July 2019 Housekeeping

Some random thoughts near the end of July . . .

garden1. I sent a newsletter out, this time musing on the nexus between collard greens, being and love. The garden has been both bountiful and beautiful this summer, more than ever reminding me of the collaborative nature of our living. Correlations with A Course in Miracles abound.

If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, please do.

2. Back in March, I mentioned my interest in beginning a dialogue group loosely-focused around ACIM. Nobody responded to that but I remain interested! Or even a once-a-year camp in the backyard and talk about God around the fire thing.

Something in me moves now in the direction of sharing not only in writing but in something closer to a circle of friends, brothers and sisters bound for glory, serious students thinking aloud together . . . The description matters less than the sharing, but you get my drift.

gardenAnyway, I reiterate my interest and willingness to organize, host, talk first and so forth. I’m not averse to an online arrangement, but that’s more complicated given my rural location, lack of reliable internet access, et cetera. It’s always nice to just share space in a dialogic way.

In any case, if you’re interested, let me know. I’m here. I’m glad you’re here, too.

On Letting Go – and thus Knowing Deeply – Christ

When I say “let go of Christ” or “let go of A Course in Miracles” what I mean is: let Christ be. Let A Course in Miracles be. Let God be. I don’t mean have or don’t have, possess or don’t possess. I mean simply give attention to Christ, or God, or A Course in Miracles and see what happens.

These wooden Christs – or Buddhas sometimes – are part stump, part discarded wooden bowls. Setting them just so in the little glade past the horse pasture makes me happy, as visiting them does. What we refuse – throw away – remains to illuminate what can never leave.

In a sense, to “let go” is to be curious. It is a state of openness in which one releases to the maximum extent possible their expectations and investments. Rather than insist Christ be this or that, or have this meaning rather than that – which is to insist on Christ as a certain kind of experience conforming to expectation and desire (which is unloving) – we simply attend the experience or Christ as it actually is for us, in that moment.

When we do this in a sustained and gentle way, we begin to see how “Christ” or “A Course in Miracles” or “God” or “Spiritual Term of Your Choosing” are really just forms of conditioning. They are descriptions of experience – often that we want to have, or expect to have.

Giving attention – rather than describing – is a way of discovering what is actually present, rather than what may be present, or was present in the past, or what we hope or fear will be present.

For me – which is not to say for you – letting go of Christ means that Christ sort of . . . floats away. It is like releasing a balloon. The balloon is vivid and beautiful but once my grasp on it lessens, it gently slips my hold and slowly rises and drifts away.

In its place is something closer to Michel Henry’s observation in I am the Truth – here paraphrased – that Christ is the light in which all things, including “Christ”, are seen. Henry approximately equivocates Christ with Awareness or Consciousness, and thus divests it of its personal and historical connotations.

The coming of Christ into the world is subordinate to the coming of the world itself, to its appearance as the world. Because if the world had not first opened its space of light – if it had not been shown to us as that horizon of visibility cast beyond things, as that screen against which they are detached – then Christ would never have been able to come into the world or show himself to us . . .

In this way, we might say that Christ is Love, just as we might also say that God is Love. And then we give attention to Love and see what happens. We become curious about Love. We let go of Love.

Allowing life to be – to appear as it is, without insisting it be something else or something different – is very liberating. It is clarifying. And we are always sufficient unto it, for we are it. When we are free, we notice that we are life giving attention to life. There is nothing to lose; there is a lot to share.

There is a lot of joy to be tasted in this simple clarity, a lot of peace. The ups and downs that inhere in the body’s adventures and misadventures don’t cease, but our attachment to and investment in them relaxes. We are less distracted by them, because there is another way, one that is given to us as us.

That way is the calm and quiet stillness of being itself, which includes us – which gently dissolves us – in itself. It is like the pleasure of holding another’s hand. Nobody teaches us to want this or be happy with it; no instruction manual is needed. It simply is.

Undoing Ego-Based Thinking

Ego is not a thing – an object or actor making decisions affecting us – so much as a pattern of thinking. It is a form of mental conditioning that guides behavior and brings forth a certain world. Critically, ego is not the only way to think and act, and the world it brings forth is not our actual home.

The most effective tool for seeing this – and allowing it to be undone – that I have encountered is A Course in Miracles (though I stipulate that my personal study and practice of the course differs, sometimes substantively, from more traditional applications).

