Striving for Littleness: A Course in Miracles

A frequent theme of A Course in Miracles is that of littleness and grandeur – the former representing the ego and the latter, God – cannot coexist (T-9.VIII.6:4-5). We are explicitly urged not to be content with littleness – but rather to seek a majesty and magnitude befitting the wholeness in which we are indelibly created and thus create alike.

Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will always choose one at the expense of the other (T-15.III.1:7-8).

There are a couple ideas I want to be clear about in my thinking here. The first is that the course is accepting – tacitly – that striving and vigilance are part of our experience in the world. They are facets of our learning. This is important to see because it is easy with the course to drift off into “it’s all a big illusion” and nothing matters. Forgiveness is hard work and it requires some tenacity and some discernment. We do not simply announce our intention to accept Jesus and then coast off into a Heavenly sunset. Rather, we realize that we are bereft and we begin to work our way back to wholeness. For some of us, the way back is A Course in Miracles and its generous view of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

So if we are students of the course, then we are going to strive for glory and we are going to be vigilant on behalf of the Kingdom. Two thousand years ago Jesus taught his followers to repent because the Kingdom of God was near – literally at hand. As John Crossan has said, this reflects a sapiential eschatology – that is, God waits for us to act and to join him, not the other way around. It is a radical perspective – quite out of sync with most of Christianity which continues to emphasize a distant judge whose retribution in the form of an apocalypse we must await in fear and trembling.

This striving is not effortful although I think it appears that way sometimes. It certainly feels that way at times! For me, it requires a level of attention that is not always natural or habitual. Hours can pass before I look up and remember that I want to think with Jesus and not the ego. So I have to be attentive and forgiving – okay, I slipped for a few hours but I’m back. I am turning my mind and its thoughts over to Jesus. This process is also facilitated by creating space in which it is possible to be still and quiet. For me, that is most often in the early morning before Chrisoula and the kids wake up.

I try to avoid what Krishnamurti called “pre-meditated meditation.” That is, I don’t sit in a particular position or take any particular approach. Sometimes I am on a zafu, sometimes on my knees, and sometimes I just sip tea in a rocking chair. Sometimes I am deeply quiet and sometimes I chat with Jesus and sometimes I just fret about work or one of my children or how to pay the mortgage or whatever. In all those spaces, I simply try to be with Jesus: I try to think with him. I try to see my thoughts with him. That’s all. No more but no less, either.

The other aspect of that quote from the text that I appreciate is the difference between littleness and grandeur. In the context of that section, it is making a clear distinction between things of the world and things of God.

Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory (T-15.III.1:5-6).

Eschatology is a word that refers to endings. In Christianity, it reflects the so-called end times, the end of the world. Eschatology is a kind of world-negation – either because God is coming to end the world or because we are going to leave it by finding God. The course is not so dissimilar, really. The afore-mentioned passage clearly indicates that we cannot find peace or joy or meaning in the world because it is so little – indeed, it is the very manifestation of littleness. The world is not sufficient unto God – and so we who are God’s creations, one with God, and creating alike God cannot be content with it or in it.

Thus, an ACIM student who strives for God and is vigilant for God’s presence is negating the world. That’s confusing! Our egoic self would like us to understand that negation in terms of no more cheesecake, no more hugs, no more sex, no more Emily Dickinson poems, no more midnight walks with the dogs, no more riding horses with our daughters, no more this and no more that.

But we are not giving anything up. We are not turning away from the world so much as revising or rethinking the world. We are in it to learn how to undo it. And so we eat the cheesecake and keep Jesus in mind. We make love and keep Jesus in mind. We play tag with the kids and keep Jesus in mind. We change the oil in the car and keep Jesus in mind. And so on. That’s it – and it’s hard to accept sometimes that it’s enough. Just staying close to the idea of Jesus in our mind is enough to undo the world and deliver us to the gates of Heaven.

