The Means of Grace

I often say that we are in this awakening thing together. This can sound like a bit like the coach rallying the team for a big game. On some level, it is that. It’s good to know that you share my commitment to practicing A Course in Miracles, and to awakening, whatever that means. On a long and sometimes frightening journey, supportive companions are a blessing.

But on a deeper level, we need each other not only to say “good job!” or “hang in there!” but also because it is not possible to wake up alone. We are literally one another’s savior and – in one of those metaphysical twists you can spend lifetimes deciphering – we give to each other the power to awaken us.

It’s like I want to go to Boston and I have the car and the keys but it’s not until I give you the keys and say would you drive me to Boston that I can actually go.

It only seems like we’re alone. It only seems like we can do this ourselves.

You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can let yourselves be wakened (T-29.III.3:4-5).

And how do we “let ourselves be wakened?”

You can overlook your brother’s dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams (T-29.III.3:6-7).

Simple. And yet . . .

This has always been one of the trickier parts of the course for me. It invokes relationship. Some of you know – because I write about it a lot – that most mornings I wake quite early and walk with my dog in the woods and fields. Then I come back and drink tea and pray and study and then ease into writing.

Those are sanctified hours for me. Yet – and I am only just learning this – they are somewhat empty if they do not translate to the balance of the day. What good is salvation if it disappears as soon as my five-year old daughter pokes her head in and asks will I make blueberry pancakes?

Indeed, a salvation – a Heaven, say – in which I have to grit my teeth over students who didn’t read the assigned Emily Dickinson poems, grouse about having to clean the bathroom, or feel aggrieved because I actually have to cook dinner for my family isn’t much of a Heaven at all.

And so the movement in my practice these days is into relationship – I am working on accepting that my brothers and sisters (in all their myriad forms) are not impediments to grace but the very means by which grace reveals itself. It’s not that solitude is bad or that I can’t carve out chunks of time to pray and study – I can and even should – but that I have to be careful of the inclination to parse experience into what is sacred and what is not.

As I have written about recently, there is no middle ground in this process. If I am willing to really look into that – to undo my resistance to it – then it can bring a helpful clarity. It can facilitate a real peace.

I am drawn these days to the course’s introduction. I remember seeing it for the first time in my aunt’s house on Cape Cod. It was electric – so much so that I had to close the book and put it away for many years! But now I find in its uncompromising directive the key to a peace that cannot be undone.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God (In.2:2-4).

Like Polaris – like Basho’s haiku – those lines restore a sense of purpose and certainty. They reawaken the awakening energy. In their calm insistence that confusion is optional and the end sure, I am able to remember why I am here, and you too.

Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark where God still shines (T-29.III.3:1).

Forgive me – reflect that loveliest of lights – so that I can make my way back home! And I will do the same for you, as best I can.

Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend. On earth this means forgive you brother, that the darkness may be lifted from your mind. When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved (T-29.III.4:1-3).

So yes. We are in this together. And I say: thank you. Thank you and thank you and thank you!

The Solution is Simple (That’s Why I Resist It)

There is a great story in the Zen tradition that you probably know. A farmer’s horse runs away leaving him with no means to work the fields. “What a pity,” his neighbors say. “Poor you.”

“We’ll see,” says the farmer.

The next day the horse comes home leading three wild horses. “That’s great!” say the neighbors. “Lucky you!”

“We’ll see,” says the farmer. “Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not.”

The next day his son tries to work one of the new horses. It throws him and his leg breaks. “Wow,” say the neighbors. “That’s really too bad.”

The farmer replies, “maybe it’s bad. Maybe it’s good, though. We’ll see.”

The next day the army comes through, drafting able-bodied youths for war. Obviously they can’t take the farmer’s son. “Incredible news!” the neighbors say.

And the farmer – who is obviously a very patient man – says, “maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s bad.”

And on and on it goes.

