On Outcomes, Equines and A Course in Miracles

I would like to write a bit about outcomes – our inclination to project a future that accommodates our ideas about happiness and satisfaction and peace. To think this way is an egoic habit and so can feel natural but in truth it is deeply unnatural and impedes our recognition that we are already awakened in God’s Kingdom.

Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God’s. His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace (T-15.IV.2:5-7).

I’ll reference a couple of personal experiences from the past month – one ostensibly joyful, the other negative to the point of heartbreak. It has been given to me to see both experiences as essentially the same, and to learn that our perceived separation from God is based not on what happens externally but rather on outcome-based thinking.

In a way, outcomes are like goals – they reflect preferred results. They obliterate the present by keeping our attention on the future. The future is by definition an illusion: it is not happening. The greater our investment in or attachment to the future is, the greater our perceived distance from God.

Of course we cannot really be distant from God, but we can believe we can be distant, and so for all intents and purposes, we are distant. The belief functions as illusory distance. If you want to know how powerful your mind is, consider that it is has convincingly made a world in which you believe  you are irretrievably separated from Love, which is your natural inheritance (T-in.1:7).

This talk about outcomes is not to say that we can’t make plans for a chronological future – I’ll meet you for coffee in an hour, I’m going to see Bob Dylan in December, our tax bill is due in January and so forth. Rather, we want to be aware of the psychological future we continually project: the deep conviction that our joy and peace are contingent on specific outcomes at least partially under our control. But happiness is now and it is given unconditionally. Anything else is a lie.

I wrote in a recent newsletter that Chrisoula and I recently became owners of a relatively large piece of land. In a way, it is a dream come true for us – it allows us to expand our homesteading lifestyle. Our gardening space will quadruple, we will be able to cut our own firewood, tap our own maple trees, and raise more animals for meat. We will have a hayfield and an apple orchard.

As it became clear that we were going to receive this gift, I got nervous. I began to think of all the things that could go wrong and we would not get the land. This was my dream: therefore, it had to be God’s will. There was really only one acceptable outcome: I get the land. Anything else fell short.

It is important to understand that I was fully prepared to live with whatever happened. Had the deal fallen through, I wasn’t going to lose myself in a whiskey bottle. I am sure I would have prayed and talked and worked it through. And in my inartful and stumbling way, I would have eventually been fine.

But that isn’t my point here: my point is be clear that I had chosen a desirable outcome. I had taken a stand where no stand was needed. As soon as I did that, my happiness and peace were compromised. It didn’t matter what happened. I could get or not get it; I could be graceful or not. The fact that I was invested in a given outcome meant that I had substituted my will for God’s. And once that happens, the game is over.

This is a subtle but important point: as soon as we judge an outcome in any way, we have abandoned the Holy Instant – the present moment – and stepped into illusion. The effect is perceived distance from God and all the grief that flows therefrom.

Every allegiance to a plan of salvation apart from Him diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own mind. And yet it is your mind that is the host to Him (T-15.IV.3:6-7).

That is why A Course in Miracles teaches us that true peace is always of God – there is no other source (T-15.IV.2:8). Nothing that happens in the world can affect us unless we want to be distracted from the Love that we have because it is what we are.

The ego is happy to let us live gracefully with disappointment. “I wanted this and I didn’t get it but that’s okay – I trust God.” The ego is delighted with that logic because a) it keeps us focused on externals (the possibility that something outside of us will bring us peace, at least eventually) and b) it keeps us focused on the future (where God is not because the future is not).

When we get what we want, what happens? When the land was “mine,” what was different? What had changed?

Nothing.

I quickly discovered that I was still invested in projection: I had the land, now I wanted a particular solar-powered house and a two-story barn. I needed to post the land so that hunters only used it with my consent and only during certain seasons. I had to meet with a logger to begin putting together a forest management plan and so on and so forth.

Do you see? Outcome-based thinking never ends. It doesn’t matter in the least what happens. There is always another future, always another outcome. There is always another condition.

We can be distracted from love forever.

I had made the land a condition: when I get this, I will be a new man. I will know God and I will know peace. These conditions were very subtle and hidden, of course, because I’m so spiritual and so gifted with A Course in Miracles and all that but it was there. It was operative. And when it happened – when I had the land – I just kept right on projecting. When it comes to avoiding the present, we’re like the proverbial dog with a bone. We don’t stop.

Why does this happen?

