Sean Reagan

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→

God is in everything I see

The basis for vision – which is the spiritual replacement of the body’s seeing – is that God is in everything that we see. God’s indwelling presence in all that we see is what gives everything its function and saves it from separation.

That this is confusing to us at this stage of our learning is a given, but we are not required to understand or even to believe. We merely have to be willing to see differently.

Certainly God is not in a table, for example, as you see it. Yet we emphasized yesterday that a table shares the purpose of the universe. And what shares the purpose of the universe shares the purpose of its Creator (W-pI.29.2:3-5).

Can we see this? What does it look like? What can we do to make this “vision” our experience and reality?

Try then, today, to look on all things with love, appreciation and open-mindedness. you do not see them now. Would you know what is in them? (W-pI.29.3:1-3)

If we would know what is in them, then we must look with “love, appreciation and open-mindedness.” And what we will discover is . . . love, appreciation and open-mindedness.

Nothing is at it appears to you. Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range (W-pI.29.3:4-5).

A table is not many pieces of wood, cut just so and assembled in a form that you recognize as “table.” A table is the function it serves (to write at, eat at, share tea at), and the love that brought the form forth (the labor, the care), and the universe that brought forth the wood (the sun, the earth, the rain, the trees).

And reflect too on what brought forth the meal you share at this table? The friend with whom you share it? What about the tools that built the table? The skill that went into the crafting?

What brought forth the sun, the rain and the soil?

If you look at a table carefully, the entire cosmos opens up from it. Everything is connected to everything else, and nothing has any meaning or function apart from this connectedness.

And yet, even this connectedness dissolves in the light in which it is itself brought forth.

When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today’s idea perfectly. And you will not understand how you could ever have found it difficult (W-pI.29.3:6-7).

It is vision that reveals relationship, creativity, connection and life-breath. The body’s eyes perceive a table but vision reveals the way in which God indwells – not in the object but in the one who perceives.

This is why earlier I pointed out that when we look with “love, appreciation and open-mindeness” we will perceive them in turn. The heart of Lesson 29 – and the essence of its powerful healing capacity – is that God dwells in us. Vision is simply the unshakable recognition of this fact.

←Lesson 28
Lesson 30→

Above all else I want to see things differently.

Lesson 28 is a more specific application of Lesson 27. It is an opportunity to explore our commitment to learning – to seeing differently – in the context of bodies in the world. This is okay – it is more than okay – because as the lesson observes, “we are still at the beginning” (W-pI.28.1:5).

Our perception of the self and world is body-centered and body-oriented. That means we perceive distinctions; that means that separation is the foundation of experience. The tea cup is different from the hand which picks it up and both are different from the chickadee outside the window.

A Course in Miracles insists that this form of seeing – so natural to bodies, so essential to bodies – is not actually seeing at all (e.g., W-pI.28.2:5) and that there is a better way.

You either see or not. When you have seen one thing differently, you will see all things differently. The light you will see in any one of them is the same light you will see in them all (W-pI.28.2:6-8).

All this means is that when we gaze at a table or a teacup or a sunset, we are withdrawing our preconceived ideas about and thus allowing another meaning and purpose to be given it. We don’t know what anything is for (e.g., T-17.VI.2:1-3); this lesson begins deepens our commitment to actually leaning into our ignorance in order to see the real world.

Indeed, the lesson promises that if we can entirely release our own ideas about what an object is, and what it is for, then we will gain vision itself. This is because gazing at anything with an open mind allows us to see with the mind, rather than merely the body’s eyes. What is seen – a table, a tea cup, a sunset – is thus transformed.

It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe (W-pI.28.5:2-3).

Thus, when we gaze at anything which appears as a separate object – distinguished from and set apart from everything else – we are really gazing at the cosmos and asking what its purpose and function are.

Just as there are no degrees of difficulty in miracles, there is no meaningful distinction between the so-called objects that we see. Anyone of them can wake us up.

