Sean Reagan

A Course in Miracles teaches – in no insignificant way – that the Holy Spirit is our Teacher (see, for example, T-5.III.10:1, T-7.VII.7:2, T-8.VIII.9:10 and T-16.I.5:6). This is a liberating idea because the Holy Spirit is a symbol of our healed mind, the condition in which it remembers perfectly its oneness with God. Thus, the Holy Spirit is not a separate being external to us who intervenes when asked, but is within us – is us – in a real and practical way.

In order to learn, we have to decide to learn. We have to want to learn. And we are all at different stages of that process. Some of us think we know it all already and some of us aren’t even asking any questions yet. Knowing where we are with respect to learning is a very personal process and it can’t be rushed or overlooked. It is on this basis that we will begin to give serious attention to real learning, real undoing. In a sense, A Course in Miracles aims to bring us to that place, where we can choose the Holy Spirit as our inner teacher.

It can be helpful to adopt an interim teacher in this process – someone (or something perhaps) that will stand in for the Holy Spirit, and help us bridge that space between unwillingness and willingness.

This is in the nature of projection! We are projecting our responsibility to learn onto somebody else and asking them to carry it for a little while. Therapists work very hard with this issue. It is not inherently unhealthy so long as the one upon whom the projection is made is aware of it and is working to undo it.

I think of Tara Singh as my teacher of A Course in Miracles. In doing so, I project onto him my holiness, my sacredness, my responsibility for decision and so forth. This is not an error because Tara Singh did not accept those projections! He knew they were there but he simply looked beyond them to our fundamental equality as creations of God. He was very skillful and attentive in bringing students to a place of decision, but he did not decide for them.

When we discover a teacher who wants only to undo our need for her or him, then we are in the presence of real grace. It is a rare quality!

I also project a great deal onto the bluets this year! I don’t think anybody else is walking around calling bluets their ACIM teacher, though of course I may be mistaken. If you have some of these pretty little flowers available, go sit with them a while. See if you are ready to be their student!

The bluets have intelligence and presence but it falls outside the brain and the world as the ego sees and thinks of it. They are creative and generous and loving but in a radically simple way. When you see their love, it is almost too much to bear. And the thought that you are not separate from them but might express the way they do . . . it brings you to silence. It brings you to stillness.

The bluets can be my teacher because they do not want anything from me! That is the sign of a true teacher – she does not want your money or your praise or your attention or anything. She is just giving of what was given to her, because she knows that the expression of God’s Love is all there is. And so you are blessed by that knowledge, and work through the details in a way that makes sense to where you are at at this particular time and place until you learn there is nothing to learn and never was.

What I am saying is that giving attention to just where we are projecting our inner teacher can be very helpful. Is it working? Are we being led home or directed outward? Is our learning in the nature of a sacrifice or a joyful acceptance of all that is? Learning is a kind of dance that happens away from what is time-bound and matter-bound. Are you hearing that song? Are you feeling that flow?

What does it mean, in the context of A Course in Miracles, to trust God?

Though I have my reasons for taking leave of the Catholic church, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the many gifts I learned within its rituals and influence. My parents in particular were devoted believers, models of the discipline and attentiveness that helpfully grounds any spiritual undertaking. In other words, I learned to trust God very early in my life!

My thinking has shifted somewhat since those early days. Back then God was a distant taskmaster, alternately loving and judgmental, capable of thunderbolts and car accidents. You just never knew. Trusting him – for it was a decidedly male God in those days – was as much a defensive, as a proactive, gesture. You didn’t want to be on God’s wrong side.

I do not perceive God in that way any longer. It is hard to say what God is – love, light, truth, creation are all reasonable enough, but also vague and capable of considerable misapprehension. I have always appreciated A Course in Miracles admonition that we say “God is” and then zip it. What else can you say? Besides, I am not really trying to define God so much as remember God, or experience God.

Putting one’s trust in God has to be complete and total. We can’t give over one part of our lives while holding on to another. If we are still trusting our own resources (however well we hide that fact, however much we deny it) then we are never going to know God. Because you can’t trust by degrees.

