Sean Reagan

Interlude: Looking is the Holy Spirit

Yesterday I talked about giving our mind over to the Holy Spirit, both in terms of its content and its function. In that way, our problems end. I suggested a next post would relate to how to give our minds over. That’s still coming, but here I offer a side note about what the Holy Spirit is.

The ego is a thing you look at (or listen to, if you prefer). It is not a thing you are, nor a thing you do. It is an image in a black mirror that itself is a reflection in a mirror (T-4.IV.1:7).

You can look at ego or not look at ego. It’s up to you.

This is another way of saying that what you are in truth in not the ego – nor anything that can be looked at – but rather the looker itself.

You are the looker. And when you look for the looker you will realize that it can’t be found and that therefore, you are actually looking.

You are a process – not an object discovered by or affected by that process.

You are more closely related to photosynthesis than to a plant, to evolution than to a physical body.

Thus, the whole drama of ego – its arguments, its goals, its plans, its stories – is not you and you, as the looker, as looking, can choose to look away.

The choice to look away from ego is the decision to look at – or listen to, if you prefer – the Holy Spirit. When you no longer gaze at the ego, you are gazing at the Holy Spirit.

Or, better, you are the Holy Spirit’s gaze.

The Holy Spirit is in your mind as ego is, but where ego is a series of convincing images – a bad movie in which you are the maligned star – the Holy Spirit is a way of looking.

Process, not object. Not the eddy in the brook but the energy creating the eddy.

To look at the ego is death, because when you look at ego and believe it is real, you have no life. It offers you nothing helpful unto the creation of happiness. Thus, to look at ego is to be dispirited, disempowered and discouraged. It is to wander briefly through a landscape of despair awaiting death. It is to be doomed.

And there is a better way, and right now, you literally are that better way. You don’t need to wait a single second to reclaim the cause of joy and peace as your own self.

The Holy Spirit is alive; when you make contact with it, you make contact with your mind’s dynamic capacity to love fully and without condition. The Holy Spirit is a loving gaze that extends from the center outward and it welcomes everything. It includes everything.

The Holy Spirit looks with love on all things and, because of its innate capacity for miracles (which are shifts from fear to love), it does not recognize problems.

[The Holy Spirit] is a Thought of God, and God has given Him to you because He has no Thoughts He does not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and that is why Christ’s vision looks on everything with love (T-13.VIII.4:3-4).

There is nothing the Holy Spirit does not welcome, and no problem that it cannot solve perfectly. The Holy Spirit is not supernatural. It is in your mind as your capacity to be clear and coherent, cooperative and collaborative. The Holy Spirit cares, and its care is offered without discrimination to the whole world, which makes it love.

This is in you: your first awareness of it will be the sense of being the looker. Find the looker and you have found the Holy Spirit, and you will share its joy and peace. This is not the end of the spiritual journey, but the beginning because the “golden aspects of reality that spring to light under [the Holy Spirit’s] loving gaze are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them” (T-13.VIII.4:6).

This becomes the new experience: our union with the Holy Spirit, which is the end of ego, and thus inaugurates the translation of the world from a place of suffering to the site of remembering the creations of a wholly loving God.

On the End of Problems

There are no problems. Not even the problem of thinking we have problems is a problem. Even that is an illusion.

It is a miracle that makes this perfection, this utter absence of problems, possible, and it is a miracle that allows us to see perfection so clearly that we know instantly it is our own self we gaze at.

Problems appear when we use our minds to project. Something scary arises and we disown it by pretending it’s about somebody else. I’m not vain and petty, so-and-so is. Projection always makes the cause of our suffering appear outside of us. So we become victims, and then spiritual seekers and healers. It’s a whole dramatic performance.

And all of it is a dream. All of it is an illusion.

When we let our minds function naturally – which is what it means to offer the Holy Spirit our “little willingness” (T-18.IV.1:10) – our minds open and fill with light. Understanding is given, not earned by degrees. And unconditional Love is remembered.

So the “work,” so to speak, is to constantly turn our mind over to the Holy Spirit. This means giving both the contents of our mind and the way that mind functions.

Imagine you are driving to Boston with the Holy Spirit riding shotgun. The Holy Spirit says “Hey, I know a better way to Boston than this route you’ve chosen. Also? I know a better way to handle the car than you do.”

And you, because you’re tired of being lost and pretending you’re not, and because you’re tired of the stress of driving, and because you really really want to get to Boston, say “okay. Tell me the way to go.”

Letting the Holy Spirit tell you the way to go is giving the Holy Spirit the contents of your mind.

