On Loving the Intellect

In a footnote in Up from Eden, Ken Wilber observes that one element of his reservations about Hegel – who he otherwise considers a “towering genius” combining “transcendent insight with mental genius” – is that Hegel had no yoga, no “reproducible technique of transcendence” (638, 641).

To me, that is an interesting criticism. It suggests that no matter how capable we are of using our intellectual powers to parse spiritual, theological and philosophical texts and draw useful connections between them, some essential quality remains absent if we cannot bring those insights and connections into what Tara Singh called “application.”

In other words, what is the benefit of talking about a spiritual path if we cannot also walk it?

Often – both on this site and in related dialogues – I tend to come down on the side of walking the walk rather than talking the talk. I don’t want to become eloquent on the subject of salvation; I want to be saved.

And yet.

Wilber makes an interesting (and to my mind, related) observation about this issue. He points out that we often talk about spiritual ideas and material before we are able to practice or otherwise integrate it into our lives. He calls this a sort of “learner’s permit.” That is, by talking about it – even in limited ways – we learn that lightening bolts aren’t going to come flying from the sky, that this particular material is not transgressive or dysfunctional. We are given permission to engage.

In fact, the initial intuition of Spirit often, even usually, drives the individual to attempt to grasp, in mental forms, that which is actually transmental . . . He is laboring to reach the transmental through compulsive mental activity – an activity itself driven by his transmental intuition (The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume Two, 651).

In a way, a lot of this website can be understood in that light – an attempt, through mental activity, to give form to a spiritual process.

Indeed, when I look at my own spiritual experience – especially since I became a student of A Course in Miracles – it is clear that intellectual effort and (dim to be sure) understanding often precedes a more abstract, less formal awareness of spirit, or God.

The clearest example of this might be the workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles which, even as they are themselves somewhat abstract and poetic in form, offer a concrete daily means by which to realize atonement for oneself. They consistently invite us to apply course principles to the facts of our lives – circumstantial challenges, difficult relationships, confusing desires, etc. In this way, they serve as the “yoga” that Wilber believes Hegel lacked.

But I’d like to offer a more specific example.

When I first began to study and practice the course, I was drawn to this idea of the world being a dream, or an illusion. Saying this to people made me feel radical and intense and special. I drove people nuts for about six months with it.

Of course, as anyone who gives more than a glancing look at the text or spends any time with the workbook lessons knows, that sort of casual (reckless, even) approach to the course quickly becomes fruitless. If the world wasn’t real, why was everyone upset and – more to the point – why was I unhappy to be a source of stress?

When we can’t lie to ourselves any longer, the truth is able to emerge. And so I began to try to understand what the course meant when it talked about the world this way. It was unequivocal: the world is not real (W-p1.132.8:2). Yet that was neither my intellectual understanding nor my practical experience. In truth, I was baffled by the assertion and even scared of it.

I couldn’t feel it, so I did the next best thing: I studied it mentally. I read Ken Wapnick. I read Gary Renard. I discovered Tara Singh and read him hungrily. Singh pointed me to Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Bohm, Bohm to Wilber, Wilber to Whyte and so on. I read both widely and deeply, and began to write about my evolving understanding as well.

I learned that the idea that the world was not real was not unique to the course – that it existed, in different forms, in any number of religions, philosophies and sciences. Somehow, I was liberated by that. The sense that there was both cross-cultural and cross-disciplinarian support for the idea meant that A Course in Miracles wasn’t out to lunch. Rather, it was merely one particular expression of a perennial idea.

Thus, I was able to breathe again. I was able to give some acceptable mental form to an otherwise frightening and inaccessible idea. As a result, I was able at last to begin to experience it – dimly at first, then with increasing intensity and clarity – as a spiritual truth.

And the truth was simpler than I’d thought but far deeper and more vibrant.

Thus, I have begun to appreciate the wisdom in Wilber’s insight. We need both the intellect and the yoga (the technique of transcendence). We need the text and the workbook. We need to give space and attention to ideas so that we might integrate them at levels other than only mental or intellectual.

It is okay, in other words, to use our intellects with respect to A Course in Miracles, or any other spiritual path or tradition.

Of course, what works for me, or makes sense to me, may  not for you. I don’t want to suggest otherwise. I often say that A Course in Miracles, like all true scriptures, meets us where we are and goes with us as far as we are able, and that is a deeply and intimately personal experience. We can light the way for one another, and from time to time we can even carry each other, but we cannot be substitutes for each other’s learning.

