Sean Reagan

I could see peace instead of this.

This is one of my favorite lessons in the ACIM workbook. I truly believe that it encapsulates several core ideas that are essential to practicing A Course in Miracles. We are the one with Love. We remember and extend Love by choosing to think differently. Changing our thoughts changes what we see and the result is peace.

That’s A Course in Miracles in a nutshell. 

I spent the night in a hospital. I arrived late, after a long day, and I stayed up for about nine hours sitting by my father’s bed. I hate hospitals. They make me feel powerless. They’re like bland bureaucracies with the power of life and death. I feel depersonalized and threatened when I am in them. And that’s on top of worrying about Dad. 

I generally respond to fear with rage-like fantasies that are alternately scary, embarrassing and silly. It’s like part of my mind has to compensate for the fear and to do so by doubling down on the fundamental conflict. It’s crazy. It helps nothing and nobody.

So I want to do better than that. My father needs me and I do not help anybody – not my father, not myself, not my siblings or mother, not the dedicated staff – if I am crazy and sullen and paranoid.

Lesson 34 was a beautiful and helpful – in part because it was also frustrating – antidote.

I began practicing at about 3 a.m. while my father slept. The room was tiny and the chair was hard but it was a fine and mellow meditation. I read the lesson by the light of my cell phone, then closed my eyes. I found that my mind followed the previous lessons – I am not the victim of the world I see because I have invented the world I see and there is another way of looking at the world – which naturally evoked “I could see peace instead of this.”

Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter. It must begin with your own thoughts, and then extend outward. It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful interpretation of the world arises (W-pI.34.1:2-4).

And, indeed, this was how it functioned.

Perhaps because it was quiet and dark, perhaps because it was an unusual and intense situation, but I “broke” the lesson’s suggestion that I focus on my thoughts. I fully recognize and accept that peace is an inside job, an internal matter, the external world merely reflecting an interior decision. But when those five minutes were over I opened my eyes and kept going. I’d look at the hospital bed. I could see peace instead of this. The cord you yank to call the nurses? I could see peace instead of this. The concrete garage blocking my view out the window? I could see peace instead of this.

This is an example of allowing ourselves to meet A Course in Miracles where we are. 

I applied it to sounds. That beeping from the saline drip? I could see peace instead of this. The snoring two doors down? I could see peace instead of this. The doctor telling a joke?

I could see peace instead of this.

And slowly I began to see peace. And – more than that – realize that peace was what I’d been seeing all along. I’d walked into that hospital fully expecting the worst but ready to be okay with it. This is going to suck, Jesus, and we both know it, but let’s get it done. And at first – for a quick couple of minutes – it did suck. All the doors were locked. But then this guy – who knows what he was doing sitting in a dark car with his window open – directed me to the one door that was open. The don’t-mess-with-me security officer at the front desk? Asked about the weather before directing me upstairs. The nurse who I thought was going to demand I leave because “visiting hours” were over? She brought me a pillow and a blanket.

Every turn – whatever happened – the worst turned out to be okay. No, it was better than okay. And then, at some point during my Lesson 34 mumbles, maybe around the time the sun was starting to rise, it hit me. Things were okay because I was okay. That willingness at the beginning meant I was bringing my will into alignment with God’s will. And even though that didn’t pacify the ego – hence the ongoing fear – it did open something deeper, something beyond the ego’s reach. I experienced love and safety at each turn because I am love and safety. No me as in Sean, you understand. Me as in you and me. And you and me as in God, as Love itself.

This was a sort of peaceful recognition. I was exhausted – sleep-deprived – strung out on bad coffee – worried about how the rest of the day was going to pan out. No light shows. No dulcet voices. Just a sweet warm sense of peace. I’m okay. It’s okay. When we are willing to act as if we are not ego – when we are willing to be miracle workers even though we doubt the assignment – we are unified and in union we are pacified. Maybe it’s Jesus. Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit.

And maybe God is Love and as God’s creations, we too are Love. 

This post is deeply autobiographical. We experience the course in the context of our lives in the world; we aren’t monks and nuns doing the lessons in isolation. We are embodied in the world and the lessons are the means – in that body in that world – by which we learn the truth of what we are.

←Lesson 33
Lesson 35→

There is another way of looking at the world.

Because we invent the world, we can choose to see it differently. We can opt to frame it in new lights that bring forth aspects or tones that make us and others happier. Because we have the same power of creation as our Creator, we can choose love instead of fear.

And so we turn our attention to the world that we see – the outer world and the inner world – and we gently remind ourselves that there is another way of looking at it all.

It is important to give attention to this lesson without trying to jump ahead – to wanting to see it differently now. This lesson builds on previous ones, and its emphasis is on becoming aware of our power of choice which is what brings forth the possibility of healing.

Later lessons will teach us how to wield this choice; today’s asks us merely to become comfortable with its existence.

The lesson also emphasizes casualness. This is an important insight into our learning process. A Course in Miracles is not asking us to be spiritual superheroes or giants. It is not about who practices the hardest or the longest or the most intensely.

