part of why I say it is spiritual, because my sense is that spiritual living requires attentiveness and discipline and especially maturity, the specific maturity of accepting the tedium inherent in simply being still (being attentive in a disciplined way), especially when the stillness isn’t instantly rewarding or sexy or remunerative or otherwise gratifying.

We tend to ignore gaps, to slide right over them. Or, noticing them, we fill them with past conceptions and practices. Often, we don’t notice we are sliding or mindlessly filling. And then when we do notice we try to unfill the gaps, or demand others gaps appear so we can handle them mindfully.

But that is now how gaps work! Gaps occur on their own; we can’t force a gap to appear. All we can do is go slowly and attentively, living the very lives we are living, and when gaps appear, respond to them gently and cautiously.

It helps me to think of gaps as stray dogs who tag along in my vicinity but who are too frightened to initiate or manage direct contact. I have to be quiet and slow. I have to murmur and coo. I have to carry treats. I have to kneel and open my palms, not make eye contact.

And after I’ve maximized openness, I have to let the dogs control the encounter. It’s their encounter. I have to be grateful for whatever happens, no matter how tentative or scant or apparently unsuccessful it is.

That’s it. I just live with my living. This is what living is. It’s this – this very this. It’s this very going slowly, this very going humbly, this very ongoing posture of a servant attending an uncertain god, whose uncertainty is holy and so can never transition to certainty.

Yes, in a way this is just wordy bullshit. Yes, we are always only loving our own self. Yes those gaps are just Sean another way. Those stray dogs are just Sean remembering Sean, the universe universing. Yes, yes, yes.

And yet.

The God of Uncertainty yields Her blessing only when we consent to not force Her into the high church of certainty, where the priests are devout patriarchs who wear blinders inside and are scared to go outside after dark. They’re big on obedience and faith; you can’t ask too many questions. Messiness is not allowed, beginning again and starting over are verboten, et cetera.

We don’t know what we don’t know ever. All our insights and learning are subsumed by a horizon of “what if.” Thus, the church of our not knowing – the altar of our slow and humble, our uncertain God – is everywhere always. We are never not praying. We are never not communing. She is never not in attendance.

What does the open heart learn who worships at this particular altar?

One, that they are not only the forever unknowable whole, for they are also always the sliver in whom the memory of original fracture tells and retells its origin story, forever insisting on its narrative prerogative. We are called to heed our stories for those stories are how we pray to the God of Uncertainty. They are alms and offering both.

The Gift of Attention is all She asks. And what she gives in reply is a reminder that the part being apart is also the whole, and in order to be a part apart it cannot remember the whole. We want to be the whole, secretly know we are the whole and yet . . . our experience is one of separation from the whole.

This separation begets yearning which is always for our God, whatever the particular object – a person, a dog, a landscape, a memory, a goal. The object (which is always an image) points to the God of Uncertainty, who Herself eschews direct observation, preferring hints and murmurs, glimpses and fragments.

Thus, our yearning is sacred, because it arises from separation and points toward oneness, towards unity. It is the very fulcrum on which the hymn of happiness is never not being softly sung. When we yearn for what is already accomplished – which is all the yearning there is, else how would we know what to yearn for (for our God has made us in Her image and what we are is expert yearners) – we know, without knowing, ecstatic unity.

And should we ever taste ecstatic unity – which we do, surely, from time to time – we forget it almost instantly, as condition of our being, which is forever bent on seeking and losing, having and giving away, remembering and forgetting. The one brings forth the other, and the other obliterates the one, and so becomes the one, the only, which then – by necessity, by love – brings forth the other.

On and on it goes, now as humans, now as maple trees, now as starlight, now as black bears, now as neutrinos, now as God-knows-what . . .

With respect to the self, Humberto Maturana makes the following observations (in his essay “Biology of Self-Consciousness):

The distinction of the self is an overwhelming experience . . . once it takes place the distinction becomes the referential ground for all other distinctions . . .

And perhaps most critically, he observes that the “experience of the self as an object obscures its original constitution as a relation . . . ”

What we call the “self” is a distinction that is made in experience. In the same way I distinguish a coffee cup from what is not a coffee cup, I distinguish the “self” from what the self is not.

On this view, what we are calling the self is simply a kind of experience that arises in organisms capable of reflection. It is a sort of primal distinction, in that it enables all other distinctions.

That is, the cosmos comes into being in reference to the self for whom the cosmos comes into being.

So far we are not making any spiritual observations. We are simply seeing the way human perception and cognition work, which is a way of contextualizing our own perception and cognition.

We are what sees and, critically, we are also what we see. Our observations – be they of chickadees, children or chocolate cakes – are not separate from us. The appearance of separation is an effect to which we acclimate (like not seeing the blind spot that is in our eye). But it’s not a hard-and-fast rule; it’s not real.

Maturana emphasizes that tremendous power of this primary distinction. The self is overwhelming, so much so that it obscures its own origins. It might even go scurrying off after those origins, sometimes under the guise of a spiritual quest. What am I? What is Truth?

If you want to correlate this to the separation in A Course in Miracles you can, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to bring God into it at all. Indeed, bringing God or Jesus or Heaven into it is often just a way of sustaining the obscuration. Why make this harder than it has to be?

You are that which obscures what you are: you are that which asks what you are. Give attention to the distinctions that appear (what is this, what is that) and give attention to how they appear (in time and space, and in language). Separation is an appearance contingent on a mode of thinking that can – if one wants and is otherwise amenable – be undone.

But it is not a mystery. No supernatural origins or causes or methods apply. It is as simple as climbing down the ladder we climbed up, or retracing our steps on a path. And it can begin with this insight: “ladder” and “path” are analogies, and the use of analogy is separative.

Heal!