A Course in Miracles Lesson 175

God is but Love and therefore so am I.

In the previous review lesson, we remember that the way to remember God is to greet – to relate – to one another in holiness. That is, we commit to knowing the other as God knows them, and we actively disregard those thoughts and feelings that would teach us to see them as bodies.

When we give attention to one another in this way, we receive that attention. We know ourselves as we know the other as God’s Creation.

In this review, we sharpen that insight by understanding – again – that this is what a miracle is. It is a shift in our understanding of what we are in truth, and what the other is in truth, so that together we can bring forth peace and happiness for all our brothers and sisters.

MIracles heal minds that believe they are separate from God by teaching them how to see God – who is but Love – in every brother and sister that we meet.

This lesson also teaches us that one of the effects of this commitment to holiness is the remembrance that fear – which does still appear in our experience – is a stranger. That is, we are home and fear is alien, not the other way around.

When we take fear literally – when take it as real, and capable of real effects – then we find ourselves lost. When we are lost, we seek. This is the ego! And endless and fruitless search for peace where peace can not ever be found.

When we stop searching for peace, and instead commmit to seeing our brothers and sisters as holy because they are beloved of God, then fear ends and we are home. We are home because we are no longer seeking anything outside of ourselves. Rather, we are remembering what is already true within ourselves.

God’s certainty suffices. Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever . . . Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself (W-pI.160.8:1-2, 5).

Miracles occur in minds that are open to seeing the other as God sees them. And miracles end fear by enlightening the mind in which they occur, revealing that mind as one with God in Creation.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 174

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

What does it mean to enter into the Presence of God? And is that even a good question?

One of the ways that our practice of A Course in Miracles heals us is by inviting us to a new experience of being – to learn that we are not self-centered and petty, not jealous and angry, not addicted to suffering – but rather happy and free, capable of creativity and service.

We do not have to go on a journey to reach God. We go on a journey – if we do – to learn that journeys are not necessary. God is present; God is here. God’s Love is all. Love holds everything.

There are a thousand times a thousand ways to remember that God is Love, and that God’s presence can neither be found nor left. It can be denied, yes. It can be ignored. But it cannot be undone.

We cannot make what is true untrue.

Rather than ask what it means to enter God’s presence, ask how to enter God’s presence. Ask how to remember that “God is but Love, and therefore so am I” (W-pI.174.1:1).

This review lesson offers us a very concrete way to do this! If we want to remember our inseperable oneness with God, then we need to learn that true giving and true receiving are the same.

They are not the same in experience, which cannot be shared (W-pI.158.2:7). But they are the same in Vision, which can be shared, through extension, from one mind to another as they learn they are one ((W-pI.158.2:8).

Bodies perceive other bodies; this is natural and inevitable. But we are not bodies! The gift we give the other is to focus on them as they are in truth – as God knows them, not as a body does.

When we practice this, we learn that it is not a fantasy but reality. We truly can know the other as God knows them, and in knowing them that way, remember what we are in truth.

So the practice is hold that thought in mind while we relate to our brothers and sisters in the world. God is Love – how does Love know this other person? Is it possible for you to know them that way? Why or why not?

We enter into God’s presence by being willing to remember God as unconditional Love, and we remember that by sincerely relating to one another – to the best of our limited ability – as God’s creations which are not embodied.

It’s not an intellectual practice. It’s a practice of relying less on the body’s eyes and more on the mind’s understanding that we are all one with each other in holiness (W-pI.174.8:4).

←Lesson 173
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A Course in Miracles Lesson 173

God is but Love, and therefore so am I

This is a walking lesson. During my Buddhist phase, I was taught kinhin – walking meditation. It was in addition to zazen. I wonder if this lesson can be practiced in a similar way. Can walking in a purposeful, measured and intentional way be part of our ACIM practice?

On the first step: I will step back, and let Him lead the way. On the next: I walk with God in perfect holiness. Or one statement every two steps.

