Language and Awakening

The word is not the thing.

Sooner or later, we have to make some peace with this, bring it into application. I have a friend who experienced what she felt was true oneness. She proceeded to tell her partner who was with her at the time. Her partner said, “did the experience last as long as the explanation of it did?” It was a good point.

We have to communicate. And words are a viable means of doing this. But they are naturally porous. I write “dog” thinking of the dog who sits near my feet awaiting her walk. But you think of the neighbor’s dog who kept you up all night barking. We have pinned down exactly nothing. And it gets harder when we talk about God and Love, not to mention Separation and Atonement which have very specific ACIM meanings. It is a mistake to trust language too much.

I am saying that talking about all this is not always fruitful and can in fact be quite dangerous in the sense that it perpetuates the very problem we are trying to solve.

One way of using words responsibly is to engage in dialogue. I don’t mean a conversation between two people. I mean a dialogue – that is, the creation of shared meaning. This can be a singular experience or it can include any number of other people. In the kind of dialogue that I envision here, we talk very slowly and carefully. Our objective is to recognize the tricky nature of words and mitigate that by choosing them carefully.

Choosing words carefully means that we are also paying attention to our internal filters: we are aware of our conditioning, our biases, our opinions and the way that they influence language. We might say that they are our language. And we are willing to suspend all of it, or at least try to suspend it, in the interest of dialogue, of creating some shared meaning.

Obviously, the other piece of this is listening. Our filters are translating what others say, too. Often, when we are talking to someone – and I am using talking in a very broad sense, including what is happening now between you and me – we are not really hearing what they say so much as measuring the degree to which it comports with our own beliefs, opinions, et cetera.

When we approach dialogue carefully, we realize that we have a tendency to view others (and the world at large) as little more than extensions of what we want to believe we are. We are not really making any room for what is – we are insisting on our interpretation of what is.

How does this help with our practice of A Course in Miracles? The course is really just an extended metaphor for changing our mind. It calls us to interact differently with how we think. Mind is both the problem and the solution. Words like “Jesus” and “God” and “Holy Spirit” are good for capturing our attention, but they must be undone if we are going to experience the end of the separation. Not temporarily undone – all the way undone.

The word is not – the word is never – the thing.

To be in dialogue – with oneself, with another, with the course – is to move slowly. It is to fix one’s intention on discovery of what works – what is functional and helpful – and then to proceed cautiously and responsibly. In course terms we say the ego is always ready to undermine us. But we might simply say that using mind to undo mind is complex – a paradox even – and so we have to be alert. We have to be sensitive. There is nothing sinister at work here. We are simply undoing a habit of thinking – of using mind – that is quite entrenched. It’s hard – of course it is hard.

But it is also doable. This, to me, is the great gift of A Course in Miracles – at least in my life. It has made awakening possible. Its Christian language, Platonic philosophy and Freudian ideal caught my attention and held it long enough to see the problem. The solution, of course, is neither Christian nor Platonic nor Freudian. But that’s okay. We have to see the problem – we have to know it – before the solution becomes obvious and accessible.

I am saying: go slowly and ask a lot of questions. When you get scared, don’t try to solve the fear. When it seems impossible, relax. Rest, even. It’s okay. Or it’s going to be.

The Absolutely Right Way to Practice A Course in Miracles

A year or so ago someone wrote me about a negative experience they’d had with a fairly well-known course teacher. With this teacher, they experienced a lot of pressure to practice A Course in Miracles a particular way. The coercion bothered them but at a deeper level, they were also bothered by the idea that it was even possible to approach the course from such a black and white place.

If you pay attention to the course community – from its highest levels to its lowest and farthest-flung – you know this is a real problem. A lot of well-intentioned people believe that it’s their way or the highway. Or they present themselves that way. And so beginners and sometimes even veterans find themselves engaging less with the course and more with someone else’s interpretation of the course.

So is there a right way to practice A Course in Miracles? An “only” way?

No.

