Notes in Late December

I sent a newsletter out today which explores the second principle of miracles. Although the early parts of the text can be choppy, the section outlining the fifty principles has always felt clear and helpful to me.

The second principle asks us to look beyond the miracle to its Source, reminding us that what matters is not how the miracles functions in our lives in the world but rather the Source from which that miracle flows, which is always love.

This is an important insight. Healing is not having our problems fixed but rather making contact with our true self which has no problems. This is a simple but powerful way of living that entirely upends our traditional understanding of self, world and other.

It is possible to be deeply and seriously happy, and to know a peace which surpasses understanding.

Feel free to sign up if you like.

Some housekeeping items:

First, it was recently pointed out to me that my contact page was not working and hasn’t for months. If you tried to reach out to me that way and did not receive a reply, please know that it reflects a technical error rather than any deliberate ignorance on my part. I’m really sorry.

Please do feel free to reach out to argue, ask questions and so forth. I am always happy for be in dialogue with fellow students.

Also, lately I’ve been reflecting on a recent dialogue in the comments to this old post, which I keep wanting to rewrite or convert to a post in their own right, but maybe it’s okay to just point to the exchange. I am very grateful for it.

Finally, I scrap a lot of writing when writing here, and recently started a kind of ACIM notebook site where those scraps might find a home. It’s less formal, less polished, less cohesive but perhaps still interesting.

I hope your winter and its various holy days and shifts in light has begun in a quiet and gentle way. I’m so glad you’re here.

Love,
Sean

The First Principle of A Course in Miracles

There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal T-1.I.1:1-4).

Imagine I set four photographs on a table before you: one is of a 1-pound weight, one of a 10-pound weight, one of a 100-pound weight, and one of a 1,000-pound weight.

Which photograph is harder to lift?

It’s a silly question, right? They are all the same. What they depict is different – what they depict would present serious lifting problems – but since they are just images, they are identical. You can lift each one with the same ease.

This is how the Holy Spirit views our many problems, which is another way of saying, this is how miracles are applied in and to our lives. Our lives – because they are comprised of differences, both inner and outer – make this principle seem counter-intuitive, if not outright insane.

For example, when The Sopranos ended and there were no more new episodes to look forward to, I felt sad. But when my father died, I felt waves of grief and confusion that shook the very foundation of my existence. I’ve long since mostly forgotten about The Sopranos. I think about my father every day.

Very different right? And who among us would suggest otherwise?

And yet . . .

. . . and yet to the Holy Spirit, they are symptoms of the same problem: the belief that I am a body in a world, and that all the apparent differences that bring forth that world and body are real, and their effects are real and not all the same.

The whole program of A Course in Miracles comes down to this one error: we are mistaken about what we are. But when we correct this error, all the error’s effects disappear.

In theory, the correction of this error could happen as quickly and simply as throwing a switch. Just see everything as the same! For most of us, however, it is a learning process which evolves in time, which process the Course refers to as Atonement.

That is, in bodies in the world over time, we learn that we are not bodies and there is neither a world nor time.

A miracle is the translation of fear into love, of hate into love, of confusion into love. Miracles are illusions, because they correct mistakes that never happened, yet to the mind that believes mistakes are real, miracles are powerful healing tools. They are as real as we need them to be in order to learn that they are not real at all.

Since “all expressions of love are maximal” (T-1.I.1:4), what the miracle heals is not what matters. What matters is the love that inspires it; it is that love to which our attention need be given, because it is that love that is our true self and home. Love is what we are in truth.

The power of God, and not of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and also why everyone shares in it. The power of God is limitless . . . it offers everything to every call from anyone (T-14.6:9-13).

We aren’t required to believe this. In bodies, we really can’t believe it anyway. We are simply invited to give attention to the presence of – and the function of – miracles in our life and learn from them what they are given to teach.

In love, there are no differences or distinctions. It is not a question of resolving to love all things the same (for that sustains the premise of separation), but of not seeing the differences at all. When the differences disappear, what problem could possibly remain? What conflict could possibly exist?

