Sean Reagan

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

A Course in Miracles corrects the error that we are separate from God. It restores to awareness our identity, which simultaneously restores to awareness both our function of loving in a loveless place (T-14.IV.4:10) AND the means by which it can be accomplished. This is the end of suffering and our return our natural state of joy and peace.

Today, we are offered a clear and unequivocal answer to the question of what am I? The answer is, we are the holy Children of God – we are extensions of God; we are creations of God. And this unity we share with God cannot be dissolved or undone. It is inherent in what God is AND what we are.

Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it . . . The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of Will between Father and Son (T-5.II.1:5, 7).

Saying it is one thing! Knowing the truth of it – in a way that allows us to become both happy and peaceful, and to extend that happiness and peace to all the world, and all our brothers and sisters – is another. Often, our ability to memorize a charming phrase can bock the actual learning the phrase would otherwise teach us.

We don’t want to substitute easy repetition for the work of remembering our intimate union with God.

Hence the essence of the devotional prayer today. We become silent in order to behold God’s glory in us, which is the interior witness unto our innocence and perfection, which witness naturally ends all conflict and grief.

We are asking God to show us once again the nature of our identity and the way in which that nature is revealed only in relationship – us with God, us with our brothers and sisters, all of us as one. It is “only in relationships that salvation can be found” (P-2.in.4:3).

Silence and humility are the means by which this glory is revealed (W-pII.211.1:2). Silence means that we are listening; we are not beseeching or pleading. We are not arguing. We are simply being fully and totally available.

Humility is the recognition that we do not – in and of our own selves – have the means. Our means have gotten us into the mess of separation; our means have produced the deleterious effects of separation. So we are not coming with any sense of expectation or grandiosity; we are not seeking credit for anything. We are not pretending we are spiritual giants.

Rather, we are coming as children unto our God – with simplicity and trust – and asking (without any sense of entitlement or insistence) – to be shown again the truth of our identity, and the rich fullness of our nature. We might intuit the answer intellectually, and that’s fine. But today we are asking to know in a fuller sense.

Who am I? A Child of God remembering with and for every other Child our Father in Heaven, and the peace and happiness that naturally follow that remembrance. And there is no way for us to do this work except together.

←Lesson 210
Lesson 212→

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

The alternative to suffering is happiness; the alternative to conflict is peace.

A Course in Miracles is an invitation to “choose the joy of God instead of pain” (W-pI.189.h) and it is an in-depth exploration of why that choice appears to difficult to make, basically teaching us – in time, in bodies, in the world – how to make it. Making it is how we become happy.

Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery (T-22.II.7:7-8).

When we ask the Holy Spirit to teach us how to remember God’s love in a way that cannot be forgotten – which is to choose happiness over suffering – we are gently taught that the only secret to salvation is that we are doing this – “this” being suffering – to our own selves, and that there is another way. The other way is just . . . not to do that.

Pain is my own idea. It is not a Thought of God, but one I thought apart from Him and from His Will. His Will is joy, and only joy for His beloved Son. And that I choose, instead of what I made (W-pI.210.1:2-5).

This is a beautiful and concise description of what healing in ACIM looks like. We realize that suffering – hurt, anger, guilt, fear, pain, loneliness, anxiety, depression et cetera – is our own construction. We come up with the idea of suffering and then work double-time to ensure it’s our experience.

And yet – sooner or later – we realize that pain and unhappiness cannot be God’s Will for us. We reach the Thetfordian juncture and cry out that there must be another way. And when we do make the cry, it is answered in relationship with our brothers and sisters. Together, we realize we are thinking in ways that God would not think, and so we have to change our thought. God’s Will is peace and happiness; why are we not experiencing it as such?

The answer to that question is that we are throwing up projection after projection – block after block, distraction after distraction – and it all clouds the simple truth that God’s Love is all there is and it includes us.

And you who share God’s Being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness (T-12.VIII.7:9-11).

We don’t have to DO anything; we have to stop doing something. The decision to stop is up to us; that is the choice that we have to make. But it is also the only choice we have to make. Once we sincerely desire the other way, then it is given. It may unfold in time – there may be bumps in the road, we may take a step back or sideways – but the end is sure.

We remain as God created us; this is both our reality and the promise that we will remember that reality, and stop insisting on holding it apart from us in the name of separation. There is another way; the way is given. Today – together – let us join hands and walk it, neither lingering nor racing, content to know where the path leads and grateful for the company we keep upon it.

←Lesson 209
Lesson 211→

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

What are we in truth? A Course in Miracles is given to correct our spiritual identity crisis. We have forgotten who we are and what we are, we are alienated from our creator and creation, and we want to feel happiness and peace again.

The course answers this question simply by reminding us we are created by the Love of God (W-pI.209.1:2) and that the Love of God represents the totality of what we are (W-pI.209.1:3). This love is both our source and our inheritance; remembering this liberates us from hurt and anger, guilt and fear. Our holiness is not other than God’s holiness. The so-called “sleep of forgetfulness” is merely our unwillingness to remember that God knows us only as innocent because we are extensions of Love (T-16.VII.12:4).