However, I wonder if we could say that there are helpful and less helpful ways to practice it? And that the arbiter of what is helpful and the degree to which it is helpful is you, in prayerful conjunction with the Holy Spirit and Jesus?

That feels healthier to me, and more consistent with the overall tone and message of A Course in Miracles.

It is my experience that the course meets us where we are. That is, whatever our spiritual needs and abilities happen to be at a given time, the course will – if it is the path that we are choosing – naturally and usefully fit into them. We will be challenged and nurtured to the precise degree that we’re ready, willing and able to be.

And that is going to be a different experience for each student. Not only that, but that experience is going to change over time. It is a process and it changes and we change with it.

And the course shifts gear to be with us at all times – even, sometimes, to where it is no longer a viable spiritual practice.

I will give you a couple of personal examples. When I first encountered the course, I was quickly and intensely invested in the debate about which edition to read. The urtext? The sparkly edition? The Criswell? What?

As an English professor and professional writer, this seemed like a reasonable issue. It appealed to both my personal and professional instincts. So I read a lot of blog posts on the subject. I got hold of every edition, read them and compared them to one another. It was a very academic process, a very intense process and . . . a very ego-driven process. I wanted to be right. And for me to be right, others had to be wrong.

I dove right into the heart of the conflict. It was my early lens into the course community and A Course in Miracles itself.

These days, I am uninterested in that debate – or at least a lot less interested. When asked, I encourage people to just stick with the FIP edition. If they feel really strongly that there’s a better one, then I encourage them to go for it. The differences between editions are far less significant than what is similar. You’re going to get it regardless of the edition you read. The conflict – which can be quite intense – is a real distraction. The idea that one edition is superior to the other for all students all the time . . . it’s just crazy. Who would want to indulge it? You find what works and then you stick with it.

Still, even though I regret that early focus – because it indulged conflict and not peace – I still learned. I got a great crash course in the course community. I was exposed to some thinkers – Robert Perry, Kenneth Wapnick, Liz Cronkhite – who are helpful for many reasons other than their take on which edition of ACIM is authentic, or real, or condoned.

So what I am saying is that while the Sean of today would discourage the approach that the Sean of yesterday took, the Sean of yesterday was still learning. He was still making progress.

It was okay. It really was.

Here’s another example. Gary Renard’s book The Disappearance of the Universe showed up in my practice at about the time I let go of the ACIM edition question. It was a rough time. I had made a commitment to the course, but was also feeling quite lost with it. I wasn’t sure I understood it, wasn’t sure what teachers to read. I felt chastened by the fact that I’d indulged community conflict so much.

In that space, Renard was an accessible and incredibly supportive teacher. His attitude and style allowed me to breathe. I didn’t care about the whole Arten and Pursah debate. I just read the book several times through. It had a real calming effect on me. It was like talking to somebody who wasn’t invested in being brilliant or overly spiritual or anything. It was so refreshing that way.

Years later, I don’t really turn to Renard’s work. It was incredibly useful at a point in my practice, and then it stopped being so useful. It helped to create a fruitful learning environment in which other teachers appeared.

Again, what worked back then does not work now. But so what? This is a learning process, not a learning event. I know students who stay with Gary for years. He’s their teacher. He’s got what they want or need. And that’s fine with me. I’m happy for them. I don’t think I’m more right than they are just because I moved on.

Always ask: what is working? What is not? And then follow what works and gently and lovingly let go of what does not. It’s okay. And it’s going to get even more okay. Our teacher is the Holy Spirit. We are already what we need to learn. Be attentive and gentle. Be open. It works. It’s working.

What is Dialogue?

What is dialogue? What does it mean to be in dialogue?

In answering those questions, I am thinking of David Bohm’s excellent little book On Dialogue, his dialogues with Krishnamurti in The End of Time, and of A Course in Miracles. Although I am no longer a formal ACIM student, the course’s focus on undoing as a means of encountering those blocks which impede awareness of love is enhanced by an understanding of – and the use of  – Bohmian dialogue.

