The body’s eyes see illusions because they are illusions. Like begets like. To the body, the world will always be real because body and world arise together, the one bringing the other forth.
But we are not bodies. This is not to suggest that what the body’s eyes see needs to be denigrated or denied. Let it be what it is, so that we might better remember our fundamental perfection as creations of a loving God.
Let me be willing to exchange my pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God. Christ’s Vision is His Gift, and He has given it to me. Let me call upon this gift today, so that this day may help me to understand eternity (W-pI.59.2:4-6).
Vision is unrestrained by the body which is always a limit. Vision is not subject to time and space. It does not have dimensions. It is God’s Will creating in us as we are created in It.
I can see what God wants me to see. I cannot see anything else. Beyond His Will lie only illusions (W-pI.59.3:3-5).
The decision that we make is not see with or as God. Rather, it is to not see any other way. That is, our work is to release that which blocks the free flow of Love in us. The Love Itself already flows as a condition of what it is.
As we surrender our insistence on our own sight – which includes our own definitions and organization and systemics – we begin to understand the perfect clarity and uninterruptible oneness of Christ’s Vision.
Now it is given me to understand that God is the light in which I see. Let me welcome vision and the happy world it will show me (W-pI.59.4:6-7).
This happiness is assured; it is the so-called endgame of our journey through A Course in Miracles. Because we one with God, we cannot think apart from God (W-pI.59.5:3). Thus, our thoughts are God’s thoughts and God’s Thoughts are ours (W-pI.59.5:4). Where is the separation now?
Grace and divine equanimity attend us when we attend A Course in Miracles as serious students committed to remembering our shared identity with our Creator. We become happy, not in a delirious or excitable way, but in a quiet way that naturally extends to all our brothers and sisters. The calm we bring forth in others is our calm; and by seeing it in others, we remember it is ours.
When we encounter resistance, it’s good to be patient. Resistance is a good teacher. Sometimes I open a lesson – review or otherwise – or read a section of the text, and I don’t understand it. Or it annoys me. I can feel myself obscuring the words, pushing their message as far away as possible. Or I get masochistic. I’m going to figure this out right now no matter what! And an hour later I still don’t know what’s going on, only now I have a headache and I’m late for work or I forgot to eat breakfast.
Resistance is part of our experience of practicing A Course in Miracles and healing our split mind. I felt it this morning, reading this lesson. What is all this abstract metaphysical nonsense? “As I recognize my holiness, so does the holiness of the world shine forth for everyone to see” (W-pI.58.2:5). Or “Seen through understanding eyes, the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself” (W-pI.58.1:5).
What do those sentences actually mean? I start to argue with them. I get frustrated with myself for not getting it. People wake up with A Course in Miracles. Why don’t I perceive the holiness of the world? Why do my eyes insist on confusion and separation rather than understanding?
When this happens, it’s okay to put the book away, make coffee, bake muffins, do a crossword. Eventually we learn that resistance isn’t as scary as it used to be. It’s just another symptom of fear. Of what are we so scared? Why are we unwilling to go into what scares us? Resistance is just unwillingness, which is just another form of fear.
What is there to be saved from except illusions? And what are illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me (W-pI.58.3:3-5).
So get a little space. A few minutes to breathe. I watch chickens scratch the snow. Admire grackles and chickadees in the maple trees. The kids wake up. And then I remember. God is love extending love. Something in me softens. I take my coffee and read the lesson again.
Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Child of God. All good things are mine, because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer loss or deprivation or pain because of Who I am (W-pI.58.4:2-5).
And I see it. All those references to our holiness . . . How can we read this lesson – or any of the lessons to which it makes reference – and come away thinking we are lost or hopeless or unlovable. We are perfect creations of a Loving God. When we accept this truth about ourselves, then we are finished with fear, and the world is blessed along with us (W-pI.58.4:4-5). Why see ourselves in any other light than the one in which God gifts both us and the world as one?
I can accept the innocence that is the truth about me. Seen though understanding eyes, the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself (W-pI.58.1:4-5).
I want to insist on being broken. I am invested in stumbling. Self-denigration and self-debasement are my mode. It’s a back-handed way of allowing ego’s judgment to go on. I might talk as if I am saved but secretly I do not accept this truth about myself. You maybe. And me someday. But not now.
