Response, Reaction and A Course in Miracles

Response is not often called for. Things happen, both internally and externally, but we don’t have to respond to them. We don’t have to act.

Often, when we sit quietly and do nothing in particular, we notice that life goes on. If we are really attentive, then we will also see that what goes on includes us. It even includes our attention. It is like a river, a movement which enfolds us at every level. It is hard to talk about intelligently or clearly.

Response is different from reaction. Reaction is what we notice after: the bee stings us and we react and then after we see what occurred. Or somebody steps on our toe and we shout “how dare you step on my toe! I am going to hire a lawyer!” And then – a moment later, an hour later, a year later – we see what happened.

It is not that reaction is outside our control – it is not – but that we are only aware of it after the fact.

Response, on the other hand, follows deliberation – at least a little. Something happens and instead of reacting, we give it space. There is a moment or two – sometimes more – of reflection. We see the potential for anger or self-righteousness or whatever and we just sit with it. Maybe we will do something and maybe we won’t.

It’s important not to confuse response as being somehow better than reaction. It’s not, at least not inherently. Both are actions. Both can emerge from either right- or wrong-minded thinking. They’re just different, that’s all. And it’s a good difference to notice.

There is a quality of attention that nurtures our practice of A Course in Miracles. It is a way of sharing awareness with our healed mind. The field of our awareness picks up so much: sunlight on brooks, black bears in trees, hurt feelings when people don’t respond the way we want, anger when the government does this instead of that. We’re hungry, we have to be in a meeting in ten minutes, the lawn needs to be mowed . . .

What A Course in Miracles calls the ego – a self made to substitute for our healed mind – adopts a judgmental approach to this. Sunlight and black bears are good. Mosquitoes and ATVs are bad. Hunger is okay when there’s a rhubarb pie waiting; it’s bad when we’re driving on the highway. And so forth.

That is what passes for attention in the world: but it is merely judgment based on desire. It is merely the body giving credence to perceived orders of need, all of which place it at the center.

There is another way to be attentive and that is to allow the healed mind – the Holy Spirit – to manage the flow of our awareness. This is the opposite of judgment because the healed mind is focused not on appetite but on what is real vs. what is false. And because it can effortlessly distinguish between them, it is unafraid. It is never overwhelmed. There is never any basis for guilt.

When we give attention to the healed mind, there is only inner peace. We do not feel stressed or upset. Whatever enters our awareness is gently lit by Love. It’s hard to write about, but you know the feeling. You cannot be disturbed. It’s very simple and natural.

When we are in that space, there is no question of “what should I do?” Doing flows in that space, surely and naturally.

Why aren’t we always in that space? What happens?

The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort (T-4.IV.7:1-2).

Those are potentially liberating sentences! They suggest that engagement with God is natural, a sort of default state from which we can stray but which we can never impair or denigrate. The problem isn’t that God is distant or hard to reach or demanding but that we are unwilling to make the consistent effort to ensure the divine contact.

And why do we not make that effort? Because we believe that we aren’t worthy of it. If we question this – our worthiness or lack thereof – we will see that it, too, reflects our sense of separation from God. If we aren’t worthy, then we must be something other than a Creation of God.

We all believe this on some level. We wouldn’t be here – reading, writing – if we didn’t. And yet it’s worth questioning, isn’t it? It’s worth considering there might be another way – a gentler way, a more natural way. That is the premise of A Course in Miracles: are we ready to try a different approach to God? Are we ready to question our separation?

Thus, when we find ourselves vexed by the question of right action – of what response, if any, is required under any given circumstances – we are really staring squarely at our separation from God. So long as we insist on action, on choosing this action vs. that one, then we are working from the assumption that we are not what God created.

To be in the mind of atonement is to give over one’s attention: to let go of the way of thinking that says “we” know what’s best and it’s “our” job to do it. The separation is simply a habit of thinking that God is not present and so it’s up to us to handle things. When we are ready, we can let that go. Nothing is required but willingness: to accept there is another way, and to wait as it reveals itself.

Atonement is Collaborative

I am often reminded – always at fortuitous times – that we wake up together. A Course in Miracles means this at both the gross physical level and at the spiritual level. Atonement is collaborative.

Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to someone’s dreeam of sickness and death. It means you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned, instead, on you. Thus they have no effects (T-28.IV.1:1-4).

Attention is an important aspect of studying A Course in Miracles. In order to offer separation-based thinking to the Holy Spirit (which is our healed, or unsplit, mind), we have to be aware that we are thinking that way. We have to see it.

