Sean Reagan

Sometimes it feels like the dance of A Course in Miracles could be called “one step forward, two steps back.” There are good days and bad days, and some of the good days are amazing to the point you can hardly talk about them with words, and some of the bad days are very bad indeed. You step back and look at the big picture of your progress, your life as a student, and it looks like you’re scrambling just to stay in place.

The truth is that a sincere practice of the Course can often feel quite discouraging. Nobody likes to talk about it in a serious way because we’re all supposed to be spiritual giants channeling ascended masters and leading our brothers and sisters out of the desert of loneliness and despair, but I think if we’re honest we can say that this is a hard path and sometimes the rewards seem few and far between.

The text and workbook are always quite clear that we have to pass through a darkness, a veil of shadows.

The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ . . . This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death and protected by its attraction . . . This is the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to allow union to call you out of separation (T-19.IV.D.2:1, 3:1, 3-4).

And the thing is, you can stand and face that darkness for a long time – lifetimes, perhaps – before you finally agree to join with your brothers and sisters and take the hand of Jesus and step through. Stepping through itself is actually not a big deal – it’s like falling off a cliff. But convincing yourself to take that first step . . . that’s really what the darkness is. The ego tells us not to have faith – not to trust that we’re going to be held and kept safe – and we listen.

And the ego is no help in this. We really have to let go of the idea that we can reason our way to peace, or think our way to peace, or plan our way to peace. Our resources are insufficient; the ego wants to convince us that we can do it – we’re smart enough, wise enough, strong enough, lovely enough but it’s uninformed and prone to malevolence when threatened by our desire to know peace.

[I]t was surely not the ego that led you here. No obstacle to peace can be surmounted through its help. It does not open up its secrets, and bid you look on them and go beyond them. It would not have you see its weakness, and learn it has no power to keep you from the truth (T-19.IV.D.i.8:2-5).

In my conversations and emails with other students, I am sometimes amazed by the often implicit but quite often explicit belief that because they cannot just snap their fingers and look at this veil and pass through it, they are bad students. Somehow we get the idea that we aren’t allowed to take two steps back. Or that Jesus will abandon us if we hesitate or become casual. This is hard work! And the Course recognizes this, and acknowledges it.

To look upon the fear of God does need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but not with fear . . . And no on e reaches love with fear beside him (T-19.IV.D.i.11:1-2, 7).

This is why Rules for Decision, after carefully laying out the right approach to having a day of peace and joy, a day in which we are last able and ready to join hands with one another and simply pass through the last remaining shred of darkness that obscures Christ and complicates Heaven, immediately follows with what to do when we screw it up.

But there will be times when you have judged already. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want an answer that will work (T-30.I.5:1-2).

It’s okay to take that literally. Notice that it doesn’t say “if there are times.” That “when” is unconditional. It’s understood that we are finding our way. It’s understood that despite our sincere and disciplined effort and our good intentions we are going to take those two steps back. Or one and a half steps back. And it’s okay. Jesus has us covered in that eventuality, too.

It is so hard to avoid judging ourselves. The ego isn’t an enemy of A Course in Miracles; it can use the Course quite well to serve its end. We compare ourselves to other students – the ones in our study group, the famous ones who write and teach. We set up an ideal, compare ourselves to it unfavorably, and then mope around like spiritual orphans. If only we were different . . .

We really have to come to a place where it’s okay to struggle and it’s okay to feel dispirited. We have to see that experience is part of the process – it’s part of the preparation for facing the fear of God and seeing to the light beyond. Jesus knows this is going to happen. Indeed, if it’s not happening – if someone is feeling light and happy and everything is just roses and chocolates – then it’s possible they aren’t being entirely honest. And that’s okay, too – we are all getting there in time – but my point is, don’t deny the hard times. Don’t judge yourself on their account.