There is another way.
And that other way is precisely what Lesson 58 insists we learn: right now, right here, without any modification or alteration whatsoever, we are blessed by God. We are God’s holy Children, a Family of perfect light and love, and we can take that knowledge with us everywhere and it will embrace every living thing we encounter.
That is what we resist: the peace, comfort and happiness for which we have been pining for so long. When we sit quietly with our resistance, perhaps we can see this. And seeing it, can offer to let go of our resistance. Give it to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, to Love. How we describe letting go of resistance is not nearly as important as what happens when we do let it go.
When we let it go, we become willing to be healed, to be one with the One whose desire for us is our desire for the One.
A Course in Miracles suggests that when it comes the illusion of being bodies in a world we are effectively willing prisoners. Our suffering is a decision we make. And because the power of decision is ours, we can make another.
Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last (W-pI.57.1:7-9).
This is easy to say but hard to actually believe. We treat it as a passing concept about our being, rather than the truth of our being. But thinking this way is what keeps us imprisoned. A Course in Miracles does not argue with us – it doesn’t try to convince us. It merely offers us another way to see our situation.
Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth (W-pI.57.3:2-3).
The question is not whether this statement is true or false; the question is whether we want it to be true or false.
You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:
Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?
Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already (T-11.VIII.4:4-7).
The choice is not ambiguous. It is not unclear. Do we want God’s peace or the ego’s war (W-pI.57.4:3)?
When we choose peace without reservation peace becomes us because it is us. But our choice must be freely made and reflect our genuine willingness to remember what we are in truth. Half-measures are ineffective.
Our decision to side with God, means that we see the world as God sees it, which means that we begin to see “our” peace is also the peace that “abides in the hearts” of all our brothers and sisters (W-pI.57.4:4).
The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light I begin to see what my illusions about myself kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself, and their oneness with me (W-pI.57.5:3-6).
Our healed vision – flowing from the mind we share with God – restores us to holiness as it restores all of life to holiness. Nothing is excluded; indeed, it’s inclusion is what makes it – and us – holy.
In this way, A Course in Miracles makes us happy without taking anything away from us. We give up nothing in exchange for everything.
The egoic perspective is that we are bodies. Bodies are vulnerable. They get sick. They can be assaulted. They feel pain and discomfort. They even die. If in fact we are bodies, then defense measures – ranging from cardiovascular exercise to gun ownership – can make sense.
But if we are not bodies, then the whole attack-defense mechanism is not only in effective (what can be attacked? What can be defended?) but it’s affirmatively problematic because it serves to obscure our actual identity.
A Course in Miracles suggests that this dynamic is not our destiny.
I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me. My own real thoughts will teach me what it is (W-pI.56.1:6-8).
Our “real thoughts” are abstract expressions of love that align with the full creative power of God. We are already thinking them; when we stop giving attention to egoic thinking, our real thoughts rise gently to the surface.
What we are in truth is holiness itself, and the gift of holiness is Vision – seeing not with the body’s eyes but with the mind that is creative because it was created in its Creator’s likeness. The real world reflects not the vulnerability of the body but “the Love of God” (W-pI.56.3:4).
Behind every image I have made, the truth remains unchanged. Behind every veil I have drawn across the face of love, its light remains undimmed. Beyond all my insane wishes is my will, united with the Will of my father (W-pI.56.4:2-4).
This is true because “God is still everywhere and in everything forever” (W-pI.56.4:5). We cannot see apart from God, because God is in our mind – and in all that our mind perceives. The truth of what we are is still held in the Mind of God (W-pI.56.5:4). We are one with God’s thoughts and with God (W-pI.56.5:5).
Our practice restores this fact to our memory, and in doing so leads us to a joy and peace that surpass our understanding.
A lot of people ask about ACIM and diet – are we encouraged, as students of the course, to eat a certain way? Avoid certain foods? Do we fast at this or that time of year and so forth? Does A Course in Miracles forbid eating meat?
Garden tomatoes from this past summer . . .