Tara Singh pointed out that words “are to be brought to realization” but that most of us are content to remain in the status quo, only nudging the perimeter of our spiritual comfort zones.

The next step is:
“not to learn but to be.”

We have to bring the learning to its appointed end.

You are the Christ.

(The Voice that Precedes Thought, 244-45).

It is imperative that we not fall into the trap of believing that our learning is an end in itself. If it does not help us to separate what is false from what is true – and thus to know the truth of “Nothing real can be threatened/Nothing unreal exists” (T-in.2:2-3) – then it is useless. But in the same way a spoon can help us dent a bowl of ice cream, or a saw allow us to clear another stretch of field, the intellect can help us to realize “its appointed end,” our remembrance of ourselves as Christ.

On Ken Wapnick

So Kenneth Wapnick has died.

I’ve tried to write about Ken many times since I started this blog and it never works out (UPDATE: this post and this post both go into my experience of Ken and Tara Singh as “teachers”). My feelings about Ken were always complicated, even as they increasingly leaned towards gratitude and respect. My debt to him is large.

Ken’s editing of A Course in Miracles always struck me as essential and useful. I know that’s a contentious statement in some circles, but still. Having spent a lot of time with early versions of the material, I truly believe that Ken’s contribution was transformative, completing a process that began but did not end with Helen and Bill. As a writer and editor, I am never not amazed at the breadth and quality of his work in that regard.

I didn’t always agree with Ken’s intense focus on western writers and thinkers and traditions in his teaching. It struck me as inconsistent with the course itself and perhaps a bit narrow-minded. However, as my own practice and understanding deepened, I began to understand what he was doing and why. I wrote to him a couple of years ago and offered my forgiveness. He was very gracious and kind.

My sense was that Ken had a vision of A Course in Miracles in relationship to the western spiritual and philosophical tradition, and I think in the end he was right about that. I often lean on Buddhist and Vedantic language and ideas – and my own ACIM teacher, Tara Singh, was well-steeped in Eastern thought and practice – but the structure of A Course in Miracles (its form) is western. That is its home. Ken’s intellectual discipline in that regard was admirable. Indeed, in the past year I have begun to appreciate more and more his fidelity to that aspect of the course.

Though I never formally studied with Ken, I have relied on his guidance more than any other teacher besides Tara Singh. I think his instruction (I am paraphrasing) to make our lives in the world about other people – being gentle and kind to everyone from our kids to our neighbors to the plumber – was brilliant. I think it perfectly summarizes how one should approach the course in terms of living in the world. When I am unclear about a particular idea or even a specific phrase of the course, Ken’s teaching always helped move me towards understanding. His book The 50 Miracle Principles of A Course in Miracles and A Talk Given on A Course in Miracles remain staples.

And it was Ken – through his writing – who taught me in a practical way that it was okay to make mistakes with respect to A Course in Miracles, okay to throw the blue book across the room in frustration, and okay to feel insane some days. Indeed, when I write about being honest with our brokenness as a means to healing, I am really just paraphrasing Ken. His vision of Jesus was deeply loving and forgiving, in all senses of the word.

I don’t mean in any way to suggest that I think Ken was perfect or infallible. I disagreed entirely with his reliance on masculine language and find his defense of it utterly unpersuasive. Some of his historical scholarship felt spotty to me (such as in Love Does Not Condemn). Some of the legal actions taken by the Foundation for Inner Peace made no sense to me.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I could have – or could have – done things differently. It’s always easy to judge another; what’s hard is forgiving them – in the sense of overlooking any seeming error – and getting on with our own learning.

My complaints about Ken feel like relatively minor quibbles, given the breadth of his helpfulness. If I wasn’t projecting some flaws onto the man, I wouldn’t have needed his assistance so much.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly, I admired Ken as a fellow writer. He maintained a remarkable level of production with a consistent and impressive (previous criticism notwithstanding) degree of quality over the years. That’s not easy to do! I might not have agreed with him all the time, but I never doubted his passion for or knowledge of A Course in Miracles. He wrote with gentle authority that was born, I think, of an authentic desire to be as helpful as possible.