Like Bohm, I understand dialogue first in terms of its lexiconic origins. It is a Greek word – dialogos. Logos means word or, better, the meaning of the word. And “dia” means through – not two. So dialogue is not a verbal exchange between two individuals; rather, it is the creation of shared meaning, a cooperative exploration of thought as it arises in relationship.

Dialogue does not aim at the “Truth.” Bohm would want to know what one means by that word. Really, we can only ascertain its usefulness or relevance if we are clear on its meaning. I am positing some absolute – God, say, though I am less partial to that word that I have been – that can be discerned through careful dialogue. Discerned and realized.

And I am saying further – and here I think I am safely on Bohmiam ground – that the difficulties we face as a society (globally, nationally, locally, familialy and even personal) cannot be resolved absent that discernment and realization.

We have to be clear: about what is going on and why it is happening the way it is.

So then one thing that dialogue can do is it can move slowly. This seems important. Something in us longs to go quickly – to get on with life, as if the journey exists solely for the destination. We all know – intuitively if not explicitly – that strictly speaking there is no destination, but that does not seem to slow us down. Using the past as a map, we gloss over the present in the interest of building some (more) desirable future. There is not much time to talk, let alone get clear on what we mean when we talk.

For example, I made reference to “truth” earlier – even gave it a capital “T.” It is fair to ask what I mean by that. But even the answer I gave – in terms of the absolute – begs some exploration. There are all sorts of implications in that word – especially when it is tagged with “God.” So maybe it is worth slowing down and trying to get clear about it. Is there a better word? Can we separate “God” from all the philosophical and theological baggage to which it has so long been chained?

And it is not just about philosophy or morality or what have you. It is also about conditioning – it is about our filters. Bohm suggests that our filters – the senses that take in data, the brain that selects and organizes it – are effectively an observer. We cannot really have a dialogue about truth if we are not challenging – raising to light – our various filters in this regard. On what basis do we retain some ideas by discard others? What are the rules by which the brain functions? If we cannot see them – if we cannot both listen and speak – outside of them, then we are not really going to get anywhere. We’re just going to go in circles.

So we can say that dialogue moves slowly and that it moves slowly because a) that enables us to be very very clear about what we mean with this or that word and also b) because it is hard to maintain awareness of our filters – our conditioning – if we move too quickly. The filters are default settings and that is what we are trying to undo. That is the influence from which we want to escape.

Dialogue implies talking, of course, and I think – perhaps because I am naturally a talker – most of us look at it that way. There’s nothing wrong with that. Speaking slower, being more selective with language, being aware of the thought process that underlies our inclination to and mode of communication is all very helpful.

Yet the other aspect of dialogue – as necessary if not more so – is listening. I hate phrases like “active” listening or “dynamic” listening. They come up sometimes in workshops or classrooms and they are always soft code for “pay attention.” I am all for paying attention, but there is a big difference between simply hearing what somebody says and listening to them. Listening as I am considering it here – hopefully with Bohm as a sort of guide – has to do with self-awareness. Who is listening?

In other words, the filters are as active when we hear as when we talk – maybe more so. And so somebody says the word “truth” and we simply translate it to our own personal meaning and continue merrily along our way. Yet it is impossible that you and I should use the word “truth” and mean precisely the same thing – or even roughly the same thing.

If we are listening while aware of the activity of the filters, then a word like “truth” will sound almost foreign to us. So perhaps we will I am not sure what you mean by this.

I think this sort of careful and deliberate dialogue can help us to clarify what is happening in our thoughts – it can make more obvious the belief systems at work and thus enable us to question their effectiveness. It is not really possible, for example, to engage in Bohmian dialouge around, say, Jesus in A Course in Miracles, and not make some contact with our egoic mind and its chaotic extravagance. If forgiveness is right seeing, then dialogue – this sort of dialogue – is an excellent tool at our disposal.