Ego owns the quality of a whirlpool: its energy tends to suck everything into meaningless repetitive cycles. When we are given to egocentric thinking, we view everything through the lens of a single conditioned pattern. Everything appears according to the dictates of the lens. The lens literally becomes a dictator of perception. It is like wearing blue glasses. Everything is not actually blue but does appear blue so long as you wear the glasses. Then imagine the glasses can talk and are constantly arguing that if you take them off you’ll be blinded or worse . . .

That’s a helpful analogy because it makes clear that our subservience to the so-called dictator is a matter of choice (even if we can’t presently see the choice). It’s a decision we made and, because we have the power to make that decision, we can make a different one. We can – as ACIM puts it – choose again (and better 🙂 )

For most of us, this “single conditioned pattern” becomes so pervasive that we forget that other ways of thinking and perceiving exist, are viable, sustainable, loving, gentle, helpful et cetera. Subject to the whirling violence of the ego, we become unhappy, anxious, depressed, guilty and fearful. Under those circumstances, Bill Thetford’s insight – there must be another way – becomes truly revolutionary, even though in another sense, it is perfectly obvious to the point of being mundane.

I use “violence” with respect to egoic patterns of thinking here specifically. The ego is a way of denying “another way.” It insists that there is only one way to see things, one way to know things, one way to experience things and that way is its way. When we refuse to consider something on its own terms, when we insist that something is only the way we think/see/say it is then we deny that other thing’s actual existence. Denying the existence of something is a form of violence. Not allowing the existence of others is violent. The ego’s insistence on itself and its prerogative – which by definition denies the existence of anything else, let alone “another way” – is violent.

So ego-based thinking is a pattern of thinking that is inherently violent. And because we are actually inherently gentle, kind, nurturing and loving, we feel acutely the pain of egoic thinking and acting. It is deeply contrary to the fundamental truth of our being. We feel guilty on its account and then repress (through projection and denial) that guilt and pain which makes it that much harder to heal the guilt and pain. We cannot love what we refuse to see.

A Course in Miracles is a way – not the way but a way – of thinking creatively about about how mind works and does not work, and then bringing that insight to bear on the question of love-as-our-being. It is clarifying and its clarity naturally undoes many of the pernicious effects of confused, misdirected and dysfunctional thinking. It is a way of healing – by undoing – egoic thinking.

Students of A Course in Miracles are called to a kind of attentiveness. We are called to witness our thinking in order to restore to awareness our fundamental unity with Creation, which is Being Itself.

As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you (T-1.III.1:6-7).

Thus, we give attention to our thinking in order to discern errors in thinking that bring forth projection and denial and the refusal to be responsible for love. That is what a miracle is: a shift in thinking away from fear and towards love. They occur when we actively give attention to them as possibility; in a sense, to look for a miracle is itself a miracle.

In this sense, “giving attention” can function as a spiritual practice effectively instantiated by A Course in Miracles. This can be formal, integrating traditional mindfulness and meditation practices, but it doesn’t have to be. The important thing is to trust the process, and to allow it to arise as a spontaneous expression of our creative unity, our integrated Being that includes God, Self, Other, Jesus, Buddha, angels, Arten and Pursah, whales, starlight and electric lawnmowers. Nothing is excluded – that’s how we know it’s divine.

Giving attention becomes a means of perceiving that what we call “ego” is not as solid or inflexible as we are trained to think (as it trains us to think). It is not as impregnable or unassailable as it asserts. Perceiving this truth naturally undoes the ego’s gravitational pull. Ego is weakened every time we question it, every time we make even a little space for “another way.”

More specifically, a spaciousness emerges in which egoic patterns of thought and behavior can actually be assessed for helpfulness and relevance. Seen clearly as dysfunctional and unhelpful, who wants it? A sense of freedom obtains because we are less caught up in unreflective living. We become intentional and our intentions are guided by a sense of equality, inclusiveness, kindness, gentleness. We are less blocked, less defensive. We are happy, and our happiness gives itself away.

Together, this spaciousness and freedom are love – not the personal love that excludes others by choosing favorites but an impersonal love that eschews conditions and qualifications. Love abides; its expression and welcome is natural and ongoing. It lets go and lets be. Egocentric patterns of thought cannot prevail against it.

As Humberto Maturana observes, “We talk about love as if it were special and rare, something difficult to achieve – but it is a really ordinary thing.”