Defending an Illusion

The first and biggest illusion is our identification the body. Conflating it with self is the surest way to demean that self – to make it vulnerable, temporary and degraded. When we talk about defending illusions, this is the biggie – this is the one upon which so many others rest. When we are no longer insanely devoted to this idea that we are the container and not the content that fills it, then we are going to know real freedom. We are going to remember our identity in God.

Defending an illusion is the ego’s great raison d’etre – it is how it came into effect and it is how it sustains itself. We cannot bear the loveliness of what we are in truth – indeed, we actively resist that love. We are sure that we have broken with God and that God is angry to the point of vengeance and – more to the point – at the deepest levels, we want that. We want to be God. That’s how special we believe we are – we think we are God.

But you see, the egoic self knows something – it knows that despite its yearning for power and eternity and all of that – it isn’t that. It knows there is something else. It knows that the thoughts of God are its undoing. And fearing that – determined above all else to preserve itself – it hides as much as it can in the body. Indeed, the body’s frailty and impermanence is the best case the ego can make that we are not God. And yet – even as it makes that argument – the ego hates the body, because it does not want to die with it.

This is the sort of craziness that defies logic. I think understanding it – at least the rough outlines – is important. The ego is subtle at times and vicious at others but its goal never changes. It wants to survive. It does not want to die.

It is only be allowing the ego to be undone – by sharing it with the Holy Spirit, taking our lead from Jesus – that we can learn that what we are in truth cannot be killed. It cannot be injured. It is perfectly whole and perfectly safe and has been that way forever and will remain so forever as well.

Often, we say that our lives are on big illusion – “it’s all a big illusion,” we say. I say be careful of being dismissive and – I say this from experience – from faking an understanding of the metaphysics that underlie the course. The ego is a big fan of intellectual appreciation – it can so easily use it as a tool of comparison. I’m not as smart as that student and not as awakened as that one. And so forth. Illusions are not undone by reason but by a love that has nothing whatsoever to do with the body.

The ego exerts maximum vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together. The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from you awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominance (T-4.V.1:3-4).

That love is a kind of attention. It is an awareness that disregards the ego’s voice – its judgment, its insistence, its guilty insinuations and its angry demands. This love simply observes – it sees. What is seen without judgment is seen with the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit sees and finds out of accord with the thoughts of God, it simply dissoves. It undoes on our behalf. And with each such undoing, we are made a little more whole. We are brought a little bit closer to truth.

Our best hope is not to defend illusions but to give up on them entirely. Let them be! Who cares? They are dust and detritus blown by the ego’s idiotic ramblings and scramblings. They can obscure the truth for a little while but of themselves they are without substance. There is nothing to defend – we are not under attack and even if we were, what we are is perfectly impregnable and impervious.

We can start opening the space for undoing by gently catching ourselves as we focus on the body. Maybe it shows up in fatigue or hunger or lust. I have to have this! I have to have that! And suddenly, our well-being is so integrated with the body that the two – self and body – are hardly distinguishable. Tease them apart. Don’t worry about being hungry – just look at the hunger with Jesus. Don’t worry that you have crazy thoughts when you’re tired at work. Just look at the thoughts with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to be well – that’s going to be taken care of for us. We simply have to want to be well – it takes the briefest moment, just a flash of longing. I want to remember who I am. And then you have opened the door and all the help you need pours through. It’s already happened. It’s already done.

Why Coherence Matters

The inclination to judge something – a person, an idea, a situation – as either good or bad and then to react accordingly is part of our biological heritage. It is what the brain does. Viewed in terms of evolution, one can appreciate why this happened. The organism – our body – has a survival instinct. It wants to live. In order to do that, it needs to recognize food and water that is safe to consume. It needs to recognize that a sabre tooth tiger poses a physical threat. It needs to distinguish between a human being who approaches with hand outstretched in welcome and one in whose hand a bloody knife is wielded.