Giving the Holy Spirit the way your mind works is pulling the car over, giving Holy Spirit the keys and just enjoying the scenery while the Holy Spirit drives.

We want to give the Holy Spirit both the content of our mind and the way our mind functions.

The metaphor is easy. In life, it is hard to listen to the Holy Spirit, much less do what it says. Often what it says is some equivalent of “stop and smell the flowers.” And doing so feels wasteful, childish, naive. It feels wrong in lots of ways. Maybe you hear your Dad’s voice telling you how wrong it is. Or a certain teacher’s.

We are conditioned to hold onto both the function and content of mind. This is what ego is.

When we hear “stop and smell the flowers,” what happens? Most of us also hear “stopping to smell flowers is wrong in all these ways I will now enumerate.” “Wrong in all these ways” is ego speaking. We want to give attention only to the Holy Spirit so we ask the Holy Spirit for help in dealing with ego. What does the Holy Spirit say in reply? It says, “I spoke first and told you to smell the flowers.”

Can you see this? The loving action was given first, then ego jumped in to judge and jeer so that we won’t do what the Holy Spirit asks.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t address the arguments of ego. It doesn’t care about them at all. It’s like they don’t exist. The Holy Spirit just knows that the flowers are beautiful, and that you are beautiful and deserve beautiful gifts, so it gives you the flowers.

And it invites you to linger there as long as you like.

The Holy Spirit always invites us to a quiet happiness that is so simple and clear it is hard to believe we ever needed or wanted anything else. All we have to do is accept it.

Coming Next: How to listen to – i.e., how to accept – the Holy Spirit’s directions. I had to break this post up – I’ve been crazy wordy lately 🙂

Notes at Summer’s End

A cup of coffee or a single walk can change our life forever. One glance from a brother or sister who sees us without any projection of guilt, theirs or ours, is perfect healing. Only after it is given to us can we offer it to others.

One way to understand our role as students of A Course in Miracles is to understand that God – love, life, justice, mercy – is literally begging us to remember we are not separate from God. Begging us.

I wrote about this in today’s newsletter. You can sign up here if you like.

Our guiltlessness establishes that we are not bodies and that we are one with our brothers and sisters in God’s creation.

Bodies are private. If I dip my foot in the brook, your toes don’t get wet. Yet somehow, when I hold you in mind – when I hold a kind thought of you, when I recall kindnesses you have offered me – I am made happy, and when I offer this happiness to those around me, they gain everything and I lose nothing. As A Course in Miracles points out, ideas can be shared without leaving their source (T-26.VII.4:7).

It’s as if bodies are a limit but ideas – that which occurs at the level of thought, of mind – are shared and thus infinite.

It is very helpful to see the way in which our identity – the “what” we are – is closer to a thought than to a body. Can we see the way that someone who is far away from us – who is perhaps “dead” even – still lives in our mind? Still speaks and influences us? Can still reach others through us? Can we begin to see how the body is a means of communication? A site of love remembering it is love?

Truly, it is not bodies that relate, but minds. And minds are not objects (like bodies) but more like processes. They are like currents or eddies in a brook; patterns in a much larger flow from which they are not separate. In the end, bodies are things minds observe – like Christmas trees or black bears. Bodies depend on minds to exist, not the other way around.

Being shown our guiltlessness is how we realize – not merely intellectually, but holistically, at all levels of existence – that what we are is unrelated to a body, much less to a particular body with its particular life, much less to a world in a universe.

That is because bodies are private and thus cannot actually be in relationship; only minds can be in relationship. And only in relationship can we be shown our guiltlessness. Only in relationship can we share our guiltlessness, letting it shine into other minds to awaken them from the dream of separation.

That all this apparently unfolds in the context of bodies and their world is not a problem. Forget the metaphysics and just give attention to being gentle and kind in sustainable and non-dramatic ways. Make your living about your brothers and sisters, rather than your own self, and see what happens.

One thing that will happen is that your identity will loosen itself from the dense frame of the body and expand to include all our brothers and sisters, as well as concepts like peace and justice, as well as non-human beings like sunflowers and rainbow trout, and finally, Love Itself.

And then, in that space of openness – welcoming everything and resisting nothing, knowing at last the radical equality of all that is – we are reminded of our innocence, and thus enter graceful communion with all life, forever and ever. There is nothing else for us to do!

Thank you, as always, for sharing the way with me.

Remembering our Guiltlessness

We learn of our guiltlessness when a brother or sister looks at us and sees not a body but rather that which is worthy of love and wholly undeserving of punishment (e.g., T-13.In.1:2).