When we study and practice A Course in Miracles, we gently remember what has been “forgotten” through unwillingness. Remembrance undoes separation. We call this “awakening” because we are leaving our sleep and the nightmares that appear to reinforce the need for sleep.

Nothing can interfere with our identity as God created it. Nothing can disturb or undo either God’s Love for us or the joy and peace that we feel in and as that Love. Nothing can interrupt the extension of this love, nor the healing it engenders as it extends. This is reality.

The miracle sets reality where it belongs. Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only truth. It thus dispels illusions about yourself, and puts you in communion with yourself and God (T-1.IV.2:3-5).

Over the past few days we have been focused on remembering the active presence of God’s Love. We have been leaning into the intimacy of the heart and the earth. Our  sincerity in our practice yields results, even if we cannot perceive them. Indeed, we are poor judges of our progress. Letting go of our expectations – even for awakening – can only hasten awakening. 

You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now (T-18.IV.7:5-7). 

This lesson is designed to bolster our confidence and remind us that the truth is true, no matter how many fantasies and lies we project before it. It is the call to hopefulness and steadfastness, grounding us in our determination to accept no alternative to God’s grace, but to remain focused and vigilant only for the Kingdom of Heaven.

←Lesson 208
Lesson 210→

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

In yesterday’s lesson, we turned to the light of God in our heart. The emphasis was on intimacy and simplicity. We do not have to crawl across cut glass, we do not have to beg for mercy, we do not have to torture our minds or bodies in the name of insight. There is no lonesome valley before us; only the Edenic valley of natural and serious happiness.

In order to know this, we have to be present to the very love that is present to us in all moments as a function of Creation, which includes us. Here, “be present” is related to stillness. We sit quietly and give attention – we bring our hearts and minds to stillness –  but, critically, without expectation of what will happen next, or what we are to do or not do. We simply let go of our ideas and goals – they are all projections anyway, substitutions we would use to usurp God’s role as Creator.

Let all [substitutions] go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within (T-18.I.8:1-3).

For me, stillness is often an effect of gratitude. I am grateful for the time and energy to rest in God; I am grateful for a program that so helpfully teaches me how to remember what I am in truth, I am grateful that I do not become still alone but share the stillness – and the commitment to it – with you, and with all the world. And I am grateful for a Teacher who can guide me in ways that I cannot of my own accord manage.

When we are still, our mind settles. It doesn’t get caught up in every dilemma and problem. it doesn’t feel a drive to admire a sunset or a passing chickadee. It doesn’t need to solve the seemingly minor problem or the seemingly major ones, like war. Judgment subsides.

It is in that stillness that we recollect – literally regather – the light of God. We realize that everything that we experience is predicated on God’s creation. My gratitude, my love, my service, my discipline – none of it is perfect but all of it arises out of (and thus reflects back upon) the very gift of Creation. We feel creation within us and extending through us, not as a function of our private wish or personal intention but simply as a function of what we are.

There is a tremendous amount of freedom in this realization, and freedom begets creativity. We know what it means to create as God creates, and nothing else will ever hold our attention in quite the same way again. When we realize that the secret to salvation is that we are doing this to ourselves, and that stopping will bring our heart to peace and the earth to stillness, what else but undoing could possibly matter?

Truth is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your ability to accept. It belongs to you because, as an extension of God, you created it with Him. It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you. Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore cannot be protected (T-5.IV.1:4-8).

We are not separate from the peace of God, and cannot resist forever the happiness this peace entails. Our prayer becomes the space in which we rest in stillness, patiently awaiting the revelation of love. If it happens, great. If not, then tomorrow. If it comes in a big wave, great. If it’s a trickle, also great.

We don’t judge; we simply find the cause for gratitude and then give attention to the light in the heart by which our self, all selves, and the world and the universe and the universe of universes is known. A spark can become a conflagration very quickly when we are ready to remember what we are in truth.

Today, together, let us make it so.

←Lesson 207
Lesson 209→

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

We do not practice A Course in Miracles alone. We practice in relationship with others, always shifting from special to holy relationship as we become less invested in and attached to fear, and more open to love. Any blessing that we extend to our brothers and sisters – broadly defined to include owls, whales sharks and photons – blesses us as well.

This blessing is shared in part because our oneness is indivisible. It is elementary. It cannot be reduced any more that it can be expanded or added on to. But even at more pedestrian levels of separation – which includes separate bodies, separate interests, separate life trajectories – we are still blessed by the blessing we offer others. Why? Because doing so reflects our function of loving in a loveless place (T-14.IV.4:10).

The children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father, because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God (T-14.IV.9:1-3).

And as we learn the true condition of God’s Creation, we naturally extend it.

When we actively seek to bring our will – and, by extension, our living – into alignment with Christ and, through Christ with the Absolute, we are loving as God loves. And God’s love does not come and go. it is not conditional on behavior or performance. We rest in it as our foundation, our essence, and its extension – which occurs naturally, without effort or intention of our own – reminds us of that essential foundation.

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard (T-14.IV.6:1-4).