I want to add one other thought. It is easy to relegate dialogue to the category of becoming – another means of self-improvement, betterment, et cetera. But is it not just problem-solving. It is not another mode of psychotherapy. Rather, it is an experience unto itself – at its best, that is what it is. We have a direct experience of both self and communication. And that is immensely energizing. If you have ever felt it, you know what I mean. It doesn’t really matter what was said, or whether any conclusions were reached, or future dialogues scheduled. You are simply lifted by what transpires, as it transpires.

Thus, dialogue is active – intensely, joyfully active. Its effects are ever in our reach.

Forgiveness Is Not A Reaction

We all know that forgiveness is a big part of A Course in Miracles. Yet understanding just what forgiveness means is difficult. Even after we figure out the course definition – it’s more like right seeing as opposed to pardoning somebody – we are still caught in the question of how to apply it. I want to suggest that we need to relate to forgiveness more as followers than actors. In other words, we aren’t doing forgiveness – forgiveness is doing us.

When I first began to study ACIM, I appreciated its focus on forgiveness. It felt deeply Christian to me. It made me think about turning the other cheek, giving away my shirt and my jacket, and all of that. It was Jesus being crucified and forgiving those who had nailed him to the cross. To forgive was to love radically in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Yet fairly quickly, that traditional understanding was undone by the course.

To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds (T-9.IV.1:2-3).

And later in the same section, this idea is expanded upon, with special emphasis on not allowing error to become real. The ego’s plan for forgiveness is to always make the error real – painfully, visibly, tangibly real – and only then proceed to pardon it. Egoic forgiveness is always conditional. The course has a different view.

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 . . . What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent (T-9.IV.5:3-5).

So forgiveness is not a reaction. It is not a response. We really have to get clear on this if we want to make it a practice, to reap its healing benefits. As soon as we perceive error of any kind, we are not in the space of forgiveness. The forgiveness contemplated by the course does not see error, period. As soon as we perceive any error – the kids are too loud, the weather is crappy, our partner is griping too much, the Democrats/Republicans are being idiotic, there’s too much war, everyone’s a faker but me, take your pick – then we’ve left forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not take a bad situation and make it right. It’s not a tool that we use to rectify an otherwise broken situation. It is not a response to a problem. Rather, it is the perception of the complete and unconditional absence of conflict.

For many years, I accepted intellectually the ACIM concept of forgiveness. It only takes a little effort to grasp and then we can parrot it to no end. But that kind of learning is meaningless. At the deeper levels we are still invested in error. The error – the sin – remains central. I had the right idea, but I was still functioning with a this-is-right-this-is-wrong mindset.

Remember always that ego doesn’t mind the course as an idea. Not at all. It’s the application – the attempt to make it real in our lives – that causes us problems. It is happy to concede a definition so long as it remains an academic exercise.

So I began to see that I had no idea what forgiveness was. Left to my brain and my body senses, and all the conditioning that goes along with that, I was always going to be stuck in the dual thought system or right and wrong. To be stuck that way was to be bereft of forgiveness and whatever peace and joy attended it. So something else had to come into play.

I always say that if you aren’t feeling battered by the course then you probably aren’t doing it seriously. Real honesty and real willingness are almost always experienced as painful. To believe otherwise is to believe that the egoic self is cheerfully participating in its demise. It’s not. It’s fighting tooth and nail. So even though I felt embarrassed at having misunderstood this important concept, and discouraged at how much farther I had to go, and so on and so forth, it was fundamentally a healthy moment. Seeing the futile resources of the egoic self means that we are at last open – even if just a crack – to the creative action of the Holy Spirit.

We really have to accept that we are students. We really have to want to learn and we can only learn when we see how little we know. It is a humbling experience.

Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is (T-9.IV.6:3-4).

So we don’t do forgiveness. The Holy Spirit does. We have to stand aside and let the Holy Spirit do its work. This can be confusing – after all, if we aren’t separate from the Holy Spirit, then what exactly does it mean to step aside?