Rules for Decision teaches us that when we start to struggle, we can simply turn our minds back in the direction of the Holy Spirit. The other sections I quoted here (from The Attainment of Peace), suggests that we practice looking with love upon one another. Why not? The bottom line is that we aren’t alone. It’s not just you and your horrific ego. We are working on this together. We lift each other with kind words and hugs and advice and tea and all of that. And that lifting enables us to choose again – to decide again – to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask again to be guide Home.

I was fortunate to grow up in a house where my mother and father took religion – and by extension, spirituality – seriously. They did not compromise when it came to Catholicism and they were open-minded and fair with respect to other paths and traditions. Of course there are downsides to growing up thinking of yourself as “Catholic” or “Buddhist” or whatever, but on balance, I feel like it was a helpful gift.

We talked a fair amount in our home about the importance of religion not being a matter of just showing up at church on Sunday, let alone only at Easter and Christmas. We celebrated both Lent and Advent, we went to mass on all the holy days of obligation, we fasted on Fridays, and we talked about prayer and God. It mattered. And it was understood – at least for me it was understood – that the goal was to become as holy as Jesus had been, that this was a serious undertaking, and that the work could not in any meaningful way be separated from the rest of one’s life. It wasn’t like getting a haircut or even like going to school. It was something you lived.

This led to some curious – and probably so far as my parents were concerned, undesirable notions in my head. I really liked looking at birds – especially pheasants and wild turkeys and grouse and so forth – and I really really liked to see deer browsing at dusk or poking through the pastures as the sun rose. Those sightings were as religious as anything else was and I treated them that way. After a while, the point of church began to seem extraneous indeed. I talked to God while I fished, prayed while looking up at the stars, and frequently asked what I considered difficult metaphysical questions: “I know it’s a sin to stick my middle finger up but what if I stick it up at the devil?”

I asked my mother that question, thinking I’d found a loophole in the catechism, but she said “just don’t stick it up at anyone.” Good advice, really.

I was about sixteen when I discovered Thoreau and Emerson and Frost and Dickinson and Catholicism was forever ruined. It took a few more decades, but organized religion pretty much collapsed as well. I am still walking the same trails I walked as a little boy, wading through the same streams and rivers, and it’s a safe bet the deer that my children and I see grazing in the distance are offspring of deer I looked at decades earlier. In a way – not just geographically, but spiritually as well – I’m right where I’ve always been.

While I don’t identify as a Catholic anymore – I’ve written at some length about this – I still believe that the spiritual life demands something of us. I say “demand.” In truth, it doesn’t ask for anything we don’t want to give, but it can take a while for us to learn that. It’s a process.

But we are part of that process. Our decisions contribute to it. And so we have to be attentive. We have to be aware. And – this is important – we have to do all of that in a relaxed sort of way. It’s like we have to make our spiritual practice the most important thing we do and – simultaneously – lighten up about our spiritual practice.

The way to do this, I think, is to be forgiving. For example, I’m apt to see “rules” in Rules for Decision and leap into one of two spaces. Either I’m going to be all rigid and Type A and “it’s Jesus’ way or the highway” or I’m going to channel my surly teen and snark at Jesus: “you can’t make me.”

But those extremes miss the point. Rules for Decision isn’t about never making a mistake. And it’s not about hewing to some theological and ideological and psychological ideal of perfection. It’s about being human. It really is.

Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the things you would experience, and say:

If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me (T-29.I.4:1-2).

That is not the regimen of spiritual masters. It is not a code for monks praying ten hours a day in some remote monastery high up in windy mountains. It’s simple. It works if we’re bank tellers, teachers, baristas, stay-at-home parents or truck drivers. It works if we have a PhD or no D. It works.

And it’s relaxed, too. “Any time you think of it . . . ” That is very relaxed language. If we forget for a couple of hours, it’s no big deal. If the whole morning slips by, well, fine. The afternoon is better for talking to Jesus anyway.

