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.

Notes in Mid-November

I walked many miles in the rain last night. Past the village the dark is smooth and alive, like the heart of something wild. There are voices in the rain.

My walk was a plea for clarity and understanding; clarity and understanding were given.

The Holy Spirit is an experience in the world: it is a quiet acceptance of all things, including what we have judged against. It is the end of resistance; it is the acceptance of everything. It is in us but not of us.

To be given to the Holy Spirit’s calm openness is to see with clarity and grace all that stands between us and the honest declaration that “the peace of God is everything I want” (W-pI.205.1:2).

We can be confused about God – call it Love, call it Oneness – but we cannot be apart from it. When we want to be restored to Choiceless Awareness we are restored because we never left.

There is no “we.” There is no “us.” There is not even God.

Yet oddly, without us – which is to say, without you, which is to say, without God – I would not know this. Which, in my half-assed way, I wrote about in today’s newsletter. Sign up if you like.

And of course – with all my heart – thank you. 🙏

Love,
Sean

Suffering is Self-Identity

You aren’t real.

Generally, this is not a kind thing to say to another person. We all believe we’re here and embodied; denying that – especially when we’re projecting that denial onto another person – is a form of violence.

The clearest and most helpful thing a body can say to another is: “we are the same.”

To a body, bodies are real. A mind that believes it’s in a body has to deal with this. In the ACIM community, this “deal” tends to take two forms: we deny the body and/or we improve the self.

But there is – there is always – another way.

Denial of the Body

The body will not buy that either it or the world in which it lives, which includes other bodies, is an illusion. If you deny the body, you will eventually hurt it, and this hurt can extend to other bodies in many ways.

No matter how spiritually evolved you are, when you have to sneeze, you sneeze. When you have to pee, you pee. Can you stop your hair from growing? Can you breathe underwater unaided?

Rather than try to force the body into some premeditated ideal of oneness or spiritual giantism, why not just forget about the body?

Think for a moment about your hair. Do you have to remember every day to make it grow? Do you have to speed up or slow its growth? Do you have to recall the complex biology underlying its growth in order for that biology to function?

No. You do not. You forget about your hair. You don’t deny your hair – that requires conflict, which is idiotic. Who fights with their hair?

The suggestion is . . . consider doing that with the whole body. Just let it all go. It’s doing its thing without you – it really is. Just let it.

Forgetting is different than denial. Denial is a form of conflict – you have to concentrate. You have to use effort to keep a thing out of mind. It pushes back and you have to overwhelm it.

Denial is hard. Forgetting is easy because it’s just a recognition that your effort is not required and so you breathe. You relax.

Self-Improvement

This leads us to self-improvement. Self-improvement is a form of mind reinforcing the original error of believing it is in a body. We eat healthy, do yoga, meditate, read ACIM, journal, go to psychotherapy. And in all of that there is an undercurrent of “am I better than I was five minutes ago? Five years ago? Two decades ago?”

This is what drove Ken Wapnick and the Board of Directors at FACIM to litigation with Marianne Williamson. They believed she’d made a wrong turn with the course, essentially obliterating its metaphysics. You can’t liberate mind if you’re constantly doubling down on the idea of making a better home for it in the body in the world.

When mind believes its “in” a body, it adopts the posture of a self. It becomes a perspective and a narrative. It localizes and specializes.

All we can do is notice this. Well, notice it and not resist it. “You” and “I” don’t solve the problem of the mind that believes it’s permanently at home in a body because “you” and “I” are features of the problem.

“You” and “I” are what disappear when the problem is solved. “Sean” isn’t going to be in some heavenly post-time, post-body space thinking, “wow, that was insane – I’m so glad I’m not doing that anymore.”

The question isn’t really what happens after the mind-body problem is solved (although spoiler alert: it’s not actually a problem). Rather, the problem is how do we notice the mind-body dilemma in a sustainable way from within the dilemma?

If that’s all we have to do – and it is, because it’s all we can do – then how do we do it?

The Gift of Attention

Start by noticing that you have been given a gift: the gift of attention. You can notice things. You can notice beauty and joy and suffering. You can notice ideas and objects. You can notice relationships.

Your attention is also a gift that you give to others – whether they are sunflowers or horses or people. In the ambient rays of your attention, the other comes alive in deep and meaningful ways. You can perceive their needs and wants, and you can respond to those needs and wants in helpful and non-dramatic ways.

The sunflower needs nothing and so you just admire it. The horse needs hay or water so you give it. Your friend or lover or partner needs you to apologize or give them space or talk about their mother or whatever. So you do that.

Attention is oddly happiest – must fruitful – when it’s not about you but about others.((This was where Ken Wapnick landed in his teaching. “Make it about other people.” When you’re driving on the highway, think of the other drivers. Eating out in a restaurant? Make it about the waiter. I have my issues with Ken but this is actually profoundly good advice for “living ACIM.”)) It just loves to flow out of you and take in all the other lives and loves that are there to be observed. And interestingly, attention does not distinguish in its function. It beholds a sunflower the same way it beholds a kitten or your neighbor.

Your reaction to those images is different, sure. That’s judgment. We prefer an hot apple pie to a pile of steaming chicken guts. But attention holds them in exactly the same way.

The suggestion here is to forget about the material and just give yourself over to attention. What happens when you do that?

Love does not perceive differences. It does not see them and compensate for them – smooth them out, negotiate between them, choose one over the other. It just doesn’t see them.

You and I – being ourselves differences – do see differences. But attention is a subtle teacher that gently allows us to begin to notice how everything – no matter how we perceive it – is in fact the same.

That’s the critical insight that we want to bring forth in our living. And attention – which from time to time I suggest is the Holy Spirit – is the guide who instructs us on how to do this.

. . . the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love, and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness.

(T-22.I.4:6-9).

Being symptoms of the problem, we don’t actually solve the problem. We just agree to see the need for healing, and then watch the healing occur.

Being symptoms of the problem, we will disappear. Symptoms don’t hang around and watch the underlying error or sickness get healed. Don’t worry about waking up, and don’t worry about dying. Don’t worry about “getting” or “not getting” it.

Be present to life in a mild but consistent way and you will be led beyond self-identity to the end of suffering.

Notes in Early November

Happy All Saints Day.

I’ve been trying to find my way with a newsletter for years. Another one floats into the ether tomorrow morning. If you’re interested, you can read past newsletters and sign up for the future ones here.

I’ve also been having fun with videos lately.

This one is posted elsewhere on the site, but I wanted to share it upfront with folks who check in once in a while. Thanks for reading (and watching). In a sincere way, I am grateful to those of you who listen to and encourage me. As Paul said to the faithful of Thessaloniki long ago, “encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”

The secret to writing and thinking publicly about A Course in Miracles is to realize that you are the student, not the teacher, and everyone who shows up – whatever their posture – has come to save you from bad dreams.

Those who would learn the same course share one interest and one goal. And thus he who was the learner becomes a teacher of God himself, for he has made the one decision that gave his teacher to him. He has seen in another person the same interests as his own (M-2.5:7-9).

I have been fortunate over the past year to have spent time with a couple of teachers who simultaneously deepened and relaxed my ACIM practice. The language is infinitely clearer and the metaphysics orders of magnitude less confusing. It’s a dream, yes, but one in which dreaming is no longer an impediment to inner peace and joy.

I hope that some of that light and helpfulness occasionally finds its way into what is shared here. In the dream we are having, our shared interests are a light which undoes the illusion of separation. Without you, it would be dark indeed.

Love,
Sean