Sean Reagan

God is the light in which I see.

Last night I was walking my dog. We live right on the edge of the village – if I turn east, within a hundred yards or so it’s as if I have left civilization all together. Yet there are houses there – some well-lit – and some of them have dogs. At one, the family had let their dog out off-leash and she was very aggressive. I was scared and my dog was scared. And I got angry – at the other dog, the careless neighbors, the town without adequate canine bylaws, the world in which it is so hard to just go for a simple walk . . .

By the time I had gone half a mile, my anger – and my resistance to any kind of attempt to be less angry – owned all of me. The quiet woods, the crystalline stars, the bracing cold – all of it was lost in a tangle of rage, disappointment and guilt.

Yet cresting a hill a mile or so into the walk, sadness crept in. A small still voice said “you’ve handled this before – and worse. It doesn’t have to be this way.” The dog and I stopped. I studied the sky through bare trees, turned my face to the wind. Some wall inside me crumbled, peace flowed in over the ruins and I accepted it – haltingly, shyly, awkwardly. And in a few moments, the craziness was gone. I reminded myself that when it tried to come back – which it surely would – I would ask the Holy Spirit for help. The rest of walk was peaceful and happy. It was graceful in a clear and simple way.

That moment atop the hill – that sadness at how crazy I was and the voice of sanity saying “this need not be” – was true seeing. It was vision. It was the light in which God clarified for me what I really am and how powerful I am. Outside was total blackness save for the stars. Inside was a wreck. But deeper – and wider – than all of that was the Light in which I know I am Love and that I am not alone. It is not as hard as it once was to reach that light and be lifted or illuminated – enlightened – by it.

That’s what Lesson 44 of A Course in Miracles is about – not a blinding physical light, not little tiny faerie lights that dance around the edges of physical objects. Just the one necessary moment of clarity in the dense tides of anger, fear and guilt. In the craziness, a voice that is not crazy. And in that clarity, we hear the call to sanity and to love. We remember that love is not only possible, it is all there is. “Nothing real can be threatened” (In.2:2). “Nothing unreal exists” (In.2:3).

. . . light reflects life, and is therefore an aspect of creation. Creation and darkness cannot coexist, but light and life must go together, being but different aspects of creation (W-pI.44:1:3-4).

That light did not come because I asked for it. Please see that. There was no virtue involved. I did nothing but feel crazy. I didn’t fall to my knees, didn’t talk to Jesus, didn’t remember A Course in Miracles. Nothing. One moment I was hurting, the next moment I was blessed with remembering wholeness. When I remembered ot, I reached for it. And there it was. That’s how the course works. See the verbs in this lesson: sinking, letting go, slipping. Releasing. You need do nothing – it will all be done for you. How simple that is and yet how hard to accept, to bring into application!

As you sit for the day’s practice, remember those verbs. Remember how little is actually required of the “you” you think you are. Just getting to the practice is enough. Trust Jesus. Trust the Holy Spirit. You are not apart from God. You are not apart from Love.No matter how bad it feels, no matter how unbridgeable the distance – it’s nothing. You are already home. God is the Light in which you see this is true.

←Lesson 43
Lesson 45→

God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him.

This is the first lesson in which the Holy Spirit appears. Its role in our healing is as a mediator between God and the self which believes it is separate from its Creator. The Holy Spirit sees as God sees and purifies our seeing in order to realign it with holiness.

Perception has no meaning. Yet does the Holy Spirit give it a meaning very close to God’s. Healed perception becomes the means by which the Son of God forgives his brother, and thus forgives himself (W-pI.43.2:5-7).

“Perception” is the ACIM word for how the body gathers sense data and constructs both a self and a world in which that self is at home. Our senses take in information – light, sound, scent – and our brain configures it to create an image of a world. This image – and the one to whom it appears – become our “self.”

This mode of being – so familiar to us as to be almost beyond question is alien to God. His realm is that of “knowledge,” which is direct experience of reality without any mediation or interpretation at all. To the body this makes no sense. To God – in whom there is neither difference nor distinction – nothing else could possibly make sense.