When we set aside our tiny will – our “volition” – the space opened restores to our shared memory both our oneness and the fact that even our confusion and resistance cannot undo what is fundamentally true. We can forget God and we can deny God, but we cannot make what is true untrue.

When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows . . . (T-14.IV.3:1-2).

We turn within to make contact with God, who is our Creator, and who calls us to create like He creates – in love, for love and through love. The course uses the symbolism of the heart here, to emphasize the deeply intimate experience of realizing our union with God. We are not perceiving something far away in time or space, but rather remembering – and bringing forth – something that is so much a part of us that to have ever believed it wasn’t seems silly.

Sorrow arises out of a sense that we are deprived of something, or have lost something. And this, in turn, depends upon a belief in sacrifice as real and meaningful. God’s Love does not return what was lost or give back what is missing. Rather, it heals our confusion about what we are. In that healing, our ideas about sacrifice are undone, and so the cause for sorrow ceases to exist.

Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the eternal (T-22.II.3:6-7).

Again, this is an intimate experience arising from our willingness to offer the world a love that it does not know how to extend itself and which, as often as not, it refuses. Our work is not to fret about what happens but simply to avail ourselves of what is given, here and now, as the essence of what we are in truth. Let us remember God’s Love, and in remembering be transformed, and in that transformation, take all our brothers and sisters, and the world we share, home.

←Lesson 206
Lesson 208→

A Course in Miracles teaches us that forgiveness is a way of being present in our lives that does not accept the world’s judgment of our nature and function. Forgiveness does not see sins and then choose to overlook them in the Name of God or some other kind of moral superiority. Rather, it does not recognize sin at all.

Forgiveness recognizes that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin (W-pII.1.1:1-3).

This is not just a way of relating to our brothers and sisters but also of relating to our own self. When we “forgive” the other in this way, we also forgive our own self (W-pII.1.1:1-3).

This is all orders of magnitude easier to say than to practice. Rumination is always easier than application. The body – and the brain activity arising in the body – judge so naturally that we don’t even recognize we are doing it. Even something as simple as making dinner involves countless little judgments, nearly all of which slip by unnoticed. And that process is going on all the time.

Decisions are continous. You do not always know when you are making them (T-30.I.1:1-2).

What, then, are we supposed to do in order to become forgiving in the radical way suggested by A Course in Miracles?

We have to learn to “see” – to understand, to know – in a new way. It is not actually new but it is so unfamiliar to us as to feel new. We have to actively seek a way of relating to the world and to our brothers and sisters that is grounded in a love that surpasses – that transcends and undoes – the world’s definition of love.

In the world, love is special. It’s conditional on attraction. It involves exchanges which require evaluation and thus judgment. It can be hidden by behavior and confused by price. It arises not from felt sense of our shared radical equality but from a private perception of inequality that inevitably works against us.

A Course in Miracles calls the new way of loving to which we are called “holy relationship.” Holy relationship is premised on a shared commitment to give more than gain, and to value the other’s happiness over our own. It is not possessive at all. Nor are these sacrifices! Imagine the peace and happiness that arises from the service inherent in a holy relationship. Imagine a world in which everybody just wants to serve everybody else.

Forgiveness is merciful because it emphasizes sharing and friendship over judgment and punishment.

True mercy – because it is grounded in sharing and friendship – raises to doubt all judgements (W-pII.1.2:2). It opens the mind in willingness and humility (W-pII.1.2:3). It refuses projection; it refuses to accept any personal perception of reality, and asks only to be shown the truth, which is the same for all of us – you, me, the sunflowers in my garden, the great white sharks off Cape Cod, and whatever else in this vast cosmos has a form.

What does this abstract concept look like in practice?

It looks like stillness and quiet (W-pII.1.4:1). It looks like doing nothing (W-pII.1.4:1).

[Forgiveness] offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not (W-pII.1.4:2-3).

There is a paradox here! We have to “judge” our failure to forgive in order to truly forgive. But recognizing that failure is a form of welcoming the truth as it is in this moment (W-pII.1.4:4-5). A Course in Miracles meets us where we are but in order for that to happen, we have to be honest about where we are.

This sequence of lessons is an invitation to become honest about our confusion and ignorance. It is an invitation to be honest about our unwillingness and stubbornness. We want to see clearly the specific ways in which we are doing this to ourselves and, in doing so, become open – even a little – to the possibility of the Thetfordian other way.

We reflect on the basic concept of forgiveness in ACIM, we make a simple verbal prayer, and then we become still and quiet and do nothing. We seek the confidence and rest that comes from trusting God rather than our own selves. We give our practice – half an hour, an hour, more even – to the Holy Spirit, who will teach us how to see the sinlessness of our brothers and sisters, and all of Creation (W-pII.1.5:3), and in that way remember our own perfect innocence.

Again, we will know that our prayerfulness is working if we feel both joy and rest. This is not an intellectual accomplishment, nor is it about proving our worthiness. It is about accepting the end of spiritual struggle and interior psychological strife. We give ourselves now to the end of suffering, and we accept God’s certainty that we will succeed.