So far as its capacity to judge goes, the human brain’s evolution has been intense and even sophisticated. Perhaps complex is a better word. Having figured out that fire was useful in many ways – it provide light against darkness, heat to be warmed by and to prepare food by – the human brain proceeded to tackle the question of how to make fire safely, consistently and predictably. Lightening is not the best or mots reliable source of fire! And then, having so learned how to make it, one learned how to carry it and nurture it and shape it to circumstances. There is a difference between a cooking fire and a light by which to walk through shadows. You can follow this developing – track it – from those first dangerous and uncontrollable fires all the way to figuring out how nuclear fission works. It’s just a process, one step leading to the other.

Seeing that process, can we also question it? I don’t mean challenging it on academic grounds – arguing about whether it tracked this way or that way and when the specific movement occurred and so forth – but rather: can we question its necessity? For example, cooked meat offers a greater degree of safe and sustainable nourishment than uncooked or undercooked meat. When the winter winds blow, a fire is not just a question of comfort but of survival. Can we agree that at that level, the brain’s activity made sense? That the emerging understanding of fire – as a form of energy that once harnessed facilitates in helpful ways the biological imperative to survive – was a net positive.

But the brain didn’t stop there. It kept going. It figured out at some point that the destructive powers of fire – fearful in the extreme – might also be contained in ways that could be directed at one’s enemies. Fire wasn’t just a personal boon but a weapon, too. And so we kept studying it and refining our use of it. We did something similar in the field of agriculture and shelter, in politics and economics. And at some point – it is hard to say precisely where and when – we crossed a line. We stopped seeing the evolution of mechanics and culture in terms of what could sustain the organism. Or rather, the evolution outstripped our capacity to evaluate each development on its merits. The brain just goes. And goes.

Thus, the sensibility of fire eventually becomes nuclear power and we have nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. The comfort and security that our far distant ancestors could only dream about has become a reality. But at the same time we have introduced an instability that effectively renders all our progress moot. We have made it very easy to ruin the world. Our ancestors wouldn’t have conceived that. Wise minds would have created differently.

For example, I often remark to myself while wandering through old New England cemeteries – a habit of mine – how tragic it is that so many children died before reaching adulthood. In 1850, amongst white families, nearly 217 infants per 1,000 died. In black families, the rate was 340. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. over the past three years averages just over seven deaths. That’s quite a reduction. And – certainly as a father and hopefully as a member of the human race – I am corresponding gratified that medicine has evolved in ways that make that reduction possible. I don’t think anybody would argue that’s a bad thing.

Yet the same human brain that managed to creatively and technically solve such a tragic problem also cast a violant pall over the world in which those children live longer. In 1850, disease and malnutrition could wipe out close to thirty percent of children. Nuclear war can take out virtually all of them.

That’s not a win-win situation.

It is, however, a powerful example of incoherence: devoting our problem-solving capacity to a “solution” that can only yield greater problems.It is easy to see how saving children’s lives makes sense – but nuclear power and weapons are hardly so logical. It is as if we are unable to discriminate or exercise control over the effects of our reasoning. Politicians might argue that nuclear missiles ensure a nation’s survival but this is only true – if it is true at all – under such grim scenarios that nobody should want to make the argument. Means and ends are wildly out of alignment. And we seem increasingly incapably of making them coherent – that is, bringing them into alignment.

I am interested in the possibility that we cannot solve this problem by the means at our disposal. Thought – the brain’s output – is powerful, often in admirable ways, but it lacks the means to self-correct. What I am calling wisdom is really just the capacity to be self-aware and self-reflective and it seems to be largely if not entirely absent. Wisdom sees the incoherence inherent in thought and sees too the way that thought denies its incoherence – by obscuring it or by projecting it outward. In this sense, wisdom is not a new way of thinking but a way of being aware of thinking. If we can watch thought – at the personal level and the cultural level both – without judging it then we create some space in which a new movement is possible.

