A Course in Miracles Lesson 149

My mind holds only what I think with God.

When I am healed, I am not healed alone (Lesson 137).
Heaven is the decision I must make (Lesson 138).

Because we are not separate, when we heal, our healing touches all of life. In a sense, to heal is to join with our brothers and sisters, and to remember our shared guiltlessness together with them.

. . . see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him with them. They are part of you, as you are part of God (T-7.VII.10:4-6).

To remember our innocence in Creation, and our shared unity as extension of Love, is what it means to be healed, because the memory of innocence dissolves the separation and all its apparent effects. In a sense, healing is a form of responsibility unto our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include skunks, birch trees and asteroids).

In other words, this remembrance is active; it is a way of being in the world. It is a way of meeting one another and relating to one another that places the other’s well-being above our own, because we know that anything we give to the other, we give to ourselves. It’s not a painful giving, but a joyous one, a liberating one.

The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons, who belong to Him (T-7.VII.11:4-5).

This is why we say that Heaven – a state of happiness because it is a state of remembered oneness, in which differences and valuation are entirely undone – is a decision that we must make. Really, we are saying that we have to want happiness more than we want to suffer. So we are looking at the ego’s thought system and seeing that it does not offer us peace and joy. In fact, it can’t. Understanding this is essential to awakening.

Perceive any part of the ego’s thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable (T-7.VII.11:1-2).

To see through ego is to see clearly, as through a lens of forgiveness, the real world where there is no loss and everything shines forever (T-13.VII.1:6-7). Wanting only this, we have only this, and having only this, we can offer only this. Offering it to our brothers and sisters is how we learn that we have it.

In this way, those who share this life with us – at the kitchen table, in the grocery store, on the highway in passing – confirm our holiness as we confirm theirs. It is a lovely, life-giving cycle of affirmation, in which together we remind ourselves that nothing happened and we remain as God created us.

Each lesson of A Course in Miracles is an opportunity to be healed of guilt, and of the fear, anger and hatred that are its bitter fruits. We do this by remembering that we go together, not alone, on this healing journey, and that the only decision we need to make is the decision to follow the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God.

Let us make it for one another today, and thus empower each other to offer the gift to everyone we meet today, friend and stranger alike. Our gentle recognition of each other as saviors is what save us. Let us assume no other burden but this one today, and thus learn it is not a burden at all but a joy.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 148

My mind holds only what I think with God.

If I defend myself I am attacked (Lesson 135).
Sickness is a defense against the truth (Lesson 136).

The reason that self-defense is a form of attack is because we are not bodies (W-pI.199.8:7) and the world is not real (W-pI.132.6:2). What is one with God, one without another, cannot be attacked – there is nobody and nothing to do the attacking. Nor is there any separate entity to be attacked.

Thus, there is no such thing as attack unless the mind believes there is, in which case it violates its own wholeness, which is infinite and eternal, by believing it is something it is not, i.e., a body.

That is what we call the separation, and its effects are painful indeed. And there is a better way.

It is interesting to consider how these two lessons – 135 and 136 – fit together. The first teaches us that we can only attack our own self and the second makes the curious argument that sickness is a form of attack. What does this mean? What are we supposed to learn here?

Sickness is a form of attack because it reflects the underlying belief that the body is real and that what happens to it has value for its own sake. Its only value is the extent to which it can be used to wake you up from the dream of separation. In and of itself it is neutral.

But the sickness – and the body apparently afflicted – do not exist in the real world. Therefore, we have to let go of our attachment to preferential narratives and narrative structures. We have to be willing to see what happens when we do not insist that reality must be this or that, have this meaning or that.

We are the ones hurting our self! That’s the bad news. The good news is, since we are the ones doing it we can also be the ones who stop doing it.

Our minds holds only what we think with God, which is another way of saying that God’s Mind is what our mind is. This is not comprehensible to those who still believe in separation, because it seems to involve to separate levels (spirit and matter) interacting in ways that inform both.

But the level of spirit has no form, and the level of form has no meaning, other than the illusory meaning we give it. Today then, let us let God direct our minds, using them to create as the Infinite creates, and to extend love as Love extends. Let us discover what the world shows us when God – not you and I – are accepted as Author without qualification or condition.

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Parenting and A Course in Miracles

Marriage and children have had roughly the same effect on my life as I once imagined life in a monastery would. That’s an odd statement, suggesting that these two extremes can serve complimentary ends. Perhaps what I mean to say is that parenting – in particular, parenting with Chrisoula under the rubric of A Course in Miracles – has inspired the very contact with God it once seemed was the sole province of the formally religious.

Whatever calling I felt to leave the world and enter a Catholic monastery was wrapped up in a fantasy of solitude. For me, the longing for God is intimately connected to being alone. But what does this mean?

In my twenties – fighting booze and drugs, writing poetry that alternately channeled Jack Gilbert and Sylvia Plath, occasionally homeless, always drifting from one place and one relationship to another – solitude seemed peaceful but impossible. I was alone sure, but in a way that grated. It was very hard for me to manage the world in those days. But in all that pain and loneliness, there was some respite. I loved the priests I knew! Their tidy rooms filled with sacred books, their quiet chapels, the safety of daily, weekly and yearly routine. I felt Jesus in the presence of those nonjudgmental men. And I wanted what they had.