It’s important to see this. It is one of the real blessings of the Course. We are not being judged. There are no consequences. If we really reflect on that – if we stay with it – it is so liberating. That is true love – a love that doesn’t judge, that doesn’t impose conditions, that doesn’t have any plans to get something for itself. Sometimes I remind myself of this and try to appreciate it and savor it a few minutes. We can’t be loved this way in the world – it’s just not in the program. It’s Love from that which doesn’t know the world. And it’s all we really want – even if we can’t quite admit that yet.

That said, I do think this section is gently and kindly saying that when and as we’re ready, God would be happy if we would invoke the Holy Spirit’s decision-making capacity in place of our own. The more we do it, the easier it becomes. And the easier it becomes, the more we do it.

In a funny way, the more intense I get about waking up, the more I see how little there is that needs to be taken seriously. It’s mostly done for us. Sometimes I feel like the only guy in the theater who hasn’t figured out that we’re watching a Monty Python comedy, not a Shakespearean tragedy. Everyone around me is laughing until they cry while I’m half an inch from the fainting couch and smelling salts.

Anyway, we’re all walking around with a history. We’re all walking around with a metaphor to try and make sense. What Rules for Decision reminds us – over and over, in every sentence – is that we can leave all that behind. Just let it go, the way the deer in late spring shed their heavy winter coats. We aren’t alone and the One who accompanies us is ready – ever and always – to relieve us of all burdens, leaving nothing but the pure light of joy and peace.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are. That is part of what is so powerful and so lovely about it. There are no entrance examinations, no catechisms, no rituals. No special handshakes or secret signs. You don’t have to walk on your knees in pilgrimage. We pick it up and read and it begins to undo what blocks our awareness of Love.

This is why students have such vastly different experiences of the Course and why there are so many different interpretations of it. It is deeply personal. You wouldn’t expect your experience of falling in love to be precisely the same in form as anybody else’s. Why should it be any different for a relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God? That’s how it goes in this world.

It is a little problematic when we become attached to or invested in our ACIM experience and start thinking that it is the universal experience, but that’s okay too. We all do it, especially those of us who think we are past doing it. It’s part of being a body in the world. We think we’re special and unique. That’s both how and why arguments start – the belief that we’re right and our rightness requires defense (which, regardless of whether it appears defensive or offensive, is always an attack). You should read this edition of the Course and not that one. You should never read Gary Renard. Listening to Beethoven or reading Emily Dickinson will solve your problems.

At the level of opinion, the Course is just another interesting set of ideas about God and self. But that is not a very helpful level. Somehow we have to go past just treating the Course as one choice among many. I mean, if we know that it is our path, then we have an obligation to stop being casual about it. We have to engage with it at the deepest level imaginable.

And that is going to look different for all of us. The form in which you practice the Course is necessarily different than mine – perhaps radically so. It doesn’t matter. You might be working out a relationship with a spouse or a child. You might be figuring out your relationship to work or art. You might be figuring out money or sex.

You might be deeply into the Course’s Christian language and imagery. You might appreciate the specificity of Jesus vs. the abstraction of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps you are drawn to the Course’s Freudian mechanics. Or the usefulness of its structure (a text, a workbook, and a manual for teachers).

All of that is just the form in which what is perfect and whole slowly remembers what it is and what it is not. Healing is just remembering that no healing is necessary.

Thus, it’s not really possible to generalize about what one means by “the deepest level imaginable.” It’s what you say it is. It’s between you and that which you call Jesus, or the Holy Spirit or God. And nobody can intrude on that. Some people might be able to make helpful suggestions or observations, but they can’t do the work for you. They can’t have the relationship for you. It’s like I said a couple of posts back, rephrasing the classic hymn. You have to walk with Jesus by yourself. Nobody else can walk that walk for you.

This is very much at the heart of Rules for Decision, which explicitly says near the beginning that we are not supposed to fight ourselves but rather focus on what is natural (T-30.I.1:7).

And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready (T-30.I.1:6).

There is no judgment in that sentence. We have to see that! It is just a fact, clearly and simply stated. That which does not flow naturally is not yet ready to flow. You can try to celebrate Christmas in July, but it’s not going to be the same. You can try to rake the lawn in a wind storm, but it’s not going to work. You have to try something different.

