What Does A Course in Miracles Teach?

Someone asked me the other day: what does A Course in Miracles teach? And I foundered trying to answer it because everything I wrote seemed bent on making the course attractive to new students or me attractive as a Course writer. How hard it is to be honest! How hard to accept how little the truth asks of us – simply that we let it be.

There is a natural tendency to glorify so-called spiritual paths and to credit ourselves just for walking on them. In my own life, I did that most acutely with Buddhism. I wasn’t serious about it. I didn’t want to do the work. I liked the idea of being Buddhist – and I liked the local Buddhist culture a lot – but it didn’t resonate in a deep way.

It wasn’t until I was nearly forty that I was ready to be grounded in a spiritual path – to study the scripture, listen to the teachers and integrate a practice with my daily life. I’m hardly immune to the fantasies and prattling that characterize a lot of ACIM, but I’ve managed to stay attentive to it, and relatively disciplined, and so in a stumbling sort of way, I have made a space in which it can function.

One of the harder aspects of the course is coming to terms with the fact that it is rigorous and demanding, and that the work we are called to do is not especially sexy or appealing. We are not seeking the beauty of Love itself but rather those blocks which impede our awareness of Love itself. That is its core teaching.

And those blocks are ugly, stubborn, repellent, cunning and quite frequently terrifying. But if one is going to practice A Course in Miracles, that is the work. That is what we do.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).

It is fun to think of ourselves as truth-seekers and bringers of the light and all of that. It’s fun to call each other “brother.” But ACIM is not well-suited to clubbiness (all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and sooner or later we have to see that we aren’t really bringing light but shadow. We have to see that what this particular path calls for is not truth-seekers but people who are ready to a) look at the obstacles to truth and b) accept a guide who can undo those obstacles.

I am slowly coming to appreciate this in a very deep way. The truth is given – it is there. We don’t have to become pilgrims in search of anything. But if God, or Love, is present – right here, right now – then why can’t we see it or feel it or know it?

To be a student of A Course in Miracles is to be ready at last to focus like laser on that question. We are done looking for God. We take on faith that God is. We are ready now to consider the mind that has arranged to not only obscure God’s isness but to make even looking at that obscurity a dangerous sin. It is not for the faint of heart.

Thus, A Course in Miracles teaches us that the atonement is simply the recognition that Love is given. It dawns in our mind as we gently seek out the clouds that block it and allow Jesus and the Holy Spirit to undo them for us. It is the marriage, not the month’s rapture, to paraphrase the poet Jack Gilbert. It is the work of a lifetime. And when we begin it in earnest – and begin to sense those first faint glimmers of light – no other work will satisfy.

A Course in Miracles: Please Take Notes

Often when I step back a bit from A Course in Miracles – disentangle myself from its metaphysics, the demands a sincere ACIM practice makes (or seems to make) – I am struck by its simple origins. It began when two people agreed to try and find a way out of mutual conflict. And it began too with willingness with respect to relating to Jesus.

“This is A Course in Miracles. Please take notes.” That was the first clear directive that Helen Schucman recieved from what she initially called “the voice,” and what she later identified as Jesus. What follows is well-known. She did take notes – quite faithfully, in a sort of stubborn way – and shared them with Bill Thetford.

Relationship – with Jesus and with one’s brothers and sisters – is the ground of the Course. Its helpfulness is premised on being open to our healed mind (symbolized by Jesus and the Holy Spirit) and extending love to others.

In time we learn those two forms of love – listening and loving – are not separate but more like two sides of the same coin.

So we can learn a lot, I think, simply by focusing on that ideal of relationship, that powerful early example the scribes offer of kindness and willingness. It wasn’t that Schucman and Thetford set out to create a new spiritual path, or become popular gurus, or get rich off a vedantic revision of Christianity. It was simply a desire to be kinder and gentler in relationship with others.

And – importantly – it also reflected a willingness to hear Jesus and then do what was asked. This is as true of Thetford as Schucman. As she says in the preface, Bill had his “special assignment” too.

Thus, if we look at the origins of the Course, we might ask where we are in respect to it: are we working diligently at being nicer to people, especially perhaps those people to whom we don’t really want to be nice? Are we making space in our life for a relationship with Jesus, one that is not premised on answers to our questions?

Maybe we can ask: if Jesus asked us to “takes notes,” would we?

