The cosmos exists because you are asleep and dreaming (T-10.I.2:1).

When you wake up the cosmos will no longer exist and since you are part of the cosmos, you will no longer exist either. And since you no longer exist, there will be no memory of any dream.

The cosmos is merely what nothing would look like if it could be something, which it cannot be.

This is only hard to understand because we prefer mystery to clarity, and indignation to peace. We’d rather reign in hell than serve in Heaven, a sentiment cherished by all the separated ones.

There is another way.

When the light comes and you have said “God’s Will is mine,” you will see such beauty that you will know it is not of you. Out of your joy you will create beauty in His Name, for your joy could no more be contained than His. The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven, and into the Presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your heart is not ready (T-11.III.3:3-6).

Milton wasn’t fucking around. Jesus wasn’t – and still isn’t – fucking around. And – whether you like it or not – you are not fucking around either.

The way is given, the problem solved. The reason we don’t live it is because we are scared of “nothingness.” We disappear, the dog disappears, the cosmos disappears. Not a shred of a memory of God or Peace or Love remains. We can’t accept it. So we keep trying to make separation work. At least in hell they give you crumbs.

Until one day – not because we can’t solve the problem but because we finally see that we are taking good people down by trying – we give up. We surrender.

When you care as much about the other as you care about your own self – not saying the words but living it in a way that cannot be denied, only affirmed – the separation ends.

The reason you don’t need to be afraid of nothingness at the end is because nothingness is not the end.

Something is the end, even if it’s nothing.

And you know this because this is the end. This is nothing: this this.

I wrote a newsletter recently about not over-indulging metaphysical inquiry. A Course in Miracles makes all kinds of claims about reality and while it’s sometimes useful to understand what those claims are, we are not called to defend or attack them.

Our ACIM practice is not about winning an ontological argument but rather seeing through the conditions that make the argument appear viable (which, yes, can feel a lot like losing the argument) and realizing, Bill Thetford-like, that there’s another way.

If we go into the metaphysical claims the Course makes – like, say, that the world is not real – then the truth of the claim is in the experience, not the description or explanation of it. It’s there or it’s not. Either way, there’s nothing to argue about.

It is like being at the beach. You can love it or hate it – describe and explain it any way you like – but you can not say that you are skiing in Tahoe.

The world is a complex sensory experience, with a concurrent metatextual narrative, but we can’t actually say is it real or unreal because the one doing the observing is inherent in what is observed.

I understand how “the observer and the observed are one” feels cliché but it does help to see clearly how there is no way to be apart from experience in order to say it’s real or unreal. You’re it, no matter what it feels like.

Look at your hand. Now look at the nearest trees, bush or flower. Is the way they appear – is the way they are given – different? You value them differently, yes. And the value you assign to them changes your experience of them, sure. But the way they are given – aren’t they both just sense perceptions brought to a certain order based on the observer you are?

And isn’t the observer you are – the body, the self – also “just sense perceptions brought to a certain order based on the observer you are?”

You can love or hate the body but you can’t make it a sea shell. You can love or hate capitalism but you can’t make it world peace. What is the function of this limitation on creativity?

The suggestion here is that instead of worrying about reality – what it is, what it is not – just give attention to what is given and to how it is given.The birch tree, say. Or your hands. Or somebody else’s hands. How does the world appear? How is what appears separate – if it is separate – from the way it appears? Don’t read about it, don’t worry what a scientist would say, or Ken Wapnick or Tara Singh. What is your experience? Which is a way of asking, what is this experience? This this.

Giving attention to the world as an appearance shifts our inquiry away from judgment and towards the mechanics of attention itself. It brings us to the present moment. Judgment leads to arguments, wins and losses, penalties and prizes. But attention accepts a gift by giving a gift, and the gift both ways is itself.

You and I are not the authors of attention. It is responsive to us, but we did not create it. Therefore it is a gift to us. Yet its responsiveness means we can give it away – to a friend, a dog, a sunset. So attention is also a gift we give.

As we become more single-minded about the gift of attention, and more skillful in both its offer and acceptance, then we finally catch a glimpse of “who.” We can ask: to whom does the world (which includes and is not separate from the body) appear? Who is having this experience?

Of course, the answer to that question is easy, right? I am having this experience! Okay, then – to whom or what do you appear?

Whatever “I” is – this incredibly local but also cosmic experience of being – who or what is aware of it?

