I have been thinking lately about my insistence that love assume a certain form in order to actually be love. Jack, my daughter’s blind horse, who I visit each morning with a flake of hay, is teaching me that this is insane. He reminds me that service is the way to end projection, and thus remember Love.
I wrote about the service part of this lesson in today’s newsletter. You can sign up here if you like. The horse part – which is the love part – I want to go briefly into here.
Jack lost sight in both of his eyes last year. Both eyes were eventually removed. At the time, the vet responsibly told my daughter that some folks opt to put their horses down when this happens. My daughter said – clearly, unequivocally – “no.”
Jack struggled for a month or so with blindness, and then became so skilled at navigating pasture and run-in you wouldn’t know he doesn’t have eyes. My daughter still rides him. It’s like nothing has changed. It is amazing.
What does this have to do with love?
It is fear that insists life must assume this or that form – a certain man or woman, say, or a horse with intact eyesight – in order to be love. You know, right, full, just, perfect, ecstatic, et cetera . . .
The perfect ideal is the ultimate projection because it can never be met, and thus leaves us forever searching, thus obeying ego’s dictate to seek but never find (T-12.IV.1:4).
Yet life somehow manages to flow without this perfection. It is almost as if life is perfectly whole and safe, and we – through the lie of projection – simply refuse to see this. It’s almost as if ego isn’t even wrong – it’s not even actually there.
It turns out that while eyes are nice, Jack does not need them to live a happy fulfilled life. It is as if the forms he perceived were – how shall we put this delicately – not actually there in the first place.
I mean we know that’s not true but . . . do we?
A Course in Miracles insists that our emphasis on the sensate world – the world brought forth through the body’s senses – is an illusion and thus unimportant. It asks us to consider that the body’s eyes don’t see, its ears don’t hear, its hands don’t hold . . .
Can this be true? Can love be formless? How would we know?
Mornings I usually wake to Jack calling from the pasture. He’s hungry; my function is to feed him. I stumble into chore clothes and head outside in pre-dawn darkness. Chickens natter in the barn as I gather the requisite flakes. Jack waits by the gate, impatient as always. “Ask and ye shall receive,” I say jokingly, and toss the hay.
And as the gold flake lands on still-frozen earth, I hear in the recess of my mind – the cave of my heart – Jesus say “ditto.”
Am I not blessed? Is the gift not given? Shivering in the New England cold, wordy and unwise but not unhappy? Listening to a blind horse munch hay? Sun rising, chickadees singing? Who is serving who?
Beloved: how much longer must we pretend we don’t know?
On the other hand, if you think that this stuff matters – that is, if you believe a political party is right or wrong, better or worse than the others – then you’re in as deep as you can go. At that level it’s just ego; there are no checks. You might as well pretend it matters who wins the Superbowl.
This is different from caring about certain outcomes in the world. Wanting kids to be fed and sheltered; wanting women not to suffer violence; wanting an end to weapons of mass destruction . . . those are goals entirely consistent with our ongoing spiritual realignment with Love. By all means work to bring them about in durable sustainable ways.
It’s not the goal that’s the problem – every sane person wants peace and happiness for their brother and sister and is willing to work to make it so.
No, the insanity appears when we decide that we know better than everyone else how to reach those goals and everybody else needs to get on board with us like yesterday.
This is the rank lovelessness of “I get it and you don’t,” against which Tara Singh warned.
I know, I know. You’re the sane one, not the insane one. I’m preaching to the choir. But riddle me this: how did I know where to draw the sane/insane line so you’d understand exactly what I meant? And how do you know on which side you’re to be found?
Hint: “I get it and you don’t.”
No. We’re in as deep as we can go, you and I. So the question becomes: what is to be done? And the answer is – because the answer is always – give attention in a forgiving way (an ACIM forgiving way) and see what happens.
Again, the problem is not that you’re frustrated that there are hungry kids in the world. What kind of monster accepts that kind of suffering?
The problem is the little tinge of righteousness you get about feeling that way, which almost always corresponds to vilifying somebody or something – Donald Trump, Congress, Capitalism – so big and/or vague you can’t reasonably be expected to do anything about it. This creates plausible deniability, which is essential to ego’s goal of continual self-deception.
Plausible deniability is how self-deception is sustained. We can’t fully lie to ourselves about the situation. We aren’t stupid. We’ve read books, talked to therapists. We know a yoga mat from a zafu. But we can’t fully own the lie either, because we’re scared and unsure of what the consequences will be and we don’t really want to find out.