It is the so-called other who reminds us of God’s uninterrupted, unconditional Love, effectively restoring it to our mind.

And it is remembrance of our guiltlessness which allows us to see the guiltlessness of our brothers and sisters.

Finally, it is this cycle of reminding others of their guiltlessness and remembering our own that allows us to be truly happy and at peace because guiltlessness aligns our thinking with reality, which is joyful and free of conflict.

This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son. And until you realize that God’s Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God’s Son is not guilty. He deserves only love because he has given only love. He cannot be condemned because he has never condemned (T-13.In.4:1-5).

Our innocence – which is shared – redeems the world.

The one who looks at us and sees us as innocent and deserving only of love has given us a gift. The unconditional nature of the gift perfectly reflects our innocence and love. Through us, it naturally offers itself to others because sharing is what love is.

This is an experience that we have in a body which then maps itself onto mind (leaving body behind). Somebody loves us in a way which so utterly transcends the body that it is no longer possible to pretend that we are bodies.

Our real identity is brought forth by the unconditional love that our brother or sister gives to us and which we give to them.

When we remember our guiltlessness, we see instantly through the illusion of self-as-body. Guiltlessness reflects our creation in God’s image as Love. It is not a love that bodies can share because it cannot be held separately or divided. Innocence is wholeness (e.g., T-3.II.2:1).

And wholeness can only perceive itself, no matter how many pieces it appears to be fragmented into. Thus, from my guiltlessness I can only see your guiltlessness. And all the world is transformed accordingly.

Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with a brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think of it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts away and, transformed into kindness, will never more be what it was (T-13.X.14:2-3).

All this occurs in relationship. A Course in Miracles is an invitation to give close attention to each of our relationships in the world – not for what we can get from them but for what can be offered to the world through them.

In other words, a holy relationship is one in which we are no longer directing outcomes or effects. We surrender its form in the world entirely and, in doing so, are allowed to perceive its true meaning in and as love.

This love – both as we receive it and as we offer it – is a gift. We cannot remember our guiltlessness, and thus become truly happy and at peace, until we let go of the insistence that we can decide who to love and when to love and what love will look like and feel like and so forth. The desire to control love – which is the whole function of ego – is a form of hate. All its works are violent.

In this sense, we are peace activists – lovers actively working against hate by no longer resisting it, and thus freely entering into relationships that confirm our shared guiltlessness.

Do not fight your ego. Cling to nothing and reach for nothing, no matter how loudly the urge to cling or grab resounds. Surrender entirely. Kneel, bow your head, offer your life gladly. Keep nothing.

Here is my promise: in the silence and stillness that follows this radical letting go, a brother or sister will appear, and they will see you in a way that will remind you of your perfection and innocence. By offering it in turn, you ensure that neither of you will ever forget it again.

Now ask yourself: what have you done that I should know this?

Refusing to Wait on Love

We have to love in the very circumstances of our lives as they are given to us moment by moment. We cannot postpone love in favor of the life we long for or think we deserve.

We can’t wait on love – neither as a gift we receive nor as one that we give.

God is one without another (T-14.IV.5:8). Therefore, there is no body and no thing that does not reflect God’s holiness, much less any body or thing unworthy of God’s perfect Love (T-14.IV.5:9).

Therefore, our holy function is to love “in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone” (T-14.IV.5:10).

In other words, we are called to love what appears unlovable. To love what appears only likable. To refuse to wait for what is lovable to show up and then love. That’s not love, it’s hate.

And you and I are beyond that now.

It is our joy to see this and to live together accordingly.

The Holy Instant teaches us that waiting is impossible because time is an illusion. When we wait, we play the ego’s game with its favorite weapons – delay, improvement, judgment, which together make the illusion of choice.

Nobody wins playing the ego’s game. Not even the ego wins.

The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego, the goal is death, which is its end (T-15.I.2:7-8).

But the Holy Spirit’s goal is life, which is eternal (T-15.I.2:9).

Life is our goal, too, because it reflects what we are in truth. It is beyond winning and losing. It is the end of the illusion of choice.

When we give attention to our lives, we may see a lot that we don’t like – wrong people, wrong jobs, wrong bodies, wrong habits, wrong cultural trends, wrong headlines. No body is immune to this because no body is without an ego.

Separating the whole into parts and then evaluating each part apart from the whole is what ego is. The ego is, literally, what it does.

But so is Love.

The Holy Spirit, obeying the Law of Love, which is Its teacher and creator, teaches us that life is whole and therefore to emphasize partiality and separation in any way is an error.