In that story, I’m the neighbor. Every day I tell the farmer what’s good and what’s bad. Then I go to the coffee shop and babble about Heraclitus’ river. Then I go home and lecture my kids that time and space aren’t real.

I’m so busy being wise and making sure everybody knows it that the Truth – and the faith that makes seeing Truth possible – are altogether lost to me.

It’s a recurring theme lately. I let go and a grace so deep and still appears, leaving me silly with joy and then . . . I take seriously the idea that “I” did something serious and important and so ought to do it again. And then we’re off to the Separated-from-God races.

A Course in Miracles puts it this way:

You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now (T-18.IV.7:5-7).

I tend to skip over that last sentence because its implications are so powerful. The whole course in right there. Whatever salvation requires is already quite literally at hand. I don’t have to do another ACIM lesson, re-read Tara Singh, meditate more or wake up at 4 a.m. and walk the dog through snowy woods while muttering in the direction of Jesus.

Those are the rituals the egoic self offers in place of the simple truth that if I’d like to wake up – like right now – then I can.

If I am willing to really read that sentence – if I am willing to give it some space – then I am going to have to see that the reason I am not saved yet is because I don’t want to be. I’m not ready. I am still deeply, even cunningly resistant to Love. And while that doesn’t make Jesus pound whiskey in a backwoods roadhouse, it also doesn’t leave me especially happy or peaceful.

And I really want to be happy and peaceful.

So what do I do? More and more it doesn’t seem especially complicated. When I am unhappy and in conflict it is because I am keeping Jesus – that loving symbol of the healed mind – at a distance. Since that’s the problem, the solution is to invite him back.

When I don’t walk my dog, I get irritated. And it’s funny in a way. Why is life so full and busy that I forget about my dog? Is it because I hate God? Or God hates me? Does God hate dogs? Why do I love being separated from truth so much? Maybe I should read some Ken Wapnick or Krishnamurti. Maybe I should write a blog post. Maybe I should return to the Catholic church and go to confession. Maybe . . .

And the Holy Spirit will say gently, “why don’t you take Song for a walk right now?”

I forget how simple the solution is. I like talking and thinking! The first time I sat in a Zendo, the teacher said that we were going to practice not paying attention to our thoughts and I was like, “wow, you must have really boring thoughts.”

She was right though. The Truth needs nothing at all from us. It’s not an insult. It’s freedom. And it’s ours whenever we’re ready.

The Journey Ends in Love

There is a certain pattern to my practice of A Course in Miracles. Lately it has become more pronounced. I stumble into a state of genuine happiness and peace. It’s heavenly, if you’ll forgive a cliche. But then – after a minute or a few hours, sometimes even a day or two – doubt and fear enter. I doubt the feeling is real or that I’m worthy of it. I fear losing it.

In response to that fear and doubt, two things happen simultaneously. First, I clutch at the peace, trying to make it mine because I don’t trust God. I don’t trust the peace. Second, I become dismissive. “Oh well. I don’t really want that love anyway. Find some sucker, Jesus.”

And then, sure enough, I am separated from the love of God. And it hurts. It hurts so much.

Here is what I am learning right now: it is important to see that I am choosing against Love. I don’t want to see that and I certainly don’t want to say it. But it’s true. I want the Love that Jesus offers to be conditional. I want an external God to offer and then jerk it away, like a cat toying with a mouse. That’s how God is, right? Cruel and spiteful, delighting in my misery.

If I can convince myself that this is true, then there is nothing to be done. It’s not my choice to be unhappy; it’s just how it is. I am God’s victim.

That’s the lie that allows me to blame someone else – God and Jesus, in this case – for my unhappiness.

In a way, we preserve the egoic self – we make it real – by defending it against these imagined attacks from God.

There is a wonderful line in the course that asks us: do you prefer that you be right or happy (T-29.VII.1:9)?

Be glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself (T-29.VII.1:10-12).