The Holy Spirit is not an abstract entity floating in space. It is, rather, our capacity to be attentive without judgment. In a sense, when we are aware that we are thinking in a way that God would not, and we are not upset or disturbed by this fact but can simply let it pass, then we can be sure we are thinking with the Holy Spirit.

The course’s devotion to Freud – and by extension, to the psychotherapy model – is neither an accident nor an afterthought. At its best – and very generally speaking – psychotherapy aims at a level of self-awareness sufficient to alter undesirable or unhelpful behaviors. We realize that we are repeating patterns and that recognition allows us to adopt new strategies or shift gears or what have you.

We are doing something similar when we practice A Course in Miracles. We are becoming aware of habits of thought (from which behavior proceeds) that are predicated on a perceived separation of God. We learn that there is another way to perceive and, in time, adopt that new perception. We begin to identify with the Holy Spirit.

That is what the course means when it asks us not to indulge one another’s dream of separation. You and I are having the same bad dream: the course invites us to look past that, to accept the possibility – and then to see the possibility as firm reality – that we are joined as a single radiant extension of God’s Love.

[S]eparation is but an empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? (T-28.III.5:2-4)

Our perception of ourselves as separated bodies leading personal and highly differentiated lives is literally the space between what is in Truth already joined. Inner peace comes when we accept that space as illusory .

Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow? (T-28.III.5:5)

Attention helps us to become aware of that space. Expressions of love dissolve it.

For a little while, our expression of love must assume a form. That is not a detriment but a gift! We can actively seek out those forms of existence in which God’s love is perceived most clearly and joyfully and then extend them. This not effortful but natural – in line with how one wave joins another on the sea.

What is the simplest and most natural expression of love of which you are capable? There is a way that God’s Love shines through you in very practical ways, blessing everyone it encounters. What is it?

Your savior waits for healing, and the world waits with him. Nor are you apart from it. For healing will be one or not at all, its oneness being where the healing is . . . There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation (T-28.VII.2:3-5, 7).

And so we choose love: at the level of spirit, where we know we are Love, and at the level of form, where the tired world awaits our kindness in order to remember we are One.

The Holy Instant and Inner Peace

That we have problems in the world perhaps goes without saying. We get a flat tire or we don’t have enough  money to pay the mortgage or we can’t find a library book that’s due. A Course in Miracles does not deny our experience of problems like this, but it does suggest that we are trying to solve them in ways that do not lead to inner peace.

For example, if our tire is flat, and the spare is flat too, and our phone battery is dead, and it starts to rain, we are perhaps going to call the situation problematic. Inherent in calling it a problem is our idea of a solution: we need someone to help us fix the tire so we can get to where it’s dry (and plug in our phone).

At an even simpler level, if we say the problem is we are hungry, then the solution is that we must eat.

In other words, as soon as we judge something as “a problem,” we have expressed a preference for its solution.

The world asks but one question. It is this: “Of these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?” Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference (T-27.IV.4:4-9).

The real problem with solutions on worldly terms to the world’s problems is that they are not solutions at all. We can fix the flat tire today but the spark plug is going to go tomorrow. The body is always hungry for something: food, water, sex, meditation, dancing, sleep, poetry and so forth.

The world’s solutions are not permanent but rather expressions of preference. I’d like to not be standing in the rain with a dead phone. I’d rather be writing poems and drinking coffee than heading in to work. And so forth.

None of that is to say that we can’t feed ourselves or enjoy our relationships or take care of our cars. We can and we should. But it is important to see how those things can never – of themselves – bring us to inner peace.

It is possible to have an answer to every problem the world offers right now. In fact, right now is the only time in which God’s answer is possible.

Jesus recognizes our quandary perfectly. On the one hand, the world in which we find ourselves as bodies is a place of endless and unsolvable conflict. Hence our problem-laden lives. On the other hand, God has given us the answer which means that we have no problems.

Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind, solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching another state of mind in which the answer is already there (T-27.IV.2:1-3).

That state of mind is the holy instant. When we are in the present moment, free of past worries and future fears, all our problems dissolve. Judgment always involves time: we compare the present to the past, find the present wanting, and so project an improved future.

Attempt to solve no problem but within the holy instant’s surety. For there the problem will be answered and resolved (T-27.IV.3:1-2).