In other words, the bridge between perception and knowledge would be too great to cross if we did not have a helper. Lesson 43 introduces that helper. We observe the world, and the Holy Spirit teaches us that our “seeing” cannot be apart from God’s because we are not apart from God.

It is critical to see that the action of the Holy Spirit is not directed by us. We do nothing other than be present and open-minded. Healing is accomplished in us but not by us.

It is also helpful to notice that the workbook deviates a bit here from its generally gentle and supportive tone. Lesson 43 is slightly more involved and includes a reminder that “mind-wandering” hinders our healing (W-pI.43.6:1-2). We are being called to a greater degree of attentiveness in our practice.

Finally, this lesson invites us to “see” with God all our brothers and sisters today. As we meet them – regardless of circumstance or context – we silently remind ourselves that we cannot see this person apart from God.

To see one another this way is to offer both our self and the other a blessing, a fact which is contained in the quiet admonition that there are no strangers in our living, only brothers and sisters.

←Lesson 42
Lesson 44→

God is my strength. Vision is his gift.

In Nothing Real can be Threatened Tara Singh talked about the distinction between doubt and trust.

The origin of the world we see – a world that is brutal, tyrannical and devoid of love – is doubt. If we had trust, there would be no such problem at all (197).

Lesson 42 invites trust to take the place of doubt. It

. . . sets forth a cause and effect relationship that explains why you cannot fail in your efforts to achieve the goal of this course. You will see because it is the Will of God. It is His strength, not your own, that gives you power. And it is His gift, rather than your own, that offers vision to you (W-pI.42.1:2-5).

We are being asked to trust that God is our strength and that God’s gift to us is the vision to see the real world.

This trust arises in the form of the actual practice, in which we sit quietly and allow course-related thoughts related to God’s gifts to us to arise in mind. We aren’t forcing anything; we aren’t insisting on anything, and we aren’t judging anything. We are seeing what appears in mind when we step back and loosen our sense of possession and control.

It is doubt that makes us write our own meaning on the world. Doubt is ego’s ally, the voice is adopts in order to turn us away from God and the joy and peace offered there. Doubt insists on the validity of ego’s thought system of separation. Doubt says there is no help and we wouldn’t want it anyway.

Thus, in an important way, this lesson becomes an early step in giving attention to the thoughts of God, which appear naturally when and as we gently give attention to them. When we are open and receptive, those thoughts arise because sharing our being with God is “the most natural thing in the world” (W-pI.41.8:2).

Tara Singh asks if we are ready to refuse to deviate into the pattern of our separation-based thinking, if we are ready to refuse to accept our private thoughts as real.

To do so, you must call upon something more powerful than thought. It is called trust and it never ceases to see the world of thought as unreal. Unless there is that strength, the fluctuations between doubt and trust will continue (201).

But we need not fear. What God asks of us is willingness; if we will give that, then God will supply the strength. And vision – the real world beheld at last – will be restored to remembrance as the gift we are given in creation. It is what we are.

←Lesson 41
Lesson 43→

I am blessed as a Child of God.

As creations of a living God we are entitled happiness. This is God’s Will for us, and we share that will. Thus the unconditional promise of A Course in Miracles that its goal for us is “happiness and peace” (T-13.II.7:1). Anything less is unreal.

God established His relationship with you to make you happy, and nothing you do that does not share His purpose can be real . . . For nothing God created is apart from happiness, and nothing God created but would extend happiness as its Creator did. Whatever does not fulfill this function cannot be real (T-17.IV.1:1, 6-7).

In the world we have made to obscure our identity creation – to love as God loves, without separation – is impossible but happiness is not (T-17.IV.2:1).

Thus, we are capable of experiencing – through sharing in relationship – unmitigated joy, and this experience is the closest we can come to knowing God as Love on this side of the dream.

Lesson forty of A Course in Miracles aims to introduce us to this joy in a realized way by emphasizing the blessing that naturally inheres in us as creations of a living loving God. What are the attributes of a Child of God? Are they kind, loving, peaceful, quiet, patient and generous?

Then go ahead and apply those attributes to yourself. Know yourself in those attributes. Be yourself in those attributes.