Yet I felt Jesus elsewhere, too. I met him in the men with whom I sometimes shared park benches. I felt him in some of the poems I wrote, page after page of impossible-to-read script, the writing of which was unmistakably salvational, like being picked up by powerful winds and slung across the sky. I felt Jesus in the zendo at the Vermont Zen Center, in the guitar I carried everywhere. I felt him in the arms of those friends who stole into my life like beneficent thieves.

And somewhere in all that – hanging out with priests and monks, putting aside the booze, getting an apartment, publishing poems – the call to join a monastery just sort of . . . faded. It wasn’t like I made a decision to let it go. It was more like one day I woke up and the woman I would marry was sleeping beside me. We were lawyers who spent our free time hiking and biking and baking bread and reading the thousands of books we hauled out of used book stores. And one morning we decided to have kids. Sometimes a thousand lifetimes pass in just a couple of years.

When I met Chrisoula, I began to write a series of poems called “In the Country of Turtles.” Turtles are my totem animal, even though I appear to have very little in common with them. Those poems are still some of my favorite writing. But like every writing project, they eventually faded. Somewhere between the wedding and the first time I sat second chair at trial, those poems fell away.

Then, one night, a few weeks after my daughter Sophia was born, I couldn’t sleep and went outside with the dog. I wrote this poem on the back of a gas receipt:

The turtle asks:
is this any way to live
now that you have a daughter?
And so I go climb a low hill
in the rain to pray.

And my life changed again.

In a confused way – I am nothing if not a stumbler – Jesus began to speak clearly to me again. Something in my daughter – the unbelievable reality of her toes, her voice, her eyes, the way she fell asleep cradled in my arms – called me back to an intensity that had once been nearly fatal. The poems came back, and the prayers came back, and the longing to be alone and know God came back.

That was a hard year! Chrisoula and I struggled in our marriage and we struggled learning how to be parents. A lot of things fell apart. We made some decisions around work and where we lived, the consequences of which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But the hard times passed. And we experienced their passing as a family. When it was over, we were new. We weren’t afraid. We were ready to be alive.

In the ACIM Manual for Teachers there is a note about the three levels of teaching/learning relationships (M-3.5:1). Of particular relevance is the third level which reflects those lifelong relationships in which “each person is given a chosen learning partner who presents him with unlimited opportunities for learning” (M-3.5:6).

In those lines, I recognize instantly what is holy about my experience of being both husband and father. It is not a hierarchical thing – it is not about authority. It is about being fully aware of gift of being both student and teacher. There is never a moment when my children are not teaching me. If you and I sat down for tea and scones and there were three scones, I would steal the third while you looked the other way. But with my children I wouldn’t dream of stealing that scone – it would be theirs, without question or condition. And you know what? They would take the scones and break off pieces for me! We would all be fed. And I would remember then that we are always being cared for, that we don’t have to worry about a thing because we are always being cared for Jesus. We are never not with God.

I wrote earlier that my longing for God is connected to my love of solitude. How is this possible with a family to which one is happily willingly committed? In part, it is about carving out spaces – both temporal and physical – in which one can rest knowing that no other body will intrude (even though yes, sometimes they do creep in). But in a larger and more productive way, it is about finding the ability to be alone with God no matter what is going on outside of you, no matter how busy or crazy or loud things get.

Thomas Merton once wrote (I believe in the introduction to Contemplative Prayer) that as the world evolved more and more Christians would be called to live contemplative lives outside the monastery walls. I am not saying that I am a monk. I don’t think about my life in those terms any longer. But I do think in terms of spiritual community, one that supports my prayer life, deepens my love and expands and inspires my capacity for service. Together, this community makes God possible.

And wasn’t that always what I wanted? Only it turns out this community is not – for me – a bunch of Catholic men. Instead, it’s one woman, two daughters and a son. To the world we look like a pretty normal New England family, given to gardens, horses, homeschooling and reading a lot. And we are that. But we are more than that, too. We are home together and together we lead each other home.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 146

My mind holds only what I think with God.

No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth (Lesson 131).
I loose the world from all I thought it was (Lesson 132).

The reason we cannot fail in our search for truth is because truth is all there is. There is nothing else to find. In God there is only certainty about this, for only certainty is worthy of truth. But we are still lost and confused. We still think separation is a thing we did and have to undo, untangle, et cetera.

We think we have to be reborn. God knows we are eternal, and thus incapable of change, let alone birth and death.

Truth is true, and only truth is true (e.g., T-9.VIII.7:2). While we can look away from this, like children squeezing their eyes shut and thinking they’re invisible, we cannot make it false. Nor can we make what is false true.

Therefore, right here, right now, you and I know the truth. We know it and we deny that we know it. We hide behind a wall of projection that we insist is the cause of every problem we have, from a stubbed toe to a missed deadline to death.

