ACIM and Responding to Suffering

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The metaphysics of A Course in Miracles are clear: there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2) and we are not bodies (W-pI.199.8:7-8). On this view, what happens merely appears to happen; it’s an illusion. It’s like winning the lottery in our dreams at night – we still wake up poor.

To bodies in the world, and to minds that believe they are encased in and limited to those bodies, the metaphysics of ACIM will always be insane. From the perspective of bodies and egos, injustice happens. Evil happens. Bad things happen to good people. Only a fool would deny this.

And, indeed, the course is not asking us to deny this. Rather, it is asking us to reframe it – to understand that it is all happening in a dream, and to invoke the guidance of powers that transcend the limitations of body and ego, powers that are in the dream by not of it, and so can point beyond it.

In the tradition of ACIM, we call those “powers” Jesus or the Holy Spirit. What we name them is less important than our ability to rely on them in times of need – which is to say, to not rely on our own judgment. “Not my will but yours” is really the point.

The fundamental practice of ACIM is to see the world as blessed and saved, and – since we cannot see this way unaided – to avail ourselves of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who can and – more importantly – can teach us how to see it that way, too. They teach us to see peace and love by teaching us how to bring forth peace and love as a function of what we are in truth.

In spiritual terms advocated by the course (T-12.I.10:1-2), that which appears as injustice, immorality, horror, and evil is a call for love. And the only helpful response to that call is love itself.

What will love look like in the world of bodies? How will it appear in the world of form? That is not our call!

Perhaps it will look like a protest march or civil disobedience. Perhaps we will make donations of food or money or time. Perhaps we will pray our knees or console someone whose grief is temporarily greater than ours.

If we ask for guidance and are even the tiniest bit willing to hear and accept it, then whatever we do will serve the cause of love. And that will be sufficient in the world because we are not the ones doing it.

A Course in Miracles makes clear that in the context of illusions and dreams, we are the keepers of our brothers and sisters, and they, in turn, are our keepers. It’s good to have a grasp on the metaphysics – it can inspire, nurture and comfort us – but really, here in the dream, the only question that matters is: how can we help our brothers and sisters? And: are we ready to let them help us?

Whatever it is that opens your heart – whatever form of service brings forth your compassion, caring, concern – is the voice to trust when you ask: what do I do with all this suffering I perceive? It will guide you to the most helpful posture you can assume in this world, and in doing so will take you – with all of us – beyond the world.

The Fourth Principle of A Course in Miracles

All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know (T-1.1.4:1-3).

Understanding how A Course in Miracles uses the concept of specificity is essential to its effective practice. It really goes to the heart of the problem of separation: the belief that we are separate from both creation and creator, and are singularly responsible for surviving this difficult exile.

You and I live in a word of specificity. A chair is not a table. We cannot eat rocks. Even when we move into more abstract concepts, we are still specific. Family trumps neighbor, neighbor trumps stranger. Exceptions prove the rule.

This specificity is the separation. It is what the miracle heals. So in a sense, miracles dissolve the need for miracles. But in order for miracles to effectively undo our mistaken belief in the reality of our specific body and specific world, they have to function in that world and for that body.

Miracles arise when we need help, and the help will be given to us by God through the Holy Spirit, Who is God’s Voice for Love. The Holy Spirit always gives us exactly as much information as we need to heal the specific problem or life challenge we face. But importantly, that help may or may not redress the problem as we have set it up. That is because the problem the Holy Spirit heals is our mistaken belief in separation, not the symptom that points to our mistaken belief.

Therefore, open-mindedness is a virtue in our practice of the course. There is no way around this.

Are you frustrated with your child for waiting until the last minute to ask for help with a school project? Spouse no longer interested in hearing about your day? Were you given an unfair evaluation at work? Car break down? Did the wrong political party win the last election?

God has a miracle for you.

But the miracle is not – as we will see more clearly in the tenth principle – about fixing the specific form of the problem. A miracle does not supernaturally repair leaking oil gaskets or magically empty the sink of unwashed dishes. It does not undo election results.

Rather, miracles realign our will with the will of God, which is life. But what does this mean?