It is easy to say that nuclear war is not rational. Plenty of writers and thinkers and soldiers and politicians have said that over the years. Ever since the first bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there have been voices challenging the ethics and morality of utilizing such power. But the presence of those voices – the persuasiveness of their arguments, their organization into focused collectives, and so forth – has done nothing to slow or contain the growth of that power. We have created and set loose the very chaos and instability that we once sought to inure ourselves against.

If we see this, then we might begin to say that opposition as we traditionally understand it – logic, persuasion, demonstration and so forth – are not working. Perhaps we might even begin to see that they are part of the problem because they arise from – and reinforce – the source of the problem. If we can look at this without judgment – if we can be aware of what is happening and our thought is implicated in what is happening, then we can become aware of the incoherence, which is often quite subtle, quite hard to catch. But even a glimpse – just seeing that what we are doing is not working either at the production of nuclear power end or at the opposition to that power – can help us to establish a ground from which some new possibility might emerge.

Indeed, it seems to me that under present circumstances there is no greater calling.

 

Defense Mechanisms and A Course in Miracles

When we think of defense mechanisms in psychological or spiritual terms, we usually mean a way of thinking – of projection, say, or denial – by which the truth is intentionally obscured. The egoic self perceives as a threat and so engages in some pattern of thought – some habit of thought, a reflex of thought really – that keeps it at bay. In terms of A Course in Miracles, we might say that all defense mechanisms, regardless of their particular form, are in the nature of a wall. They maintain a separation – of self from Truth, self from Source, self from God.

Defense mechanisms are not – in the most ideal sense of the word – natural, but they are certainly common. They are reminders of the fact that both of the course’s scribes were Freudian psychotherapists. Freud defined defense mechanisms as psychological weapons wielded by the subconscious in order to manipulate reality. In A Course in Miracles which, while influenced by Sigmund Freud, also breaks with Freudian thought in notable ways, we all experience them. As we practice ACIM or in another spiritual tradition we are able to undo them. And the deeper we go, the more defenses we find. The undoing is somewhat constant – until we reach that place where the choice is very stark and we can undo them at their source, eradicating both the specific forms of defenses that remain as well as the inclination to create new ones.

I think it is helpful to remember that we are defensive even against Jesus. Whatever our practice, whatever its symbols of healing and love, on some level we are resistant to them. On the surface we can gush about how wonderful they are, wax rhapsodic about their virtues and impact on our lives but deeper down we don’t want they have to offer. The egoic self is entrenched and will not relinquish its position willingly.

Because our defense mechanisms are products of the egoic self and its belief system and thought patterns, we cannot undo them when we are relating only to the egoic self. Some other energy is going to have to enter the process. We have to change our minds but not in a superficial way. It is not simply a question of saying, “well, I am defensive but I am not going to do that anymore.” It has to resonate in a deeper way, a more holistic way. If it is coming only from the ego, from the shallow levels of pain and pleasure, then it won’t work except temporarily. And we want a more permanent solution.

So it is good to start by seeing our defense systems in action. This is quite an accomplishment in and of itself! The ego does not appreciate light of any kind. So as soon as we make a commitment to seeing egoic thought patterns at work – observing how they arise, how they operate, what their effects are and then deciding whether we still want those effects or not – we are undermining the ego. We are relating to our self at a deeper level. And we will know this because we will see – at least initially – how hard it is to watch the egoic self at work. It resists any effort to really know it.

There is nothing for that difficulty but to persevere. Keep looking. At first it will be hard. Your mind will drift. You will slip into excuses – I’m only behaving this way for justifiable reasons. And so forth. But soon you will come to a place where the inclination to judge what is happening in your thoughts will loosen its grip. You’ll be able to see yourself think. When that happens, patterns emerge. You begin to see that the ego is very quick and slippery but it is not especially complicated.

I will give you a personal example. For a long time I was an angry person. I knew that there were aspects of my childhood that had been painful and unfair – situations where power balances were askew and so I was unable to protect or defend myself. No wonder I was angry – it was a sort of delayed response to an unjust past. Nobody could argue with me. Nobody could say I should do it otherwise. But one day I had to admit that believing in that narrative was a way of explaining the anger but it did not relieve the anger. It just displaced it.

