Sean Reagan

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).

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.

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.

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.