Or just an easy mental rhythm as we move gently through the world. I will step back and let God lead the way. I walk with God in perfect holiness.

The metaphor both lessons adopt is that of being a walker – a body walking. The suggestion I am making is: let us put our actual bodies into it. What happens?

A Course in Miracles occurs in the context of separation, to assist in the undoing of separation. Therefore, it appears to bodies in a world. And the healing it anticipates and which its practice brings forth also appear to bodies in a world.

Rather than resist this obvious condition of healing, why not lean – or step – into it?

The suggestion is not that this is a right or even a better way to do the lesson than to sit still and meditation in the core ideas. The suggestion is that it may be more helpful. What do we have to lose by trying?

←Lesson 172
Lesson 174→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 172

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Yesterday I talked about how this sequence of lessons deploys a call-and-resonse model that is designed to gently nudge us byond the domain of reason and intellect and into the domain of faith.

Faith is not superior to reason but it does allows for certain kinds of insights that reason in its infancy can’t fully reach (because it is still so yoked to the need to report back, to justify itself).

Today, again, we are presented with nontrivial statements about our self – that, paradoxically, we are safest when we are utterly defenseless and that God counts us among his ministers.

“Minister” here should not be confused with a church leader, but with the older – more natural – understanding of one who tends and cares for others. In other words, a healer.

I have written a lot about nonviolence and A Course in Miracles. I’ve written less but still plenty about how we can heal in God’s name, as students of the course.

Yet again, these big important ideas are subsumed by a greater one: that God is Love and we are not separate from God. When individual lessons are reduced to a single powerful lesson, they are not being minimized. Rather, we are being asked to see how they flow from a greater truth, which is the truth of our identity which is in God as Love.

When that is clear, then nonviolence ceases to be merely conceptual, and our capacity for healing is neither dormant nor theroretical but active and effective. It is a real thing right now.

It’s easy enough to say (or write) this. It is harder to accept – to know – the truth of it, in a way that ends any alternative perspective.

Hence, for today and a little while longer, we are not trying to “get” anything. Nor are we trying to let go of anything. We are simply expressing a willingness to have our mind pried open by any means possible, and to find out what happens next.

Therefore, I wish you something new in your practice today.

←Lesson 171
Lesson 173→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 171

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Our theme now is that God is Love and therefore, we are as well. The mantra-like nature of this sequence of lessons is a simple veil masking an exponentially deeper and more powerful idea: that we are not separate from God.

This is not to be understood as “in these bodies, with these personalities and stories, we shall be lifted up and incorporated into the perfect unity of God.”

Rather, it is to be understood as: what you are in truth is already one with God and never was and never will be otherwise. We are confused about what we are – no more than that but also, no less.

The second statement obviates the first. If we think that the egoic self – with its body-identification, its time and space orientation, and its language-based relationshps – is God, then we’re confused.

A Course in Miracles is about undoing that confusion. In this sequence of lessons, it de-emphasizes the intellectual approach that tends to dominate the curriculum, in favor of an almost call-and-response simplicity.

If you hate this simplicity, don’t worry. It’s not a crime against God or Nature.

But if you find yourself responding to it – finding it welcome or easy, finding it affirming or familiar – know that somewhere in the deep past, ancestors praise and celebrate you, while in the future your descendents thank you. This is an old and veritable approach to learning.

So in this lesson, for example, the ancillary ideas are that everything we perceive is an echo of the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God, and that we are endowed with the power of decision.

These are not simple ideas. And yet the lesson does not invite us to go into them in an intellectual way – proving them wrong or right, say. Explaining them or theorizing about them.

Rather, the lesson asks us to put right and wrong aside – set analysis aside – and instead focus on something broader – that God is Love and we are not separate from God.

We are being asked to take a very lofty view of ourselves here, one that is beyond the reach of reason and evidence, and thus can only be reached by faith. Intellect is beside the point; sometimes it has to be.