Of course, we are at different places with respect to how this works – and even how it ought to work. I know that. The Course meets us where we are and it’s no use pretending otherwise. Often I think I’m half a step away from Heaven and then I’m gently reminded how much work remains. It’s okay. You reach a point where the expectation of divine reward subsides a little. You trust that what is happening is what is supposed to be happening. The ego’s ranting and raving becomes a little less influential. There is some space in which peace is not a stranger.

Perhaps it is never a bad idea to keep things simple. For me, sometimes, that takes the form of stepping back from the Course, looking at it more generally and more gently. I try to avoid heavy duty analysis in favor of gratitude. I come away remembering that all that is really going on here is that a) I am learning to be in relationship with my right mind and b) I am learning to be in relationship with you. The one facilitates the other.

And truly, that is the work of a lifetime.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant –

In 1872, Emily Dickinson wrote a poem (1263 – “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”) that neatly sums up how human beings awaken to knowledge of God. When she wrote this poem, Dickinson’s greatest work was behind her; there is a sense in which these eight lines feel almost like an afterthought. But in truth, it is one of her finest pieces of work, a helpful note for those who turn to her not only as a wonderful poet but also as a spiritual preceptor.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
the Truth’s superb surprise

We are by nature bent on discovering the truth of our wholeness – that is, we know at the deepest level that we are separated and broken and dimly remember a state in which we were not. Our return to that state of perfection and wholeness is what drives the spiritual and religious quest. Indeed, Karen Armstrong has argued that spiritual epiphany or insight – a personal experience of the transcendent – may well be the primary defining human characteristic (The Case for God, p. 9).

Thus, Dickinson’s premise is that we must ultimately have “all the truth.” We cannot settle for part of it. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ repeated insistence in A Course in Miracles that compromise is not possible. We cannot have some light and some darkness too. Everything and nothing cannot, by definition, be mutual possibilities (e.g., T-3.II.1).

And yet, we are not – most of us – ready for the whole truth. We are so deeply enmeshed in the ego’s argument that we are bodies at war with other bodies, stalked by an angry and vengeful God, that if we were wrenched out of it at once our heads would explode. As Dickinson puts it the Truth’s “superb surprise” is simply too bright for us. And so it is revealed to us gently, circuitously even – as if the Holy Spirit loops us ever closer to the vivid center of being where only Love exists.

This calls to mind an important passage in the text of A Course in Miracles in which Jesus reminds us that we are not going to advance lickety-split from nightmare to awakening.

So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awakening, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to awaken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend (T-27.VII.13:4).

Dickinson says something similar in the final half of her wonderful poem.

As Lightening to the Children eased
with explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
or every man be blind –

Though we are clearly adults in body, in our spiritual lives we are more like little children. Orphans, even. The Truth must be revealed to us gently and slowly, in pieces, with clear and simple explanations of what is happening, so that we see the light gradually. It is the only way, suggests Dickinson, that a human being can come at last to Truth.

Jesus does not disagree.

How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now (T-6.V.2:1-3).

When I briefly (and ineptly) studied and practiced Buddhism in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I was deeply invested in enlightenment as an “aha!” moment. Waking up was an event bestowed upon worthy individuals by worthier ones – notably Buddha, although I was still deeply infatuated with Jesus at that time. It was something external to me that would be handed over as a reward – kind of like a badge or a trophy.

It took me a long time to see the silliness of that position, and even longer one to accept the alternative. Fortunately, Jesus is patient. In time, I began to understand that the Holy Spirit was not separate from me, and that “me and I” were simply shallow and painful symbols of the powerful decision-making mind.

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will (T-27.VII.13:1-2).

Jesus is not talking about the figure in the dream – the egoic self to which we are all more or less still attached – but to the dreamer who projects the world. When we see that, we can assess the results of our efforts. And finding them wanting – as rigorous honesty will inevitably do – then we can open up the door to an alternative. We can let Jesus and the Holy Spirit help us to “see” better.

In essence, we are letting them “dazzle” us with happier and happier dreams until we can at last let dreaming go altogether.

There is enough testimony out there to conclude that for some people, this awakening thing really is like a snapping of the proverbial fingers. They go to bed with the ego and wake up to the Holy Spirit. But for most of us, the truth indeed “dazzles gradually.” We pray, we practice, we do what is in front of us. One step forward, two steps back. Maybe a little slide to the left or right. Maybe we stop by the roadside and cry a little, or whine about how hard it is. Maybe we help somebody or let somebody help us (thank you!).