But it is special in a different way. When the emotion of love is there, then vision expands . . . the legitimacy of the existence of the other does not mean you have to like, or want to be near the person, being, or circumstance to love it – it means that you have to let it be, to see it (The Biology of Business: Love Expands Intelligence).

Thus, we are not trying to banish the ego or vanquish the ego or negotiate with the ego or anything like that. We are merely noticing it, noticing its effects, and trusting that our noticing contains powerful seeds of healing. There are other ways and we are not alien to them. As we slip the ego’s constriction, those other ways appear to us. They are already given.

Ultimately, the gift of attention is the gift of love. Ego is a way of saying “no” to this gift, but the gift remains. Love remains. Attention is a way of saying “yes” and accepting – by offering – the gift again.

Pacing in the ACIM Daily Lessons

The early lessons of A Course in Miracles go slowly, the one building on the other in ways that can feel so slight as to be almost negligible. We might long for the express lane to awakening, or a path that appears less obtuse. Yet both the pace and the logic of the progression of the ACIM daily lessons builds a strong foundation for healing at the level of mind.

The sixth lesson of A Course in Miracles is a good example of this: “I am upset because I see something that is not there.”

We are not consistently happy. Our sense of peace and joy is always compromised. If we are not hurt or angry or guilty in one moment, we may well be in the next, and so a sense of impermanence always threatens even our happiest moments. Lesson Six of A Course in Miracles is an invitation to deepen our understanding that both our distress and our fragile inner peace are illusory because they they are premised on a wrong idea.

If we can reach that wrong idea, and see its ineffectiveness, then we can replace it with a better idea, which is to say, we can begin to re-learn a joy and inner peace that are not conditional.

We think that we are angry because so-and-so stepped on our toe. Or because it rained on our picnic. We think we are depressed because our preferred candidate didn’t win election. We think we are scared because the world isn’t taking the climate crisis seriously.

That is, we notice our feelings and we identify their cause. Absent the cause, we wouldn’t feel the way we feel. And the causes are always outside our control. I can’t fix the rain, I can’t cast more than one more vote, I can’t keep the world from stepping on my toes.

Lesson six does not deny the law of cause-and-effect, nor the way that it appears in our lives, but it does suggest that we reconsider our certainty that the external world can actually function as a cause. We are asked to name “the form of the upset (anger, fear, worry, depression and so on) and the perceived source very specifically” (W-pI.6.1:2).

This specificity is what allows us to anchor the lesson in a personal way (these are my feelings), and also in a way that feels logical and rational (this is the world I live in). The lesson’s effectiveness – and the workbook’s overall effectiveness – is strengthened by this.

For example, we might say “I am angry at my boss because she doesn’t recognize how much overtime I give to my job.”

Or, “I am depressed about my marriage because my partner no longer expresses much interest in me.”

Or, “I am scared because I don’t have enough money to pay next month’s property tax bill.”

To the ego – that is, to the habitual thought patterns that characterize our thinking minds – these seem like reasonable statements. Who would disagree?

But to each them, without qualification or conditions, Lesson Six adds: “I see something that is not there” (W-pI.6.1:4-5).

That is, the actual cause of our upset is not the named external cause but rather the fact that we “see something that is not there.”

In other words, both the form of our upset and the apparent cause are illusions. We think they are real – they certainly seem real and feel real – yet they are not. We are getting worked up literally over nothing.

But not quite nothing! For so long as we accept fear and guilt and anger as a part of our reality – to be judged good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable, to be mitigated, resisted, et cetera – than those experiences will remain real for us.

Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in your mind, your allowing it to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions (T-5.V.4:1-4).

Thus, lesson six allows us to begin undoing what we have accepted into our mind. We look at the specific forms of our upset and distress as well as their perceived causes, but beyond that – as the lessons and our study and practice progress – we are undoing the very idea that what we are can be vulnerable at all.

. . . God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a Fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone is perfect. To deny this is to deny yourself and Him, since it is impossible to accept one without the other (T-6.II.6:2-11).

Accepting this as our actual identity feels like a big step and, as we currently think and live, is is, but keep in mind that we are not called on to make it either alone or all at once. Indeed, the Lessons of A Course in Miracles aim at gently but surely correcting our thought process so that accepting our oneness with God does not feel like a big or scary or dramatic step. Rather, it feels natural. It feels like saying “yes to what already is.