The lesson is asking us to enter what Abhishiktanda called “the Cave of the Heart,” a domain of which Wittgenstein both was and wasn’t signifying when he observed that whatever lay beyond speech could not be spoken of, and thus silence was the better path.

We speak these words – repeat them, mantra-like – and when we are ready and willing, the Holy Spirit will take us to a place of stillness and silence in which the truth of our identity stands so clear and true that we will never again believe the silly idea that you are a body in a world, the latter of which isn’t real, and the former of which is doomed.

←Lesson 170
Lesson 172→

An ACIM-Based Writers Workshop

For the past year or so I have been mulling an ACIM-based writing group. Recently, unprompted, a friend said, why don’t you run an ACIM-based writing group?

What can one say but yes?

So I am offering an ACIM-based writing group. If you are interested read on, and if after reading on you are still interested, let me know.

For this first group, there is no charge.

This group will be small – at most six or seven participants.

The group will meet once a week for four weeks. We will work together to find a mutually convenient time. I am thinking four Sundays in August, but I am flexible.

Each week we will meet virtually for two hours, plus or minus (e.g., keep an open mind about the last fifteen or twenty minutes).

Prior to each week’s meeting, I will send around a reading list which will include sections/lessons of A Course in Miracles (I use the Foundation for Inner Peace version), as well as up to half a dozen poems and/or essays or fiction (either whole pieces or sections of larger pieces). You will not need to buy anything – if I don’t have links, I’ll attach pdfs.

Some fluency with A Course in Miracles will be pre-supposed! I recommend having read the Text and having either completed or being relatively far along into the Workbook. If ACIM is not your practice, this workshop will make less sense.

During the first half of the meeting, we will talk in a discursive way about the writing and how it connects to A Course in Miracles. Four questions will loosely guide our shared dialogue:

  1. What is the author saying?
  2. How is the author saying it?
  3. How does it relate to ACIM?
  4. What is my response?

In the second half of the meeting I will provide several prompts and each of us will choose one and write for approximately 20-25 minutes. I’ll ask you to mute and turn off your camera – but remain present – and together we will write.

When we are finished writing, we will – if we want to – either share all or a part of what we wrote, or what we discovered or felt while writing.

Critically, this portion of the meeting will not be dialogic. We will not feed back to one another; we will not provide praise or criticism. We will listen with open hearts and minds, and welcome what is given. This is designed to maximize the potential of our shared vulnerability in both extending and holding space for one another’s truth.

Sharing will be entirely optional.

Additionally, if participants want, I will meet with you 1:1 once during the four-week period to talk about your writing (both as a process and as a product) and its relationship to an ACIM-based spiritual practice.

This, too, is entirely optional.

I hold a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing (after a law degree it was a kind of spiritual therapy), and have been running workshops for kids, college students and adults in various settings for fifteen years or so. My poems and short stories have appeared in a lot of places, including Yankee Magazine, Rattle, Chiron Review and others. Prior to my MFA – and after bailing on the law – I worked as a freelance writer for many years.

I was also an English professor at a local community college.

For the past ten or twelve years, my writing has been mostly focused on ACIM and my twenty-sentences practice (which surfaces now and then publicly, and is presently not surfacing but private).

Writing creatively as a spiritual practice can be a means of penetrating mysteries and illuminating secret spaces. Often, when our discursive mind hits a wall, appliced poetics (in any genre) will dissolve the obstruction. Or reframe it, or burrow under it, or simply sing to it.

In A Course in Miracles, the freedom bestowed on us through the Atonement, frees us to create as our Creator created us. Writing can be a powerful way of liberating our minds, allowing them to partake in a literal way of the same divine Source that fuels the cosmos.

It can also just be a lot of fun.

If this workshop is successful – e.g., fun and interesting and helpful – I may charge for it but right now I am simply curious to discover what, if anything, happens while doing it.

Interested? Let me know.