Sometimes I feel that somewhere, somehow, I whispered “yes.” I thought God wasn’t listening. Probably I hoped he wasn’t. But he was. He sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit. He sent other helpers, too. And they have taught me so patiently. Their lesson is so simple: I am doing this to myself. And so I can choose not to do it. They will help.

No more than that, but no less either. It is enough.

Before this Love – even with such teachers beside me – I am scared. I don’t want to lose myself – small, sad and pathetic as that self is. I think it’s all I have. To surrender it and live in God . . . what is that but annihilation? What is that but loss?

And so it goes. It is too late to turn back and tarrying has become so painful. “Follow me,” says Jesus. “You who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

One or two steps only and the journey ends where it began: in Love.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 158

Today I learn to give as I receive.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that revelation – direct union with God – is beyond the scope of what can be taught (T-1.II.2:1-3). Vision, on the other hand – recognizing our own self in our brothers and sisters and thus joining with them – is very much a skill that we can learn. And it is this to which the course directs it efforts. When we have accepted Christ’s vision, then our experience of being bodies in a world will be a happy dream that reflects – that symbolizes – the perfect wholeness of Heaven.

This distinction matters! The course teaches us a new way of thinking about miracles – shifts in thought that unite us with one another by teaching us that we have shared – not separate – interests. The more miracle-minded we become, the more our experience of living includes the free flow of Christ’s vision gently bringing all of us back to our home in the Mind of God (T-1.II.1:6, T-1.II.2:4-5). Miracles are practical and helpful. They undo each and every block to our awareness of Love, no matter how seemingly large or intractable. Given to serving the Voice for God – the Holy Spirit, our healed mind – miracles become radically transformational. They literally induce a peace which surpasses understanding.

Lesson 158 is very much concerned with facilitating our relationship to miracles. It wants us to deepen our miracle-mindedness and implies that we are ready to do so. It makes perfectly clear that our facility with miracles is intimately – is divinely – yoked to our relationship with our brothers and sisters. We do not end this meandering horror show alone. We are each the other’s way out. We are each other other’s savior.

Thus, we are called by this lesson to practice – to make manifest in the world – the Vision of Christ. We do this by insisting on seeing each one of our brothers and sisters as “another chance to let Christ’s vision shine on [us], and offer [us] the peace of God” (W-pI.158.10:5). Our experience of this love perceives only “an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearfult thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin” (W-pI.158.7:3). We refuse the separation and actively embrace the atonement.

Christ’s vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created . . . It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees (W-pI.158.7:1-2, 4-5).

We accomplish this – we make it possible – by recognizing that “the world can not give anything that faintly can compare with this in value” (W-pI.158.8:2). We want to be saved; we want only to be saved.

So we have to be clear about what is working and what is not when it comes to ourselves and our lives in this world. We have to be clear that the world does not offer us the peace and happiness for which we long. It never has and it never will. There is no constellation of external people, things, places and events that will bring about true joy. So long as we are holding onto the world even a little, we cannot begin to practice the vision of Christ. We have to empty our hearts entirely.

This letting go cannot be an intellectual exercise. If we are simply being logical and concluding that yes, the world does appear to be doomed so a spiritual alternative makes good sense, then it won’t be effective. It has to come from a sense of pervasive despair. Our helplessness has to be total and our sense of desolation utter and complete. It has to be felt in a deep way. Most of us don’t surrender willingly. We really have to go all the way down in defeat.

Yet – and this is where ACIM metaphysics can be really useful – we already are defeated. We don’t have to go on with the same old suffering. If we are attentive to our living – within the world, within these bodies – then we can see clearly the futility of our efforts, our own will. We’ve already been here and we’ve already done it. This surrender – this willingness to recognize that the world offers us literally nothing that we want – has already been accomplished. If we see this, then we can move on to seeing one another not as bodies but as light itself.