Little by little we start to realize that the rays of God’s love are both more plentiful and present. We are happy – don’t analyze it! – and getting happier.

Take heart for those moments when you are aware of – and can accept – God’s love, even if it’s just a sliver. When we are starving, a crumb is better than nothing. Soon enough you’ll be ready for the occasional crust, and then a thick slice. And one day – maybe this afternoon, maybe next year, maybe in a decade or two – you’ll embrace the whole loaf. It’s all God asks.

How A Course in Miracles Changed My Life

People ask sometimes how A Course in Miracles changed my life. There are simple answers I give: I smile more. I share more. I’m more patient and gentle. Not perfectly so, but noticeably so. On the other hand, I don’t know if that’s really true. I don’t keep smile records. And it’s hard sometimes to talk about the course in ways that don’t feel cheap and inadequate (not that you’d know it from my wordiness).

forgiveness_love
A seed begets a seedling which in turns begets a sufficiency of nourishment . . . so it is with forgiveness and love.

On the other hand, one thing I am learning to do is keep my mouth shut. I have always been nimble with words, kind ones and hurtful ones. When I am angry or scared, I have a tendency to use language to beat back the object of my fear or anger. To deliberately hurt another because you are frightened . . . that is not so good. Understandable perhaps, but not desirable. As Bill Thetford pointed out – and as Helen Schucman quickly agreed – there must be another way, right?

That agreement – to which we, too, are party – is the cornerstone of the change ACIM begets in our daily living.

Earlier this week, I found myself in a stressful situation. Someone was not where they said they would be, and when they finally arrived – late – they were preoccupied and unable to focus on me.

I was a little annoyed when they weren’t there, but when they arrived unable to tend to my needs, I began to get angry. Whenever I feel anger, I know that it is a result of fear, and so I try to make contact with it. I try to find the fear. And I do this not so I can “fix” it but so I can fully give it over to the Holy Spirit for undoing. Clear seeing is how this giving – and undoing – happen.

Soon enough, little tendrils of anxiety were obvious. I could observe them. They were like weeds quickly scaling a stalk, tightening and climbing, threatening to overtake everything. Fear often comes very quickly but if you give careful attention, you can perceive its movement. You can see it happening.

It was a challenging situation. Money was involved. My children were involved. A lot of thoughts ran around in my brain: I would never treat anybody like this. I’m paying for this, damn it! I have to stand up for my children. And so forth.

But I did not say anything. I sat quietly and waited. I concentrated on witnessing what I felt and thought without surrendering to it, without allowing it to vent outward. I knew that if I talked it would not be from a place of love, but a place of hurt and anger and fear. And we have choices now! That is one of the promises of A Course in Miracles. We can “choose again.” We can decide to try and remain peaceful despite external circumstances, despite our psychological distress. I chose silence because I have always appreciated the Dalai Lama’s observation that we are here to help others, and if we can’t help them, we can at least not hurt them.

Even when we are roiling with negativity, we can still practice kindness. We don’t have to give in to the ego’s demand that we attack a brother or sister. Mohandas Gandhi said that it was not that he was incapable of anger but that he succeeded “on almost all occasions to keep my feelings under control.”

Whatever may be the result, there is always in me a conscious struggle for following the law of nonviolence deliberately and ceaselessly. Such a struggle leaves one stronger for it (My Faith in Nonviolence).

Of course I am not Gandhi, but it was nice to hear the ego insist this was a crisis and to respond to its insistence with calm and quiet. No, it is not a crisis. And I know who walks beside me to help me understand this now. It was not that the negativity disappeared, replaced by lovely angels singing hallelujah and offering kale and green tea smoothies, but rather that I was able to simply stay with the Holy Spirit, which is to say: I was attentive to my capacity for gentleness, kindness, helpfulness. I was attentive to my – which is really our – capacity for lovingkindness. I did not lose that essential connection.

When we do that – when we do not allow the external world (which includes emotion and thought) to influence and affect us, when we do not let it drive our decision-making process, when we simply observe it in a spirit of gentle open-mindedness – then we see the potential of the choice that A Course in Miracles awakens in us. It is not the power to be happy but to know peace at the deepest level. It is the power to remember what we are in truth.