When A Course in Miracles talks about “life” it is rarely referring to the physical experience of being a body – eating, excreting, sleeping and breathing, rinse and repeat from birth to death. That is not life but a mildly corrupt facsimile of life. It’s an imitation produced with an eye for efficiency over quality, a good story over reality. Mind that has forgotten what life actually is and stubbornly refuses to be reminded.

Rather, “life” refers to a creative ongoing relationship with God, not as an object or even a process, but as a perfectly abstract idea. Holiness arises in shared creativity, which is circular in nature, both infinite and eternal.

. . . the Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he has given Him. It is because he is God’s Son that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same (T-28.II.1:2-7).

It is this relationship that miracles demonstrate. And it is this relationship that restores to our mind the memory of peace which naturally brings forth our shared ability to be happy and free in and with one another.

Thus, when I bring my specific problem to the Holy Spirit, Its response is not to instantly solve the problem as I’ve set it up. My problems all arise from confusion about what I am in truth: I think I’m a body in a hyper-competitive world of scarce-and-getting-scarcer resources. I think I’m at risk of death and the that the best defense is a good offense. Every single one of my so-called problems is merely a symptom of this misunderstanding.

Therefore, the Holy Spirit’s specific answer always addresses the underlying error, which is essentially my conviction that separation is not only possible but actually happened. The Holy Spirit never confirms separation because it knows the separation never happened. It always gives me just as much knowledge as I can handle in a given moment, a given set of circumstances, to remember that separation is not real.

When we accept that the world is not real and that we are not bodies, then we will no longer have problems.

How does this seemingly impossible condition play out in our lives?

Say that I am struggling with a supervisor at work. They are not always fair in their judgment, and they don’t always communicate in helpful ways. When I try to talk about this, they aren’t responsive. What should I do?

This is a real problem that can occur in the world! A Course in Miracles does not suggest we ignore it or suffer through it or anything like that. Instead, it invites us to bring it to the Holy Spirit and/or to Jesus. Find a quiet space, clear our mind, and in a natural and nondramatic way, let our preferred spiritual guide know what’s going on.

And then – keeping in mind the open-mindedness referred to earlier – get on with our lives.

The answer will be given, it will be precisely as specific as we need it to be and it will do two basic things. First, it will alleviate the stress I experience in the given relationship. Second, it will alleviate the stress by reminding me – to the deepest degree I can accept – that the problem is not real because the world is not real and I am not a body.

Usually, this reminder takes the form of remembering that my supervisor and I have a shared interest in peace. To that end, since we are all either asking for love or extending love, my interpretation of the relationship is refactored so that I can more accurately assess my role in its failure to bring forth peace.

So, I will see that I am asking for love from my supervisor in the form of fairness, dialogue, willingness to change, et cetera. Simultaneously, I will remember that my supervisor – who is obviously also struggling with the relationship – is also crying out for love. I may not know what form of love they need is, but that they need it is clear from the relationship.

Then the problem is very simple, right? “To have peace, teach peace to learn peace” (T-6.V.B.7:5). Once that is clear, then my problem is no longer a problem with my supervisor, but a problem with my own failure to remember the love that was given to me in creation. When I remember this, I become responsible for extending that love. I choose love. I choose to teach peace to learn peace.

When I do this, the relationship heals because I am no longer asking it for anything. I am just looking for opportunities to bring love and peace to it. The form of the giving doesn’t really matter at this juncture. It will be obvious. The truth is, when we remember that we are only here to be helpful (T-2.V.A.18:2), then the specific way to be helpful is not hard at all. It’s so incredibly obvious we can’t believe we didn’t see it earlier.

What’s hard is remembering that the specificity promised by A Course in Miracles is always aimed at healing the actual error, which is a mistaken belief in my mind that I am separate from my brothers and sisters and therefore in competition with them. The specificity is always aimed at mistaken belief, not the effects of that belief, however painful or dysfunctional they appear.

In time, as we practice ACIM principles, and bring them into application in our living, it becomes easier to remember that we are not bodies and that the world is not real. The remembering generalizes and reaches the whole of our apparent lives, like how a fire fills the darkness with warmth and light. We stop getting so worked up about everything. A quiet happiness becomes our default state, forever offering itself to our brothers and sisters and, through them, to the whole world. We join together and the fire brightens. In its ambient radiant glow, we do nothing because nothing is wrong, nothing is broken. Nothing happened so nothing needs to happen.