Thus do you learn to give as you receive. And thus Christ’s vision looks on you as well. This lesson is not difficult to learn, if you remember in you brother you but see yourself (W-pI.158.10:1-3).

Don’t wait on this! Look honestly at your life in the world and ask what it has gained you. Be clear about the peace that you want, and the happiness you want to have in order to share. Search out the love that you dimly remember. And come to this practice of kindness: this willingness to look on the world with Christ’s eyes – a vision that forgives, that embraces all it rests upon with love and joy. It is not easy because it is unfamiliar. But the doing breeds remembrance – this loving inclusiveness is what we are in truth. Give it and we receive it. And receiving it, we are brought back to our Creator in Heaven.

←Lesson 157
Lesson 159→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 156

I walk with God in perfect holiness.

God does not move; we appear to move. The course is using “walk” here to reflect both our understanding of the world brought forth in separation and the reality of the real world. Basically we are on a journey that is an illusion because there is nothing to leave behind, nowhere to go, and nobody and no thing to do the journeying.

We don’t know that yet, and so we need helpful illusions to teach us and steady us while we learn. Hence, we “walk with God in perfect holiness” (W-pI.156.8:5).

The value of this lesson then lies in our ability to take it seriously but not literally. It points to something, and empowers us to integrate this something into our lives in the world so that we can ultimately go beyond it.

You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is (W-pI.156.2:4-6).

The key word in that quotation is “life.” Life is where the abstract perfection of God – itself impossible to imagine in the context of separation – becomes tangible to an exquisite degree. That is because the course emphasizes not many lives in many forms but one life, inclusive.

There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live (W-pI.156.2:7-9).

Tara Singh often observed that there was “one life beyond appearances.” Therefore, the maple tree that you pass on your walk only appears to be separate. Same with the chickadees on it limbs, the dandelions at its base. Same with the soil and the sun and the rain. All one.

It is possible to give attention to this one life. We can start by loving the seemingly separate instances of it – who doesn’t love a maple tree full of chickadees – yet in time this love will generalize. We will stop seeing the form as an example of oneness, and begin to see oneness because of the form (and thus effectively eclipsing the form). The chickadees are our brother, and the maple tree is our brother, and Tara Singh is our brother, because there is only one life.

This love – which begins as a remembrance and self-transforms to a present recognition – is a gift in which our innocence is revealed as a gift that we are giving unto the world.

The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own. And they they see in your their holiness, saluating you as a savior and as God (W-pI.156.5:1-4).

The light that we carry is shared – it is not Sean’s. It is not even “ours.” It cannot be possessed. It can only be recognized, and it is only recognized when it is shared, or allowed to extend itself through us. This sharing is kin to the willingness to see only what is true. What is true is Love in which all differences – those that are negative, those that are positive, and the full spectrum in between – are undone. Since we too are merely a symbol of life, we get out of the way, and let Life be Itself for Itself. That is what salvation is.

As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen (W-pI.156.6:2-4).

We are not guilty. Guilt depends on separation for its existence – separate bodies, separate interests and the endless string of conflicts in which those bodies become entangled, often in terrifying ways. Yet when we see there is one life – not our life, but one life – then the grounds for guilt are dissolved and our innocence appears, like a light that cannot be put out.

This happens in time. It happens to selves apparently encased in bodies. It happens in the world. Collectively, it is the transformation of nightmares to happy dreams, and it is reflected in our shared willingness to be servants and peacemakers rather than masters and warmongers.

When we declare that we walk with God, we take a stand against separation – which is death – in favor of Life, which is God, which is Love. We live on terms that reflect our shared salvation, and thus make salvation real for the world.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. That means that if we asked who walks with us a thousand times (e.g., W-pI.156.8:2), then we would do it every minute and a half. We literally would not go two minutes without stopping to ask: who walks with me? It sounds crazy, right? But is there any evidence that Jesus is not being literal here? Isn’t this a variation on the old idea to ask and ask again. 