Jesus isn’t saying, “my favorite students are the ones who are ready for Rules for Decision.” He’s saying that he loves all of us and wants us to find that space where we can feel that love and trust that love. It’s like tuning in to a radio station: you need a good signal and music that you want to hear. It’s personal. It’s between you and Jesus.

Awakening isn’t something we can force, like jamming more leftovers into the fridge. Awakening is more akin to simply realizing that what we’re trying to do has already been done and so we can breathe. We can relax. We can go for a walk and enjoy the scenery. Why not?

It is important to make space for A Course in Miracles. That’s really one way of thinking about this first step in our new decision-making process: we aren’t going to make decisions alone anymore (T-30.I.2:2). As we slowly release the inclination to judge, and the actual judging slows and loses impact, we become aware of what is. We become aware that something is working independent of what we think we are, and that our efforts don’t contribute to it. God isn’t waiting for us to do anything, much less do something grand and heroic. God is simply waiting for us to reach the awareness that we are not separate from God. We’re waiting on that, too, and all our solo decision-making stands in the way.

Let the Course meet you where you are. Trust that you have a place in the Great Awakening and that it is both your will and the Will of God that you fulfill it (T-15.XI.10:10). If you have to take baby steps, then take them. If you can’t go past the Course introduction, then don’t. Don’t decide what you are and where you ought to be. That’s already been decided. Listen to the One who knows. Be ready to be guided.

I’m working my way through a close reading of Rules for Decision. Yesterday’s post mused on the relationship between new beginnings and the rules. Today I’m wandering just a few sentences in, thinking about how utterly uncompromising A Course in Miracles is when it urges us to leave the decisions to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Thanks for reading. 

The first time I read Rules for Decision, I got sort of obsessed with its promise that there was a way I could have the day I wanted. Greed entered. I wanted a day when my students stood up and cheered when I walked in the classroom. I wanted a day when strangers would hand me fifty dollar bills and thank me for the radiant Christ-like glow that emanated from my being. I wanted to leave my little house in the morning and come back at dusk to a mansion.

In a lot of ways, my early approach to A Course in Miracles was like that. It was in the nature of horse trading. I was always asking “what’s in it for me?” I figured I’d do the lessons, give the Course a certain amount of attention and in return God would deliver a grandiose and enviable life, as if Heaven were a package you could wrap and Jesus the divine equivalent of the Fedex guy.

If that sounds familiar, don’t worry about it. Wanting salvation on our own terms is part of being human. Very few of us get to skip that particular issue. In a lot of ways, it’s just that challenge for which Rules for Decision is directed.

The decision to see ourselves as bodies and act accordingly causes us a lot of unhappiness. In general, we associate bodies both with ultimately insatiable desire (appetites for food and sex and comfort and so on) and weakness (they hurt, grow decrepit and die). And we associate the world through which they stagger with scarcity and loss. We can’t both eat the same slice of apple pie.

In that light, a lasting joy and peace are impossible. We can scrap a little bit of happiness here and there, and we do, certainly, but we all know that it won’t last. We all know what’s coming. And really, that’s the whole point. The ego survives by keeping us tethered to the physical and the external. It throws us bones and feigns friendship even as it condemns us to misery and hopelessness.

What is particularly vicious about the ego and its condemnation is the false hope that we can get away from it. It’s Orwellian, really. In Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, the government holds lotteries that few – if any – people actually win. Yet the shred of hope that they someday might keeps them from rebelling or looking for hope and meaning elsewhere. They are pacified by scraps.

That’s the ego’s m.o. too. We think we can beat it with a bigger house. We think we can beat it with formal religion. We think we can beat it with a diet, with meditation, with the right yoga teacher. We think we can outsmart it.

But any plan that accepts the ego’s premise that the world and bodies are real is doomed. The way out – as Rules for Decisions cheerfully observes – is to heed Jesus’ instruction and surrender our decision-making power to the Holy Spirit.