And we are – at last and forever, again – at peace.

Problem-Solving with Spirit

I sent out a newsletter yesterday with a glancing reference to problems. You can sign up here if you like. In this post, I want to be blunter about responding to problems.

When things go sideways in the world, it is tempting to fix them. This is understandable but misguided. The desire to fix is what makes problems, not what fixes them.

You are not a body and there is no world. The problems you think you have are illusions. The attention you give these so-called problems – suffering them, fixing them – is what makes them appear real.

There is another way.

The only thing you need to do with problems is remember that by taking them seriously you make them real. Who takes illusions as reality? You don’t rush the stage when the magician saws a volunteer in half. Don’t rush the stage in your life either.

Not rushing the stage is a form of nonviolence and service. It is a shift from selfishness to selflessness. This reflects – in the illusion of body and world – the mind’s shift away from fear and towards love. It is an extension of the ACIM principle that we are only here to be truly helpful (T-2.V.A.18:2).

Helping others and bringing peace to all life is our nature. It is the inheritance from God we accept by giving away. Nothing else is worthy of us, much less our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include maple trees, black bears and moonlight).

We think that Jesus and Buddha, Mother Theresa and Gandhi are special. In fact, they’re like us but more so, because they gave attention only to Creation’s cry for love. They heard nothing else so they gave nothing else. If a child asks you for bread, would you give her a stone? Well, the world is that child. Do what you are here to do.

You might still ask: but how? How do I do this? The answer is: you already know. You know. And I know you know. Asking “how” is a delay tactic. It always is. Be the beautiful clear light you are, the radical love for which you and the world so long. There is nothing else to do and no one else to do it.

Beginning Again, Together

A Course in Miracles teaches me that I am confused about what I am. I think I am a body in a world. But the course suggest I may not be. Am I willing to consider this?

When I try to solve my problems in worldly terms – impatience, dishonesty, overeating, whatever – all I do is make temporary solutions that eventually beget more problems. Whatever underlies the whole concept of problems goes on unaddressed.

A Course in Miracles invites me to consider that the solution is not to find the right external circumstances (i.e., a different therapist, a new job, a diet) but to change my thinking about the problem. When thinking changes, the problem changes, because its source has shifted. Its source is the mind and that I can work with.

Critically, I do not want to work with thinking in order to have a better life in the world. Rather, I want to work with it in order to remember the deep, natural and sustainable peace that literally shares itself and is our actual identity.

Therefore, when we are lost and forsaken in our bodies in the world, we ask the Holy Spirit what to do and then listen for its answer. Its answer may not be obviously helpful or appropriate. But we will know it is the Holy Spirit because it does not argue. It’s a friend – not a lawyer or a judge. Only ego argues. The Holy Spirit simply gives us the answer and then honors our power of decision.

We are not actually lost in fear. We are not actually mired in conflict. Fear and conflict are illusions. Their only reality is the one we give them through the power of belief. To the extent we believe they are real, then to that extent they are real. And that is the only problem that needs to be solved.

The Holy Spirit’s answers are designed to teach us that this is a dream, and remind us that we have the power to choose otherwise. They are not designed to make the dream better. That may or may not happen; it doesn’t actually matter.

We are not separate from the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is a metaphor for our clear mind and pure heart. The Holy Spirit knows us as Christ and knows God as Love, and unites us in a Holy Trinity that itself dissolves in Oneness. Of Oneness there is nothing to say. Of healing, we can say: there is nothing to do, and only we can do it.

To be Christ is to be endlessly beginning – there are no accomplishments, no experts, no altars or thrones, no royal roads. In Christ, wholeness accedes to the “Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). A Course in Miracles puts it this way: “humility brings peace because it does not claim that you must rule the universe, nor judge all things as you would have them be” (S-I.V.1:4).