If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember (T-6.III.2:2-3).

Later – much later – I was able to see the situation in a different light. I understood the pressure that this other person faced. I understood that while what happened had involved me, it was not about me. It was simply another event in an unfolding narrative. Blame was not necessary; only kindness. Only forgiveness, where forgiveness is understood as simply seeing that everything is taken care of anyway. It is okay. It is more than okay.

And I was deeply grateful that I hadn’t screwed it up by giving voice to fear, anger and impatience. In my admittedly inept and awkward way, I had stayed with Jesus. I had stayed with the Holy Spirit. I had stayed with Love – or perhaps it is better to say I remembered that Love cannot leave. My willingness wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. We have to engage our lives right where they are. We have to what is in front of us in the spirit of love, no matter how impossible that might seem.

Sometimes that is what a blessing looks like. That is what a miracle is. And that is how this particular spiritual practice – as strange and wordy and baffling as it can be – has changed my life.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 169

By grace I live. By grace I am released.

Kindness is not complicated – really it is just a question of putting another’s needs before our own – and that service becomes the light by which we are find our way back to Heaven. We need each other so that we might learn how to better hear the call for love and to practice – for practice does make perfect – our capacity to respond to that call with love. There is nothing else to do.

Somehow, when we allow the Holy Spirit to bring our focus to kindness, the ego just sort of disappears. It fades away. Anger and viciousness are forgotten. We aren’t rejecting anything. It’s more like we just acknowledge our brokenness and humbly ask God to let us be of service to our brothers and sisters anyway. Ego resists and resents that that grace-filled prayer for the wellness of our brothers and sisters. When we privilege others, we undo the ego’s need to turn them into enemies, which is how it sustains the illusion of separation from God and Creation.

When we choose to help those the ego wants us to hurt, we respond to a call that is deeper and lovelier than the ego can withstand.

We do this because as students of A Course in Miracles we know that giving and receiving are the same (M-2.5:5). Thus, when we respond with love to a brother or sister, we are also offering love to ourselves. This isn’t complicated! We all know how happy it makes us to help others. We were made to serve one another. There is no other, no better use to which we can put these bodies.

We could literally end war, feed the hungry and bring about a new world of peace.

Yet our objective is greater than even the end of conflict in the world: we seek to remember our fundamental unity with God. We want to return to that state each of us dimly remembers and daily laments that we ever turned away from it. We did not say no to God! But we think we did and the effect is the same. Radical kindness is what reminds us all this is a dream from which we are even now awakening. It lays the groundwork for divine homecoming. We don’t yet know when or how or what it will look like, but in offering one another love, we testify to our confidence that it is assured.

The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter. For your part is still what all the rest depends on. As you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God (W-pI.169.11:2-4).

What a beautiful mission! And what is our part in bringing it about? Simply to be kind: to extend miracles from the interior altar that knows nobody has left God and the ones who believe otherwise will soon remember the truth. It seems impossible but if we turn within, with empty hands and open heart, the direction will be clear. We are only here to help others – that is the special function of miracle workers (T-2.V.A.18.8:2). We don’t have to think about helping ourselves – that is in better hands than ours.

What is the face of Christ but his who went a moment into timelessness, and brought a clear reflection of the unity he felt an instant back to bless the world? How could you finally attain to it forever, while a part of you remains outside, unknowing, unawakened, and in need of you as witness to the truth (W-pI.169.13:3-4)?

Let us be grateful for this opportunity to walk together, bringing the light of Love to all the world’s shadows, gathering all our brothers and sisters who remain yoked to sorrow and sacrifice (W-pI.169.14:1). We aren’t spiritual giants and we aren’t holy gurus. There is too much work to be distracted anymore by titles and labels, churches and rules. We are simply those who at last are ready to love one another in the manner of the One who sent us, giving and receiving kindness, altogether lighting the way home.

←Lesson 168
Lesson 170→

Reading the Rules for Decision: On Sitting By

One of the reasons A Course in Miracles is so effective is its insistence there are only two options available to us: we can be right or we can be at peace (T-29.VII.1:9). There is no middle ground. The clarity of that will save us, once we stop fighting it.

Rules for Decision is clear that when we are unhappy – when our feelings are not feelings of peace and joy and natural harmony – it is because we have chosen to be right about something. We have decided what the rules of life are, which means we have chosen how to win the game of life, and have found ourselves on the losing side.