That time I wrote to him, I sent a couple of blog posts for review. He was succinct and helpful – agreeing that Emily Dickinson was a wonderful poet, pointing out a couple of places where he believed I’d erred. He told me to keep writing, to have fun doing it, and to always remember not to take it all too seriously. Near the end of his letter he wrote, “always be true to your own truth, Sean.”

That was good advice. And he was a good teacher, and a lot of what he taught remains with us now he is gone. What more is there to say?

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Learning in Bodies

We have the structure of human beings living in the world with other human beings, and other forms of life with their own unique structures. That is the physical context in which we encounter A Course in Miracles. Thus, our learning takes place in bodies and has as part of its subject those very bodies.

This can be a challenging concept to understand. For example, we tend to hear “I am not a body/I am free” (W-pI.199) from the perspective of our bodies: our eyes read the words, our brains translate them into meaning and then decide how to behave in the world given that information. The lesson appears wrapped up in the very form it denies.

ACIM students are often reluctant to admit that they accept the existence – relative or otherwise – of their bodies. We believe that the course teaches otherwise and we want to be good students. We want to fit in with our spiritual tribe, and so subtly or otherwise we pretend that we get it – we aren’t bodies, we’re free! We pretend that we are living it, when in fact it’s just words.

Denial shows up on a sort of spectrum. At one extreme, we say to people who are sick or suffering, “well, you’re not a body,” with a sort of implicit “shake it off.” There’s an unfortunate amount of that in the ACIM community. I don’t think the ones doing it are bad people. They aren’t trying to be hurtful. But still.

At the other end of the spectrum, we keep our denial to ourselves. We “pretend” that we believe we’re not bodies, but never actually look in a sustained and nonjudgmental way at the pretense, and so the lie hums along just below the surface.

Most of us move around this spectrum. It doesn’t really matter where we are on it – the effect is the same. We don’t learn the lesson that is offered. But the way off this spectrum (and into a space of learning) is simply to acknowledge the truth of our self-deceit: “I understand this concept intellectually but I don’t know how to live it. It isn’t my experience of reality. It’s just words.”

What I am trying to say – because it is very much what Jesus is saying implicitly throughout A Course in Miracles – is that it is okay that it’s just words. It’s okay that we don’t get it. In fact, it is more than okay. It is the whole point. If we could learn all this stuff in the blink of an eye without a lot of work, then there wouldn’t be any need for A Course in Miracles. After all, we’ve had Jesus and Buddha for two thousand and twenty-five hundred years respectively and we’re still lost. We’re still confused. There is no shame in it. On the contrary, there is a lot of potential.

So it’s good to be honest about that. Honesty is a sort of space in which our right minds can function: sending a few shoots of clarity and right-thinking into the mix that will hopefully take root and blossom into real insight. The Holy Spirit is not much help when we are satisfied with our progress and full of self-righteousness. Why pretend otherwise?

A few years ago I was invited to a spiritual get-together in a neighboring state. The friend who invited me mentioned that one of the individuals organizing the event (an elder in that particular community) was into A Course in Miracles and was really looking forward to talking with me.

The two of us ended up talking for an hour or so on a patio overlooking the Connecticut River. It was one of the hardest and most confusing talks I have ever had about the course. This person kept talking about bodies as illusions – really going into it – but always adding almost casually, “so if a person is in an abusive relationship, it doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the dream.”

The fourth or fifth time this happened, I realized we were not talking about a hypothetical situation. And we were not having an intellectual dialogue about illusions in A Course in Miracles.

I struggled in that conversation to make the point that we are not meant to suffer here in this world – that it is crucial to take care of ourselves, whether that means going to AA meetings, getting chemotherapy or moving to a safe house or otherwise ending an abusive relationship.

Indeed, hiding behind the metaphysics of “I am not a body/I am free” is the opposite of healing.

The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world . . . it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging  in a particularly unworthy form of denial (T-2.IV.3:8, 10-11).

The course goes on to explain that “unworthy” in this instance is synonymous with “unnecessary.” In other words, we don’t recover and embrace the mind by denying or somehow hiding the body.

But it is important to be clear that this hiding – this inclination to keep secrets while feigning spiritual wellness or expertise – happens to all of us from time to time and to various degrees. And it can be very hard to see it happening. We are very good at fooling ourselves. I think all of us have these kinds of blind spots. We “fix” them by becoming aware of them and offering them, through awareness, to the Holy Spirit (T-10.II.2:3).