There is nothing to judge; therefore, there is no need to judge. Judgment is an illusion of decision-making (really, of power) that hides our brothers and sisters from us. Without our brothers and sisters, we cannot remember our own self. Peace is the quiet way, the gentle way, and the forgiving way in which we remember our shared interests and on that basis join with one another. Our joining is neither mysterious nor mystical but the sweet acceptance of what we are in truth. Our whole being knows this, and yearns to forget everything that would obscure it.

Together we forget in order to remember that together we are Christ.

Kenosis and A Course in Miracles

You must empty yourself of everything, including even the longing for life. You must give up everything, including control over your death. Forget about living and dying, and then forget you forgot about it.

You will ask, “what is left? What more do you want of me God? What else can I give?”

And then you will wait for an answer. Like standing alone on a high cliff overlooking the desert at night you will wait. You are not allowed to rush towards the answer; you are not allowed to make demands about how it is given. You have to rid your mind of all anticipation, foregoing even your right to be disappointed.

Even when you have given everything up, you will find you have not given everything up. When you let go and let go and let go and there’s nothing left to let go of, you still have your will. You still have this willingness to let go. Can you let go of even that? Can you let go of letting go? Can you let go of all conditions you have placed before God and Love?

Do you see how this involves forgetting? How it has to involve forgetting? Do you see how it is not a getting but a forgetting and that this is why you resist it?

When you do see this, then even your desire to please God will not remain. And then you will know perfection in a blade of grass, a ray of moonlight, a child’s laugh, crickets on a warm summer night. All the differences in the world will not be able to turn you away from loving everything equally and totally.

This is because what remains when nothing remains is what God gave us in Creation; what remains is the gift, which is being itself. This existence: this this. And it is not a gift, like a diamond in a black box, but rather a giving, continuous and everpresent, eternally freely extending itself as if it were alive and not dead, as if it were beyond the reach of life and death. Not an object but a process; not a process but a law, not a law but the end of the need for law.

This is what we call kenosis. This is the self-emptying of everything, even of kenosis. In A Course in Miracles, we call this “God takes the last step” (T-13.VIII.3:2). We call it coming empty-handed unto our God (W-pI.189.7:5). Most of us intellectualize it, make an idol of it. We make it a thing with which we can be in relationship. I certainly do.

And yet.

It’s not that. It can’t be objectified. It has no ability to even register our existence.

How much of you can you disappear? How still can your mind become?

Beyond God, what?

If Love is the Answer

If we believe that Love is the answer, then our living should reflect this. If we are not happy all the time – if we are scared, defensive, greedy, closed-minded, even to a tiny degree – then we are still not accepting Love is the answer. We like the idea but not the application. It’s not a crime against God or Nature but there is a better way.

If we cannot fully accept that Love is the answer, it is because we are scared. We are scared of losing our self, of losing control, of losing life . . . and that’s not a fear we can really talk our way out of. It’s like quarry jumping – you can’t talk your way through the air into the water. You have to leap.

That’s an imperfect analogy, of course. It’s helpful to talk, share, build community, study, do therapy and so forth. It’s just that the actual experience of letting go of fear is not something we talk through – we live it. We let go – first for a second, then for a minute, then for a week. Then it becomes a practice; then it becomes the focal point of a life dedicated to peace.

A Course in Miracles is a way of doing this – of creating circumstances in which we can face the fear that obstructs our remembrance that Love is the answer and that God is Love.

Fear is not the problem; the problem is not looking at fear. But when we look at fear – when we can say, “I am scared and so I am projecting and spiraling” – that is different. That is healing; that is undoing ego. That’s helpful because it creates the conditions for and of peace.

It doesn’t always feel good to look at fear, especially when it’s deep-rooted and won’t dissolve right away. We want to feel good! But wanting to feel good is a projection – it’s the projection of a self that always feels good, that’s entitled to feel good. And we have to let that go! That, too, has to go. That, too, is a symbol of fear. Only when we are free of projection will we be free to remember that we are Love and know the peace that is our inheritance and the gift we extend to others.

Looking at fear is just a thing we do while there is fear to look at. There won’t always be. And this “looking” and the way in which is it is a form of healing will become increasingly intuitive for us; it will happen more and more without apparent effort or intention. So that’s something to look forward to :).

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