How do we do this? First, we can ask for help. We seek a space of interior quiet and ask for help in seeing things differently. We can simply say to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, “I’m having a hard time here and if you can lend a little light in whatever form makes sense to you, that’d be great. Thanks.”

Prayer can quiet troubled minds. It almost always reminds us that we are not alone.

The other thing that we can do is simply notice that we’re not in the holy instant. We want things to be different – a better car, a better phone, a better driving companion, whatever. We don’t beat ourselves up for that. We simply notice it. We give attention to the fact that we are in a place of separation, not atonement.

Those two steps almost always restore to us some measure of inner peace. Prayer and attention are witnesses to our deep willingness to be transformed, to give way to the light of Christ. In the end, that is the only answer: to accept that we are extensions of God’s Love, the way roses and whales and starlight are extensions of God’s love. This love has always been and will always be and so nothing – not even death – can affect it.

Yes, that seems to be far down the road. I get that. I feel that way too sometimes. But I can also tell you that as we deepen our practice and commitment, guided by A Course in Miracles, we begin to sense that peace is not far off at all. Rather, it is what we are in truth, and all we are doing now is remembering. At any moment – even this one if you want – you can experience all there is to know of God’s deep, abiding and perfect Love.

On Charging Money and A Course in Miracles

In the consideration about whether and how to expand my teaching in the ACIM community, money was always the biggest stumbling block. Is it fair to charge for spiritual-related services? Isn’t money distracting at best and downright evil at worst?

For me, money is that symbol – that illusion – wherein the separation from God is perceived in exquisitely sharp and painful detail. It has been that way as long as I can remember. I have always believed at the deepest level that money is the single biggest impediment to Love that the world has ever known.

Challenging – and undoing – that belief has been my single biggest forgiveness of this lifetime, and I am sure that I am only beginning.

What direction, if any, does A Course in Miracles offer its students with respect to money?

Money is part of our experience in the world of separation. It is as much an illusion as anything else – from the grass that makes up the front lawn to the maple syrup we pour on our pancakes to the children that we call “daughter” or “son.”

As such, money is neither good nor evil. It’s nothing. The metaphysics of the course are very clear on this.

Yet few of us perceive the world with that kind of clarity. Most of us – because it is the condition of being here -believe in degrees of importance and value. We love our kids differently than kids we’ve never met across the globe. We believe that cancer is worse than a headache.

But illusions – like miracle – are not subject to any hierarchy. Any one of them – money, say – is as illusory as the next. No more and no less.

So from a course perspective, money is not a means of communication nor a form of energy but simply an illusion.

At the same time, it rarely does us any good to substitute a working knowledge of course metaphysics for an actual experience of peace and joy. We can walk around and say “money is an illusion” until we’re blue in the face but if in our hearts we hate money – or lust after money – then we’re in the illusion as deep as we can go.

An it is very important to be honest about that. The course doesn’t want to turn us into metaphysicians. It wants to help us look at what blocks our awareness of Love. For me it’s money. For you it may be something else.

An honest appraisal of one’s attitude towards money, then, is very helpful. If we believe that having money reflects alignment with God and Godly Love – if we equate an abundance of cash with an abundance of divine Love – then we are confused about about what God is, what we are and what love is.

And if we believe that denigrating money somehow purifies and bring us closer to God – you know, because saints are poor and always hungry – then we are also confused about God and self and love.

In a sense, the clearest attitude towards money that would be consistent with ACIM is this: on Monday we wake up and discover we’ve got a million dollars in the bank and so we smile and say “life is good.” On Tuesday we wake up and all that money is gone forever and so we smile and say “life is good.”

And we mean it both days.

In other words, the happiness towards which A Course in Miracles guides us is not contingent on what appears or does not appear in the illusory world in which our illusory bodies lead illusory lives. Any belief to the contrary is the separation.

That is true whether we are talking about sex or food or money or art or houses or jobs or anything. As soon as we’ve judged it, we’ve invested in it. We’ve made it real. It doesn’t matter if we think it’s good or bad or some combination thereof. We’ve strayed from the essence of the early course lessons which remind us – I am paraphrasing – that we don’t know a damned thing about reality.

So we have to be attentive to where we are – our beliefs, our opinions, our attitudes, our convictions. That is where the separation is operative and so that is where the Holy Spirit stands ever ready to lead us to atonement.

We get healed when we go straight to the problem with our eyes wide open.

That is what I am doing when I charge for teaching: I am trusting that God’s Love will not be withdrawn or diminished because I am doing this. It is a leap of faith into the mouth of the lion.