I think those are natural questions amongst seekers in general. Lots of religions have rules and regulations around food. When I was an aspiring Buddhist most of the men and women with whom I sat and studied were vegetarians. It was an extension of compassion – a way of demonstrating kindness to all life. In part because of that model, I was a vegetarian for many years. I have fond memories of those years, particularly after I met my wife and my cooking really took off. Chrisoula and I had – and still have from time to time – some incredible veggie dishes. Edward Espe Brown’s Zen-inspired cookbooks (especially The Tassajara Bread Book), Deborah Madison’s work, the various texts spiraling out of the Moosewood Collective . . . I still turn to those recipes.
When I was Catholic – especially as a child – we refrained from eating meat on Fridays (a point somewhat lost on the fish we sometimes consumed). As I grew older and more committed to Catholicism I did a fair amount of fasting – avoiding meals, limiting what I ate, and sometimes going for many days with only juice. Nor are Buddhism and Catholicism the only traditions where food is regulated in some ways.
But when we commit to practicing A Course in Miracles, we leave that behind. Well, we leave it behind in the sense that we no longer associate a formal way of eating – of embracing or rejecting a type of food or food preparation – with salvation. The Course has a single goal – to heal the mind that believes it is separated from God. Its references to behavior are scant at best. That is because correcting behavior does not necessarily heal the mind, while healing the mind will always affect behavior – though often in surprising ways.
Our little orchard was prolific this year . . . these were the blossoms in Spring.
The idea that we can be saved – can end our separation from God, can enter Heaven, et cetera – by changing habits of behavior is an old one. But if it were that easy, we wouldn’t need to have religious and spiritual practices. We’d just adopt certain regulations of behavior, set up some punishment/reward system to reinforce the desired behavior, and police one another. That does not lead to inner peace. In truth, it doesn’t really lead to outer peace either.
What is helpful is making contact with the part of our minds that believes if we can only tweak the external – get the right partner, or the right spiritual practice, or the right diet, or the right prayer – then we will be happy and never struggle again and then remembering that salvation does not work that way. The separation is an inside job – a problem of thought, not circumstance – and so it has to be addressed internally. What is going on outside of us exists as an effect of our thinking, not as a cause. We can learn from it, sure, but the fundamental shift is still going to be at the level of mind.
Thus, you can be a devout meat eater – taking down a meat lover’s pizza every night and a rasher of bacon at breakfast – and be a student of A Course in Miracles. You can also be a vegetarian. Or a vegan. You can be – as Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes once said – a dessertatarian and be a student of the Course. There is no right or wrong way to approach food. As Krishnamurti once said, here paraphrased: eat meat or don’t eat meat but get on with it. In other words, the healing the Course contemplates has nothing to do with our bodies. We can’t eat or fast or exercise or dance or walk our way to inner peace. It’s all in the mind.
Prize-winning eggs from our flock of layer hens.
That said, it’s important to not be cavalier about the issues that can come up around food. For many of us, it is an area in which we need considerable healing. Forgiveness is always appropriate. If someone is addicted to food in some way, then their practice of the Course is going to involve forgiving – seeing with Jesus or the Holy Spirit – that relationship. And that forgiveness – which, remember, happens in the mind – will probably have some effect on the outside.
Our practice of A Course in Miracles is deeply personal. The course never looks the same from one student to the next. We are called to heal in very specific ways. I know Course students who are very passionate about not eating meat. I respect that. My own practice with food has been to deepen my relationship with it at the level of production – Chrisoula and I (and the kids) grow a tremendous amount of veggies and fruit, raise pigs for meat, chickens for eggs and meat, buy beef from local farmers. We have even kept bees and a goat for milking. I don’t think anybody’s practice of the Course has to mimic that – indeed, it probably shouldn’t. But it is neatly tied into forgiveness for me – a kind of simplicity, a kind of self-reliance, a kind of healthy diet.
The question is always: does it work? It is it helpful? It is important that we not be bullied into thinking that we have to practice a certain way. A Course in Miracles meets us where we are and helps us move from that place ever closer to inner peace and coherence. In that light, what is “right” for someone in an external way is not going to be right for somebody else. It’s okay to find our way.
Apple harvest! Always one of the great joys of homesteading . . .