Tara Singh said that if one could really see an orange – free of all our ideas about oranges, our opinions about oranges and free, too, of our inclination to gather data and spew it all out – then we would be enlightened. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but still. His point was well-taken, and he may well have had Lesson 28 in mind when he made it.

There is another aspect to this lesson that requires our attention. All we are actually doing is seeing all that we are doing and resolving to do less of it. We are basically getting out of our own way in order to allow what is given to be more clearly and radiantly itself. For each object we are letting its purpose be revealed to us, rather than forcing it to conform to our own judgment.

This is an act of letting go; this is an exercise in humility; this is a way of seeing that what is given includes rather than excludes us; and it is a way of tasting the sameness – the radical equality – that will briefly be our experience of love in this world before God takes us home at last.

←Lesson 27
Lesson 29→

Above all else I want to see.

The early lessons of A Course in Miracles invite us to question both how we see and what we see. Our natural human reliance is on the physical eyes. In general, we accept without question the world our sight provides. This leads to a curious belief, though: that what can’t be perceived with the eyes does not actually exist. The course aims to reverse this thinking. 

Our lives are built around desire. We want to eat and drink, make love and make happy, be sheltered and entertained, and we want to live forever. Among these many desires, A Course in Miracles gently teaches us to prioritize vision in order that we might “see” what the eyes insist does not exist.

You cannot lay aside the obstacles to real vision without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against. If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, and He will judge truly. Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it away from you (T-12.II.9:6-8).

We are called to be willing participants in our salvation.

Lesson 27 – under the guise of a declaration of enthusiastic commitment – is really a quiet declaration of our evolving intention to be healed through our practice of A Course in Miracles.

There are two interesting facets to this lesson that can help deepen both our practice of ACIM and our experience of the Holy Spirit’s vision.

The first is that there is no judgment with respect to the depth of our sincerity. We are not more or less worthy of salvation based on the intensity and integrity with which we declare our desire to see above all else.

This does not matter. The purpose of today’s exercises is to bring the time when the idea will be wholly true a little nearer (W-pI.27.1:4-5).

Ego judges; it finds us to be good students or bad students. It compares us to other learners and always finds us wanting. The workbook – both here and in other instances – makes unconditionally clear that this judgment is false (both when it finds us to be poor students and when it finds us exceptional).

Our presence – our little willingness – is literally all that matters.

The second aspect is the suggestion that to wield the vision of the Holy Spirit involves sacrifice. We don’t want to give up gazing at Cezanne paintings, or watching football games, or baking chocolate cakes, or holding our children’s hands, or being sexually intimate.

It feels as if to become holy as the course seems to define it – we are not bodies (W-pI.199.h) and there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2) – then we are going to have to give up a lot.

Not so, suggests this lesson. “Vision has no cost to anyone” (W-pI.27.2:3). Moreover, it “can only bless” (W-pI.27.2:5).

It is not incumbent on us to understand this; it is simply important to see the way in which we are scared and to allow that there is another way. This is a form of humility and open-mindedness that facilitates the Holy Spirit’s capacity for healing.

Lesson 27 invites us to structure our day around its core affirmation, and leaves to us the determination of which structure works best. And, to the extent that this becomes a distraction (should I do fifteen minutes? Thirty?), we are reminded that the real question is not the form we select but how often we remember to utter the declaration and how badly we want it to be true (W-pI.27.4:1-2).

Critically – reinforcing the underlying theme of being non-judgmental – the lesson states clearly that we cannot actually fail.

You will probably miss several applications and perhaps quite a few. Do not be disturbed by this . . . If only once during the day you feel that you were perfectly sincere while you were repeating today’s idea, you can be sure that you have saved yourself many years of effort (W-pI.27.4:4-6).

Such patient and gentle instruction is itself a powerful motivation. Here, in this lesson, we begin to sense that we are not alone, and that our Guide is greater in love than our capacity to imagine.

←Lesson 26
Lesson 28→