Lesson 23: ACIM in a Nutshell

We might reframe ACIM Daily Lesson 23 this way: if you want to know peace, then give up projection. Indeed, in a sense, this lesson encapsulates the whole function and thus our whole practice of A Course in Miracles.

There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effect will change automatically.

W-pI.23.2:2-7

This is one of the clearest statements regarding a fundamental course paradigm: give attention to your thinking rather than to the world. Or, to put it another way, the only problem we really have is that we think we have problems (T-26.II.3:3). Change the way you think, and the self and world you perceive will change as well.

Of course, if giving up projection were easy – or even intuitive – then we wouldn’t need A Course in Miracles. Or therapy or Buddhism. Or hugs. The course is given so that we might begin to work with our thoughts in order to change how we see the world and – through that evolving shift in perception – remember our identity in and as love.

Thus, lesson 23 is a firm step in the direction of reforming our understanding of what we are in truth. It is an invitation to shift our sense of identity from “victim of the world we see” to “the image-maker itself” (W-pI.23.4:1).

It is also a promise that as we do learn that we are making the world, and accept responsibility accordingly, that nothing will actually be lost when we let that world go. This addresses a significant fear for many of us – does awakening mean I won’t see my kids? Or listen to Leonard Cohen songs? Or dip french fries in mayo?

Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone.

W-pI.23.4:4-6

As I have pointed out many times, a point comes in our learning where we realize that we are trapped – the self is an illusion that cannot save itself, and the world offers no path that can save us either. So long as we believe in that self and that world, then the “trap” retains its stranglehold on us.

Lesson 23 – again, encapsulating a fundamental principle of A Course in Miracles – makes the case that this “trap” can be escaped by seeing that it is an illusion. It isn’t real. There is nothing to escape. But how do we see this? How do we, you know . . . actually make it happen?

This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process (identification and letting go) require your cooperation. The final one (replacement) does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so (parenthetical emphasis mine).

W-pI.23.5:2-6

Thus, we want to see in a clear and sustainable way how we project attack thoughts outward and thus create a world of scarcity and violence, one in which peace is a fleeting sensation and love never welcome.

We want to see that we are the author of our suffering and – because we not want to suffer – let go of the impulse to project.

That’s it – that’s our whole job.

Lesson 23 is basic. All we are doing is noticing our attack thoughts (so-and-so is always judging me, I should eat healthier, why don’t people stop driving fossil-fuel powered cars, my mother never loved me, why can’t the news be positive et cetera). And then – for each one – we remind ourselves that if we will let this thought go, then we will remember the peace that is already given.

Noticing is hard! It takes practice to see in a consistent way how our minds project and how projection is always an attack.

But the truth is, letting go is even harder. Ego is happy to be noticed; it doesn’t object to that. It will lose that battle in order to keep fighting. And where it really resists is letting go.

Giving up attack thoughts feels like losing our self and our world. It feels like a form of sacrifice. We identify with the world that is made of attack; we are familiar with a self driven by vengeance.

So Lesson 23 is like a first step in mind-training. It’s like being taught how to stretch properly before being taught how to run a marathon. We want to run already, want to cross the finish line already. And the course points out that this not realistic; if we will go slowly, pace ourselves, and train up, then we will surely recall the peace and joy that is our inheritance. Forcing and faking it are not helpful.

In other words, if we are noticing attack thoughts (which include “being attacked” thoughts), then that’s sufficient. The letting go comes with time.

We are still at the stage of identifying the cause of the world you see. When you finally learn that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.

W-pI.23.7:4-5

We learn in time that time is not real. We learn in bodies that we are not bodies. And we learn in the world that there is no world. Don’t wait on light shows and spiritual lottery tickets. In a gentle and quiet way, give attention to your living, ever reminding yourself that you are the author of your pain, and that a better way waits on your decision.

On Letting Go and Letting God

We are not really capable of full alignment with the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles. To even recognize ACIM – as a book, a method, a community – is to be separated. So I think that while being clear about the underlying metaphysics is helpful to our practice, it’s not – in and of itself – enough.