The outlook starts with this: Today I will make no decisions by myself (T-30.I.2:1-2).

Easy enough, right? We know the Holy Spirit is there to handle the decision-making for us. We know that Jesus is ready to point the way and model the path and even hold our hand if necessary. What could be more simple?

The thing is, there are two aspects to this making-no-decision-by-myself thing. The first – and I think for many of us, the easier – is in checking our responses to situations as they arise.

So, for example, we get a flat tire while driving home and as soon as we step outside to fix it the Heavens open and a cold rain starts falling and then when we get a look at the spare tire we see that it’s flat too.

And we think: this is a crappy situation but you know what? I’m not going to freak out. I’m going to let Jesus decide for me. I’m going to ask the Holy Spirit what to do and then do it. I’m not the boss; they are.

There is a lot to be said for that sort of response. Refusing to respond to negative external situations before checking in with our internal teacher, our inner guide, is very important. It can head off a lot of guilt. Indeed, Rules for Decision is clear that we are supposed to do precisely this.

But.

There is another level to that process and – at least for me – it is the harder. Not only am I to refrain from judging what my response should be to a given situation, I’m also not supposed to judge the situation. So in that flat tire scenario, I’d never get around to deciding “this is a crappy situation.” I wouldn’t judge it all.

Do you see the difference? In one scenario, we say life sucks but I’m turning to Jesus. In the other, we say I have no idea whether this situation is good or bad so I’m just going to let Jesus handle it. He’ll tell me what, if anything, I should do.

Our resignation as decision-maker has to be total. We’re not hiring someone to help us make decisions. We’re handing over the reins entirely, holding nothing back.

This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. But it must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called to make response (T-30.I.2:3-4).

And that distinction really matters. When we decide that a certain set of circumstances is bad, then we have effectively decided what the solution ought to be. If I say the flat tire is bad, then the solution is fixing the tire. If I say the rain is bad, then the solution is an umbrella or better yet a sunny intervention. And then when those things don’t show up, I get angry because God is letting me down.

And all the while, that is not how God sees it. The problem is not what I set up, but that I bothered to set at all. Jesus says in the text that when we judge our lives in advance this way, we

have set the rules for how you should react to them. And then another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear (T-30.I.2:5-6).

So this is the reason that we are so unhappy right now. This is why we can’t seem to ever break free of pain and sorrow. This is why we always fall back to pain and anguish.

You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first. This leads to fear because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked (T-30.I.3:2-4).

Thus, we have to engage decision-making at two levels. First – importantly – we have to refuse to judge what is happening in our lives. Divorce, job loss, too much snow, a headache, tulips that won’t grow, not enough time to ourselves – whatever it is, we have to leave it to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We have to accept that we don’t whether the situation is good or bad. We have to refrain from seeing it in that light.

That’s hard! It feels very natural to judge our lives this way. And we – or I anyway – can be quite stubborn about giving it up. You know, we have the flu and we spend a couple of hours retching and vomiting and we’re supposed to pretend that we don’t know whether it’s good or bad?

So we say, “Newsflash Jesus. The flu is bad. And you know what else is bad? Cancer. School shootings. Tsunamis.”

Doesn’t that sound logical? Reasonable? I felt righteous just putting it down.

And yet the Course doesn’t equivocate. Jesus doesn’t say, “okay, sure. We’ll carve out a few exceptions. You get to decide what’s good and bad in terms of physical illness, but the rest is off limits.”

It’s all off limits. We aren’t supposed to judge any of it. And it’s only when we don’t judge it, that we learn what, if anything, we’re supposed to do in response.

I’m not saying that if you get a diagnosis of cancer, you should do back flips. Or refuse treatment or something like that. But I am also not suggesting that you smother yourself with ashes and wail in lamentation. As hard as it is, if we can let it go just the tiniest bit, we start to see that life is not about us. It’s bigger and it’s more beautiful and it’s also more certain.