Thus, we create mini-narratives in which we tell ourselves (and others, if they ask) that we would have owned the lie but couldn’t for reasons beyond our control. The phone rang. So-and-so was having a bad day. We were taking a “me” day away from stress. If you’d had my father . . .
These little excusal narratives allow just enough slack in attention to let us go on in self-deception. And self-deception creates a barely tolerable status quo in which our misery never quite reaches a level where we’re ready to blow everything up in search of a real solution.
Can you notice that? Because noticing that will redirect you to what you can do about whatever is vexing you. What you can do about it. In this way, you will become responsible for how you see and that means you will perceive a different world in which there is a lot you can do. A lot.
Making a commitment to this level of seeing is different than most spiritual paths the world offers us. It makes a different set of demands on our attention and living. It doesn’t tolerate half-measures (not because it’s vindictive but because half-measures don’t work). It’s more like on-the-job training than a spiritual practice. More psychotherapy than prayer.
Eventually, you will realize that the problem isn’t hungry kids. It’s adults who are so confused and tolerant of their confusion that obvious solutions and corrections to literally any problem become invisible or impossible.
You know, adults exactly like you and me.
Then you get arguments and straw men and studies and white papers and NGOs and social media campaigns and long talks into the night about the injustice of it all . . .
. . . and the kids are still hungry. And we still have that nagging feeling inside that there’s something we should do about it, would do about it if we could only remember . . . what self-help book it was it in . . . which yoga position is it unlocks the kundalini . . . is it Saint Francis I like or Saint Therese?
Yes. That’s not great. And yes. There is another way.
Heal yourself. Penetrate the illusion that you’re powerless; correct your seeing so that you stop perceiving the external appearance – the whole world of forms – as a symptom of an interior condition that believes it is a victim of outside forces. Get right on cause-and-effect. Stop acquiescing to powers you neither admire nor respect.
Get the reins back. Be real. Ask: where do you want us all to go?
Spring is coming. The chickadees are more voluble; crows linger longer on the thawing compost. The horses call for their morning flakes of hay earlier and earlier, sunlight cresting eastern hills where the river turns.
I am sufficiently embodied to be deeply happy about this. And sufficiently right-minded to know it’s okay to say that to you.
Most of the weekend was given to writing about this line from A Course in Miracles: “It is sure that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living, and use them for any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to live with guilt rather than die of it” (T-16.IV.4:5).
It’s part of a relatively complex analysis of how we use special love relationships to avoid looking at hate, and how not looking at hate is the whole reason we’re so confused about what love is. Good stuff. I mean hard stuff, but . . . also good.
The idea was I’d write about this for today’s newsletter, but after seven thousand words and about as many rewrites it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. I went to bed a wee bit consternated, woke up at 5 a.m., and wrote today’s newsletter in a hot second.
One thing about special love relationships is that they’re hard to notice. We are wired and conditioned to integrate them into our living without realizing that’s what we’re doing, much less why we’re doing it. We call them holy relationships. Or just love. And continue on our not-so-merry-but-at-least-a-little-merry way. It’s not a crime against God or nature.
But everything – without exception apparently – has to be raised into the light of inquiry, lest we hold onto some shred of illusion and from it build yet another cosmos in which suffering and loss abound. As the Buddha might say, were I not so smitten with Jesus, just how many times do you want to ride this carousel, son?
In the newsletter this morning, I ended up musing on the right/wrong binary which – while not entirely irrelevant to happiness – often obscures a much better question with respect to happiness, to wit: does this (whatever this is) help? If yes, press play. If no, shuffle onto the next jukebox and see if that one has any songs for dancing, making love, singing at the top of your lungs while driving down the interstate . . .
What does all this have to do with the afore-mentioned quote from A Course in Miracles?
Maybe nothing.
Maybe I’ll get to it in a future post or newsletter.
The thing is, what’s challenging about that quote is that it asks us to share the very thing we are most afraid to share. What is that? Is it sex? Praise? Attention? Love? A story about what our Dad did?
If we can answer that question quickly, then we probably aren’t answering it honestly. The easy answer is the one that’s given so we won’t see the real answer.
What feels so precious – makes you feel so vulnerable – that even thinking about giving it away to just anyone is tantamount to death?
I know what the answer is for me and – this is the whole point of this post – I don’t want to share it with you. I’m too scared. Which is why I wrote the newsletter I wrote, and also why this post dances with truth but only at a flirty distance. The loving embrace of the slow dance – that beautiful intimation of our shared oneness – remains . . . what? Do you know?
Anyway, I hope you will not stop twisting by the pool with me.