Helen Schucman understood this very well, writing (in a non-scribed section of the preface):

The text is largely theoretical, and sets forth the concepts on which the Course’s thought system is based. Its ideas contain the foundation of the Workbook’s lessons. Without the practical application the Workbook provides, the Text would remain largely a series of abstractions which would hardly suffice to bring about the thought reversal at which the Course aims.

In other words, the world is not real and we are not bodies and we learn this in our bodies in the world.

Which is reasonable, right? I mean, where else would those lessons even make sense?

So there’s a kind of two-step dance here. There’s the underlying metaphysics of ACIM (which are complex and theoretical, relatively speaking) and there’s a principled application of those metaphysics (which is embodied and psychological, and simple but not easy).

If you do one without the other, then you have a move, not a dance. And we want to dance.

The pragmatic living the course encourages centers in significant part around carefully watching the function of our mind and patiently correcting its habit of projection and denial (which, together, obscure peace and happiness).

. . . we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

W-pI.151.13:3-4

This is not a thing we do alone! It’s a thing that we consent to having done for us. It’s like going to the doctor for a broken arm. You don’t set the bone yourself; you consent to let the doctor set it for you. But you do have to get there.

In A Course in Miracles, our job is to show up and give consent to healing which is the function of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have any other job, any more than the doctor setting our bone needs our advice about osteology.

The course lessons are essentially baby steps in showing up and giving consent to be healed. Any one lesson can wake us from the dream, but it’s their cumulative effect that is actually transformative.

If we make a good-faith effort to hold the metaphysics in mind, and then do the lessons with sincerity and integrity, our living will gently shift in the direction of peace and happiness

This works because ACIM is basically about shifting our minds away from what hurts towards what helps, and even tiny shifts are healing. And because it works, we naturally lean into it, which begets even more healing.

The bible says that as we “thinketh in our hearts,” so we are (Proverbs 23:7). A Course in Miracles reframes this to “as a man thinketh, so does he perceive” (T-21.in.1:6).

But both frames make the same underlying point: don’t try to change the world. Rather, change the way you think about the world, and the world will follow.

There is only one thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given to you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for there the power of salvation lies:

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you.

T-21.II.2:1-6

In many ways, that’s a big pill to swallow, but our attending physician – God, Jesus, Buddha, Holy Spirit or your guardian angel – is happy to cut the pill into manageable chunks. Ask and it shall be done.

The Healer watching over us wants only to heal us; it has no other function. Our job is notice our need for healing and then relinquish the mad idea that we are (or even could be) in charge of our own healing.

I have always liked the phrase “let go and let God.” It neatly captures the two steps of the ACIM dance I’m talking about here.

“Let go” is the active thing we do – releasing our stranglehold on methods and outcomes. “Let God” is the metaphysics that we can’t really understand in worldly terms. God acts when we do not. Together, these two steps are a cornerstone of joy and peace. They go together in us, as we go together in them.

Choice is the Last Illusion

Imagine that it’s lunch time. On the table before you are twenty hot dogs. Each is the same – one hot dog in a roll without any condiments. They are identical. So you’re going to pick one, but it doesn’t matter which one you pick.

You can call it a choice but is it really?

Would you hold up the “chosen” hot dog and be proud of your choice?

Would you boast, publicly or privately, about your decision-making skills?

Would you anguish over your choice? Ask for advice? Call a friend?

Choice depends on judgment which in turn depends on distinctions. If everything is the same, then choice is meaningless. If everything is the same, then it’s not worth getting hung up on choice, choosing and chosen.

This is easy to see with hot dogs but less easy with, say, people. We choose our partners – the ones with whom we build homes, raise families, share our bodies, et cetera. And those choices are premised on distinctions which we have judged (analyzed, compared and contrasted to others, et cetera).

Distinctions arise as a condition of the body and the world and, from the perspective of the body and the world, they are non-negotiable. Don’t even try to end or transcend or befriend them.

All we can really do with distinctions is notice them. Just notice the distinctions that arise, and notice that – from the perspective of a body in a world – there is literally no way to escape them.