The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to God is natural to you (T-16.II.3:3).

Thus, the Holy Spirit teaches us that Love gives attention to all of life, without separating it into good, bad and in-between. If changes are called for – and they will be, from time to time and in various ways – then Love will handle the rearranging.

Our role is simply to give attention – to consistently and non-dramatically give attention to life. What it looks like, tastes like, sounds like, feels like. What its rhythms and cycles are. Its responsiveness. Its order.

When we notice judgment and preferences arising, we let them be. We don’t have to fix them; we just have to notice them.

All we do is give attention. And all we give attention to is this: this this.

When we do this, a lot of what once appeared uniquely important to us (people, places, activities, objects) loses the partiality that made it seem special. Yet this is not a loss, for the former “part” gains in holiness, because we see it now with the vision of Christ, in which “every loving thought is true” and “everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes” (T-12.I.3:3-4).

If you would look upon love, which is the world’s reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense against it the underlying appeal for it? And how could you better learn of its reality than by answering the appeal for it by giving it? (T-12.I.10:1-2).

There is only love and calls for love, and the response to both is the same. There are no differences; there is nothing special. In this lies our salvation.

Therefore, be quiet today and every day; be quiet and be still. Give the gift of your attention to all of life, and let it speak to you in the language in which it speaks to you. Let it draw you close and end your fear and loneliness by reminding you that you both have and are everything.

If a cry for help appears, offer help. And if help is offered, recognize it by accepting it.

Above all, do not distinguish between the two, for there are no grounds upon which to say this is not that and vice-versa.

Giving and receiving love are the same because there is only one giver and only one receiver. Beyond the appearance of differences, there is only one life. We share it, you and I, happily remembering that together we are – like our Creator – whole.

Between Attention and Love, This Love

In a newsletter today I wrote about the relationship between attention and Love. You can sign up here if you like. I want to think out loud here a bit more about this. Healing and awakening are both implicated in it.

In his notebooks, Paul Brunton said that misunderstandings about our identity – i.e., our confusion about what we are in truth – is “not only a metaphysical error but also a mental habit.”

We may correct the error intellectually but we shall still have to deal with the habit. So deeply ingrained is it that only a total effort can successfully alter it” (Notebooks 1:37).

This is a helpful observation! We want to be metaphysically coherent and we want that coherence to be sustainably reflected in our living – our families, communities, traditions et cetera. Healing – which is the incoherent becoming coherent – requires the balm of truth in order to reach all levels of our being – the social, political, symbolic, material.

For example, we may logically conclude that God is Love and Love is what we are in truth, and then go on being driven by fear and hate. So at one level we have the pacifying insight, but at another, nothing changes. Somehow the insight that “God is Love” has to bring an end to fear and hate at all the levels.

We need an insight into the unhelpfulness of the old pattern and we need to actually repattern – or perhaps unpattern – it.

“Insight” happens at the level of thought. But the body and the world are the site of repatterning inspired by the insight, recursively deepening it.

What does this process look like in practice for students of A Course in Miracles?

Say that I hike to the top of Mount Ascutney because it is there I feel closest to God. I follow the Weathersfield trail, reach the summit, meet with the Lord in quiet prayer and . . .

. . . hike back down! I have to go back into my life, right? Kids need supper, apples need picking, poems need writing. In other words, I want to the grace of the summit prayer to gracefully inform the other, more common areas of my life as well.

The union that is implied here – that what occurs on the summit does not stay on the summit, so to speak, but is incorporated with everything else through relationship – hints at the wholeness of reality.

It is fairly easy to say that “God is Love.” Even to believe it is not so hard! But to live that way in the world in a body is not easy at all!

In fact, the world and the body are made to deny that God is Love. They argue that God is at best not real and at worst cruel and indifferent. They argue that you are alone in your struggle to survive. Even the possibility of release through death is denied. What else is hell for?

So I have to remind myself that God is Love. I have to literally forcibly remember to remember that “God is Love” is true and only that is true.

Then, holding that truth like a lantern, I have to go into the world – which is both inside and outside my body – and love in literal pragmatic ways that which is murderously hostile to love.

We are called, you and I, to take literally the prayer of Saint Francis, which takes literally the Sermon on the Mount, which took literally a love that even crucifixion could not kill.

We know what we have to do. We are saints in chrysalis, and now is our time to be reborn in Love. For whatever time is given us in this confusing landscape of body and world, let us offer only love. Let us be the means by which love – the love that even crucifixion could not kill – extends itself to itself, thus remembering itself forever and for all.