It happens because despite all our good intentions, we don’t really want the peace of God. We want our version of God. We want to be the authority. Faced with Sartre’s God-shaped hole, we hoist the ego’s shovel and go to work filling it.

It is good to see this happen. In a way it sucks because it seems so negative: we’re still resisting God; we’re still turning our back on Heaven. But it’s actually positive because when we see it – and see its effects – we can make another choice. We can choose again. In a way, that is all A Course in Miracles wants for us: that is all it wants to give us: a chance to choose again (T-31.VIII.1:5).

I reflected on this as the weeks passed. In a deep way, I felt as if this lesson from the land was critical to my spiritual growth. I’d been speaking and writing for years about how the external cannot satisfy our desire to know God and how the past and future impair our experience of God as a present Love. Now I was being given a chance to experience it: to bring it into application, as Tara Singh would say.

I began to perceive that outcomes – what happens – all happen within the Holy Instant. The Holy Instant is what happens: it excludes nothing. Birth, death, morning runs, winter blues, homemade cider and Emily Dickinson poems – all are contained within the Holy Instant. To believe otherwise is to believe that we contribute in a creative and meaningful way to the Holy Instant – and we emphatically do not. It is always there – always present, always available – because God is always ready to give it to us (T-15.IX.1:7).

Thus, it is not a question of growing spiritually, or finding a better spiritual path, or practicing ACIM more intensely, or going to church, or doing yoga, or finding a better partner or a new teacher or anything. Nothing is missing. Everything is given. And when we’re ready, we’ll settle into the gift that is always given.

Each time I felt myself pulled towards outcomes, I gently reminded myself they were simply distractions from God. It didn’t matter if I was teaching, writing, parenting, walking or cooking dinner. When my mind drifted, I brought it back. I gave it back. It was easy: and it was lovely.

And then my fourteen year old daughter’s horse died.

Mac went down in the cold rain. The regular vet couldn’t help so we transported him three hours to an equine hospital in New York. We stood vigil while Mac grew sicker and sicker. As the sun rose Monday morning, he went into surgery. An hour into the operation, he died. Mac – the Haflinger quarter horse cross around which my daughter’s life revolved – was gone.

Throughout that experience, I was held and supported – and knew I was held and supported because  I could feel it – by Christ and by Love. These were not abstractions! They were the love manifest by every one who cared for us, helped us, invited us to lean on them, and so forth. Every time someone mentioned the word “outcome” – and it seemed to come up at least once every fifteen minutes – I remembered that there are no outcomes: there is only this moment. And someone was there to remind me it was okay to remember that.

I chose to be faithful to that truth: I chose to stay with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And I was not made bereft. Instead, I was given peace and the gift of service. In truth they are not separate.

In the Holy Instant we remember that what we are in truth is one with God. It is that memory that renders us capable of true service: when you want for nothing, it is easy to give everything. It just happens. It is natural in the deepest sense of the word.

Thus, I could see with great clarity when Sophia needed me and when she needed to be alone with Mac. I could give attention to thorny issues about the surgery without giving space to either anger or impatience – with the vets, with how to pay for it, with other voices that wanted to weigh in. I knew that what was happening was not about me. When I was hungry, I remembered to eat. I remembered to feed others. I remembered to ask for help and to accept it when it was offered.

This is not to say that there were not times when I felt sorrow – great waves of it. My brain did not stop pumping out ideas and images and stories. I sobbed. I stepped out into the rain, peered into dark clouds and cried out to God for mercy for my daughter and her horse. I begged Jesus to stay close to me, and close to my daughter, and close to Mac. I said thank you over and over, often without any clear sense of what I was grateful for. A little language to remind us that life is in better hands than ours is a good thing, a peaceful thing. It helps. Trust what is helpful. The Holy Spirit is never not speaking to us.

In the Holy Instant, we remain focused on what is: not on what would distract us from what is. Does that make sense? Things that seem to be good will happen in life and things that seem to be bad will happen too. They are the same. All that matters is God. We are not quitting or giving up or abandoning anybody when we make God the singular fact of our lives. Indeed, it is the only way to know – and extend – peace.

*

In a dream the other night I walked a dark road through stone and brier. Rain and wind beset me. For a long time I walked with my head down, studying my bloody feet. When at last I looked up, a faint light beckoned. I walked quicker towards it. Time passed. I crested a hill and at its peak saw that the light was a lantern and that I held it. That which I sought was already given – it was already here. And when I looked closer I saw that my hand wasn’t the only hand holding the light. Yours was there, too, and we were home.