For example, when I teach, I often slip into the space of thinking I’m the sole judge of what is working or not working in the classroom. Some days I walk out with my head hanging, thinking, “well that sucked. They didn’t get the point I was trying to make. What a waste.”

And then an hour later, some student will come by and thank me for teaching the way I did because they really needed to hear such-and-such. Or whatever. And I remember: oh right. It’s not all about me. I don’t really know what it’s about. That’s why I’m such a terrible judge.

And if it’s not all about me – and if I know I’m terribly at making decisions- then maybe it’s okay to chill out on trying to decide what’s good and what’s bad and what’s helpful and what’s not. Maybe I can relax. Maybe Jesus really does have everything under control.

In the end, it becomes a question of trust. Perhaps that what it always comes down to. When I trust that I don’t have to decide where we’re going, decide what route to take, decide when to go, and even drive the bus . . . well, life gets simpler. Even though I don’t do this perfectly yet, I can assure you that not making decisions by yourself – by letting Jesus and the Holy Spirit make them for you – is vastly relieving. You wouldn’t believe how funny and easy and lovely life can be when you realize you’re not the boss of it.

And once we’re there, then it’s relatively easy to just accept instruction as to what we’re required to do. You learn that you don’t have to do as much as you thought. A lot of life goes on just fine without our intervention. And the things that the Holy Spirit asks of us – the response to a given situation – is always easy and natural. There’s not a lot of effort involved.

Indeed, this waking up thing – this not making decisions on our thing – can actually be playful. It can even be fun. In a way, it’s like catching snowflakes on your tongue. All you have to do is open your mouth.

Rules for Decision is one of my favorite – perhaps the favorite – section of the text of A Course in Miracles. It is clear and structured and it promises that adherence to its steps will bring us the peace and joy for which we so long. No fluff. No shades of gray.

This section is premised on the fact that we are always making decisions. Our senses are in a state of continuous perception. Our brains process that data, organize it according to the past, and then make decisions – hopefully optimized for the future – about present behavior. At the level of the body, there is a certain amount of sense in this. When it rains, we open an umbrella. When we are hungry, we eat some bread and cheese.

But in another way, this is not a very functional way to live our lives at all. In fact, it is the source of a lot of pain and confusion. We look around and see people living in big houses or driving fancy cars or eating at posh restaurants every other night. We decide it’s unfair or unjust and end up festering in envy. Or we decide that we want a piece of that lifestyle and we decide to pursue it all costs, family and ethics and peace of mind be damned.

At the deepest level, we have decided to accept the ego’s judgment of what we are and of what we are capable. We decide not to challenge the notion that we are bodies wending their way through a cruel and violent and depraved world. We have decided against God and thus live in a state of guilt and fear. This is not a metaphor! The ego supplants God. Nothing good can come of it.

When we talk about ontological guilt and fear, we are talking about something that is grounded in our being. It is not fear of the barking dog or guilt for eating too much ice cream. It is the ocean of fear and guilt upon which the fragile egoic self perilously floats. It is this level to which the healing in A Course in Miracles is ultimately directed. We work our way slowly backward – or downward or inward if you prefer – to that roiling mess of ontological guilt and fear. We face being at its ugliest and most sordid depths.

Making contact with all of that is very difficult – especially when you realize that there is no way out but through it, and so you can’t just glimpse it quickly and then move on. We aren’t tourists on this journey; we are travelers. We are pilgrims. We really have to sustain your focus. It’s that moment in the course when you realize that the solution to your so-called problems really and truly is not outside you at all but is instead that darkness, that shadowy mess of snakes and demons, that tangle of murder and death, that bilious muck that swirls in your heart like hell’s own hurricane.

It is discouraging and frightening, to say the least. You feel as if you have done all this work and it’s been going swimmingly and you’re so happy and then . . . it’s like you thought you were just about to hop, skip and jump right through the pearly gates into Heaven and Jesus says, uh, actually, we have to pay some attention to all this terrifying and ugly material first.

