Sean Reagan

Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.

Few sentences in A Course in Miracles as neatly sum up the problem the course is given to solve as these from the first paragraph of Lesson 79:

The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized (W-pI.79.1:4-5).

If you do not recognize the problem, then you cannot solve it. Even if it is already solved, you won’t know this. We have to see clearly what the problem is: there is no substitute in healing for this simple fact.

How does this show up in our lives? It shows up largely in the belief that we have many problems, each requiring their own individual solution. And so we hunker down with each apparent problem, diligently “solving” it, only to have a whole other batch of problems arise to take its place.

We consent to this hopeless situation because its underlying function is to keep us unhappy. Tending to many problems means we never look at the one problem – separation – which is the only problem we actually have.

The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate and failure is inevitable (W-pI.79.4:1-3).

Thus, we never experience the peace and happiness that go with being entirely problem-free (W-pI.79.3:5).

The endless tangle and complexity of the world’s problems are a distraction. They can’t be solved. They are designed to keep our attention on the world and away from the mind where the power to create and heal is actually exercised. It doesn’t matter whether they are ignored or embraced, denied or studied, fixed or left undone.

So long as they keep our attention away from separation, they have served the ego’s purpose.

If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems that seem to confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem (W-pI.79.6:2-4).

A Course in Miracles teaches us that all the world’s problems – the big ones, the little ones, the easy ones and the impossible ones – are all the same. And their sameness is what allows our mind to shift from the specificity of form to the generalizability of love. We can’t find salvation in the world; we have to look where salvation is. And when we do, we will recognize both it because we recognize its function.

The key to success with this lesson is humility. We have to be radically open-minded. It’s easy to say that our only problem is separation. We want to go past the level of words. We want to go past the level of form altogether, and reach the abstraction of what we are in truth.

We want to see separation as we believe it exists – where it exists, how it exists, in all its rotten glory – and, on the basis of that clear seeing, understand the solution as well and allow them to merge.

All that is necessary is to entertain some doubt about the reality of your version of what your problems are. You are trying to recognize that you have been given the answer by recognizing the problem, so that the problem and the answer can be brought together and you can be at peace (W-pI.79.8:3-4).

This is equivalent to bringing light to darkness. Light is the answer to the problem of darkness. Correction can only be accomplished where correction is possible – and this can only be at the level of the error. “Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work” (T-2.VI.3:7).

Problems appear to be many; they appear to be complex; they appear to be real. Our work now is to question these appearances, and open our minds to the possibility that we have but one problem: separation, and seeing it as and where it is will allow the solution to present itself as well.

←Lesson 78
Lesson 80→

Let miracles replace all grievances.

A miracle is a change in perception which allows us to see reality with greater clarity, in turn moving us away from fear and towards love. Grievances obstruct miracles by doubling down on the body as vulnerable and subject to attack.

So long as the body – and not spirit – remains our touchstone, any joy or peace that we experience will be temporary and conditional. Lesson 78 teaches us to raise our so-called grievances into the light of healing where they can be undone, allowing miracle-minded thinking greater flow and effect.

We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God (W-pI.78.2:2-3).

A grievance always involves our brothers and sisters. They have let us down, or infringed on our rights, or taken something away, or made it harder to get something else. Thus, when we release grievances, we simultaneously bless our brothers and sisters. We no longer see them as “bodies,” but as children of a loving Creator. And in seeing them this way, we remember our own self.

. . . every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see (W-pI.78.3:2-4).

The lesson invites us to consider someone against whom we hold a grievance. And rather than focus on the grievance, we will focus instead on the light in them. The light will bless us both; the one we see apart from our grievances becomes our savior.

He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God’s plan (W-pI.78.5:4-6).

We carefully examine the grounds of our grievance in all its detail. We refuse no aspect of our judgment. And then, when we are clear about the degree to which this brother or sister has harmed us, we ask to be shown the light in them.

It is tempting here to approach this lesson intellectually. We say of the one against who we are aggrieved, yes, I know that he or she is innocent in truth. I know that we are all equal children of God.

