Sean Reagan

In Monday’s newsletter I wrote about the way in which judgment arises as a replacement for Vision. As the course asks: why judge when you can see?

Judgment is a form of interpretation, and interpretation is never without ego involvement (T-12.I.2:1). This is not a crime against God or Nature! It’s simply another form of conflict making us deeply unhappy. If there is a useful alternative, why not avail ourselves of it?

Judgment and projection are related, in the sense that judgment is too painful to bear so we project it outward. We judge the ones making war, for example, and that feels just. It feels right. And that self-righteousness allows us to temporarily allay the pain of judgment. It addresses the symptom but leaves the underlying cause of suffering untouched.

A Course in Miracles is very practical. Sometimes we forget this because of its overly-wrought language and density, and because of the drama that often attends our ACIM community in the form of ascended masters, spiritual lights, new texts channeled from Jesus et cetera. But truly it offers us a way to become naturally sustainably happy and to co-create – with God and with each other – a world in which we are all naturally sustainably happy.

“Projection makes perception” (T-21.In.1:1). Therefore, the world that we experience through the body witnesses to our state of mind. It is “the outside picture of an inward condition” (T-21.In.1:4). It always reflects either love or fear, and thus our decision to listen to either the Holy Spirit or the ego.

Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free (T-21.In.2:1-4).

How is this practical?

Because if the world we see is no more than what we gave it, we can give it something else.

The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as yours. And if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you (T-21.In.2:7-8).

A Course in Miracles invites us to change our mind rather than the world. But it makes clear that as our mind changes, the world will change with it. Therefore, we are not ignoring war and famine, injustice and hate. We are simply responding to it at its source, which is inside us.

This is not an invitation to forget the suffering of our brothers and sisters. It is not an invitation to become distracted by metaphysical ruminations about illusion and reality. It is an invitation to become fully responsible for it. A Course in Miracles invites us to become peacemakers, living symbols of a joy that is merciful, just and nonviolent.

Mercy, justice and nonviolence create – by extending through relationship – happiness for all.

Our practice is not to ignore the world but to read it carefully and allow the Holy Spirit rather than ego to teach us what it means. The Holy Spirit will interpret in favor of love and peace, and as a consequence our behavior will naturally bring forth love and peace.

But it has to happen in that order! Read the signs, ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means and how to respond.

If we reverse the order – decide what to do and then try to get our mind to go along – then we are simply listening to ego. And ego is happy to work for peace and justice. It will take that project over in a heartbeat. But if it does, nothing will change and we will simply be frustrated and exhausted and the list of people, institutions and belief systems to blame for our problems and the world’s problems will simply grow longer and longer.

There is – there is always – another way.

My practice of A Course in Miracles – in which I join with you, if you will join with me – is to go slowly and patiently through the world, humbly seeking to be helpful.

I am only here to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be whereever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal (T-2.V.A.18.2-6).

Note that “helpful” sometimes means – in fact, often means – just staying out of the way.

Thank you, as always, for sharing this path with me. It is not easy, but the company is good. Our shared desire to be healed is the answer to all the world’s problems, big and small. Let us support one another in changing our minds.

Love,
Sean

I want to point out a two-step process that has been very helpful in my practice of A Course in Miracles specifically and, more generally, in my practice of becoming happy and peaceable to a Christ-like degree.

The first step is learning to discern between the Voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of ego. They truly are two different teachers, and we are listening to one or the other all the time, and seeing this, and knowing the difference is incredibly helpful. Without knowing the difference, we can only stumble and flail about. A rigorous spiritual practice begins with our ability to discern between helpful and unhelpful teachers.

This “rigorous spiritual practice” is the second step because it is the step of choosing to listen to the Holy Spirit rather than the ego. That is hard to do. It is hard to do it once or twice a day, let alone retrain our mind to hear only and always the Holy Spirit. But that’s the path.

So those steps go together, like a dance or a recipe.

Sometimes people ask how do you tell the difference between the two voices?

Ego always argues and its case always involves the body’s welfare, one way or the other. Ego changes tone a lot – it cajoles, flatters, debates, teases, belittles, rages. Its only value is whatever gets the job done.

And yet.

The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally un affected by your attempts to dissociate it (T-4.VI.1:7-8).

Holy Spirit does not argue because it does not recognize any conflict. It does not try to force anything because it respects our decision-making power. It isn’t trying to sell anything because it knows we have everything. It is always calm and confident, and it will always share with us its confidence.

[The Holy Spirit] is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator. This communication is the Will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous (T-4.VII.3:4-6).

Ego basically argues that you’re vulnerable and in need of help, and only it can help you, and it works frantically – without any consistent ethics or morals – to keep you scared and dependent.

The Holy Spirit always reminds you of your fundamental innocence as a condition of being Creation Itself, thus teaching you how to create like your Creator.

Ego breeds an endless cycle of conflict / temporary solution / conflict. The Holy Spirit blesses you with happiness and inner peace that is unconditional. You have to actively refuse it in order not to know it.

Therefore, it is natural to ask: why is it so hard to hear only the Holy Spirit? It offers us everything. Shouldn’t it be easier to give attention to it?

It’s hard because you and I are on the fence. We are willing to consider – mostly intellectually – that we’re not bodies and the world isn’t real, but we don’t actually believe it. Basically we are hedging our bets. And there is no middle ground in salvation (T-28.VII.2:7).

And the further truth is, we’ve been indoctrinated by ego. So the Holy Spirit’s suggestions and directives can seem illogical or even dangerous. We are so attached to ego’s endless litany of reaction, attack, defense, et cetera that anything else sounds alien and foolish. It feels right to ignore it.