This is the juncture at which attention slips into – is elided by – awareness and discovers being and nothing, which are the last experiences and concepts available to us. This is where the search ends, like it or not. The good news is, since there’s nothing left for us to do, whatever gets done is done by God.

God takes you where you are and welcomes you. What more could you desire, when this is all you need? (M-26.4:10-11)

Believe this – accept it as true – and you will know again the peace surpassing understanding.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

~ Max Planck

. . . rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God (S-1.in.2:3).

(I sent a newsletter out yesterday – you can sign up here if you like).

Mind, which is abstract, identifies with the body, which is believed to be not abstract but material and thus substantively other than mind. When and as mind does this, it denies that it does this. Then it forgets that it does this. Then it forgets that it forgot and, in this way, ends up believing it is a body. Any suggestion otherwise (there’s only consciousness, et cetera) feels silly, unbelievable.

This identification of mind with body is ancient, deep and entangled. It spirals out into the cosmos; it touches every atom. Body and world, world and universe, are one projection.

When mind believes it is permanently yoked to a body, fear arises. Desire and longing arise. Expectation and judgment, sorrow and happiness arise. These are all forms of suffering! They are all caused by the same illusion, which is that we are separate from – alien unto – Creation. We think we’re bodies but we’re not (W-pI.199.7:8); we think we’re in a world but there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2).

So separation is what we have to address. We have to awaken from the dream of misidentification that is separation. We have to realize we are not bodies and there is no world, and then see what happens. A Course in Miracles provides a framework to do this.

But remember: in truth, nobody awakens. Awakening is not an experience any body has. Even Jesus is just a projection! If you think you’re awakened, you’re kidding yourself. If somebody professes they’re awakened, they’re kidding themselves and you. None of this is a crisis (because none of it is real) but it is a kind of self-generated drama that keeps us from true peace and happiness.

Are we not ready to try something new?

That question is a trap! It’s a trap because whether you say yes or no, you are asserting that awakening takes effort and there’s a you somewhere that gets to decide the effort is worth it, let’s go for it, et cetera. And then you’re right back in the problem you meant to leave behind.

Try to see that there is no free will. Everything is caused by something else. Every belief we hold, every thought we have reflects prior conditioning. We’re just repeating what Mom and Dad said, and when enough of us do this, we call it culture. It’s what brains in bodies do – generate a self that thinks it’s responsible for everything.

This raises an interesting question: what caused our desire to awaken? Deep down you recognize in yourself something beautiful, strong, tender, just and merciful. What caused that? What is this energy that longs to remember itself through you by expressing itself as joy and peace for everyone?

What happens when you ask those questions in a serious and attentive way? What happens when you wait on answers that don’t come from you but from the Holy Spirit?

It’s okay to trust the part of us that wants to awaken. It’s okay to be guided by it. To do what it asks us to do: wear saffron robes, practice the ACIM daily lesson, pray a rosary, cut off a hand and throw it over the monastery wall. This longing to awaken is how God reaches for us; why not reach back?

Yes, I know – “reach back” is nonsense. God is nondual. There is no subject and object in God. There is no sky father with earth kids. There is no separate intelligence using language and concepts to call parts of itself back to itself. God is One.

“God is One.” We think we know what this means! But what is interesting is when we let go of our knowing.

The Planck epoch is an impossible-to-imagine time period a million million million million million million millionths of a second after the Big Bang. In it, our understanding of the laws of physics breaks down. We know the epoch exists but we cannot say what it is. Is not knowing a problem? When we learn that we have no idea what “God is One” means, we also learn that we knew all along. It’s this: this this.

In the separation, mind became “a perceiver rather than a creator” (T-3.IV.2:1). It can be helpful in our ACIM practice to look closely at this distinction.

Sit quietly for a few minutes and give attention. Here, snow falls. Blue jays jaw in the hemlocks. Images of my father playing catch with me appear. Feelings of frustration with so much weather-related suffering arise. More snow. The hayloft is cold. What’s for breakfast?

I perceive all this, yes? The sounds and shapes and colors, the memories and feelings, the ideas. I don’t create it – I perceive it. It is given. I don’t perceive its source or cause, only the ongoing effects. I can’t turn blue jays into cardinals. Can’t make snow into rainbow-colored confetti. Can’t not think of pink elephants.

(Nor, by the way, can I perceive nothing).¹

There is a lot of peace in realizing clearly both that mind perceives and how it perceives. The biggest insight is seeing how the perceiver (the self and the body) is also the perceived. We enter the loopy lovely spiral of creation.