We all get very excited to learn that we are not bodies – on some level, I think we know intuitively that we are not, and so we are grateful to be reminded. We are eager to relearn our truth and to live from its space. But we can’t rush the process of undoing. Sometimes, in our desire to wake up – to please Jesus, be a good course teacher and student, et cetera – we use words to suggest we’re further ahead in the learning process than we actually are. For example, I might paraphrase Tara Singh or Krishnamurti and pretend that their insights are mine.

In my early twenties I drank and did drugs in a very self-destructive way. A lot of people – family members, counselors, even cops on a few occasions – tried to point out how dangerous and crazy my behavior was. I listened but I didn’t hear. It wasn’t until I was sleeping in my car and vomiting blood that a dim light went on and I realized that I needed help. And even then it took more than a few tries to find my way to sanity.

If you had run into me in those days, you would have found me studying Thoreau and Saint John of the Cross and Jacques Derrida. I had even run into A Course in Miracles! I was smart in a way, but in another  way, I was utterly hopeless. I could discuss the relationship between Emerson’s Self Reliance and Merton’s Contemporary Prayer but was entirely incapable of seeing that my life – stealing money from friends and family, lying to everyone I met, retching my way through the few lucid moments I had – was an utter and chaotic mess. It hurt me and it hurt others.

Even though things are not nearly so discordant today, I am hardly immune to the underlying error: mistaking my body for my true self. The key is not to fall into judgment over it: to think I’m a bad person or a bad ACIM student because for an afternoon or a conversation or a whole week I fell for the old lie that I’m a body. That’s just spiritual pride masquerading as love. It happens, sure, but it still needs to be called out.

So why not let it be? Be broken. Be dysfunctional. I often use the verb “stumble” around here because it helps keep me honest. I’m not a spiritual giant striding manfully into Heaven while scores of angels cheer me on and ask for my autograph. I’m stumbling and grumbling and learning so slowly that it almost seems like going backwards.

But it doesn’t matter. What matters is willingness – not the form it shows up in. In other words, it’s being a happy learner that counts. Critically, while it’s nice to remember that joy is the sure result of our learning, it’s hardly a prerequisite to getting started.

All we can do is give attention to what is unfolding within and without us, and to do so with as little judgment as possible. This is hard to do and yet it comes as such a relief. Even a little effort can yield helpful results. Honesty is crucial: not the movement to find or fix problems, but simply to see what is appearing right now and accept it. In these bodies in this world, that is healing.

On Guilt and Time and Inner Peace

A Course in Miracles teaches that the separation from God occurred over “millions of years” (T-2.VIII.2:5). Yet the separation lives in and acts through us with our consent now. As we become aware of the through process known as separation, we naturally orient towards dissolving it, which is simultaneously a movement towards inner peace.

Speeding up this dissolution – for it is possible to end the separation and experience inner peace now – is enhanced if we understand the relationship between guilt and time. As A Course in Miracles puts it, “[g]uilt feelings are the preservers of time” (T-5.VI.2:1).

Two principles underlie the relationship between guilt and time. The first is that anyone who perceives that they are dissociated from God – and who believes that dissociation reflects reality – will naturally feel guilt. They will assume they are responsible for the separation.

Second, those who are guilty make time in order to facilitate the expiation of their guilt. The thinking goes something like this: I am guilty now because of what I did in the past but I will be absolved (or punished) in the future.

In this way, time and guilt go hand in hand. The undoing of one is the undoing of the other.

It is not especially helpful to seek a moment in our past when we “chose” separation. It is not that such a search will necessarily be fruitless, but rather that we never have to look beyond the so-called “here and now” to see the separation. Why make our learning harder than it has to be?

Taking note of separation-based thinking now is what enables us – with considerable assistance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit – to end it now. And that is our goal. We don’t want to understand the problem; we want to solve it – or, better, we want to see that is is already solved. That is the beautiful and never-not-helpful essence of lesson 79 and lesson 80.

So what does the separation look like right now? Its form changes from student to student. Perhaps it is the blue jays harassing our beloved chickadees at the feeder. Perhaps it is the neighbor running his lawn mower or leaf blower when what we’d prefer is a monastic silence. Perhaps it is our fear of going to dinner with new friends later who might find us boring. Perhaps it is a diagnosis of cancer, or anger at this or that politician, or our fear of dying.