Right, Wrong and A Course in Miracles

I think often of my early experience with A Course in Miracles: my investment in being right about it, in taking the right stands, siding with the right wave of opinion, and so forth.

That’s natural enough, in the sense that it’s judgmental and harsh, which is how we have learned to perceive and function. And really, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are quite indifferent to what we think of them and their assorted curricula. Their patience is infinite. A lifetime is as a second.

In time I learned that right and wrong are not helpful. They don’t move me towards peace and kindness and love. They keep me fractured. They are always tacit endorsements of our separation from God. What works for you? What pries open your spiteful heart and lets a little light in and – most importantly – allows a little light out?

Trust that. It is Christ in you leading you away from the world of bodies and time and into eternity, into Love. Be like a child willing to be led by a loving parent. No more is asked of us. You know where the light is: you know how to be loving. It is – beyond all the drama and drudgery and anguish of existence – the singular fact of which you are composed.

Find it: stay with it: extend it.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 193

All things are lessons God would have me learn.

It is possible to experience peace in this world, a facsimile of what we will know when we remember again that what we are in truth is not separate from what God is. The means of peace is forgiveness: the sharing of our perception with the Holy Spirit, that it might be directed toward Heaven rather than the ego’s self-serving hell.

Lesson 193 of A Course in Miracles is a clear and explicit statement of this principle: there is nothing in this world that cannot serve the purpose of salvation if we will simply share it with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. Given to the Teacher who knows the way Home, all things facilitate that longed-for return.

However abstract or unrealistic or even complicated this idea might seem, it is in reality quite simple: the only lesson that we really need to learn is “forgive and you will see this differently” (W-pI.193.3:7).

The form of the lessons changes constantly, but its content – the healing power of forgiveness – never does. Thus, we might be forgiving a spouse for being impatient or angry. Then we might be forgiving the President of the United States for advancing a policy with which we disagree. Then we might be forgiving the neighbor’s dog who barks too loud. Then the homeless guy outside our office. Then the rain. Then daylight savings. Then chocolate . . .

How do we know that these things – and myriad others need to be forgiven in the mode of A Course in Miracles? By the degree to which we still experience pain – if we are upset or angry or wracked with need or sad or grieving, then it is certain that we have not yet fully shared with the Holy Spirit.

Don’t let this become yet another source of guilt! Jesus and the Holy Spirit are models of truly infinite patience. They merely await our willingness, healing as much as we are able to share with them, and then quietly resting while we summon the willingness to offer yet more seeming strife and anguish. It’s not a crime to take this by degrees.

But when we are ready to be free of suffering – and to know the peace that surpasses understanding – we can begin to approach our lives with the earnest diligence of the student who is ready – like really ready – to graduate.

Let mercy come to your more quickly. Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant. Time was made for this. Use it today for what its purpose is. Morning and night, devote what time you can to serving its proper aim, and do not let t time be less than meets your deepest need (W-pI.193.10:2-6).

Our deepest need is to end the seeming separation and return to God. Nothing will satisfy us – nothing – but to restore to our memory the Source of our Creation and to know ourselves again as what we are in Truth.

The way to do this is to see in each form that presents itself – in work, in family, in friends, in the news, in our reading, our dog walks, our seeming idle thoughts, our dreams, our longings, our memories – as yet another opportunity to forgive and thus see differently.

God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself. His Son does not remember who he is. And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it (W-pI.193.8:1-4).

Joy is a daily thing – and peace is sure when we refuse to cling to the ego, the frail and malicious self, that seeks to replace God and control all things. Let go. Let the Holy Spirit teach you how to see the forest, how to see the other drivers, how to see children and cats, and sunsets and cheesecakes.

The purpose of our existence is merely to practice forgiveness that we might remember we are wrong about what we are and thus deeply confused about our true existence. We are given a Teacher who can lead us home as surely as a river finds the sea. In this lesson, Jesus urges us to avail ourselves of that Guide – and to give salvation as much of our willingness as we possibly we can.

Heaven waits on us. And we want nothing less.

←Lesson 192
Lesson 194→

Looking Again at Atonement in A Course in Miracles

From time to time I find myself needing to revisit certain core ideas in A Course in Miracles. Such is the case with Atonement – which is simply the Holy Spirit’s plan end the illusion of separation. In what way is the course breaking with traditional Christianity and establishing some new theological ground? How should we understand – and bring into application – this essential concept?