So, you know, you lose your job and ego starts shouting “hire a lawyer! Beef up your resume! Polish that Linked-In profile! Call so-and-so and complain loudly about how you were treated! Revisit your anger at your father/wife/partner!”

And the Holy Spirit says, “do nothing.” Or “ask your neighbor if they need a hand with anything.”

Or maybe you’re fixated on ending war. Ego has ideas about this. “Tweet more! Argue with strangers on Facebook! Go to a rally! Tear down your neighbor’s political sign! Obsess about how wrong people can be! Pick a fight! Pick two fights!”

And the Holy Spirit says, “you haven’t gone for a walk with so-and-so for years – give them and call and see if they’re up for a hike.”

You are trying to save your house and family, or establish world peace, and the Holy Spirit seems oddly uninterested in these noble pursuits. It just nudges you to be a better friend or to sit quietly with tea watching birds at the feeder or wash the bathroom floor or whatever. Its priorities seem ridiculous.

It takes a long time to trust that the Holy Spirit is, in fact, the Voice for God, and that its suggestions always bring more peace both to you and all your brothers and sisters. But this is the way, and there is no other. “All other traits of God’s Teachers rest on trust” (M-4.II.1:1).

Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself (C-I.5:2-3).

Ego is still the default, which is why conflict remains so pervasive, and why happiness and peace are always coming and going. But ego is not inevitable. Violence and suffering are not inevitable. And there is something that is inevitable – our union with our Creator. “God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you” (T-4.I.9:11).

Learn to distinguish between the two teachers, and you will see how only one offers anything you actually want. Then listen only to that Teacher and follows Its guidance, no matter how seemingly insignificant or silly. It asks so little of us, and offers so much.

There is no way to God, just like there is no way to the self. You are already fully present; so, too, is God. Wholeness is not waiting to be reconstructed; it is waiting to be recognized.

The Wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the Wholeness of God’s Creation. By this recognition it knows its Creator (T-6.II.1:2-3).

The salient quality of wholeness is inclusion (e.g., T-6.II.1:4). God’s Creation excludes nothing. You and I exclude a lot. So one way to begin to remember wholeness is to notice who – and what – we insist must be apart from it.

Perhaps we want to exclude Vladimir Putin. He’s an autocrat and a warmonger. Perhaps we want to exclude Russian soldiers who target Ukrainian civilians. They are war criminals. This feels rational, no? In Heaven there is no war, so only peacemakers need apply.

Go slowly with me here.

We are dismayed by war because we know that violence and conflict are of the ego, and peace and happiness are of God.

But the solution to war is not the additional violence of excluding our brothers and sisters who make war. It is not the additional violence of choosing sides in war. All that merely doubles down on the original error that conflict has value in and of itself.

The one we reject is our savior, and by our rejection, we not only refuse to save them, we also deny our own salvation. This is obviously contrary to God and to Love.

There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your completion, in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. In the protection of your wholeness, all are invited and made welcome (T-15.VII.14:6-7).

Nonviolence is not an optional response to conflict. It is the only response that actually means anything, because it is the only one that refuses to accept the violence inherent in separation, and thus reestablishes our shared interest in peace and happiness with all our brothers and sisters.

To see any brother or sister as a wrongdoer who is worthy of exclusion is to effectively damn all of us, including our own self. This is what projection is, and also why projection is so effective at sustaining the illusion of separation.

The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceieve. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one . . . Wherever he looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always (T-6.II.12:2-3, 5).

Thus, as I pointed out in yesterday’s newsletter, we have to become responsible for projection by refusing to do it. That means that when we are scared or angry, full of righteousness or hatred, convinced that conflict is just, et cetera, we have to do nothing other than just sit with the feelings.

To “sit” with our feelings is to give them – and the circumstances apparently giving rise to them – to the Holy Spirit. We aren’t projecting, arguing, improving or anything. We are simply refusing to be part of the ego’s war on God.

If you think this is merely a metaphor, and has no relationship to the war you perceive outside yourself, I encourage you to at least try it. Refuse the ego’s call to war – what happens? Refuse to crucify anyone, no matter how evil they seem – what happens?

I make you a promise: if you refuse to be a pawn in the ego’s bloody war, then you will remember God’s peace, because your refusal of ego is your acceptance of the Holy Spirit and its message of Love, which is God’s peace. Thus, you will feel abiding peace in your heart, and in your mind you will know with calm certainty exactly what you need to do to manifest this peace unto the world so that all our brothers and sisters might remember peace with you. Hint: it’s not about what you do but how you look.

When you look with gentle graciousness upon your brother, you are beholding [the Holy Spirit]. . . . You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you need to see. When the peace in you has been extended to encompass everyone, the Holy Spirit’s function here will be accomplished (T-19.IV.3:2, 4-6).

Is it clear? Be still and hold all the world, all your brothers and sisters, without exception. Place no condition on this welcome. Hold the young mother who died with her baby outside a maternity hospital in Ukraine. Hold the baby. Hold the young men who fired the weapons who killed this woman and her child. Hold the profiteers who sell the weapons. Hold the so-called leaders who give the orders.

A Course in Miracles is not fucking around. It is a beautiful, radical, rigorous spiritual path. It is teaching us how to become peacemakers and saints, so that all our brothers and sisters – broadly defined to include butterflies, maple trees and rain drops – might rest in the peace and happiness of the wholeness that is our shared inheritance as creations of God.

God is; you are. There is no gap anywhere, only the mistaken perception of a gap. Yet in that gap are the seeds of war, starvation and pestilence (T-28.III.4:2-3). Will you join me in stillness today – a few moments only – in which we refuse to be combatants in ego’s endless conflict, and instead become peacemakers intent on allowing our minds to hold only those thoughts that we think with God?

There is an end to suffering and violence. I am telling you: together we are it.