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you (Matthew 7:7).

This lesson invites us to an intense devotion, the ultimate fruit of which is freedom. We awaken when we remember – and are no longer willing to forget – that it is God who walks with us, that we bear within us a holy light whose radiance we can neither diminish nor eliminate. Holiness, it turns out, is the condition of life. We go with God always, as God goes with us.

←Lesson 155
Lesson 157→

Coherence is Movement

Coherence is in motion. It is a moment, much like a river as it moves from higher to lower ground, bounded by banks. This distinction matters, inasmuch as we seem to have a tendency, innate or otherwise, to look for static, one-off solutions. We imagine that there is a blueprint for truth and reality and if we can find it and study it, then we will have the answer and every conflict will be solved and will remain so forever.

But coherence is not like that. Indeed, no sooner do we say “this is coherent” or “this view will make us coherent” then we are wrong. We are being incoherent. Coherence cannot be trapped in amber or reduced to bullet points. Krishnamurti said that “truth is a pathless land.” So what we are suggesting then is that maps are static but the territory is alive and shifting and changing moment to moment. It is a movement for which the map – even a very good one, a very clear one – cannot be a permanent substitute.

Thus, if we want to be coherent – or have an experience of coherence – then we need to let go of some presuppositions. Chief amongst these is the notion that truth can be caught in time and held in place. It has no qualities that allow us to do this. It is not even an idea or a thought. Ideas and thoughts are easily held, fossilized or codified, and given physical manifestations. Sometimes that activity can reflect coherence but it is not itself coherence.

What I am saying – what I am sort of circling around saying – is that we cannot ourselves make coherence. We can’t force it. On some level, even to have it as a goal is to miss the point, and so ultimately to miss coherence. Some Buddhist teachers will tell their students, you cannot become enlightened if you wish to become enlightened. Or perhaps it is also a bit like the artist Jasper Johns who said that to be a great artist, one has to give up everything, including the desire to become a great artist.

For most of us, this sort of direction (trying to awaken is what prohibits awakening) – if it even qualifies as direction – is maddening. We believe that reality can be known and measured and that actions can be taken based on those measurements. It is like building a bridge or updating software – orderly and predictable to the point of routine.

But if that is so, then why are we in crisis – personally, communally, globally? Why are things breaking down at all levels?

It is seeing that – seeing the incoherence of our fundamental assumptions, the ones that give rise to our beliefs, which in turn drive our perceptions and then our actions – that enable us to take our first tentative steps in the direction of coherence.

I say “tentative” and I mean it. If we are going to create meaning in a coherent way, and experience coherence, then we have to move slowly. We have to keep in mind that we are not building anything nor even discovering anything but simply encountering something that is already present and already dynamic. It has its own energy apart from our judgment and perception.

In that light, then, the qualities that enable us be coherent are not necessarily what we would expect. For example, a quality of attentiveness is very important. We have to give attention to what is happening in an internal way. We have to see how our thoughts emerge, the shape they take, the nature of their movement on the inside, and how that affects the outside.

Really, it is a kind of attention that slows things down, or takes things one at a time. It doesn’t multitask. It wants to see what is happening with our anger, say, but then it also wants to see what is happening with our assumptions about the anger. As David Bohm often pointed out, if we are looking inward without questioning our assumptions then we are not going to get anywhere because it is the assumptions that are doing the looking.

What he meant is simply that we might assume that anger is bad and if that is the case, then we are going to “see” anger as bad. We have to see that assumption that colors our inquiry. When we do, its power is diluted considerably and we get a clearer sense of how the anger operates – its relation to some central self, the way it drives the body into fight or flight and so forth. All of that can be very valuable but in order to get to it, we have to get to the assumptions. And in order to get to the assumptions we have to be patient, and attentive, and even painstaking. The reward for this can be quite impressive – coherence is healing and peaceful – but we cannot overlook the hard work upon which it rests.