But if healing were that simple then we would have thought our way into it long ago. We are not merely repeating ideas in this lesson; we are actively trying to encounter someone we hate and fear and know them in the light of love.

This succeeds because it is what we all want from one another. We want to be seen as we are in truth, liberated from the hellscape in which our bodies appear to make war on one another. You might imagine the one who – when encountering this lesson – thinks of you as the one they are most unwilling to forgive. What do you want from them, more than anything? What do you want for them?

What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and you make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God’s Son. And what you see through him will free you both (W-pI.78.8:1-5).

That is a beautiful and reassuring passage. And we are allowed to read it literally; we are allowed to know that our brothers and sisters can be forgiven, and that their forgiveness is our forgiveness, because only this level of mutuality and love satisfies our Creator.

God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside, and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved, and all the world with you (W-pI.78.9:1-2).

This is our only role in salvation: to forgive our brothers and sisters through the miracle, which teaches us how to perceive truly. The effects of healing radiate throughout Creation, excluding no one and no thing. Our joy and peace are both natural and inevitable.

←Lesson 77
Lesson 79→

I am entitled to miracles.

Many years ago I read a brief article about a woman practicing Lesson 77 of A Course in Miracles in conjunction with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, a tapping-based healing modality). She would work through the ritual of tapping, while repeating “I am entitled to miracles.” Within days, she had a new job and a few other blessings as well. The point of her story was that EFT works. But it reflected a fundamental confusion about ACIM: that miracles are real to the degree we can measure their external effects.

A friend who studied off and on with Tara Singh once told me a story.  He was complaining to Singh about certain material circumstances – his apartment was too small to add dark room and he couldn’t afford anything larger. It was hard to practice the course and be happy in such challenging conditions. Singh told him that peace was not connected to external circumstances. Real peace was being just as happy winning a million dollars as losing it.

Miracles are not about achieving some ideal outcome in terms of personal circumstances.

In A Course in Miracles, a “miracle” heals perception by teaching us how to only perceive truly in order to go beyond perception. In order to do this, the miracle “perceives everything as it is” (T-3.II.3:4).

To receive a miracle and to give a miracle are the same movement: both are effects of right seeing, which is to say, seeing everything exactly as it is in reality. When we remember our self, we remember our Creator and we remember that we are bound to create accordingly.

Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are (W-pI.77.2:1-4).

To be created – to have being – is to be capable of right seeing. The miracle merely recognizes what we are and restores our natural abilities to their natural use. And what is true of us, is true of our brothers and sisters.

. . . miracles are never taken from one and given to another . . . in asking for your rights, you are upholding the rights of everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God (W-pI.77.4:3-5).

Miracles do not actually do anything. We don’t get anything. They are more in the nature of flipping a light switch; we simply see in a clearer and more helpful light than before. The clarity means that we have fewer doubts and fewer questions.

There is no room for doubt and uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is a simple statement of a simple fact (W-pI.77.6:5-7).

We are entitled to miracles. This is a declaration of freedom and also a statement of gratitude and trust. Miracles free us from the tyranny of perception and ego’s inconsistent judgment. We are grateful for our liberation and we trust the One who is in charge of it.

Thus, today, we create a space in which we might taste anew the joy and peace of Heaven, which are in us because we are “one with God” (W-pI.77.1:3). Salvation is a gift that we give the world as it was given to us, and doing so is the simplest thing imaginable. It consists simply in being what we are in truth.

←Lesson 76
Lesson 78→

I am under no laws but God’s.

Lesson 76 of A Course in Miracles brooks no middle ground. It is like Bob Dylan’s song Precious Angel: “You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” Yet the absence of wiggle room is a gift, for it forces us to confront the lesson in helpful terms: what are the laws of God? And what am I that should be subject to any other law?

This lesson is easy to understand when you also understand that the self to which the lesson refers is not a body. It is associated with a body (because it has dissociated from God), but this is an illusion, not a fact.

In this sense, A Course in Miracles is a course in identity correction.

How simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true Identity (W-pI.77.1:4-5).

Lesson 76 addresses a critical aspect of that this self-confusion. If we consider ourselves bodies in the world, then we are subject to its laws. The lesson invites us to notice the way we subject ourselves to these apparent laws, and to consider an alternative.

There are no laws but God’s. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you. You will be listening to the One Who says there will be no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes, and nothing is replaced by something else. God’s laws forever give and never take (W-pI.76.9:1-6).

Of course, these laws are the opposite of those which appear to govern the world in which we live, and the bodies with which we are associated.

In that world, if we are not careful what we eat, then we will get sick and die. If we don’t pay our mortgage or rent, then we will lose our shelter. We can seek satisfaction in one partner, then trade them for another. When someone we love dies, we never see them again. Et cetera.

To the body, those laws will be forever real. This is important! From the body’s perspective, if you and I sit at a table with a single slice of pie, and I eat the pie, you do not get any pie. I love my children more than children I’ve never met in a country I’ve never visited, even though I know this is not coherent.

We don’t have to resist these appearances; we merely have to notice them. The fix, so to speak, arises as a condition of our noticing, and it not something we do.

Thus, Lesson 76 is not an invitation to run this world or its various bodies by new rules. Rather, it is an invitation to see that what we are is not of this world and so we cannot be its subject. Thus, we cannot seek salvation in terms of the world. Doing so is an exercise in futility; it can never work.

. . . how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else (W-pI.76.2:3-5).

How shall we understand this in terms of application?

Don’t get hung up on the fact that the world and the body are subject to laws like nutrition, capitalism, gravity, evolution and so forth. To the body, those laws will always appear real. Their appearance is not the problem; the problem is our investment in those appearances as if they are real and causative.

In this sense, the lesson is an opportunity to open our mind a little, that it might perceive a new way of thinking, one that is aligned with laws not of our own making.

We do not need to prove God’s laws. We do not need to establish and maintain them. You need only be willing to notice them, even the tiniest bit. They are already our reality. So really, our willingness to perceive God’s laws is our willingness to perceive our own self, which is not a body, and for which sacrifice of any kind is impossible.

As this becomes increasingly clear, we begin to appreciate the course’s emphasis on seeing things in stark relief. What works works and what does not, does not. What’s helpful is helpful and so we ought to make use of it; but what is not helpful should be set aside as a distraction and not picked up again.

Again, A Course in Miracles emphasizes correction of our self-confusion.

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born (T-31.V.17:7-8).

So this lesson is a chance to go deep within and admit that we are lost. We can face the surrender of the entire world – everything we think we know, everything that we believe – and accept that we have no clue what comes next. We don’t know how to proceed. This is a good space because it is a space of learning. It is a space of receptivity to Bill Thetford’s “another way.”

The workbook lessons are always opportunities to shift our thinking, away from fear and towards love. That transition can seem to take time and it can seem difficult. That’s okay. Our thinking – especially with respect to what we are – is cloudy indeed.

Yet with every application of every lesson, the clouds thin and drift away. Magical thinking – the notion that salvation can be obtained in bodies in terms of the world – is undone.

Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His (W-pI.76.7:5-6).

We are not bodies, though we associate ourselves with bodies. We are love itself, and subject only to the laws of unconditional giving. This is our salvation; this is the foundation of our joy and inner peace.

←Lesson 75
Lesson 77→

The light has come.

The 75th lesson of A Course in Miracles is both a celebration of what we are in truth and an opportunity for gratitude. We celebrate that which knows it is an extension of God’s wholly loving will. And we are grateful for the learners and teachers who make “the happy ending of our long dream of disaster” (W-pI.75.2:1) possible.

Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world, because the light has come (W-pI.75.2:3-7).

This lesson is an invitation to reflect on our study, and to notice the way in which it has gently but clearly steered us to the “single purpose” (W-pI.75.4:3) of waking with our brothers and sisters from our dream of “darkness and turmoil and death” (W-pI.75.1:6).