One can understandably spend lifetimes in this space. There is a lot of happiness here. There is a lot of peace.

But A Course in Miracles suggests this space is the beginning rather than the end of healing. We have to investigate the truth of “before Abraham was, I am.” We have to go back to the beginning (e.g., T-3.VII.5:9).²

When we see how there is apparently only perception – and that the self, as such, is also a perception – then we can begin to give attention to “perceiving truly,” which in turn fosters love (T-3.III.1:8). This is different than merely giving attention. It evokes laws of Creation and an order in which those laws are known (rather than perceived). It removes the self as author of experience.

In other words, according to A Course in Miracles, there is something beyond perception. Or, to correct the first sentence of the preceding paragraph, there is not “only perception.”

Miracles, as A Course in Miracles uses the term, are designed to heal perception by teaching us how to only perceive truly in order to go beyond perception.

First question: What does it mean to perceive truly?

It means to accept what is perceived as given. The miracle “perceives everything as it is” (T-3.II.3:4). We don’t add to it, we don’t embellish it and we certainly don’t denigrate it.

It means not trying to make (or pretend that we have made) one part of perception truer than another (which is another way of saying, make it all the same). What is perceived is neutral; it’s the egoic self that brings evaluation and judgment into it.

It means that we don’t try to oppose perception in any way.

It means seeing – and accepting unconditionally – that we can’t oppose perception. “You cannot make untruth true” (T-3.II.6:2).

And finally, critically, it means understanding that “to perceive truth is not the same as to know it” (T-3.III.5:13).

A lot rides on that last distinction.

Right perception – true perception – is a beginning. It is a cornerstone. A Course in Miracles teaches that “right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars” (T-3.III.6:1). Right perception is adjacent to – without actually being – knowledge. It’s where we start.

Knowledge means certainty and the end of questioning (T-3.III.2:5). It is not variable (T-14.VIII.4:6). It does not induce action, because it is not related to the body or the world (T-3.III.6:8). To know is to be as God is, perfectly whole, imperturbable and peace-filled (T-13.VIII.2:3). Words do not apply and no image is fitting because knowledge is not symbolic (T-3.V.4:6-7).

Knowledge is impersonal (T-4.II.1:4). There is no self in it. There are no distinctions whatsoever in it (T-4.II.11:12).

It is tempting to claim that we have reached or attained or are in possession of knowledge. Or we make a goal of knowledge – it’s why we practice ACIM or see a therapist or go to church. We want to know God, know peace, know joy. Honestly, claims to knowledge and action purportedly undertaken on behalf of knowledge make us feel special.

But remember: specialness is always temptation. Only ego can be tempted, and the temptation always reinforces self-identification with a body. We want to be the one who “gets it,” the teacher not the student, or at least the favorite student. Our intention here is irrelevant; anything personal is always ego.

To want anything is to imply that what we are in truth is capable of lack, which is to accept sacrifice, which is to condone suffering. This is the opposite of truth! It is the opposite of the joy and peace which are our inheritance. It is important to see how our thinking functions, and to be entirely honest about its goals and effects. There is no other way to purify our thoughts and reach the ones we think with God.

The solution is to the problem of pretending we are further along spiritually than we actually are (which is just the problem of being distracted from what we are), is simply to go back and start again. Sit quietly and give attention for a few minutes. See what is given. See how you can’t oppose it. Rest in the space of non-opposition.

This leads to the second question: What is given in the space of non-opposition? That is, what is beyond perception?

1. Common arguments pushing back on this include: what about a whisky blackout? Under anesthesia? Deep sleep? Am I not at those times perceiving “nothing?”

   I think these are examples of impaired or altered perception, rather than no perception. The self remains in some embryonic degree because it reconstitutes itself, and incorporates the so-called “blank” into its being. “Can’t remember” is different than “nothing.”[↩]

2. If there is one! The “loopy spiral” image suggests there is no actual beginning, only arbitrary declarations that vary according to the one doing the declaring. “Beginnings” and “endings” – and even “now” – are concepts contingent on linear experiences of time. The experience is one thing (that’s just a feature of bodies, particularly human ones) but the actual existence of time is another. The course (like many nondual paths) insists that time is not real and will – when we remember what we are in truth) – just disappear. It’s illusion, not reality. “Back to the beginning” then is symbolic, but of what? This is a fun and nontrivial question![↩]