Category: Healing

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!

Over and over in the past week or so I have turned to these sentences from A Course in Miracles about healing and holy relationships.

Hear a brother call for help and answer him. It will be God to Whom you answer, for you called on Him (P-V.8:4-5).

I want to observe and reflect upon the circular – or entangled, perhaps – nature of the holy relationship indicated by these sentences.

When our brother or sister calls to us for help, it is in fact our own call to God for help. On this view, our brother or sister is our own self.

When we respond to our brother or sister, it is God to whom we respond. On this view, our brother or sister is God.

Thus, in our relationship with our brother and sister, they function as both God and our own self.

Also thus: our “own self” is – to our brothers and sisters – both God and brother and sister.

If we look at the relationship closely (the one between us and any other and the one between us and God), we see that the various entities – self, brother/sister, and God – are distinct but, depending on perspective, also the other entities.

In fact, the closer one looks, the more  one sees not “entities” but “relations” and, perhaps, “relating.”

So we could also say that “Self,” “God” and “Sister/Brother” are simply labels affixed to the same thing. The labels may be helpful in terms of organizing our thinking about that thing – that relationship, that relating – but they are not themselves that relationship or relating. They are indicative, not veridical.

What shall we do with this?

We could start by considering this sentence (from the same course section): “We are deceived already,if we think there is a need of healing” (P-V.7:4).

That sentence makes clear that there is no actual need for healing but that one can be deceived about this. Thus, if one is deceived, then there is a need for learning. There is a need for clarification (or the undoing of deception, if that is easier).

In other words, we need to learn that there is no need for healing, and the one who will teach us is “one who seems to share our dream of sickness” (P-V.7:5). This “one” is our brother or sister who comes to us in pain and asks for help; it is also our own self, when we bring it to a sister or brother in pain. Both instances beget forgiveness.

Let us help him to forgive himself for all the trespasses with which he would condemn himself without a cause. His healing is our own (P-V.7:6-7).

So we can ask: What will our living look like, and what will our brothers and sisters look like, and what will the world that we construct together and apart look like, when we realize that there is no need of healing?

We will see the face of Love shining in, through and as all things. Neighbors, sunflowers, toll booths, slippers and feral cats. All of it. This love is impersonal, all-inclusive and unconditional. That is why it is our – and all life’s – “natural inheritance” (In.1:7). And that is why it permeates all life, regardless of form.

Of course, this love – which in course terms is given to us in creation by God – can be overlooked and ignored. And that overlooking and ignoring can yield a state of suffering which appears to be a result of lovelessness.

But our experience of lovelessness is not proof of love’s absence or negation! It is merely proof of our confusion about love (and the need for healing).

So our learning – which is really a sort of undoing – has to do with no longer overlooking or ignoring love. The natural effect of this learning is that we remember – we see again – the love that is always there.

How shall we teach others to notice love? By noticing it in their own self and responding to it where it is.

How shall we teach them not to ignore their natural capacity for joy and peace? By noticing the pain ignoring it causes them and gently suggesting that there is another way.

Note that this “teaching others” is by definition a reciprocal act – it is literally a form of relating to God – and so it necessarily involves our own learning. We, too, are stubborn and ignorant. We, too, are confused and unsure. We, too, are in need to hand-holding, hugging, encouragement, and aid.

Thus, sometimes, “teaching” looks and feels like “being helped by others.” But, as we observed at the outset – at what I suggested is a “holy entanglement” – there are no others.

When we are in pain and our sister soothes us, it is the love of God. When our brother is in pain and we soothe him, it is the love of God. We think of “the love of God” as a noun – an object, a thing – but perhaps it is more helpful to think of it as a verb – as a process, a flow, a flux, a dynamic.

Thus, with respect to healing and holy relationships, we might think of two big ideas:

1. Nothing is actually broken and in need of healing, but we can be deceived that something is broken and in need of healing, so we need to learn that we are deceived; and

2. The process of our personal call for help and our personal response to others’ calls for help – and their calls and their responses, both to us and to others – is, collectively, the “Love of God.”

Again, in the case of point 2, Love is not seen as an object but a process. It’s not something one gives but rather giving itself.

Both of these points represent ways of thinking – or of organizing our thinking – that are unfamiliar. However, giving attention to them in a sustained way will naturally make their application more natural, which in turn inspires joy and peace.

Thus, our practice is to be present to our brothers and sisters – to go with them two miles when they ask if we will go with them one, and to ask them to go with us a mile when we are need of company and assistance, and to accept the help they offer in response.

In such a process, who could not be healed? This holy interaction is the plan of God Himself, by which His Son is saved (P-V.5:7-8).