It is a chance to learn – yet again – that God’s love is not conditional and is always given, always present, always available. Period.

Really, that is what our lives in the world are in the end: repeated opportunities to learn – in different forms, of course – that God’s love is here now.

Our attention to these learning opportunities facilitates salvation.

I was mulling all of this over for weeks on end – talking to people whose judgment I trust, reading and praying. About two weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a clear and sure voice in my mind: “Charge money or don’t charge money, but get on with the  teaching.”

Charge money or don’t charge money but get on with the teaching.

The clarity was lovely and impeccable: Jesus was saying that the money was not the important element. The expanded teaching was. And the teaching mattered not because I have something you don’t, or anything like that, but because I don’t know what I have and can only learn it through teaching.

This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you (T-16.III.4:1-2).

When we place our faith not in ourselves but in the Holy Spirit, we learn. Miracles happen and as we witness them, we learn a little more about what we are in truth.

This experience is different for all of us but the essence is always the same. What do we learn when we step into the very conflict that appears most full of risk and most unlikely to be solved?

We learn that we are not alone.

[t]he Holy Spirit is part of you. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together (T-16.III.5:1-3).

That is knowledge to which all our learning in this vale of illusions is directed. Money is not the point, teachers are not the point and belief systems aren’t even the point.

The point is that we have forgotten the only fact of our identity: that we are one with God, outside time and space, beyond form and name and judgment altogether.

This is not the peace of the world which always passes. This is the peace that surpasses understanding – including that of our brains.

So how do we get to it again?

We look at what we fear. For me it is money. For you it will be something else: you know what it is. And when we look clearly at this fear – which means we engage with it – we take it onto the dance floor and give it a spin – it dissolves before us. It fades.

And then – for a moment – like stars perceived though a thinning veil of mist – we perceive the Light and Love that composes us and awaits only our acceptance to shine a little bit brighter, that we might all go home, sooner rather than later.

**

If you’re interested, Liz Cronkhite has written some thoughtful and articulate posts about money and A Course in Miracles here and here).

On Teaching and A Course in Miracles

As many of you know, I am a teacher. I came to this profession eight or nine years ago somewhat by surprise. I was required – as a condition of my Master’s Degree in Fine Arts – to conduct a teaching practicum. It terrified me. I was ready to quit the program rather than face students. I don’t know why. I actually initiated the withdrawal procedure.

But then something – that still, small voice with which I am becoming increasingly familiar – urged me in no uncertain terms to do this thing. The fear didn’t evaporate but the directive was clear. I didn’t feel as if I had a choice. So I corralled a few willing students and for ten weeks taught them about writing. I shook with fear the day I started and with tears the day I stopped because I didn’t want it to end.

I have been actively teaching ever since.

Soon after I got my sea legs with respect to A Course in Miracles I decided that I was going to teach it. Yet oddly, each time I moved in that direction, I faltered. It wasn’t clear that teaching was the right action. So I stepped back. Every now and again I would check in: now should I teach? Now?

A few years ago, I felt like it would be okay to do some writing about the course. I was at a bit of a creative crossroads anyway, and this seemed like a reasonable path. It was a form of teaching. I was pretty sure nobody would read it so why not?

So I wrote. It was okay. Some of it felt rushed. Sometimes it was clear I was just parroting other teachers – usually Ken Wapnick or Tara Singh. Sometimes I would write and think, is that true? Is that really my experience of the course?

Then, about a year and a half ago, the writing shifted. I stopped worrying so much about who read it and what they thought. I began to see it for what it is: an interior movement in the direction of wholeness that belongs not to me (or you, for that matter) but to Jesus.

Last year I came very close to expanding my teaching to include one-on-one mentoring, a newsletter and online classes. But in the end, the clarity wasn’t there. Fear remained prevalent without any mediating factor. So, again, I let it pass.

This summer, I have been given a lot of direction with respect to teaching. Some of it has come from friends and some from other teachers in the broader ACIM community. Some of it I sought out, some of it was simply given. The theme was clear: it is okay – it is perhaps more than okay now – for me to teach.

And so gingerly – softly – and I hope humbly – I am saying yes to teaching. I am taking this next step.

What does this mean practically?

First, I will continue to write as frequently as possible on this blog. There will never be any charge for this content. It is far too important on too many levels.

Second, I now offer one-on-one mentoring and audio classes. You can learn more about them on their respective pages. I am charging money – I hope fairly – for those services. Later this week I will publish a couple of posts about teaching ACIM generally and my decision to accept money in exchange for that teaching. For now, I will just say that the decision was incredibly difficult and the subject of a lot of prayer and reaching out.