To that end, Lesson Six is a gentle nudge to look more closely at our thinking, and to consider that it may not be working very well. That’s really it. We are getting tied up in knots over something that’s not there. We are like children panicking over a nightmare, unable to discern that it was only a dream (e.g., T-6.V.2:1-5).

Giving our attention and energy to the order of the workbook lessons, we begin to perceive the light that wakens us and, in time, to perceive that the light is us. As we accept that our egoic thinking only perpetuates anxiety, depression, fear and guilt by virtue of a confused application of the law of cause-and-effect, we naturally make space for a healthier way of thinking, one that allows our natural happiness and love to extend themselves in perpetuity.

A Course in Miracles: Spirit Makes No Comparisons

Everything that we perceive arises as – and on account of – distinctions. A raspberry is not a blueberry which is not a bowl of ice cream which is not the river flowing in the distance. Given our structure, in order for anything to be brought forth, it must be distinguished from what it is not.

If you look into this, you will see how it works. Just look at the cup; look at the river; look at your desires and dreams. After a while, one naturally begins to wonder what the first distinction is, or even what the ground from which the first distinction (and all subsequent distinctions) arise.

These are fun and interesting questions! The challenge is that, given our structure – both physical and cognitive – we cannot reach the undifferentiated ground from which all distinctions arise. We can speculate about the ground; we can argue for its existence. But we can’t reach it. The Beginning, the Source, God, the Divine Et Cetera – remains forever separate from us (at least in form 🙂 ).

A Course in Miracles asserts that this habit of distinction – which is separation – represents the fundamental difference between ego and spirit. Ego distinguishes, and its distinctions are its ongoing struggle to live; spirit does not make comparisons and thus lives forever.

Critically, spirit cannot be known via comparisons (or judgment of any kind).

Spirit . . . is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. This is its main difference from everything else the mind can grasp (T-4.II.11:9, 11-13).

This bright line – spirit here, ego there – is the foundation of ACIM’s assertion that spirit is forever unaware of ego and vice-versa (e.g., T-4.II.8:5-8). You can’t get there from here. You can’t have a spiritual experience as an ego.

But there is hope because our distinction-making minds can learn to be “right-minded.” To be right-minded is be “uniformly without attack” (T-4.II.10:2) because the mind understands and accepts without question that spirit “is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged” (T-4.II.9:7).

Ego’s dominion crumbles when we no longer perceive spirit as an enemy – that is, as a separate object that has something we want (eternal life, perfect joy) that it won’t just share with us. Our battle with our misperception of spirit is literally what the ego is. When we stop fighting, ego is gone.

This is what A Course in Miracles intimates right-mindedness is. And the inevitable outcome of this healed clarity is the realization that perception itself is unnecessary (T-4.II.11:3).

That is a powerful statement that makes no sense – and cannot make sense – to the structure that we have and with which we are aligned. How can one live without perception?

You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the “you” who are living in this world? (T-4.II.11.5-8).

To the body, the world and other bodies will always be real. They will always be the beginning of our questioning, which means that – as regards what the body cannot understand – and our answers will be confused and unhelpful. You can’t explain how a bicameral legislature works to a child; no more can you explain spirit’s function to the ego (whose very existence depends on misunderstanding).

So the work as such is to let go of ego. This happens when we give attention to our living and notice when we are thinking egoically – which is to say, in terms and conditions that make sense only to bodies. I want this and if I don’t get it I’ll be miserable, I must have that to prove to everyone I’m special, that person is evil, this person is not pleasing me, et cetera.

Noticing these thought patterns is not easy! We are habituated to thinking from the perspective – the location – of a body at stake in a world. It’s important to remember that it’s okay to take the alternative slowly, to admit to confusion or even fear. It’s okay to notice ego but still not understand how to think another way – with God or Spirit or Christ.

Admitting our status as beginners is what brings forth the ladder we ascend to joy and peace; it’s what makes the ascent possible.

In truth, as soon as we open ourselves up to the confusion that a good question initially begets, we are no longer of the ego, but are turning our attention to the abstract light of Christ, or Spirit, which is itself the answer.

That is, we begin to perceive that the answer is not how to better use the body, or better relate to other bodies, but rather to attend the light – the life – in which those bodies are brought forth.