On day, after I’d found A Course in Miracles and had been studying it for some time, I saw that whenever I felt anger it was always a response to fear. Maybe you are thinking, “wow, you never had a therapist who pointed that out?” But you see, it is no good having somebody else explain it, or reading about it in a book. That is just the intellect – it is just remembering what somebody else said about your problem. Real solutions are born at the level of personal insight. You see the anger and then – like lightning flashing – you see the fear.

Once that happened, I never felt anger the same way again. Every time it showed up, I would just let it go in order to see the fear that lay beyond it. And the fear was always there. Pretty soon, I didn’t think of myself as a guy with anger issues – I thought of myself as a man in fear.

The ego does not appreciate that! The anger had a story attached to it. It was all about me. It was always easy to justify by pointing to external circumstances – difficult aspects of childhood, the annoying behavior of coworkers, economic injustice, whatever. But the fear was different. It was more amorphous. It didn’t seem to attach to anything so much as just exist – like a cloud that lay over the land as far as the eye could see in four directions.

So you sit with what is revealed. You get past this problem and you find another one. And you sit with it. I sat with the fear. I held it up to the light. Let’s look at this: how does it show up? What does it do? What does it make me want to do? And so forth. Again, it is a question of just looking – looking with Jesus, if you will. Or the Holy Spirit. We are saying to the egoic self, I can’t make use of you in this situation so I’m going to turn elsewhere.

Of course, that “turning” is symbolic – but it is incredibly helpful. It is incredibly powerful. We are opening up regions of mind that have hitherto been left darkened and empty. In essence, we are unifying our thought – bringing the power of Mind to bear on our fractured and separated little mind.

When we are able to look at our defense mechanisms in this way, we are blessed with insight. And insight always undoes the mechanism, enabling us to go even deeper into the question of who and what we are in truth. I am not saying that it is easy but it is simple. It is really all that we are called to do – bring the light of understanding to bear on our conflicts and confusions. As we do that – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly – they are dissolved and a corresponding peace enters. Joy heightens. And we are able to continue the necessary deepening, the necessary sharing.

Solving Problems with A Course in Miracles

Yesterday, while mowing the lawn, I fell into a funk. I remembered a lie that I told many years ago. It was a big lie to somebody who is a relatively important and consistent part of my life. I’ve never been called out on it and now and then I remember it and wonder if I will be. It marks a low point in that particular relationship and I always feel bad when I think about it.

This is a post about solving problems with A Course in Miracles. Feeling terrible is not mandatory, suffering does not build character, and it’s okay to be happy.

I decided to look closely at the lie. I remembered the circumstances of it: the fear I felt in the moment, the anger. The person to whom I lied has not always been nice to me and has sometimes been affirmatively mean. There were people in the room who were supposed to have my back who did not. It was understandable that from a frightened and injured place, I made a mistake. It was defensive and really, who could blame me?

That is how the ego “solves” problems: it breaks them into little pieces. You think you’ve got a problem? You’ve really got fifty problems. And each of those problems? Yep. Fifty more in each of them. Looking closely at the lie only complicated my feelings. Maybe I felt justified in the lie but now I was mad at the people who were supposed to support me and didn’t. So I had to look closely at those relationships. You know what I mean?

It is a web from which we can never quite untangle ourselves. And the ego assures us that our “struggles” are sincere efforts to fix the problem. And so on and on it goes.

A Course in Miracles would end that. It teaches us that we only have one problem – our perceived separation from God – and that that problem has already been solved.

Everyone in the world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the solution that solves them all is to be accepted. Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks the problem is something else (W-pI.79.2:1-3)?

No matter what the problem seems to be, it is always the same problem: we believe that we are separated from God and thus must suffer the consequences. When I told the lie, it was because in that moment I did not accept that God and I were wholly one but rather apart.

