Nonresistance and A Course in Miracles

Nonresistance is a helpful aspect of any practice of nonduality. Certainly it is reflected in A Course in Miracles, the path – for lack of a better word – down which I was stumbling when the light-that-is-always-there began to reveal itself.

We say ‘God is,’ and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel it is now aware of something not itself. It has united with its Source. And like its Source Itself, it merely is (W-p.I.169.5:4-7).

This is the God that is “All in all” (T.7.IV.7:4), who cannot be metaphysically said to be separate from anything else and thus capable of acting upon it in any way. This God is neither active nor even present within our fantasy of a self and our fantasy of a world in which that self interacts with other selves, all in varying shades of sadness and joy and confusion.

In saying this, I do not suggest there is “this” life which is Godless and “that” life in which God is present. I am not suggesting that the lives we presently lead are a transition from a real state of Godlessness to a real – but better – state of Godfulness.

Rather, I am saying – because it is inherent in the nondual tradition to which A Course in Miracles belongs – that there is only God; the rest is a dream or illusion. There is only Reality; the rest is simply our bungled interpretation which we cheerfully but foolishly confuse for Reality itself.

We could say that nonresistance is a way of being in the dream without trying to bring God into it as well. Why ask God for help in getting this or that job, when getting and not getting the job are equally illusory? Why thank God for a cure from cancer, when having cancer and not having cancer are equally illusory?

God is not in the world we make: God is not attached or invested in the self that we think we are. Outcomes in this world are all equal because they are all illusory. Nonresistance is simply a way to bring this fact into application. Tara Singh used to tell his students they had only job: to not wish that things were other than they were. Even the idea of God must undone. Even that one syllable is too much. As A Course in Miracles says, “we cannot speak nor write nor even think of this at all” (W-pI.169.6:1). The God who is “formlessness” (W-pI.186.14:1) and creates “only the changeless” (T.6.IV.12:4) cannot possibly be an agent observing and affecting our world of form. Even these words – well-intentioned and aspirational as they are – are merely distracting chaff.

Let it go now. Let it be . . .

What does nonresistance look like in practice? It is the graceful acceptance of all that arises before us, which includes our own judgment. It snows, and we hate the cold and snow, and so we give attention to the cold and snow and our hatred of it. Even our judgment in the ultimate sense is illusory, for it rests on the assumption that good and bad are equally possible. But how could they be when one accepts the truth that God simply is? For in that knowledge there is “no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel it is now aware of something not itself” (W-p.I.169.5:5). “I am,” not “I am this” or “I am that.”

In these bodies in this world it seems impossible to practice nonresistance all the time. But the truth is that even our resistance is contained in what is One. Separation is not possible; even the idea that it is possible is in the final sense contained by God. Nothing is that isn’t God. Period.

Thus, we give sustained and gentle attention to all that arises: our thoughts and feelings, our ideas and ideals, our images and stories, our wants and needs, our preferences and aversions. We allow all of it equally; we let nonresistance be the hallmark of what seems to be our being. And in doing so the lovely emptiness of God envelopes us.

. . . Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received; an altar clean and holy for the gift (W-pI.169.1:4).

The gift is given; we merely prepare ourselves for its reception, where preparation means holding nothing that would otherwise interfere. That is the essence of nonresistance: give attention only to this, let the balance elide or fade, that what is given might at last be wholly and unconditionally accepted.

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