The solution isn’t to ask for help in winning or adopt a new strategy. The solution is to stop playing the game.

[Y]ou have already gotten angry. And your fear of being answered in a different way from what your version of the question asks will gain momentum, until you believe the day you want is one in which you get your answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want (T-30.I.7:2-4).

How hard it is to see this – and, once seen, to accept and bring into practice. Rules for Decision reminds us that this impulse to be right is like a snowball rolling down a steep hill. If you don’t check it in its tracks, it’s going to build momentum and get bigger and bigger. It starts to influence other decisions. It gets messy fast.

Our reaction, of course, is to fight. That’s our instinct. You know, we decide that because we’re tired we need to leave work early and we get all excited about it – a good book, a glass of wine, a bubble bath. But just as we’re getting ready to go, somebody drops a “do-it-now” project on our desk. And we fight it! We get angry. We argue. We postpone. We try to delegate – forcefully.

It’s like being tangled in a web, isn’t it? The more we resist, the more enmeshed in the problem we become. Letting go – going limp – is really the way out. We have “sit by” as the Course says (T-30.I.5:3). We have sit by and let the given answer be revealed.

That is one of my favorite phrases in the whole text – the suggestion to just “sit by.” I’m not wired to just sit by. I’m wired to move fast and get things done. It’s the whole reason I became an altar boy when I was kid. I wanted to be able to move around a bit during mass.

I’m a walker by nature. I’m into movement. My students get dizzy sometimes because I can’t teach standing still – I wander all over the classroom. When I’m in the forest, I can build up to quite a clip. Sometimes people who walk with me ask who’s chasing us. To which I usually respond “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

Yeah, yeah yeah. I know. I’m a lot of fun to walk with . . .

But the truth is, some of my most peaceful and happy moments are when I actually do just sit by – find a nice rock near the brook and sit on it. The dog romps and swims and I just hang out. I get a little dozy. Sometimes it’s a tree I sit near.

When we sit by, something magical happens. In the forest, it means that the birds come closer. Chickadees flit by near enough to touch. You can see the details of a pine cone – each fold, each tuck, each shade of brown softening into the next. You hear each note of the brook as it flows past – bass and treble, a hint of other voices. It’s mesmerizing.

It’s not just in nature. In the classroom, when I am still, I am often surprised by how the students fill the space my nervous intensity was trying to swallow whole. They get creative and insightful. I see them differently: we slip outside the normal hierarchy of teacher-student and the light of Christ shines a little. And I think, oh right. I don’t have to take care of everything. Somebody else has this covered.

Walking briskly isn’t a crime! But if our investment and attachment to it is such that we forget to sit by or refuse to sit by then it becomes problematic. We need to identify those places and moments in our life when we are so insistent on our way that Jesus and the Holy Spirit can’t get in with a shoehorn. And then have to slow down and make some space for them to do their thing.

Whenever I first sit by, I am almost always frustrated. I think, there’s a better spot on the river to sit. Then I think, man, it’s too cold to sit by. I’ll sit by tomorrow. Then I think, I should’ve brought a book. Or writing utensils. Why did I forget my pen? I should hurry home and bake some bread. I could be missing an important email.

That’s the resistance. That’s the insistence on my rules for a happy day: more sunlight, a good book, a chance to write a poem, emails to feed the ego.

But soon enough – if I don’t give in – those voices fade. And when they fade, what remains is the Holy Spirit. What remains is the clear and lively intimation of Heaven. A chickadee will sit on you if you are still enough and quiet enough (and the dog stays away long enough). And when it happens you think, oh my God. How many other miracles am I missing?

When we catch ourselves in a state of misery, Rules for Decision indicates that we should quickly remember “I have no question. I forgot what to decide (T-30.I.6:4-5).”

That is a simple way to remind ourselves that it’s time to sit by. It’s time to let go of our terms, and let the terms of God be revealed to us. And they will be. They are right there, humming beneath the chatter of our egoic thoughts and ambitions. God literally can’t wait for us to slow down and just hang out.

Peace was given to us. It’s present right here and right now. We don’t have to invent it or manufacture it or midwife it into our experience. Indeed, so long as we think we do have to play a role in peace, then we’re not going to experience it. Peace is letting go and letting God. It’s only hard because we make it so. And we don’t have to. Not anymore.