All of those examples are formal (literally having a form) reflections of an underlying belief that we are separated from God. Do you see how they all make our happiness and peace contingent on ideal external circumstances? If the blue jays leave, then our chickadees will be safe. If the neighbor pipes down, then we will be able to pray and know peace. If our new friends don’t respond with gushing praise and admiration, then we’ll be miserable.

And so forth.

When we set the world up this way, we are separating various parts from what is whole – what is God – and then assigning value to the various pieces. And then we ask those pieces to become responsible for our inner peace and joy.

Basically, we ask the divisions we have made to take the place of God.

If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone (T-15.V.2:3-5).

Another way to say this is simply that in each moment, when we project onto something external (be it a person, a place, an event, a piece of food, the weather, etc.), we are effectively confirming that we believe we are separate from God. As a result, something other than God – with whom we are joined – becomes responsible for my happiness and peace or lack thereof.

Regardless of whatever temporary respite projection and the external world provide (and they do provide some), guilt is always the only sure result of using separation to try and fix the problem of separation.

Guilt is intolerable. Of course, we have a sad gift for bearing a lot of it over long periods of time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s desirable. Or helpful. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t have another choice in this regard. There is always another way.

Unfortunately, we have used our creative powers of healing not to turn inward with God – which is the only solution to the problem of guilt – but rather to make time and then wait for a solution that cannot come because it is not in time.

This is basically a trick of the ego. On the one hand, we get to assure ourselves that we’re working on the problem of guilt because we aren’t ignoring guilt (we’re making time after all – a not-insignificant project) but on the other hand, we are never going to actually end guilt because – like the horizon itself – its “end” is always a frozen image in the illusory realms of tomorrow where (as Shakespeare so poignantly noted), lies only dusty death.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

So much for the helpfulness of time.

It is important to be clear and level-headed about this. If we perceive ourselves as guilty now then it can only be in the future – be it the next five minutes, five weeks, five years or five lifetimes – that we will no longer be guilty. In a way, that seems very logical and reasonable. But – and this is critical to our understanding and practice of A Course in Miracles – it does not work.

This is one of the blessings – and by blessing I mean both opportunity and pain-in-the-ass – available to us as ACIM students. In a calm and collected way, we are able to make contact with the simple truth that the way our thinking (which is to say, our egos) try to solve the problem of guilt doesn’t work. We have to try something else.

And what else shall we try? That which has no opposite – that which cannot be other or else because it is All – God.

God knows you now. He remembers nothing, having always known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instant reflects His knowing . . . in the holy instant, free of the past, you see that love is in you, and you have no need to look without and snatch love guiltily away from where you thought it was (T-15.V.9:1-3, 7).

What does this mean in a practical way?

Attention given to the wholeness of the present moment is a most effective tool of healing because it reflects an invitation to the Holy Spirit which is “the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception” (T-5.I.5:1).

Thus, to use an example from earlier, we can watch the bird feeder and be aware of the totality of the moment: the color of the Blue Jays in sunlight, the dance of chickadees on the new-fallen snow, our identification with the smaller birds as victims of the larger, more aggressive birds, the language we use to describe the experience . . . all of it.

If we can observe all this without judgment (so much as possible – this is not necessarily easy), then we are effectively deferring to the Holy Spirit who sees and perceives as the egoic self does, yet maintains the essential connection to knowledge, or truth, or God (which the ego emphatically does not do).

In other words, the Holy Spirit is aware of the ego’s activity and bias yet doesn’t fall for it, being simultaneously perfectly at home in Christ, and concerned only with healing the mind that still believes in the separation.

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed (T-5.II.1:2).

It should come as no surprise that this healing reflects an “alteration of the time sequence” (T-5.II.1:3) because it is a letting go of the separation now (T-5.II.1:4), and thus ends altogether the time structures that guilt relies on for its existence.

In a way, everything always leads us back to a present experience of God – an awareness that right now, without condition, qualification or impediment – we remain precisely and perfectly as God created us. Because it is not possible to leave God, guilt is not a justified response to anything. Time is not required at all.

We can talk about this intellectually – there is a place for that, of course – but we are also called by our interior experience of Jesus and God, as mediated by A Course in Miracles, to go beyond mere ideas and into actual experience itself. Heaven is here and now. Find out what that means so you can share it with your brothers and sisters. What else is there?