It is a gentle, self-directed curriculum that asks nothing of us that we cannot give, and allows us considerable flexibility in the pace and intensity of the learning experience.

Thus, it is important to be patient and forgiving with ourselves, and to meet ACIM where we are and allow the relationship to evolve according to the calm confidence of Spirit rather than ego. Merely show up and let what happens happen.

←Lesson 32
Lesson 34→

I have invented the world I see.

Today’s lesson of A Course in Miracles picks up on yesterday’s in what should seem like a predictable way.  We are not victims of the world we see because we invented the world we see.

You could give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see (W-pI.32.1:3-5).

In this way, the lesson keeps our focus on revising our understanding of cause and effect, essentially, reversing it. In the world’s understanding, external causes create internal emotional effects. We are well or not well based on what’s happening outside of us – and we have no control over those external events. Our inner state is unreliable because the outer state is as well, and the outer causes the inner.

A Course in Miracles suggests instead that we look inside, see the kind of world we want to see – one that supports our commitment to separation, guilt and fear – and then project it outward (e.g., T-13.V.3:5). The inner is the cause of the outer. We’ve got perception – and cause-and-effect – backwards.

In truth, the inner world and the outer are the same (W-pI.32.2:1) because both are in our imagination (W-pI.32.2:3).

In a sense, this sequence of lessons revolves around the idea of will. Whose will is being exercised? Whose is being suppressed? To what ends are the exercise or suppression being put?

For most of us, especially as ACIM beginners, we are exercising self-will, which is of the ego, which is also a de facto suppression of God’s Will. Ego  is very selective in terms of what it allows into awareness and what it excludes. Its selectivity is predicated on judgment – this is good, this is bad. And the standard of judgment is always its survival. Does [insert perceived object/idea] perpetuate ego’s existence? If yes, then it’s good. If not, then forget about it. And forget you forgot about it. For the ego, there is no other standard. Why should there be?

This is part of why A Course in Miracles so often suggests that we ask what everything is for things are for (T-17.VI.2:1-2). Ego’s judgment decides the function of everything based on whether it will keep the ego alive and active. But that’s its goal, not ours. Our goal is to undo the ego and be free of the limitations its thought system forces on us. So we have to shift our focus. Even when we think we know what something is for, it’s helpful to ask again. Is there another way to see our job? Our children? Our routines?

Remembering that we are creators of the world and not merely passive observers can help us to ask these questions more pointedly as well as be more open-minded with respect to the answers.

The “answers,” by the way, are always some variation of “yes. There is a way to see this that brings forth love, not fear.”

Of course, this series of lessons is not really proactive in the sense of telling us how to undo the ego. The course is inviting us to notice – by giving attention to – how ego functions. What are its effects? How shall we evaluate those effects?

Thus, ACIM is really about changing our minds about mind. That’s it. If we can see the ego, and if we can accept that we do not share its agenda, then we will naturally withdraw our support from its frantic spinning of story and world. What happens after that is in God’s hands.

This is what A Course in Miracles means when it tells us that we are already saved, that the journey is already over. We aren’t creating new selves or improving on old ones. Rather, we are allowing our true selves – which are hidden but by no means ruined or gone because they are Creation – to shine through the sludge of ego and thus remind of us what we are in truth. As we remember this, the “sludge of ego” disappears as soon as we decide we neither need nor want it anymore. We can do this because “we invented the world we see.”

←Lesson 31
Lesson 33→

Lesson 31 is the first time A Course in Miracles uses the word “victim” in the Workbook. It’s a heavy word, a loaded word. We tend to resist it because we associate victimhood with with passivity. And  we are the opposite of passive. We are constantly checking out new self-improvement regimes, fine-tuning our spiritual practices, considering tweaks to diet and exercise routines . . .

But this resistance is to miss the point of the lesson, really – and, in an important way, to overlook a core teaching of A Course in Miracles. It doesn’t matter how intense or active or devoted we are in our bodily self in the world – to be in that self at all is to place ourselves at the mercy of ego and its demented belief system. And in that limited (and limiting) sense, we are victims. We are victims of our decision to honor a bad idea rather than the wholeness of mind itself.

It’s like walling off a chunk of Heaven, making it resemble a dungeon, and then trying to pretend the dungeon is Heaven by deliberately forgetting what Heaven is really like.

This is what we do when we serve ego, and we’re good at it, and it is exactly the sort of thing that “victims” do.

Today’s lesson attempts to undo that. Can we get past the bodily self and the egoic self? Can we see how these are, regardless of the forms in which they appear, mere shadows of our true identity? Can we begin to release them – little by little – in favor of whatever awaits us when they aren’t the whole of our perception?

Indeed, this lesson is, as it proclaims, a declaration of freedom (W-pI.31.4:2). And that freedom begins with reconsidering what we actually are, reversing our traditional understanding of cause and effect, and asserting – regardless of whether we believe it or not – our desire to be free. In each of those steps, we accept our responsibility as creators. The inner, as Jesus says, is the cause of the outer (W-pI.31.2:5). There are few ideas that are so important to our understanding of the belief system that is A Course in Miracles.