The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? . . . Your ego and your spirit will never be co-creators, but your spirit and your Creator will always be (T-4.III.1:4-5).

In other words, there is no distinction between “having the Kingdom of God and being the Kingdom of God” (T-4.9:7). The body believes there is a difference; spirit knows otherwise.

In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. God has given you everything (T-4.III.9:1-2).

Give attention. Let the world soften and blur. Let the body be a body. When we release the body from the demands of ego, it becomes a prism through which the light of Christ – which is the light of Love – streams. We are not the object which notices those streams; we are the streams. We are – together – the very streams of Love.

Doubt as a Christian Virtue

Radical doubt underlies my experience of being Christian. At any moment – for any length of time – I am willing to let the whole practice and tradition go, to see it all as unhelpful, confused, discriminatory, superficial, distracting, unnecessary, illogical . . .

It is like an enormous wave overtaking this aspect of my experience, decimating it and strewing the pieces for miles across the landscape.

The work is to let this wave of doubt come and go of its own volition without resisting it, without trying to turn it into something that it’s not. And then, in the ruins, in whatever remains, reconstruct anew the fundamental relationship: self/other, self/Christ, self/God, self/world, et cetera.

It is not easy.

Given my structure as Homo Sapiens, my inclination is to solve problems and resist what appears to cause them. When uncertainty arises, the inclination is to do whatever possible to convert it to certainty. Doubt is the sand on which no stable residence can be constructed.

This feels rational and self-loving. After all, it is a natural aspect of being human. I am not disappointed in myself for being unwilling to live in doubt.

Yet on the other hand, doubt, too, is natural. It, too, arises as a fundament of my structure and nature. Clearly it is sometimes merited – how else do we learn? Become more loving, helpful, patient, instructive? Thus, I want to notice doubt. I want to give attention to it.

Letting doubt just happen – letting it arise naturally in my living without rushing in to change it – is what I mean by “noticing” doubt. By “giving attention”, I mean simply letting doubt have its own space by being in responsive dialogue with it. What does it feel like? What does it want? It clearly wants my attention. But why? How?

Who and what am I when I doubt?

I do not seek doubt, and yet at times it is there. I cannot kill or otherwise end it, for it always returns. While I have the capacity to respond to doubt, I am not its author. I am not its master. Like temptation, like surrender, it is given.

Of course, if doubt is natural, then it arises in concordance with Christ, the light in which all things have their existence. In the lawful order of God, that which appears is what is given and, as such, is the material in which it is also given to work out holiness and grace, and to end – if possible, to whatever degree possible – our alienation from God and Love.

Thus, rather than resistance and disdain, doubt deserves welcome and acceptance. In a sense, this suggests that Christ is that which – in addition to welcoming Christ – is that which doubts Christ. Christ inheres in doubt as well as certainty.

Thus, when I sit quietly and doubt Christ, I sit with Christ. In my nonresistance to doubt, I affirm Christ and Christ affirms me, even if – perhaps especially if – I do not experience the relief and joy such affirmation would seem to propose.

So Christ does not come and go according to my experience of doubt or of certainty; Christ is present in and as both.

This is another way of saying that Christ is beyond – transcends, perhaps (is other than) – the dichotomy of “I feel good/I feel bad.”

I am not suggesting that if we are unhappy we should double down on our unhappiness. It’s okay to come in from the rain. It’s okay to take an aspirin. It’s okay to call bullshit on somebody who’s full of shit (temporarily or otherwise). I simply observe that doubt is not antithetical to living Christianly.

When I no longer resist doubt but accept it as “also Christ,” as “Christ which does not come or go,” then an opening appears. Life widens. Doubt exposes a chasm, an abyss, one we are already toppling through in darkness. It reveals that as constituted – in our very living right now – we cannot find our way, cannot assert who “we” even are, or what “our way” might even be.

And yet, in this emptiness – in this void – we discover agape, the unconditional, impersonal, all-inclusive love which shifts our living from the narrow confines of self (that can be lost, found, and lost again) to the radiant wellspring of the collective, the whole related unto us, in which my joy and your joy are one joy, one love.

It is knowing this one love that enables us to live from it – as it – and thus embody the good news that death is conquered and only happiness and peace need attend our living. Doubt is not a failure of faith, nor a glitch in our well-being but the essence of our humanness, which forever relates us through Christ to Love itself.