After all, the body itself is a distinction, and the thought that “the body itself is a distinction” is itself a distinction. It is – in a nontrivial way – distinctions all the way down.

For whom is this a problem? Because it does feel like a problem, right? If I tell you the one you love is an illusion, you might be okay with that in a certain intellectual context, but you are still going home to them. They are still “the one” – your comfort, your solace, your joy. So it seems like there’s a conflict here.

It is ego which sees differences and ego which creates contexts in which those differences are sharpened in some respects and softened in others. It is ego which tells a story which includes things like “falling in love,” “waking up,” “being one with everything,” “being born again in Jesus Christ” and “soulmates” and all that.

And those things might actually happen! They might occur. Because that’s what the story calls for. Ego loves enlightenment, A Course in Miracles and a good holy relationship. It loves them because they all involve differences and judgments, which collectively are ego’s so-called life breath.

So when it appears suddenly that all of that is the same – and there are no grounds for any meaningful choice between spiritual paths, sexual partners, or even bread recipes . . .

. . . then ego pushes back. Hard. Its existence is at stake.

What you are in truth – what we might, here in this little essay, call “Spirit” – does not acknowledge differences. Spirit knows that love does not see differences. Spirit knows that any definition of God we come up with has nothing to do with God. There’s nothing to choose between. What possible reality could choice have?

Ego really really really wants you to believe in choice and it really really really wants you to believe your choices matter. Thus, the illusion of choice is deeply embedded in your thought system – even A Course in Miracles doesn’t altogether get rid of it (e.g., T-31.VIII.9:6, T-2.VIII.3:7, W-pI.190.6:4).

But as the sameness of the world is revealed, the grounds for choice become thin and finally unusable. It’s all the same.

When that is clear and can no longer be meaningfully denied, then you are going to experience ego as a homicidal psychopath. You are going to want to destroy the world and its inhabitants right down to the last cute puppy and then salt the ruins.

You are going to see the viciousness of ego in an unadulterated horror show that will make all of history look like a cakewalk, a G-rated Disney flick.

This is what scares you. This is what you refuse to consider.

And so this is why you cling to the illusion of choice. Because when you don’t, ego fights back in ways that are literally terrifying.

Yet if you will give attention to this fear, this terrifying drama, this evil that appears to live in you, then the horror show will pass, and what remains will be still and quiet, calm and beautiful, a small gap across which God will flow, as easily as a flake of snow melts on your tongue.

To perceive this gap – and to be given unto the Love which undoes it – is simply to see clearly that choice is an illusion.

Beyond Spiritual Awakening

If I were pretending to know something, which I am not, because I don’t, I might write the following.

When you are “awake,” there will be no “you” to partake of the experience, and no “other” with whom to share it. It’s not an experience that one has, nor a state one observes, nor an understanding one shares.

This is another way of saying that “awakening from the dream” is also a dream.

I’m not saying you won’t sometimes have experiences of being one with the cosmos. Or that you won’t sometimes feel a total melding of your soul with someone else’s. Unity and related spiritual insights abound. They happen to bodies in the world. We are renewed and inspired when they happen.

But A Course in Miracles is making a slightly different kind of offer. It doesn’t aim to improve improve the dream by upping its ecstasy quotient. Rather, the course reveals that the dream is a dream, and thus restores to the mind which dreams awareness of its creative power.

This, in turns, paves the way for “what waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation” (T-28.III.1:1) – peace beyond understanding, love beyond separation, the Face of God, et cetera.

If we want that – or think we do – then it starts with the basic insight that the experience we are presently having – being bodies in a world with other bodies, a world in which time passes and stuff happens, all bound up in a narrative thread that includes A Course in Miracles and “awakening from the dream” – is literally the separation.

Look around you and look within you. Outside of you, is a world constructed by distinctions – a tree is not a horse and neither are the crease in the hills where the morning sun appears.

There are similar constructions inside of you: different words for different things, different moods and sensations. An idea about pie is not an idea about justice. And neither is your desire to hold and be held by your beloved.

Differences and distinctions – separation – abound, both within and without.