Forgiveness – our commitment to seeing from our own holiness which naturally occurs as a condition of remembering that only God’s Will exists – makes vision and its healing effects inevitable.

Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He will not fail you now . . . He will show you what true vision sees (W-pI.75.7:2-3, 6).

The light to which A Course in Miracles refers here is not the light by which the body’s eyes see. It is closer to the light of understanding – the light in which we know ideas or concepts, like “God is Love” or “mercy is justice recognized.”

Thus, we are not looking for a physical experience so much as a mindful one – one that is premised in abstraction and, as such, cannot be contained by a body (including a brain). After all, is the idea that “God is Love” limited to your brain? Your life?

If we can see the truth of this – and recall as well the core ACIM principle that ideas do not leave their source (T-26.VII.4:7) – then we will be well on our way to the happiness that is the course’s goal for us, and the necessary condition for our awakening unto oneness with God.

←Lesson 74
Lesson 76→

There is no will but God’s.

This is a simple but deeply satisfying lesson of A Course in Miracles. If it’s true – and if we accept its truth – then all our perceived conflict is over. And in the absence of conflict, there is only peace.

Thus, if we can grasp this lesson – and bring it into application – then we will know in fact the peace that surpasses understanding.

To share is to make one. If you and I travel separately to Cape Cod, we have two different experiences. But if we travel together, stay together and recreate together, then we have a unified experience because it is shared.

That analogy is imperfect but it does move our thinking in the direction of what it means to share a will with God. Where it fails is in our recognition that God’s is the only will there is.

Thus, it is more accurate to say that there is only God’s Will, and to leave our own self out of it. That is not easy for us to conceptualize, much less accept, but it is the truth of our being, and in realizing it without resistance, our happiness is complete.

The belief that conflict is possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflicting goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have not goal but His (W-pI.74.1:4-6).

That last sentence bears patient reflection, for it essentially defines us: we are expressions of the Will of God.

Is that your experience? Is that your truth?

What does it even mean?

It means that the ideas, plans, goals, strategies, excuses and assumptions which characterize our lives in the world are illusory, and that we are no longer capable of denying it.

There is no middle ground here. There is no option for compromise. Either God’s Will is the only will, or our will is real among all the other separate wills out there, each conflicting with one another, fighting one another, struggling with one another. Which do we prefer be the correct understanding?

But if we relinquish our own will – our separate will, the will whose objectives always revolve around favorable outcomes for this body, this self – what happens?

Ego says that everything will fall apart. We’ll lose everything from our shoes to our next meal to our dignity. We’ll suffer and die. It will be awful.

Don’t argue with ego! Just let it be for a few moments – or a few hours or days even. What happens when we just let go?

One thing that we will notice is that life does not stop. It goes on; things happen; other things don’t. We begin to see that the ego’s interventions are obtrusive, not helpful. We begin to see that it’s at least possible that God’s Will is sufficient.

This is not an argument that it won’t rain at the picnic or that our bodies won’t be diagnosed with cancer. It is a reminder that those outcomes – negative unto the ego – mean nothing to what we are in truth and therefore cannot disturb our peace. And joy is the hallmark of peace (W-pI.74.6:1).

Lesson 74 asks us to be alert unto our joy, our happiness. If we are practicing the lesson effectively, then joy is its sure result. If, instead, we find ourselves withdrawing from the world or from our lives, then we are still confused.

When we identify with Spirit, which is to let go of our identification with the body, then we naturally let go of a lot of the investment and expectation that surround the body and its experience. By extension, we also relax our investment and expectation of the world. It’s not that the body or the world go anywhere, but that we begin to experience them differently. They are no longer the primary mode of our experience.

Thus, the lesson calls us simply to repeat its core idea and remind ourselves that peace and happiness are both our goal and the result of practicing A Course in Miracles.

Awakening is not about loss; the ACIM’s happy dream does not call for sacrifice of any kind. To remember that we share a will with God, and that this is so because only God’s will is real, is a profound statement aligning us with what we are in truth: expressions of God’s wholly perfect and wholly loving Will.

←Lesson 73
Lesson 75→