First things first. Atonement is based on the verb “to atone,” which in English was most likely modeled on the Latin verb “adunare,” which means “to unite.” In the Latin, it is a combination of  “ad” (which means “to” or “at”) and “unum” (which means one). To atone is to make reparations for a prior wrongdoing and as a result to be restored to an original state of union.

In a great deal of Christian theology, atonement was (and is, in many cases) presented as the reconciliation of God with all human beings as a result of the sacrificial death of Jesus. As Saint Paul noted, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3).

In other words, human beings – having grievously sinned by separating from God  (and compounding that sin daily) – were obliged to make amends with God if they ever hoped to see the shinier sides of the Gates of Heaven. Jesus, through his suffering and death at Golgotha, covered this for all humanity.

This narrative of redemption through blood sacrifice has its antecedents in the Old Testament. The gospel writers were not ignorant of tradition! In Leviticus, for example, God orders Israel to set aside one day a year to be “the day of atonement” (Leviticus 23:27-28). On that day, people were to sacrifice an innocent animal in order to atone for their sins. The shedding of the animal’s blood “was brought in to make atonement” (Leviticus 16:27).

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul (Leviticus 17:11).

Centuries later, Jesus would become the symbol of the lamb – sacrificed so that through the spilling of his blood we might all atone and return to our original state of union with God.

Interestingly, it was Mary Baker Eddy who popularized a somewhat different take on atonement – shades of which can clearly be seen in A Course in Miracles. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy wrote that the principle of atonement was the principle of oneness with God.

ATONEMENT is the exemplification of man’s unity with God, whereby man reflects divine Truth, Life, and Love. Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man’s oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage (18).

In A Course in Miracles, Atonement is the Holy Spirit’s corrective plan that undoes the ego. The Plan of Atonement came into existence after the belief in separation emerged. Its guiding principle is that the separation never happened and we remember this – and share it with others – through forgiveness (T-1.III.3:1). It explicitly rejects sacrifice of any kind (T-3.I.1:2).

This is the real insight of ACIM and in the text, Jesus insists that we not overlook it. We are asked to forever break the ties between suffering and atonement. The former is a symptom of the belief in separation; the latter is simply joyful. The crucifixion, by which our salvation was seemingly wrought, is merely an “extreme teaching example,” that serves to remind us what we are in truth is not bound by form and cannot be killed.

Fear is what keeps atonement at bay – not our unwillingness to repent, not the magnitude of our alleged sins, not the egregiousness of our errors. Just fear. We are scared of love, scared of God, scared of each other and scared of being scared. Crucifixion – that horrifying blend of torture and execution – long served as the symbol of our deep-rooted fear. In A Course in Miracles, we are urged to let that go.

God does not believe in retribution. His Mind does not create that way. He does not hold your “evil” deeds against you. Is it likely he would hold them against me (T-3.I.2:4-7).

Sacrifice – the idea that we must giving something up in order to get something else – is altogether foreign to God who neither thinks nor creates that way (T-3.I.4:1). When we begin to see this – and to accept it – the fear associated with torture and death (reflecting, of course, the “sacrifice” that Jesus allegedly made on our behalf) begins to dissipate. We begin to see that salvation, properly understood, is actually enlightening – that is, we are literally lightening our load by releasing unnecessary blocks and baggage and simultaneously allowing light into the interior landscape darkened by fear.

That releasing and allowing for light is really a metaphor for forgiveness, which in terms of A Course in Miracles simply means looking at our specialness – at what facilitates our seeming separation from God – with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It is the willingness to gently allow for the possibility that our habitual modes of thinking and understanding are not functional and that another way is both possible and necessary.

When we invite the Holy Spirit (if you prefer your spiritual companions to be abstract) or Jesus (if you prefer them to be quite specific) we are trying to see beyond what separates us – bodies, jobs, attitudes, income tax brackets, houses, cultures. We are trying to go beyond finding fault in the externals  and instead accepting its origins as internal.

Thus, when we “atone” in A Course in Miracles we are not really forgiving people for being troublesome or mean or selfish or violent. We are really forgiving ourselves for the belief that we are separated from God. The external wrongdoings are projections that reflect our own interior horror show. Forgiveness is the means by which we see the illusion for what it is, and thus let it go, and perceive instead the Love that lies beyond it.

Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind (W-pI.122.3:1-2).

Forgiveness is personal. Though our demons and devils arises from the same error (the belief that it is possible to separate from God and that we did separate from God), they assume forms and modes that are unique to us. They show up in the world of separation, which is the world of variability and change. This is why I often say A Course in Miracles meets us where we are: it doesn’t matter what your problems are or how you prefer to talk about them or how you conceive of solutions.

Atonement is not contingent on form – it will assume whatever form is most helpful at a given time and place. In truth, the atonement is perfect love (T-2.VI.7:8) which always adapts itself to circumstance, forever taking the language and structure that is most suited to the shared experience of those extending and receiving it (T-2.IV.5:1-3).

We undertake Atonement in here in the world because it is “the natural profession of the children of God” (T-1.III.1:10). And Jesus assures us that once we accept the gig, we aren’t going to hurt for material.

You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform (T-1.III.4:2-3).

I was a lucky kid growing up in the Catholic church because a lot of my teachers – priests, parents, catechism leaders and later professors and monks and nuns – tended to dwell on how much God loved me. Even Jesus’ death on the cross was presented as a loving gesture. He would suffer and die for me – who else was willing to do that?

Yet that message of love was often in conflict with the imagery and language that was presented in other settings. I would sit in the pews and look at the crucifix – this poor broken and bloody body and think, man, I would never have asked him to do that for me. Nobody should have to suffer like that. What kind of God are we talking about here?

It is not really possible to talk about a God of Love – or say God is Love – while simultaneously preaching that only the shedding of blood through torture and execution can lead one to that God. In the end, it is a message torn between perfect love and perfect horror.

A Course in Miracles neatly resolves that. It is not everybody’s spiritual path, nor should it be, but it is a pretty consistent and elegant one. Atonement is natural and effortless. We ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help us practice forgiveness. No more than that is required. Our willingness to practice – and our faith that our learning is in better hands than ours – is what finally allows us to see the folly of self-reliance.

You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you . . .  In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ‘My brother, choose again.’ He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom god created altar unto joy (T-31.VIII.2:3, 3:2-5).

In every moment Christ calls and urges us to choose again: to choose with Christ rather than against Christ. Will we do it? Atonement is nothing more than our quiet answer “yes.”

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The End of Victimhood and A Course in Miracles

In a deep way – a psychological way – we believe we are victims of the world we see, the ones who populate it, and the God who made it all. We are wracked by fear and guilt and thus driven by hate. I know how unpleasant that sounds, but A Course in Miracles will not make any sense – and cannot really be helpful – until we accept this.

Even when we are happy – because it is sweet to listen to leaves falling in Autumn or because we just baked a lovely pie or because our grandkids are over and the sound of their laughter is just this side of Heaven – we are in our hearts truly miserable.

This unhappiness – which is fear-based – is the profound fact of our lives in the world and it is sustained by our desire – our insistence, really – that it not be healed or undone. We want to be unhappy.  And that means we are invested in death because whoever hears only the ego hears only the promise of death. Dress it up however you like – we are talking about being followers not of Christ but of a rotting and horrifying corpse.

No one but must regard the body as himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable. It is not given to the ego’s disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death (T-19.IV.B.i.16:5, 17:1).

This idea was very stressful to me for a long time, because I believed in an ideal of spiritual wellness and spiritually healthy people did not walk around confessing to hatred and anguish, guilt and fear. They did not believe in death; death was an illusion because the body wasn’t real. You know the ACIM drill.

I could talk the walk just fine but I was not actually walking it. And it is the walk that heals us.

Thus, we reach a point in our ACIM practice where we see that it is not working. We may be a bit more balanced, a bit more patient, a bit less judgmental but we are not really experiencing the unalterable joy of knowing God as our Creator and our identity as Creation Itself. And that – that joy, that peace – is what we really want. Before that gift, a so-called better life on the world’s terms is not a gift but a curse. 

This is an ACIM crossroads of sorts. A lot of students remain here. They are moderately happy. Life is better than it was before the they studied A Course in Miracles. And it’s understandable! When you scrape yourself off the floor, life on your knees looks pretty good. Settling makes a certain kind of sense.

But we are called to something brighter and finer than the ego’s compromises. And sooner or later we are going to get around to trying to find it. First we blame the course. Then we blame our fellow students. Then we blame the teachers teaching us the course.

And then we get around to looking at ourselves.