Also, when I talk about trusting God these days, it is less in the nature of deferring to the greater power of a separate deity, and more akin to saying that the future – such as it is or isn’t – is not the proper focus of my attention. All healing is in the present moment. When I am not obsessing with the future – with this or that outcome, with this or that goal, with this or that plan – then I am naturally able to give more attention to what A Course in Miracles calls the “Holy Instant.”

Nothing is wanting in the present moment. There is no lack. There are no problems. Everything is fluid but serene. Discovering this is critical to our inner peace and happiness. Who lives in the future (or the past) is by definition unhappy. And there is another way.

The other way is trust. It is taking on faith that the past and future are illusory states that have no bearing on truth. Reality cannot be segmented into periods of time, each period to be judged, and life lived in vain pursuit of those that are most or more desirable. To place one’s trust in God is to declare an intention to avail oneself of all the healing and all the power that is offered to any of us: the present moment, in which all creation extends to and through us, and we remember God, and are One.

I perceive the rhythm and movement of A Course in Miracles as a subtle presence in my life – powerful but not overwhelming. It is reminiscent of a brook slowly carving away at the landscape, quiet and beautiful, and one only notices its transformational effects after months or even years .

In a sense, this is simply how I want to learn – and how I learn best. The course meets us where we are, but we also take it in the form and manner that works best for us. There is no use fighting this, no use resisting it. Part of accepting the Holy Spirit as a Teacher, and Jesus as a guide, means relinquishing our inclination to control outcomes and dictate means.

That said, there are certainly times in my life the course precipitates fairly significant – even dramatic – shifts in thinking. These moments are somewhat rare, but I am grateful for them indeed. They are in the nature of lightening flashes, quick and powerful, in the wake of which nothing is the same.

For me, one of those moments occurred early in my practice. One morning, while walking the dogs, I realized that the God to whom I prayed – and with whom I had been in relationship for well over three decades – had more in common with Jonathan Edwards (he of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God fame) than with the God inherent in A Course in Miracles.

This insight literally rocked me. Every time I turned toward familiar modes of prayer, there was nothing there. I felt weak and fluttery. I was embarrassed and chagrined. I was scared to move forward but even more scared to fall back to the familiar.

Driving home the other day past fields bright with dandelions it occurred to me that in many ways, I had finally integrated the course’s view of God: present, loving, trustworthy, kind and with whom I shared a powerfully creative Will. I don’t mean to suggest I’ve got it down perfect; only that I am not so torn between competing visions of God. I have settled on a belief system that empowers me to look closely and without fear and what still seems to obscure the divine.

So most of the time my practice is like a brook – steady, pulsing, strong, reliable – but then other times yes, it floods the banks, it pushes me hard where I need to go. I am grateful for that! As I am grateful for the quieter moments as well, all of them reminding me my Teacher knows the way.

A spirit of inquiry is helpful in our practice of A Course in Miracles. Forgiveness requires honesty, often at levels to which we are unaccustomed to giving attention. The willingness to investigate – to ask questions – particularly outside the bounds of our spiritual and psychological comfort zones can be very fruitful. It can help facilitate insight.

I do not mean that as students of ACIM we are meant to indulge in emotional or spiritual archaeology, becoming Lara Crofts of the psyche or spirit. It is my experience that devotion to A Course in Miracles – studying the material, doing the lessons, participating in dialogues here and there – will naturally evoke more than enough ruins and skeletons to keep us busy.

Our goal is not to push forth boldly into territory marked unknown but to be patiently attentive to what shows up. And what can we expect will arrive? Memories, family stories, biology, world events, theological beliefs, fluctuations in personal economy, opinions and ideas, art, teachers, weather and cake.

It will all show up – the whole world, which includes your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, energies, ideals and so forth, will just show up. And piece by piece – for that is how we begin when we believe tacitly in separation – we will look into it. We will engage in inquiry.

Inquiry in this case really doesn’t mean much more than a level-headed study that does not rush to conclusions. If you are angry at the world bank, you can just look at it: your ideas about the bank, what it did or didn’t do, your feelings about global finace, fiscal equality. All of it. Just look and notice what is going on.