In general, review periods in A Course in Miracles are opportunities to go more deeply into our practice and more effectively ground our understanding of ACIM principles. These parts of the workbook can feel tedious or extraneous, but we skim them to our detriment.
The Introduction to the second review period in the ACIM workbook is noteworthy in several respects.
First, after reviewing the material for the day, we are invited to sit quietly and listen. We give attention and await a specific directive.
There is a message waiting for you. Be confident that you will receive it. Remember that it belongs to you, and you want it.
W-pI.rII.In.3:2-4
This is enheartening, especially in its clarity and confidence. What is the message? What will you know at the end of the day’s practice that you do not know when you begin?
The promise of being met in such a personal and enlightening way is deeply motivating.
The second aspect that stands out is the insistence on taking our ACIM practice seriously, to effectively regard the review periods as “dedications to the way, the truth and the life” (W-pI.rII.In.5:1).
Refuse to be sidetracked into detours, illusions and thoughts of death. You are dedicated to salvation. Be determined each day not to leave your function unfulfilled.
W-pI.rII.In.5:2-4
Be determined each day not to leave your function unfulfilled. That is a worthwhile focus to give to our practice. It merits our attention and devotion. But just as critically, we merit an intense and open-minded study.
Finally, although it’s easy to overlook, the Introduction to this review reminds us that showing up devoted to miracle-minded thinking is more important that the “particular words” that we use to describe and explore that practice. A Course in Miracles is not an intellectual exercise, but rather an whole-hearted and open-minded application of transformational ideas in the interest of inner peace, ours and everyone else’s.
Thus, the next ten lessons present as a unique opportunity to strengthen our study and practice – and, by extension, our shared experience of healing.
In the separation, mind became “a perceiver rather than a creator” (T-3.IV.2:1). It can be helpful in our ACIM practice to look closely at this distinction.
Sit quietly for a few minutes and give attention. Here, snow falls. Blue jays jaw in the hemlocks. Images of my father playing catch with me appear. Feelings of frustration with so much weather-related suffering arise. More snow. The hayloft is cold. What’s for breakfast?
I perceive all this, yes? The sounds and shapes and colors, the memories and feelings, the ideas. I don’t create it – I perceive it. It is given. I don’t perceive its source or cause, only the ongoing effects. I can’t turn blue jays into cardinals. Can’t make snow into rainbow-colored confetti. Can’t not think of pink elephants.
(Nor, by the way, can I perceive nothing).((Common arguments pushing back on this include: what about a whisky blackout? Under anesthesia? Deep sleep? Am I not at those times perceiving “nothing?”
I think these are examples of impaired or altered perception, rather than no perception. The self remains in some embryonic degree because it reconstitutes itself, and incorporates the so-called “blank” into its being. “Can’t remember” is different than “nothing.”))
There is a lot of peace in realizing clearly both that mind perceives and how it perceives. The biggest insight is seeing how the perceiver (the self and the body) is also the perceived. We enter the loopy lovely spiral of creation.
One can understandably spend lifetimes in this space. There is a lot of happiness here. There is a lot of peace.
But A Course in Miracles suggests this space is the beginning rather than the end of healing. We have to investigate the truth of “before Abraham was, I am.” We have to go back to the beginning (e.g., T-3.VII.5:9).((If there is one! The “loopy spiral” image suggests there is no actual beginning, only arbitrary declarations that vary according to the one doing the declaring. “Beginnings” and “endings” – and even “now” – are concepts contingent on linear experiences of time. The experience is one thing (that’s just a feature of bodies, particularly human ones) but the actual existence of time is another. The course (like many nondual paths) insists that time is not real and will – when we remember what we are in truth) – just disappear. It’s illusion, not reality. “Back to the beginning” then is symbolic, but of what? This is a fun and nontrivial question!))
When we see how there is apparently only perception – and that the self, as such, is also a perception – then we can begin to give attention to “perceiving truly,” which in turn fosters love (T-3.III.1:8). This is different than merely giving attention. It evokes laws of Creation and an order in which those laws are known (rather than perceived). It removes the self as author of experience.
In other words, according to A Course in Miracles, there is something beyond perception. Or, to correct the first sentence of the preceding paragraph, there is not “only perception.”
Miracles, as A Course in Miracles uses the term, are designed to heal perception by teaching us how to only perceive truly in order to go beyond perception.
First question: What does it mean to perceive truly?
It means to accept what is perceived as given. The miracle “perceives everything as it is” (T-3.II.3:4). We don’t add to it, we don’t embellish it and we certainly don’t denigrate it.