I say: don’t sweat it. Just keep in mind that what you’ve brought to bear so far hasn’t worked. Trust that there’s another way. Pray or meditate if that helps. Go for long walks. When you run into conflict, don’t struggle with your perception. Just watch how it plays out in your mind. Be attentive. For me, attention and willingness go a long way. Sooner or later, they make possible what seemed otherwise impossible: I have the experience of forgiveness. I feel the deep peace that naturally accompanies the realization of oneness. It’s vibrant and energetic.

And it fades – or I cling to it and so it disappears. Or it seems to. Yet a little taste will carry you a long way. And the next sip is almost always closer than you think. A moment of clarity, a few minutes of revelation, an abiding insight, a calm certainty. We are never as far from God as we believe. To know this is to forgive.

Question Your Separation from God

The separation is the starting point. It is the beginning. We believe that we are separated from God. It is an old problem, an old belief, and it gave rise to religion and all other sorts of thought systems and beliefs. We are always struggling with the self that we think we are – the egoic self, the false self, the human-made self – and the self that remains as God created it – eternal, unified and free.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that the Separation never happened. There was no fall from grace. We never left the garden. The idea that we could somehow somewhere be separate from our Creator was both tiny and mad. All we had to do was laugh at it. But by taking it seriously, we gave the separation credence. And given the power of our minds – which create as they were created, fully like to their Creator – the separation became real. This world, these bodies, these personalities.

Can we accept that it is all an illusion? If we could, then we would remember. We are still as God created us. We have not left our home. Heaven is not a place, attained after virtuous sojourning through a material world, but a state that is accessible to us now. Do we know it? Are we willing to know it? It is without conditions. It is contingent on nothing but our readiness to accept it.

Every lesson, every sentence of A Course in Miracles wants to assure us that what we think happened – the break from God – did not happen. Period. And if it did not happen, then it is not real, and it has no effects. No scarcity, no sin, no loneliness, no guilt, no fear, no anger. The egoic self says, “it sounds nice but you know it’s not how the world works.” The egoic self says, “it’s just a metaphor. Don’t take it literally.”

The egoic self wants us to believe that we broke from God in the past and can heal that break in the future. It is perfectly happy to allow for self-improvement. It uses the past and future as a sort of hammer and anvil with which to crush the present – render it a blip between the two periods of time in which we are utterly powerless, in which everything is meaningless.

God, through the Holy Spirit, calls to us now. It would restore our fullness – our sanity – this instant forever. That is the promise of A Course in Miracles. And yet we go on with half-measures. We listen to Holiness with one ear and give the other to hell.

The lives we think we live are based on wrong ideas, wrong thinking and resistance to the help that is always present. No wonder we ache. No wonder we are ever in touch with our brokenness. We own the lie for fear of Truth. And all we need to do is say, “okay. My way is not working. I am ready to try yours.” The Holy Spirit is aflame in the tiny gap created by willingness. Jesus walks beside us. So does the Buddha, so does Guru Nanak. We are not alone. We are not inventing spiritual wheels.

Every time I think I get it – every time I think I’ve given it over – I learn there is a little more. More sludge and cruft that needs healing. More shadows in need of the soft light of Christ. Is this what Jesus meant, so many years ago, when he said “you will not get out until you have paid the last penny?” It’s not a threat – not a condition as the world knows conditions – but a promise. Give it all over. All. And when we do . . . “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven.”

We have to question the separation. We start there – with questioning, with healing. It is either real or it is not. The miracle teaches us it never happened. The miracle says it’s okay to breathe: we’re home.

You Can End Your Separation from God Now

If God is, and we are not experiencing God, then we have interjected something between ourselves and God. It is not an object though it may certainly appear that way. It is simply the idea that we can be separated from God. That is all. If we can liberate ourselves from the tyranny of that one idea, then we will know the peace and joy of God.

And yes, I know. Easy to say, hard to do.