In the ACIM text, Jesus gently observes that when we pronounce A Course in Miracles confusing and impossible to apply, we would do well to consider the possibility that we have not yet done all that it asks (T-11.VIII.5:2). The Holy Spirit can only take us so far as we are willing to go.

The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you think you have . . . You who believe it is safe to give but some mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total (T-26.II.2:1, 5:1).

Our unwillingness to be broken – to cherish some aspects of brokenness – precludes healing. Thus, what we keep to ourselves remains unhealed. And healing is not partial – it is total or it does not occur at all.

It is when we accept this – the unconditional nature of love – that healing begins in earnest. We begin to see down into the depths of us – we reach those places where language will not go, the material that does not yield to form but is instead the seething mass from which forms of hate and lovelessness arise. This is truly horrifying! This is the ego’s last gasp and best argument. And yet only by looking at it, can we be liberated from it. And indeed, it is when we are willing to look at it that we learn at last that A) we are not alone and B) what we are looking at is not such a big deal.

We begin to learn that we are not separated from God, and that the only problem we have is our willingness to believe in problems.

You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:

Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?

Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already (T-11.VIII.4:4-7).

Dwelling in the ego’s gruesome bedrock is not necessary. We aren’t asked to wallow in guilt or to set up camp in that ontological horror show. We are simply asked to give some attention with the Holy Spirit to what happens when we turn within and consider the fear, guilt and hate that is encountered there.  

So long as you are confident that Holy Spirit is looking with you, keep looking. Go deeper. When you start to feel shaky, stop. It’s okay.

That is the work: the refusal to be a victim of what is external but, as importantly, to refuse to be a victim of what is internal. We escape from both together (W-pI.31.2:5). We are going to peer into every last corner in which the ego hides and works its dark magic. The Holy Spirit is our lantern. And I promise you: no shadow can stand against it.

The Ego Is Self-Imposed Darkness

We all make an ego for ourselves – a self, an identity – and, critically, we also make one for every other person that we perceive (T-4.II.2:1). This is important! It’s not just our self that we’re fogging with bad ideas and guilty thoughts, but everyone else too. It’s not an ideal approach to inner peace – not for us and not for our brothers and sisters.

It is helpful sometimes to make contact with this fact: to sit quietly with a cup of tea and look closely at the egos we have made for others. This person is attractive. That person “gets us.” This person is mean, that one is generous. She makes too much money while he is too self-righteous. Irish people drink too much and Germans are too efficient. Buddhists are peaceful, Catholics are repressed. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

We all do it and we all do it for the same reason: we want something. We are raging oceans of emptiness and darkness and want other people to fix it. We want them to love us, comfort us, feed us, entertain us, console us. We assign roles – lover, parent, friend, soul mate, student, teacher – and expect everyone to dance accordingly. When they do, we think we’re happy because we’re getting what we want. When they don’t, we are poor victims of unjust external forces. Either way the ego wins.

This is the root of conflict. It’s not money and it’s not sex. It is the false self we believe we are that creates false selves for every other being we perceive.

So what do we do? We need to see the total futility of ego-based thinking. When we do, we will reach the point that Bill Thetford reached: we will declare that there must be another way.

Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self (T-4.II.4:10-11).

That point is a sort of surrender. It reflects the shred of willingness that is all the Holy Spirit needs to begin to teach us “the other way.” We begin to perceive our brothers and sisters without bringing our own needs and wants into it. It’s not that our needs and wants aren’t there – they are and they will be so long as we believe we are bodies in the world – but that they are no longer as powerful. They float up and we know they aren’t the only game in town. So their stranglehold on us loosens.

It is an incredible gift to look at a person and leave – or will to leave – your predetermined sense of them behind. It liberates them. It validates them at the level of spirit. And it releases us a little as well, because only spirit can perceive spirit. So when we make this effort to put aside the egos we make for everybody, we are also putting aside our own ego.

This is the practice of right-mindedness which leads naturally to right perception – a critical step in our awakening journey. Right perception is the ground from which on the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit springs (T-4.II.10:1-2).

The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move (T-4.II.10:3-4).

Often, when I am interacting with others, I make a point of giving attention to the ego I make for them. As importantly, I make a point of remembering that they have made one for me. It reminds me to breathe and relax. We are all sort of fumbling through this self-imposed darkness. The best I can do is rein in, as much as possible, my own projections. Really, what else is there to do?