A nontrivial aspect of our practice of A Course in Miracles is becoming aware of projection, noticing its negative effects, and becoming willing to no longer project. God’s Love is True, and all there is, and yet we go on throwing block after block in front of it to obscure it. There is a better way!

We want to stop projecting hindrances to our awareness of God’s Love, and we want to stop denying that we are the ones doing it. The better way arises when we agree to become responsible for finding it.

It is a simple shift in thought, a decision at the level of the mind, to remember God’s Love and only God’s Love. And it’s easy because God’s Love is all there is anyway.

Our willingness to stop projecting – which is to become responsible for the content and function our mind (which is to give both to the Holy Spirit) – is what it means to “loose the world” from all that we believe it is.

We think we know what a pine tree is for, or a church, or a wedding ring. This lesson is part of the course’s emphasis on letting go of that deluded certainty. We don’t know what anything is for. Therefore, we let go of all of it.

It is tempting to slip back into definitions. We can make “letting go” a thing we hold onto too! We think saying “I don’t know what it means” means we know something. But we don’t! That’s the challenge. If we don’t know, we can’t say – we can’t say anything at all. We become silent. We become learners. We become humbled.

Really, this lesson is both a review and an opportunity to let the world mean only what God would have it mean. It has no value but the value the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God, writes upon it. And all the Holy Spirit writes testifies to our innocence, and the innocence of our brothers and sisters, and thus makes clear and safe the way to salvation.

Let us practice with a glad heart today, reviewing two basic ideas that in conjunction open our minds to the truth as God created it.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 147

My mind holds only what I think with God.

I will not value what is valueless (Lesson 133).
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is (Lesson 134).

The first part of today’s review teaches us the right use of judgment – the judgment of what is valuable and what is not. It is a way of asking, are we ready to value Love and not fear? Peace and not conflict?

If we value Love and Peace then these are the qualities that we will bring forth in our living, because what we hold in mind must appear in our living. As A Course in Miracles observes, the world is “the outside picture of an inward condition” (T-21.in.1:5). Yet now, instead of the dark shadows of fear, our clear minds reflect only the light of Christ, in which nothing is seen but what reminds us only of God.

The second part of the review is a way of understanding and applying first. Forgiveness “as it really is” teaches us how to value what is valuable, and not value what is without value, and not get twisted up in doing so.

Because we get confused, right? We want to value what is valuable but bodies aren’t valuable so . . . we are supposed to not value our brothers and sisters? Our kids and parents? This dilemma – dramatic as it sounds and intense as it feels – is not actually a problem. It’s just the same old confusion of mind with body arguing its own case.

Forgiveness – clear seeing – teaches us that our brothers and sisters are not bodies but that the love appearing in and as and through those bodies is them. When you see this light and understand what it is, then you can no longer mistake the body as valuable in and of itself. It’s like a coffee mug – we drink our coffee and get on with life. The Light of God is the coffee, our bodies are the mugs. It’s literally the same thing.

If this sounds crazy or difficult, consider that may be because it is true in God’s Mind and you are still resisting your home in that mind. But since our mind holds what it thinks with God, then perhaps this idea is not entirely without merit. Perhaps in giving attention to it, we will finally see that God is the Mind in which thinking is. Not the thought so much as the awareness in which the thought appears.

On this view, you and I are thoughts in the Mind of God. And on that view, we are more like sunbeams than dense and solid bodies. In truth – which is to say, in God’s Mind – we are illuminative and generative, like any other good idea.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 145

My holds only what I think with God.

Beyond this world there is a world I want (Lesson 129).
It is impossible to see two worlds (Lesson 130).

The clarity of Lessons 129 and 130 braces us for the decision we are called to make: do we want to see the real world or do we want to remain stuck in illusions, and the despair and chaos they bring forth?

We can’t have it both ways. There is no such thing as a little Heaven or a little hell. What do we want? And, are we ready to choose it?

While there is value in investigating these questions – going deeply into our answers, allowing understanding to be the stable foundation of forgiveness – today we are not asked to linger on them in that way. Today we take a different approach.

Today we hold those questions lightly and give the whole of our attention to God’s Word. We enter the quiet space of listening, and simply allow Creation to express itself as it wills. When we do this, we recognize that we are not doing anything. Therefore, we do not actually have to decide anything. It has already been decided; it is already true.

You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over. Your are still worn and tired, and teh desert’s dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome you . . . Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him (T-18.VIII.13:1-3, 5).

Our liberation is not a moment of self-insight but rather a forgetting of the self altogether. When we forget the self, the body and the world lose their luster, and our attention naturally gravitates towards its resting place in God. We are freed from personality, freedom from the needs to survive, freed from the need to compete with our brothers and sisters.

We are freed from the obligation to solve the problem of what we want and how to get it. We have no problems.

The mind that wants only to remember what it holds with God, and in that remembrance, realizing at last what it is in truth, does not have any wants. It does need to choose anything for there is nothing to choose between. Creation has no opposite; no more does Love.

Thus, our review today is in practice a gentle step away from learning goals and towards gratitude, which is always how Love finds a home in us. Let us be thankful and not worry about what need to do or not do; it is done. Our thankfulness is the light in which we know the truth.

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