Ultimately, the course is about changing our minds, where “change” means “heal.” Sometimes that change shows up in the world. Obviously my home and living arrangements look different than other students who aren’t as devoted to homesteading. Obviously, my relationships are in many ways shaded by my family’s commitment to growing, raising and preserving our own food and nurturing a network of like-minded consumers and farmers. But what really matters is the mind in and through which all of this lovingkindness takes place. I eat and relate to food in the most loving way that I can. If the goal is love – healing the mind – then whatever follows will be helpful.
To that end, be kind to yourself. Remember the guidance of Lesson 294: the body is “of service for a while and fit to serve, to keep its usefulness while it can serve, and then to be replaced for greater good” (W-pII.294.1:11). Don’t endanger yourself or others in the name of spirituality. Eat well; eat in a way that minimizes guilt; eat in a way that extends love to your brothers and sisters, broadly defined. We gain nothing by depriving ourselves of calories, nutrients, water and the simple joys that attend eating. Wherever we are at with respect to food, our eating – the whole gestalt of it, from growing to preparing to eating to composting – is yet a way to remember that together we are Love.
Note: As this post has been read and commented upon over the years, I have become increasingly sensitive to the importance of respecting the food and eating choices of my brothers and sisters. The course is silent on the subject of what to eat; beyond that, food is like everything else – a means to forgive (that is, to see in a loving and holistic way) the world and all its contents. It is necessary to give attention to life as it arises; it is not necessary to adopt rigorous diets, undergo intense fasts or otherwise attack our bodies.
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Lesson 55 of A Course in Miracles – and the lessons it reviews – is a chance to see again – to experience again – that we do not not know our own best interests because we do not know who or what we are. Our experience, filtered through the ego’s teaching lens, establishes that we suffer alone in a world of chaos. It is this we try to avoid, or try to fix, or try to reimagine.
What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death . . . The very fact that I see such things is proof that I do not understand God. Therefore I also do not understand His Son (W-pI.55.1:2-4-5).
The solution to this problem requires no activity on our part. Rather, it is a shift in thought. The only real problem we have is that we think we have a problem (T-26.II.3:3). The abstract solution is to remember that none of this is real because we are not separate from God. The specific solution is to be willing to change the way we think in order to see “the witnesses to the truth” (W-pI.55.1:7).
The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts . . . It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the Love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts that give rise to this picture (W-pI.55.2:2, 4-5).
When we accept responsibility for these thoughts, we simultaneously become able to make contact with our “loving thoughts” which reform the deranged projections of hate and restore to the peace that is God’s intended gift for us (W-pI.55.2:6).
Do you notice ow the narrative voice has changed in the review lessons? In the regular lessons, the narrative Jesus addresses us directly – “you” have this experience, “you” think that, “you” must try to do this in order to heal. But now the text adopts the first person. “I do not know who I am . . . “(W-pI.55.5:2). This is a deliberate shift, and it accomplishes two things.
First, it begins to merge our self with that of Jesus. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus is both teacher and elder brother – a role model for how a separated Child of God follows the Holy Spirit to full acceptance of the Atonement. He is like us and we are like him, different only in our belief in the illusion of separation.
There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you (T-1.II.3:10-13).
So the lessons are helping us accept Atonement, in order to better realize our potential for holiness.
The other thing that happens in the narrative shift is that we begin to learn how ideas in A Course in Miracles can be expressed in many ways, and often the most effective is in language that is personal to us. Several main lessons near the end of the first fifty encourage us to try restating the lesson in the form of related ideas (Lesson 43 and Lesson 46). We are being given license to integrate them more fully into our experience and thus increase their helpfulness.
Why is that helpful? Because the more loving our thoughts become, the easier it is to turn those thoughts toward the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the fact that they are loving is evidence that they are flowing from and to and with the Holy Spirit already. Thus, we are taking the teacher who can translate our experience from fear and hate into the gentle light of Heaven.
It is easy to overlook the benefits of review periods. But these lessons are here for a reason; they are structured the way they are for a reason. When we merely glance at them, we don’t hurt ourselves. We merely fail to use time as constructively as possible. We are postponing salvation.
Is there not a better way? And is it not right before us?