But – and I think this is really the point I wanted to make – the lie is not the problem either. The problem was that while mowing the lawn, I felt separated from God. So I pulled a story from the past – one of my better ones for “proving” that me and God are on opposite terms – and used that to feel crappy.

Is that clear? I am trying to say that no matter what we are thinking – what movie from the past we’re playing (I told this crazy lie) or what fear of the future we’re indulging (I wonder when I’ll get caught lying and what kind of shame and humiliation I’ll feel) – the only issue is that in the present moment we have denied our fundamental essential unity with God. Period. There is nothing else to solve ever. Nothing else ever happened.

The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved (W-pI.79.4:1).

How do we solve the problem of separation? Well, it is helpful to remember that in course terms it has already been solved (see ACIM lesson 80). To experience the problem as solved . . . I bring my attention to the moment – me, the lawn, the mower, the neighbor’s kids, the chickadees, whatever. God is there – I don’t have to do anything. I just have to be willing to realize the truth. If that level of awareness doesn’t work, then I pray. I ask for help. Sometimes I literally fall to my knees and say, “help me for Christ’s sake!”

It takes some time, yes. And we all slip back into egoic modes of thought. But it’s okay. Keep trying. Pray and meditate. Study the course or whatever text or tradition appeals to you. One of these days, we’re not going to feel guilty anymore!

What Do You Do if You Skip the Daily ACIM Lesson?

A Course in Miracles is best understood as a course – a text with accompanying lessons and a manual for teachers. It is true that we can use these resources as we see fit – and that what works for one student is not necessarily going to work for another – but I also think that we are giving short thrift to ACIM if we get too casual about how we study and practice the course. In that light, people sometimes ask: what should you do when you skip your daily ACIM lesson?

I think there are two levels to answering that question: a practical sort of day-to-day level, kind of like telling somebody what to do when they forget their homework. And there is another level where we can actually learn something valuable and transformational because we skipped the lesson. If we choose to see it rightly, we are never not learning.

On the practical level, if you forget to do a lesson, just take a deep breath and resolve to remember tomorrow. If you forget tomorrow, then take a deep breath and resolve to get to it the next day. Very few students actually go through the full gamut of three hundred sixty-five lessons without missing one or two. And given that we are not supposed to become ascetics or monks, the ordinary events of our daily life are sometimes going to crowd in and overwhelm or obscure our practice it happens.

If you are serious about your study – if you are intent on making this your spiritual practice – then it simply does not matter that you are sometimes forgetful or casual. It is your willingness to continue – to return to the practice itself – that will save you.

Lesson 27 is very much to the point on what happens when we miss the application of a lesson – or some aspect of it.

You will probably miss several applications, and perhaps quite a number. Do not be disturbed by this, but do try to keep on your schedule from then on (W-pI.27.4:4-5).

That gentle admonition – and it is gentle indeed – leads me to the second level learning raised by the question of skipping or missing ACIM lessons: there are no consequences. It is worth repeating: there are no consequences.

If you look closely at lesson 27 – and it is hardly the only lesson that states this or its equivalent – you will see that Jesus is very clear. You cannot make a mistake. There is no examination. There are no conditions. And because of that, there are no consequences. You don’t have to be worried, you don’t have to compare yourself to other students, you don’t have to build yourself up or tear yourself down.

You simply have to practice the course to the best of your ability, without stress or anxiety. It is outside every aspect of our lives in the world.

That is a revolutionary idea! We are so invested in being right and reaping the benefits and, conversely, of being wrong and suffering the consequences. It is so ingrained in us and it is such a source of worry and fear and guilt. And the course is teaching us that this kind of thinking – right and wrong, good and bad – simply doesn’t exist. It’s not real. There is tremendous liberation in that.

So don’t worry if you miss a lesson. Remember that you have already passed this course. You are already a teacher of God ready to save the world. Your remembrance of this simply beautiful fact is only a matter of time. Come back to the course. Come back to the lessons. Choose again, in confidence and love.