Because you are an aspect of separation, there is nothing you can do about separation. A Course in Miracles suggests that separation is an illusion but you’ll never know that because you are part of the illusion. All your works and ideas and goals are part of the illusion.

Yes, in the context of the dream, a lot does seem to happen. You study ACIM, you fall in love, you take up knitting, you see ghosts, you vote in elections, you give up meat, you get sober . . .

But upon waking, the dream and all its contents vanish. And they take the dreamer with them. Remember the dream you had on June 14th, 1994? Of course not. Awakening is like that but without the one saying “I don’t remember” and the other saying “of course not.”

What you do in the dream is unrelated to reality and thus unrelated to awakening. The mind dreaming this dream will not remember it upon waking. The “you” in the dream – i.e., the “you” writing and reading this – is not the dreamer.

You don’t have to believe that, any more than you have to believe in gravity for gravity to work. But it is the course’s bottom line, metaphysically speaking. There are other paths, for those for whom this is too bitter a pill to swallow.

There are two common responses to this “bitter pill.” The first is resistance (two big subforms of which are a) ignoring it and/or b) arguing against it). That’s a form of delay that can last lifetimes.

The second is depression and angst, followed by a helpless “now what?”

To that latter question I think the course actually offers a couple of helpful answers. Neither ends the dream but both can make us happier within the dream, which is nicer than the alternative and which coincidentally seems to grease the skids for God’s gentle intervention. ((There is not a lot to say about this. The course refers to God taking the last step (e.g., T-17.II.4:5), which is true but in such an abstract sort of way that even mentioning it is kind of ridiculous. God isn’t a being in any way remotely recognizable to us and doesn’t actually do (or not do) anything. Nor is there anyone for God to do things to but . . . the course does not want us to be overly dispirited at this junction. I’m here to suggest you let everything go, including God, Jesus and A Course in Miracles, and also to be a friend in the despair and confusion that seems to attend that part of the process. Though remember, there are lots of way to Boston )).

First, help others. Be of service to your brothers and sisters. When we help each other, we help ourselves, because we’re all the same. It’s like if you fix the broken wheel on a cart, you are actually attending all the wheels because you’ve relieved pressure on them. The other three don’t have to work extra hard to compensate for the broken one.

A simply effective way to help others is to live by the Golden Rule. Treat others they way you’d like to be treated, and don’t make it conditional. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s working or not working. Just live by the rule and let the pieces fall where they fall, which they’re going to do anyway. ((I am occasionally reminded by folks that there’s a flaw in the Golden Rule, namely, its presumption that others do, in fact, want to be treated like you do. They may not! While I think this gilds the lily a bit too finely, it’s not without merit. When I say “treat others as you’d like to be treated” I mostly mean in broad and abstract ways – like access to food and shelter, freedom to make one’s own decisions in both big and little ways, love who one wants to love, etc. I am not suggesting that just because I happen to adore prisms you all ought to have a bunch, too.))

Second, notice how your mind functions. What’s the difference between thinking and what you think about? Are you a thought? Notice how mind uses projection and denial to handle what it doesn’t like. Notice how bias shapes what it does like. Notice how forgetting and remembering happen. What’s the link between thought and behavior? Is there one? If you can, find out what happens when you’re asleep or under anesthesia or in a whisky blackout – not what happens in the world while you’re out but what happens to you. Where do you go? What are you doing?

The previous paragraph can sound like it’s drifting too far from canonical ACIM but it’s actually consistent with the overall tenor of the lessons, albeit stripped of their Christian and mystical overtones. Give attention to mind for its own sake; this is a fascinating practice and well worthy of what we are in truth.

Again, being a servant unto others and giving attention to how your mind works aren’t The Answer. There isn’t The Answer. But they are a means by which you can lighten up and notice in a deeper way what’s going on. Remember: it doesn’t matter if you wake up or not. That’s just another part of the dream. Your job is to notice the dream (e.g., T-28.II.4:2-5, 7:1, 10).

Stay close to the ACIM metaphysics. Don’t water them down or supplement them. Then just be as helpful as you can be to others, always with an eye on the function of your mind. This will work wonders, truly.