It is also worth noting that the course is upping the ante again. We have moved away from a minute here and there – and two minutes six times a day – to a morning and evening meditation that can last up to five minutes each, as well as frequent recitations of the idea throughout the day. A sense of order is slowly and gently being imposed on us.

This, too, can lead to resistance. Yet if we will simply do it and not judge its effects, we might discover that the opportunity to deepen into a sustainable ACIM practice is actually welcome. The more its ideas become our default thought system, the freer we are.

No suggestion is made that we should push ourselves so hard we crash or lose faith or become discouraged. But it is good to take note of our spiritual comfort zone and push – gently, even a little – past its boundaries. 

Lesson 31, then, is consistent both with ACIM’s gentle but non-negotiable reversal of ego’s thought system, and its emphasis that our active participation – through willingness, through study, and through application – are required. We don’t have to do it perfectly, but we do need to show up.

←Lesson 30
Lesson 32→

God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.

There is a seamlessness to our experience that we basically deny. We’re here, the cat is there, the driveway is out there, our friends are scattered hither and yon. Work is is three hours, supper is in ten, tomorrow is the doctor’s appointment, Easter is a few months off. Segmentation – separation – is the way we deny that seamlessness, that oneness. It’s a habit that’s hard to break but, like most habits, it’s only a decision we made once that we have since repeated a thousand times a thousand times. It’s not reality. It’s a choice against reality.

Lesson 30 of A Course in Miracles has a sort of “take the kid’s gloves off” feel to this problem. It’s like we’ve been taking guitar lessons for a month and the teacher has us working scales and practicing chords and learning songs nobody really wants to learn (little etudes, Twinkle Twinkle, etc.). The amp has been off and when it’s on the volume is just a hair below one. Then bam! The teacher says, well, okay. You’ve been pretty diligent. Why not play for a while?

God is in our mind. God is inside us. Wherever you look, whatever you see with the body’s eyes – there’s a way to see it that brings for the Love that inheres in the presence of God which is in us in a real way. This idea threw me when I finally opened up to it in with genuine willingness. Forty years of worship and idolization were knocked aside, leaving me naked and vulnerable. I was walking in the early morning and realized that God wasn’t a separate or distinct entity, a distant intelligent Creator moving us all around like pawns on a chessboard. I felt dizzy and frightened. But also I felt alive.

The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement . . . (T-4.III.1:4-6)

That’s heavy stuff. The first time I did this lesson, it more or less sailed right past me. It was a couple months later that I measured its full impact, staring up into the morning sky and wondering what was going to happen, now that God was no longer roaming the heavens like some overpowering adversary but was in my mind, indivisible from whatever I am in truth.

I don’t remember the second time I did it.

This time around, it feels comfortable. Yesterday I was in a friend’s kitchen and I was doing lesson 29. The borders of what I saw grew fuzzy and indistinct. Everything appeared to merge with everything else, the wood stove into the rocker, coffee maker into bread bin. I sensed vaguely that the external world only exists in relation to our seeing, our perception. I’m not trying to sound super-spiritual here. It was just a hint and I experienced it mainly as an idea. But when I turned to Lesson 30, it made sense. God is out there – in everything – because God is in here. There is nothing else.

In this way, projection is undone and all that remains is the gentle extension of love.

It recalls what Meister Eckhart said so long ago: The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me. And it recalls, too, those simple lines from the introduction to A Course in Miracles which are its effective summation.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God (In.2:2-4).

How do we approach this lesson? As we do the others. Just practice it. Let it be. There’s really nothing that we – the little us, the egoic us – can add to it. We bring our sincerity and diligence and willingness to bear and then let the chips fall where they may.  For most of us, awakening is a process unfolding in time and each step is a gift. Adopting a spirit of joyful anticipation and gratitude can ease the journey considerably.

Often, the fruits of our ACIM learning are not reaped in the immediate moment of practice but rather down the road (as was the case with my first experience of this lesson). However, the core idea in this lesson stands some meditation or reflection. It’s not something that we grasp intellectually, or only intellectually. It’s more like staring at an optical illusion and then suddenly getting it. Our eyes and our minds adjust and reinterpret what they were seeing and what as there before is gone, replaced by the new.

. . . the world will open up before you , and you will look upon it and see in it what you have never seen before. Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you (W-pI.30.1:2-3).

A Course in Miracles will take us as far down the road to Heaven as we are ready, willing and able to go. And when it is time to stop and catch a breath, that will be okay. It’s no big thing. We are not really going anywhere save where we have always already dwelt.

Thus, in a sense, Lesson 30 is simply an invitation to be quietly happy in the presence of that which wants only to make us happy. Have fun. Enjoy the companionship. Expect miracles and then do them.

←Lesson 29
Lesson 31→