It means not trying to make (or pretend that we have made) one part of perception truer than another (which is another way of saying, make it all the same). What is perceived is neutral; it’s the egoic self that brings evaluation and judgment into it.
It means that we don’t try to oppose perception in any way.
It means seeing – and accepting unconditionally – that we can’t oppose perception. “You cannot make untruth true” (T-3.II.6:2).
And finally, critically, it means understanding that “to perceive truth is not the same as to know it” (T-3.III.5:13).
A lot rides on that last distinction.
Right perception – true perception – is a beginning. It is a cornerstone. A Course in Miracles teaches that “right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars” (T-3.III.6:1). Right perception is adjacent to – without actually being – knowledge. It’s where we start.
Knowledge means certainty and the end of questioning (T-3.III.2:5). It is not variable (T-14.VIII.4:6). It does not induce action, because it is not related to the body or the world (T-3.III.6:8). To know is to be as God is, perfectly whole, imperturbable and peace-filled (T-13.VIII.2:3). Words do not apply and no image is fitting because knowledge is not symbolic (T-3.V.4:6-7).
Knowledge is impersonal (T-4.II.1:4). There is no self in it. There are no distinctions whatsoever in it (T-4.II.11:12).
It is tempting to claim that we have reached or attained or are in possession of knowledge. Or we make a goal of knowledge – it’s why we practice ACIM or see a therapist or go to church. We want to know God, know peace, know joy. Honestly, claims to knowledge and action purportedly undertaken on behalf of knowledge make us feel special.
But remember: specialness is always temptation. Only ego can be tempted, and the temptation always reinforces self-identification with a body. We want to be the one who “gets it,” the teacher not the student, or at least the favorite student. Our intention here is irrelevant; anything personal is always ego.
To want anything is to imply that what we are in truth is capable of lack, which is to accept sacrifice, which is to condone suffering. This is the opposite of truth! It is the opposite of the joy and peace which are our inheritance. It is important to see how our thinking functions, and to be entirely honest about its goals and effects. There is no other way to purify our thoughts and reach the ones we think with God.
The solution is to the problem of pretending we are further along spiritually than we actually are (which is just the problem of being distracted from what we are), is simply to go back and start again. Sit quietly and give attention for a few minutes. See what is given. See how you can’t oppose it. Rest in the space of non-opposition.
This leads to the second question: What is given in the space of non-opposition? That is, what is beyond perception?
I sent out a new newsletter, reflecting some thoughts on salvation that arose from rethinking Lesson 76 (which builds to what are, for me, the course’s most helpful pair of lessons, 79 and 80).
The overarching idea is that salvation is not found in the world and doesn’t apply to bodies, but is found rather in the mind which thinks it is not saved but can be. The question is always one of shifting our attention from the body towards the more abstract levels of spirit. This is not easy to do, but it can be done, and we can become better at it in time. Certainly, it is the means by which we remember our true identity and begin to live in actual peace and joy.
So far 2021 has been about looking closely at the ACIM Workbook again, which I have not been through in an applied way for many years. In dialogue with others – both in a formal study group, public comments to shared work, and 1:1 emails and conversations – I am consistently helpfully reminded of Tara Singh’s gift for enacting the fundamental insight that “the course is meant to be lived.”
That is, A Course in Miracles appears as a feature of the world which we, in our embodied form, encounter, study and practice, all with an eye towards salvation (broadly defined so as to avoid as much as possible the more litigious tendencies of doctrinal religion). We are here to learn how to be happy, and how to bring forth a world in which our brothers and sisters can be happy too. This is a variation of Peter Maurin’s (co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker) insight that our work was to bring forth a world in which it was easier for all of us to both be and do good.
Thus, our practice of A Course in Miracles does involve coming to a better and more sustainable understanding what we are in truth, but it unconditionally also includes an aspect of subtle activism in the service of radical love. We are called to give attention to the “signs of the times” and respond in ways that are harmonious with unconditional love. The cry for love is always going out; the way that we live reflects our response which is itself a reflection of a healed mind, which knows itself only as one.
I don’t know what this looks like in practice for you. Its formal appearance and presentation are less critical than the spirit which it reflects (or, if you prefer, which animates it). When we create in a spirit of love, we cannot help but make the world a better place, and its “betterness” becomes grounds for deepening yet further into our “upstream” explorations into mind, creation, spirit, Heaven, God . . .
. . . All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I am grateful to those of you who stay close to me in my learning. Together we build a little oasis of sanity and joy, a light which by virtue of being shared naturally brightens the self-imposed collective darkness of suffering. There is another way and we are it 🙏 ❤️ ✨