But that is the promise of A Course in Miracles! And it is backed up by a curriculum that will assist us in the necessary liberation. The hard part is letting go of the world and turning inward. That interior landscape – of ideas, of images, of fantasies – can seem unwieldy indeed! Yet it is only there that meaningful help can come. And it is there that the necessary undoing will be accomplished – in us and through us, but not by us. Not like that.

When I say let go of the world, I mean only to withdraw one’s investment in it. To let go of the idea that external circumstances can be the cause of anything. The Course does not advocate asceticism. You don’t have to swear off cheesecake, do yoga three hours a day and Tantric meditation the other twenty-one. Sackcloth and ashes are not required. You are allowed to live your life in the world.

You are simply asked to consider seeing that life a little differently.

How does this work? We allow the Holy Spirit to see for us. We allow the Holy Spirit to offer guidance – where to go, what to say, who to see. Don’t complicate this. Don’t make it so metaphysical and abstract that you can’t decide whether to brush your teeth or not. The Holy Spirit is just that part of your mind that remembers God. The ego is a way of thinking without God; the Holy Spirit thinks with God. It’s a gift and it was given to you. More than that, it was given to you to be used.

So use it! Find a way to make this possible.

I’m a word guy. I talk a lot and I write a lot. So I believe in talking to God, talking to Jesus, talking to the late Tara Singh, who is my teacher, talking to the Holy Spirit. I ask for a lot help. And the help comes.

And I am here to tell you that as time passes, and as my faith and my practice deepen, the help doesn’t leave. I don’t have to talk it through as much. I can relax into the Presence.

I am learning to experience God as eternally present and conditioned on nothing but willingness.

The Presence – call it God, call it Source, call it what you like – is not contingent on external circumstances. It is as consistent and supportive and lovely in the forest as in traffic. It’s not out there. It’s inside. When you make contact with it, whatever appears to be outside is transformed. It has no power over you. It is beautiful and nurturing because that is how the Presence “sees.” You move through it – interact with it – but it’s all changed. It doesn’t seem as important or as real.

Navigating the internal landscape is not easy. In fact, it can be so terrifying and apparently challenging that returning to the external world can seem very reasonable! The interior is filled with fear and guilt. Images from the past haunt us – choices not made or made poorly, times we were victims and times we did the victimizing ourselves. Dread and gloom shade the future. Who needs it?

But that’s where the willingness comes in.

Can you let what you experience inside be? Can you look at the sludge and ugliness and just let it be? It’s not your job to fix it or heal it. The Holy Spirit will shine it away. All you need to do is come to that place where you allow that function to be fulfilled on your behalf.

Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit’s function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and yourself. The knowledge is safe but where is your safety apart from it? (T-14.IX.1:4-6)

Spend a few minutes in meditation whenever possible. Don’t worry about getting it right. Right and wrong are not helpful ideas when it comes to God. Just be still – sitting, standing, walking, kneeling. Whatever. And let your mind do what it does: let it fill with the horror show. Let it be all judgmental and cruel. Let it be silly or boring.

And say: here you go, Jesus. Say: this one’s for you Holy Spirit.

Maybe not this hour and maybe not today even but soon you will discover that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not simply metaphors. You will encounter an internal light – faint, flickering, tiny – and it will heal you. Slowly it will heal you. I feel completely comfortable promising you this is so!

Don’t run away from what scares you. Don’t hide from how horrible you think you are or how terrifying the world is or how rotten other people are. Give it over. In words, with images, in prayer. Sing it out loud if you have to! But find that willingness. A spark is all that is need to start the conflagration. Let go.

The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness, or what you made to what you are (T-14.IX.1:1-3).

What you made to what you are . . . God created you perfect and you remain the perfect Creation of God. Find the truth of that! Everything else is of your own making. Let the many obstructions you made go. Undo the separation by accepting that it never happened. Let the One whose job it is to teach you that truth teach it to you.

And like that, you will be home.