I work constantly in my own practice not to intellectualize it too much. Part of being a beneficiary of good psychotherapists, and being well-read and studious, and raising your own food, and praying a lot when others are asleep and so forth is that you start to think you’re just the tiniest bit special. You’re humble about it and you know that Jesus doesn’t play favorites but deep down you believe that he does play favorites with at least one person: you.

We all do this in our own ways. For me, it tends to manifest in this attitude: “Because I intellectually understand what is happening, and can write about it, and because I’m such a sweet and honest guy, I do not actually have to go through all this. I am exempt.”

You may have your own version of a reason not to go all the way with A Course in Miracles, for thinking that you get a pass. But once we’ve caught even the faintest hint of the path, then there’s nothing left to do but walk it. We can delay, postpone, reconsider, encourage others to take the first step while not taking it ourselves . . . sooner or later, we have to look at the fear and the guilt.

It is like the old Woody Guthrie song which I used to play so happily when wandering around Ireland with a guitar and harmonica.

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,
You gotta walk it by yourself,
Nobody here can walk it for you,
You gotta walk it by yourself.

He is riffing off the classic hymn describing how Jesus became Christ.

Jesus walked this lonesome valley.
He had to walk it by Himself;
O, nobody else could walk it for Him,
He had to walk it by Himself.

Really, you just have to take the first step by yourself. After that, Jesus is there to help. But still. That first step can be mighty hard. I suspect some of us spend lifetimes with one foot lifted, never quite bringing it down.

It is this space to which Rules for Decision is directed. It’s helpful in other contexts, of course – when we’re just beginning, when we’re just figuring out what ACIM metaphysics are all about, when we still want to have the world and release it too. But it becomes most fruitful when we are ready to go deep – when we are ready at last to plunge into the interior horror show and – come hell or high water – see what’s on the other side.

That is why this section shows up in a chapter entitled The New Beginning. These rules become most powerful tools after the goal of awakening is at last clear and we have mustered the willingness to do the work, however challenging or tedious or useless it appears.

The speed by which [awakening] can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step. Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear (T-30.In.1:3-5).

Our goal is to begin integrating these rules – or steps, if that is a more comfortable word – into our lives in a habitual way. There is a transition in which our practice of the course gradually stops being one part of our life and instead becomes a cornerstone of that life, a virtual bedrock. We accept it as our path and we accept at last the necessity of following it. We see that the style of our following doesn’t matter – Jesus isn’t giving points to the most enthusiastic course student or the most earnest. We can stumble and fumble all we want so long as we are following. And we do.

Really, Rules for Decision are rules/suggestions for how to follow Jesus – not in the traditional way of taking up our cross and trailing along behind an executed sage of Galilee and Judea. But literally transforming our minds so that we can say goodbye to guilt and fear and their resultant pain forever. We are learning to think like Christ. Freedom is not repeating the past or honoring the past, however well-intentioned, but rather in meeting existence – meeting being- without judgment.

Thus, following Jesus this way is simply a manifestation of our willingness to think differently about who and what we are. And that willingness is a manifestation of trust – on some level, even if only faintly, we trust that Jesus is there and that even if we can’t accept it or see it or hear it or feel it we really aren’t walking that lonesome valley alone. We are walking it with Jesus. Somehow, we are walking it with Jesus.

And that matters! It matters because that trust that Jesus is somehow practically there – buried so deep as to be all but mythological – is truly a reflection of God’s Love. It is the pinprick of light on the far side of the dense and heavy veils of guilt and fear and hate made and sustained by the egoic self. It is the assurance that far beyond these limited bodies with their limited brains and their limited world lies an indivisible Truth that is beautiful and profound and altogether ours.

Whether you are feeling it today or not, this moment or not, you are the Love of God, and that knowledge is going to guide you out of the hell of this seeming world. There’s a little work left, yes, and it may not be easy, but the end is sure. You wouldn’t be reading A Course in Miracles otherwise. You wouldn’t be reading this (long-winded) post otherwise.