Thus, we heal together but learning together that healing is not necessary but learning is. We are both student and teacher unto one another and the world we make is our classroom.

It is helpful to remember that projection is a mode of perception, not an action that we take, like writing a letter or mowing a lawn. It is a way of seeing that is at odds with reality and is thus dysfunctional. It enhances rather than dissipates our sense of separation from life. Thus, ending projection is really a matter of choosing a more helpful way of thinking.

All metaphors are clunky, but we could think of it this way. Yesterday, when I came in from my walk I looked at the calendar. I pulled my glasses from my pocket to read and saw only a blur through shadows. I squinted, moved my head back and forth, shifted my glasses and nothing helped.

Then I realized that I was wearing my sunglasses, not my regular reading glasses (insert embarrassed smile). Once I put the right glasses on, everything clarified. I could see again.

So when we project, it is like we are focusing through a wrong lens. The solution isn’t to do anything, other than focus through the right lens.

Even that is a bit misleading because it makes an image of us picking and choosing between lenses – like trying on this or that pair of glasses until everything comes into focus.

But the shift we are talking about – from wrong-seeing to right-seeing – is simply a change of mind. It takes place internally. There is nothing to do. We don’t have to resolve to stop projecting, we don’t have to apologize to the object of our projection, we don’t have to make an amends to Jesus for screwing up his ACIM program. Nothing.

We are  not seeing clearly and so we choose to see clearly. No more than that. But no less, either.

The simplicity of this is both astounding and intimidating. When we see the truth of “the secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself” (T-27.VIII.10:1), then we are given the means of ultimate liberation. We may yet delay our release – we may backtrack into denial and projection – but the game is truly over. It is merely a question of when we choose to bring the truth into application. How clear!

And yet, after so many years of resistance – lifetimes, perhaps – how frightening to think that we can at last be happy and at peace forever. We become paralyzed a little. We freeze up. It happens to all of us, and it is understandable.

When we discern that we are holding some external influence (a person, place, thing, event, etc.) responsible for our inner peace, then we are given an opportunity: to continue to obsess over and blame this external influence for our problems, or to accept that we can be hurt by nothing except our own thoughts (W-pII.281.h).

If we choose the latter, then we are taking responsibility for own salvation. This alone creates a powerful shift in perception. Our focus moves from the external – the person who impedes us, the job that doesn’t function, the city that’s too loud, the weather that’s too wet, whatever – to our thoughts. We give attention to thought itself.

When we give attention to thought, sooner or later we learn that its flow is no different than anything else that is external – a river, a tree, the song of a bird. Its apparent importance and power are simply affects we’ve assigned to it and then pretended that we weren’t involved in it at all. But the truth is that of itself, thought is nothing. It is merely another external detail.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are, accommodates our illusions of preference, and moves us as far into healing as we are ready and willing to go. It is very practical and efficient, and its efficacy is premised mostly our willingness to let it work without getting in the way.

And so at last our attention moves away from mental thought and towards what A Course in Miracles calls “the thoughts we think with God” (e.g. W-pI.51.4:4). In those thoughts our joy and peace are found. In those thoughts is our home.

How do we do this? For me, it is a matter of making A Course in Miracles my spiritual practice, for lack of a better word. I read the text, I do the lessons, I heed my teacher and trust that eventually the requisite insights will blossom which in turn heal this fractured perception. And, notwithstanding a few bumps and wrong turns here and there, that is pretty much how it has gone.

More and more I appreciate and respect the deeply personal nature of A Course in Miracles. It meets us where we are, accommodates our illusions of preference, and moves us as far into healing as we are ready and willing to go. It is very practical and efficient, and its efficacy is premised mostly our willingness to let it work without getting in the way.

. . . [T]he memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe (T-12.VIII.5:2-4).

I am not saying that ACIM should be anybody’s spiritual path and, if it is, I am not saying that they should walk it this way or that. I am merely bearing witness to how it has worked – and continues to work – for me.

There is really nothing to do but give attention to our practice, right here in the world, and trust that we are not alone in it. Tara Singh encouraged his students to bring a sense of order to their lives – to make God their first love – and to know as a result that “the Divine Intelligence is there to help” (Love Holds No Grievances 54).

It can seem boring and insufficiently mystical at first – to clean our house, eat simple healthy food, focus intently on the daily lesson’s directive or whatever – but that is only because, as a means of resistance, we insist that God be a mystery, or distant, or conditional.

God of course is none of that. God is here now, a present reality presently unrecognized. The slower we go and the simpler we live, the more vividly and clearly our recognition of that fact – that truth – dawns in our minds.