Learning Love Through Service

There is value in thinking about kindness – general, simple ordinary kindness. Helping shovel the walk, listening carefully to other people’s stories and questions, paying for lunch, offering up compliments, sharing experience. Doing this is a form of service to our brothers and sisters and to our own self. We learn love through service.

“Thinking” in this context means thought, feeling, plans, memories, actions and so forth – the whole external movement of the egoic self. When we give attention to others, we ease up on that self-concept with its endless conceits for getting (materially, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically) at the expense of others.

A good rule of thumb seems to be: play nice and don’t worry so much about winners and losers. Miracles are not zero-sum games. Love does not function by degrees.

The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who accept love of you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is they who hold it out to you (T-13.VI.12:2-3).

The question is not whether this is a central teaching of A Course in Miracles. Or whether we are able to manifest that level of selfless now now. Very few of us are ready to make enormous metaphysical leaps into Heaven. Instead, we catch glimpses of it here and there and savor its crumbs here in the world we call home. And while we believe we’re here, we have to do something.

People sometimes say “how do we wake up? How do we let go of thought? How do we experience Christ outside of the brain’s buzzing?”

There really is no single or ultimate answer. We can’t force insight. When we make awakening a goal it becomes like the horizon which remains ever in the distance, dooming us to endless repetitive travel. Instead, we have to come to an intensity that is more passive than active, and to an awareness that is not reflecting back on itself (look at me!). If this seems altogether too vague and abstract, that’s because it really makes no sense to the ego. The ego wants to do; spirit is content to be.

So the capacity for passive intensity and non-self-reflective awareness is in the nature of a gift (given both universally and unconditionally). It is not an accomplishment. If at any level we perceive it as a spiritual badge of honor accruing to us and not all of us then we are missing it.

What we can do here in these bodies in this world is be kind, preferably without making a big holy deal of it. In my experience there is always someone around me who could use some help. When I am willing to help others – and keep the willingness simple (and keep the focus on them) – then the others show up and ask for help. It’s all very natural and straightforward. Service is fun. We want to help.

Does this mean there is no relationship between acts of kindness and awakening? Can these little gestures in the separated world of illusion help stir us from the sleep of forgetfulness?

In at least one way – a tangential way – yes.

Taking care of other people tends to quiet the brain which in turns allows for the voice of the Holy Spirit to come through more clearly and consistently. Stillness is Spirit’s stage. And while a certain Bodhisattva inclination is not the only way to achieve this – forest walks before dawn, long drives, cutting wood, gazing through prisms and writing are all effective – it is a reliably helpful way.

And putting us into sustained helpful contact with our teacher is a central goal of A Course in Miracles. So in that sense, yes, service is helpful.

I say all this to remind myself what matters. It is possible to get so wrapped up in the course or so involved in ideals of awakening or so invested in religious and philosophical literature that our spiritual sleep only deepens and the ego’s stranglehold tightens. Sometimes the best way to learn about Love is to simply get out there and show a little of it to our brothers and sisters.

Giving Attention to Kindness and Starlight

And yet kindness matters – continues to matter. Those actions taken through the body for another – thoughtful letters, hugs, fresh-baked bread, attentive listening and so forth. I can’t forget this. Won’t forget it.

I stood for a few minutes this morning beneath the dogwood tree out back. Each twig and branch is encased in ice through which starlight sparkled like a thousand times a thousand little prisms. I was breathless, thoughtless, joyful.

It is important to give serious attention to what is happening in thought – to the specific form of practice the Holy Spirit extends to (and through) us. Only our attention and willingness will undo our insistence there be a world filled with bodies from which to derive temporary satisfaction, briefly staving off the horrors of death.

We want to know this as a fact – not an idea that we read about or somebody smart talked about or somebody holy preached about.

When we make contact with the eternity in which both time and thought happen, we begin to intuit the Truth of what we are. We begin to make contact with God, outside the familiar bounds of physicality and language. That is discomforting at first but we are still drawn to it – still yearn for the loss of egoic self that greater space, that nothingness that is Everything implies.

We pass through the gateless gate and fall weeping with joy. We step back outside it and indulge in analysis and judgment. It’s okay. The gate is never not there and we are never not welcome beyond it. Seek the reminders of its presence: the kind stranger, the answered prayer, the prismatic stars before dawn. They are not real anymore than our brains and eyes and tongues are real but they will serve for a little while to remind us of the Glory that is ours and waits – eternally patient, eternally giving – just outside the walls of perception.