If this sort of teaching is not your cup of tea – for any reason whatsoever – I respect that without qualification.

Finally, I am also offering a (free) newsletter that will come out approximately monthly (depending, of course, on how wordy I’m feeling). It will feature one (or two) articles that are a bit longer and better-researched (and better edited!) about A Course in Miracles. You can go ahead and sign up.

The first few times I wrote about A Course in Miracles on this blog, I wanted to die. I wanted to crawl under the chicken shed and not come out for at least a decade.

Eventually I realized that I am a writer and so it is natural and right to use that gift with respect to my evolving practice of A Course in Miracles. There’s no point in hiding our light beneath baskets. I try to be honest and helpful, and I learn a little more with every sentence.

I think that’s what will happen with respect to this new expansion as well. It’ll be awkward and a little bumpy to start but sooner or later it will be just another facet of my own effort to accept atonement over separation from God, Love instead of guilt and fear, and Peace instead of conflict.

I hope it’s helpful. If it’s not, no hard feelings. If you have any questions or concerns, leave a comment or drop me an email.

Finally, thank you so much for being here. I truly wish that I could pour you a cup of tea or coffee and walk quietly beside you in the New England woods that have long functioned as my chapel.

In the interim, I am here – in all the ways I feel I can be – and I am deeply grateful – more than you know – that you are here as well.

Love,
Sean

Healing Wrong Perception

One of the salient qualities of the ego is its perennial dissatisfaction. No matter what happens, it wants something else.

This is an example of what A Course in Miracles calls “wrong perception” or “misperception.” Healing it is a major focus of miracles (T-1.I.49:2).

A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking . . . it acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed (T-1.I.37:1-3).

We can observe misperception and its effect in our lives. Our goals are always shifting: we want lots of money and when we get it, we want more. Or we decide what we really want is simplicity. We get the dream job and then discover a newer, better job. Or a new sex partner. Maybe vegetarianism would bring us closer to God.

This kind of thinking can be quite subtle and we are often loathe to admit it. We want to be spiritual and sane, not greedy and insane. But faking happiness and peace are not happiness and peace. They are distractions. We don’t have to do anything for joy and peace – they are the natural result of setting the ego aside.

Letting go of the ego is what heals perception. Absent ego’s judgment, we perceive things as they are. They are no longer impeded by the ego’s goals for it. Our lives do not actually require interpreting but that is all the ego knows how to do: interpret things and assign them meaning and value, over and over. And while this keeps the ego going, for a time, it never works in terms of inner peace and happiness.

Wrong perception is the wish that things be as they are not. The reality of everything is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the condition of its reality. It is also the condition of your awareness of reality. You do not have to seek reality. It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions (T-8.IX.2:1-5).

This is very clear! The work is to learn how to do no work; or rather, to see that what we are doing is not working, and so to go slowly and quietly and see what happens when we stop insisting that we know what we’re doing, we know how things work, we know what’s best, et cetera.

The present moment is sufficient. The gift of the holy instant is our touchstone and salvation (T-15.I.15:11-11). The ego is happy to accept these concepts as ideals – it will cheerfully consent to putting them on bumper stickers – but it will resist with all its might if we try to make it center of our living.

So the question becomes: can we make contact with our desire that life – right now, right here – be other than it is? Can we see the action of wrong perception as it happens?

That is, can we ask: what do we wish was different about our life and then allow the answers – and the false logic underlying them – to come to the surface? Can we give attention to them?

And then, seeing it, can we also realize that it is only this desire to change things that brings us to grief? That stands in the way of inner peace?

Peace is simply the relinquishment of the impulse to judge the present and find it wanting. This is the essence of all the early lessons. We don’t understand what we perceive (W-pI.3), what it means (W-pI.10), or how to respond to it (W-pI.12). All we actually see – until the miracle heals out minds – is the meaning that we given everything (W-pI.2).

We come back to the beginning then. We start again in this moment simply by recognizing the ego’s desire to change everything – to look at everything, judge everything, and keep us on a path of shifting standards and perennial dissatisfaction.

The ego professes to be able to make our living happier and more peaceful by making it all different.

But there is another way: we can accept what is given precisely as it is given. We can make it all the same (T-15.XI.10:11). The Peace of God waits only on our acceptance of this gift, and to receive it as such is to heal the means by which it is given.