The lesson also steers clear of deep dives into mind in favor of quick and consistent reminders of what we are in truth. These reminders are to take “little time and no effort” (W-pI.40.3:1). We are closer to a pep talk – to being coached by Jesus and the Holy Spirit – than to the psychoanalytic model of healing which the workbook has been emphasizing thus far.

This lesson is an invitation to be fully happy in the context of the dream we made in order to avoid happiness altogether. It asks us to gaze directly at the weak and vulnerable self depicted by ego and challenge it. We are not that; we are something else which cannot be harmed nor asked to sacrifice in any way. The lesson contemplates a direct experience of that “something else” which is, of course, our identity as Children of God.

So lesson forty subtly opens our mind to healing by allowing into the dream a joy and peace that undoes the dream. In essence, we are being asked to surrender the body-bound, earth-bound self to God as is.

This is the little part you think stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven (T-18.IX.1:6-8).

In this lesson, by accepting another judgment of us, we regain a faint hint of Heaven. We take an enormous stride into the waiting arms of Christ, the light of awareness in which God restores us to the fullness of Love.

←Lesson 39
Lesson 41→

God goes with me wherever I go.

Because God is with us, all we need to do in a dream of separation is question the dream’s reality. Love dissolves the appearance of separate lives and experiences, and restores to mind awareness of our one life in God.

The myriad experiences of pain and loss we experience as “separated ones” are all dispatched with equal efficiency. They are not different problems with different effects and different levels of intensity. They are merely symptoms of our confused self-identity.

We are healed when we remember what we are in truth.

Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to them (W-pI.41.3:1-2).

This is true because we cannot be apart from our Source, which is “all joy” (W-pI.41.4:2) and “all life (W-pI.41.4:3). Our peace of mind remains perfectly still and undisturbed because we cannot be separate from God (W-pI.41.4:4). We don’t have to do anything other than see rightly what is already given.

This is not the truth of the self that believes it is permanently attached to a body in a world where bodies suffer and eventually die. This is not the truth of a mind which believes in scarcity, guilt and pain. We need to be clear about this! We need to be honest about what our experience is, and not cloud it with what we want it to be.

We want to face the grim facts of imprisonment and exile, in order not to underestimate the requisite release and healing, and in order to call upon the right savior.

Lesson forty is an invitation to perceive without fear the “dark and heavy cloud” (W-pI.41.5:3) that obscures truth and to pass through it to “the light beyond” (W-pI.41.5:3).

This is another way of saying that the separation never happened. We can deny and ignore it, we can obfuscate it – but we cannot destroy it. We have built a heavy cloud over our oneness with God – a complex web of false ideas, dissonant voices, haunted and haunting images – but it is within our power to slip through it. Are we willing?

Healing begins in honesty. Honesty allows us to begin at the beginning, which is where the error of mistaken identity is at last seen and given to be corrected.

This lesson also begins a form of study that resembles the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer. We are quiet and still, turning inward, away from the world and its concerns, away even from the self who wants to be free of the world and its concerns. We are “trying to leave appearances and approach reality” (W-pI.41.7:4).

That last sentence is a powerful teaching moment. It allows to see the self and world as “appearances” rather than reality, and invites us to find “reality” apart from them. It is like suggesting that we cannot find ourselves in a mirror – all that we will see there is an appearance, a reflection. The real self is not “in” the mirror.

If this is confusing at this juncture, that’s okay. It’s more than okay. But the course reminds us that reaching God in this way – in this contemplative mode – is neither mysterious or difficult but rather “the most natural thing in the world” (W-pI.41.8:2).

The way will open if you believe that it is possible . . . it will never fail completely, and instant success is possible (W-pI.41.8:4, 7).

It doesn’t take years of arduous meditation. We don’t have to suffer or deprive ourselves. We don’t have to crawl on our knees through cut glass. We simply have to believe that reaching God is possible. That’s it. If we believe it – if we truly, for one split second, believe this – then the way is open and we will be restored to remembrance of oneness. 

This is our comfort and our certainty that we are not praying and studying in vain. The promise of A Course in Miracles – the peace of joy of undivided Creation – is already given. It is already true. God is with us because what we are cannot be apart from God.

There is no fear. There is only love. In this lies our truth and our salvation.

←Lesson 40
Lesson 42→