But don’t rush it. Don’t try to leapfrog the way home. Rules for Decision lays out a sure method to heal your mind. Each step lights the way a little more. Each efforts throws another helpful ray before you. We are leaving good ideas behind now. We are heeding the rules by which the attainment of Heaven is assured.

Like all students of A Course in Miracles I make mistakes. I get frustrated with people. I can be very impatient and patronizing. I’m greedy sometimes – for food, for attention, for praise. I allow myself to be casual and lazy in my spiritual practice. I skip walking the dog because it’s raining. You know how it goes. We all do it and we all wish we didn’t.

A Course in Miracles teaches us both why we make these errors and how correct them and – ultimately and most importantly – how to get to a place where there is no such thing as error. In a way, we are learning through the course to be kinder, gentler and wiser people – true examples of radical healing – here in the world while simultaneously learning that it’s all just a dream in which healing isn’t necessary at all.

Our errors – regardless of their seeming magnitude and effect – are all a result of confusion about what we are in truth and what our role is in God’s plan for salvation.

The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise (T-9.IV.2:5-6).

When we believe that we are bodies – perhaps with souls attached and perhaps not – then we are going to try and defend those bodies. We are going to identify with its appetites and its fears. We are going to look at our brothers and sisters as if they are merely bodies too – sometimes pleasing us, sometimes hurting us – but always with separate and competing interests.

That is why forgiveness in A Course in Miracles constantly urges us to overlook error (T-9.IV.1:2) and to see one another not as bodies engaged in a frantic dance of scarcity and loss but as equal thoughts in the Mind of God bent on remembering that Holy and unified state.

Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept as true only what your brother is, if you would know yourself (T-9.IV.1:3-4).

Of course, if it were that easy, then we’d already have done it and there wouldn’t be any need for A Course in Miracles. And the course acknowledges as much: “You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them (T-9.IV.2:2). So what do we do? How do we ensure that our perception will not rest on error but rather see beyond it to the Love that is our singular reality?

Central to the practice of A Course in Miracles is our willingness to accept a new guide or teacher in place of our egoic selves. Seeing the uselessness of our own teaching efforts, we effectively resign and ask the Holy Spirit (or Jesus, if that is more comfortable for you) to make decisions for us.

Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it (T-9.IV.5:3-6).

Practically speaking, this means that we have to turn to the Holy Spirit. We have to remind ourselves every five minutes – every minute if that’s what it takes – that we need help and that help is here if we are ready.

So talk to the Holy Spirit. Get on your knees and ask to be guided. Light some incense. Read a few lines of the course when and as you can. Get a tattoo that says “help me Jesus!” Whatever it takes to keep in mind that you are not running the show anymore. You are a follower now, not a leader, and Life itself is counting on you to remember that.

Sustained effort in this regard is never without results. The form of the asking doesn’t matter so long as the content – the need itself – is there. We slow down and a sense of calmness enters. Even if we’re scared and uncertain, we can perhaps make contact with the willingness that there is a better way, and that we’re going to find it one way or the other, sooner or later.

As we begin to see the effects of looking at our lives with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we become more confident that this actually works. We aren’t being led down some primrose path and we aren’t being sold a flimsy bill of goods. And we begin to see that forgiveness is natural – that we can extend Love to one another without worrying about the apparent external details. We start to practice forgiveness all the time.

The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created (T-9.IV.3:1-3).

This is the way out. This is the way to fully recalling our fundamental Oneness. This is the means by which we remember that we are only journeying until we realize that no journey is necessary.

Thus we practice forgiveness. We start with what’s in front of us – the spouse that won’t make the bed, the son or daughter who talks back, the boss who won’t listen. We give it all to the Holy Spirit. We don’t pretend to be spiritual giants and we don’t worry about how messy it all looks. We are not the judge anymore. The new guide is here and so we become devoted followers. In this way, worry and fear end, and Love – which is our natural profession and our one calling – swells in their place.