When we do this enough, we eventually begin to see that the external problems are really just symbols of an internal dilemma. So our attention will start to turn inward. We will notice that we are angry at China for failing to curb coal emissions and we will say: “oh, right. This is about concern that we leave a planet for my grand-children and that is really just fear.”

So then we are looking at fear. Or something else will bring up sorrow and so we will look not at the symbol but at the content it symbolizes.

So a spirit of inquiry – a habit of inquiry, a willingness to inquire – are all means by which we begin to deepen our capacity to make contact with the vast reservoirs of guilt that seem to roil just beneath the surface, keeping us separated from the Love that is God.

Contact with guilt is not made for its own sake; that would be masochistic. Rather, it is made so that with the Holy Spirit, it might be undone. I say “with the Holy Spirit” because it is essential we understand that we are not the undoers. We want to avoid all temptation to seize steering wheels or grab reins. A certain passivity is more than helpful here. In a sense, as we inquire, we are taking what we learn and offering it to the Holy Spirit – it is a simultaneous action really – and it is undone for us. So we are participants, but kind of the way that we are participants in a flower’s beauty. We have to stop and see it and smell it but we didn’t create it.

So that becomes part of our practice of A Course in Miracles: inquiry, which is attention give to what is, and what is is always shifting and changing. It is never not there, and we are never not without opportunities to learn and deepen and become grace-filled.

Prior to teaching A Course in Miracles, Tara Singh undertook a three year silent retreat. He gave three years of his life to silence! Can you imagine that? The discipline it took, the commitment . . .

People ask me sometimes why I read Tara Singh so closely, and listen to him on tape and video, and say he is my teacher even though he is deceased, even though we never met. I give my attention to him because he had an intensity of devotion and a willingness to do what was required without questioning it. Most of us have so many reasons not to study today or not to pray. Christ is right here and we are so casual! We don’t want to know what is real and we are always going to get around to changing tomorrow. We think we are serious but could we be silent for three years? Do we have the resources internally?

To say “no” is not to beat ourselves up but rather to be honest, and to see what is going on with us without bringing ideals and evasion into it. So we are not serious yet, so what? If we can see it, then we can make a decision to do it differently, to end our casualness and come to clarity. Honesty is a gift because it always allows what is essential to be revealed. It has no secrets. It respects the truth too much.

He did not make silence an ideal. Rather, he made it a gift. It was not about him but about others! And so the need of his brothers and sisters could not be excluded, or it was no longer a gift.

One of the aspect of Tara Singh’s retreat into silence was that he sometimes spoke! Perhaps you think that makes him a hypocrite. But he talks about it briefly in Dialogues on A Course in Miracles. He says that when we would go out walking, people who needed directions would always find him – how do I get to this street? How do I find that park? He was amazed by this – that people with that need would always turn to him. He could walk down the beach surrounded by people playing and relaxing and recreating and not one of them would reach out, but as soon as somebody had a need then they would find him and ask him for help.

And he helped them. He gave what was asked. He did not see this as a compromise or hypocrisy.

But I never felt like I was “talking” in directing them because I was meeting a need. The need and the silence became one (265).

He goes on to say that at the relative level – at the level of the world at which most of us are engaged – there is always going to be contradiction. We can’t avoid it and shouldn’t expect to.

You see, Tara Singh is pointing us in a new direction. He is intimating a space that the wise always ask that we seek out and make our home. He did not make silence an ideal. Rather, he made it a gift. It was not about him but about others! And so the need of his brothers and sisters could not be excluded, or it was no longer a gift. Does that make sense? It won’t at the level of relative thought – where right and wrong are the law. But it is very clear at the level of love where our brothers and sisters are the means of salvation.

The clarity and love inherent in this brings me to tears. It is so simple and clear.

So the more I read and study Tara Singh, the more beautiful and helpful his example becomes. He is not admirable because he could stop talking for three years. He is admirable and helpful because the silence was at such a level it could include words that were offered in love. He could sustain the silence while helping those who were lost.

This is why I call him “Teacher.”