Sean Reagan

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.

Beyond Choice, Love

In a sense, to come to stillness is to see clearly that choice is the last illusion. There is nothing to choose between; there is only this: this this.

The many choices that appear to us are always various forms of the one choice, which is the choice to remember God or not remember God in everything we see.

But it’s a trick. Because even this one choice is not actually a choice, because we are never actually separate from God. It is like breathing; we can give attention to breathing or not, but it still sustains us. It is still how we live. We don’t have to remember God to be one with God, any more than we have to remember to breathe in order to draw breath.

There is nothing to choose because there is nothing to choose between. There is no this or that. There is only this: this this. Beyond all appearance there is only one life. To know this is to know that we are already home, and that our long journey in search of home was merely a dream.

You are not a stranger in the house of God . . . Illusions have no place where love abides, protecting you from everything that is not true (T-23.I.10:4, 6).

But this will not be our truth until we stop insisting on certain outcomes in the world. This person instead of that one. This path rather than that. Sun instead of rain.

The stillness to which we are called is deep. It is beyond what is personal and cultural. It is beyond needs and wants. It transcends the ages.

This was not clear to me until I let go of the one who was given to me as a soulmate. The one appeared and I let the one go. I let go of the one who was all that remained after the bleak nihilism of the void, the years and years of study, the endless succession of demons and ghosts advertising fear. I let go and . . .

. . . realized gently that there was nothing to let go of and nobody to do the letting go. In a way, it was like my soulmate took everything and disappeared, leaving me with nothing but God. How generous!

This is a precious gift, far beyond anything the world or a body can offer. We lose nothing and are given everything.

We can read and read and read about it but we won’t know this peace and joy until we actually let go of all that stands before it. Until we actually let go of every idol and symbol the world offers, then the peace of God will always be just another projection, another thing we have or don’t have.

So the suggestion is, stop projecting and actually do the thing you are afraid to do that you know will restore God to your memory. You know what it is; do it.

The form this takes will necessarily change from person to person. But in your heart – in the heart within your heart – you know the truth of your calling. You know the One who is calling. You know what to do to remember God and reflect only Heaven in this vale of tears and duress.

We are here to remind one another to do this, and to support one another as we do it, together remembering the love beyond all idols and symbols, including our soul mate, including A Course in Miracles, including Jesus, including even God.

Together, we are the stillness in which it is so.

Mid-Summer Notes on Love

I wrote a newsletter today – first in months – about how projection is a denial of the fact that we are creations of God, who is Love, and Who is not mocked. The clarity of this is blinding, and we tend to look away.

You can sign up here, if you are interested.

A few years ago in the Cambridge Public Library I had the insight that I didn’t need to study anymore. Every jot of information necessary to awaken from the dream had been given to me.

This was as clear as starlight in winter, as simple as drawing the next breath.

Still, for a little while, I went on studying.

But it was like how when you stop paddling a canoe, the canoe drifts a while before gliding to a halt. It takes time for an energetic pattern – of study, of loving, of sailing – to dissipate. But in time it does.

Then what?

For me, I found fear. All the emotional structures and relationships I’d built to manage the fear stopped working, and all that remained in their wake was the brutal logic of fear.

There is nothing to do in that space but be still. A parade of demons and monsters passes, one after the other, each horrifying in its own way, each making a case for your doom, and you just sit quietly watching. It feels like forever. It feels like torture.

Yet for me, there was a point in that parade when I realized that nothing in it was going to kill me. Scare me, yes. Horrify me, yes.

But end me? No.

Oddly, the relief I felt at this was quickly sublimated by a grim nihilism I wouldn’t wish on anybody. It was like being pulled under stormy seas by an invisible hand. I’d fight for the surface, get dragged down again. After a while I couldn’t make the surface, but I’d still struggle for the light gleaming faintly above me.

Eventually – I think this is what has to happen, but I can speak only to my own experience – I just gave up and went down.

This is getting long and dramatic! So let me say this: in my experience, when you surrender to nihilism, when you lean right into it, give yourself wholly to it, it dissolves. I can’t say exactly how or why. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t something I did. It was just a thing that happened in the absence of resistance.

That is a sweet space! Fear no longer has a stranglehold on you, death has no mask it can wear to intimidate you. When someone says “I and the Father are one,” you aren’t envious or jealous.

In a lot of ways, this feels like the end of what we call “the journey.” But it’s not. Nor is it a beginning.

So what is it?

I told a friend recently I feel as if I have walked ten thousand miles to reach the Gates of Eden and only in their shadow do I realize that the last step – the step through the gates, entrance unto the Kingdom – is harder than all the many millions that got me here. He laughed.

“It’s not like that at all,” he said. “It’s like you’re in a dressing room and you’ve taken off the fear suit but are realizing that there’s no love suit. Naked is the love suit. You are the love suit. And you’re scared to go out into the world like that.”

Love is blinding, and we tend to look away. Love is freeing, and we turn back to the cage. Love opens us up to the cosmos, and the cosmos enfolds us, vast folds of Love enveloping vast folds of Love endlessly.

In the newsletter, I wrote how sometimes I am like a child who refused to open his birthday gifts, and then complains that nobody got him anything. Where is my happiness?

What happens if I accept the gift?

These are the same question.