Sean Reagan

I suggest that the other – I am thinking primarily of people here, but the suggestion applies as broadly as one wishes, reaching sunflowers, galaxies and time – is a construction, and that special attention should be given to others we construct who we love to distraction, as well as those we despise to distraction. This is what it means to heal through and with others.

I suggest the other we hate and the other we love are the same person in that they reflect the same interior process of construction, and that they thus reflect the same fundamental problem which is “distraction from love’s creative function.”

This raises two broad questions:

1. How or why is the other constructed? Who constructs? Of what is the other constructed?

And 2. Distraction from what?

The second question is actually easier to answer, and in terms of happiness, inner peace and remembrance of unity with God – more important to answer.

The answer is: distraction from our capacity as love to create, which I distinguish – loosely tracking the language of A Course in Miracles – from our capacity as egos to make.

That is, we construct (or make) the other, and this process of construction is a poor imitation of the process of creation which does not create others but rather as love creates love. Or, more aptly, domains in which love recognizes and remembers itself.

Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real (T-1.I.24:1-4).

This is consonant with the course’s insistent that Mind is always creating (T-2.VI.9:7), and always producing “form at some level” (T-2.VI.9:14).

What about the first question: how or why do we make the other, especially the special others, who we either hate or love (or sometimes both) to such unhelpful distraction?

A traditional way of thinking about living is that an external world exists apart from us – it’s out there – and that we perceive a faithful reproduction of it via our senses and then think about that reproduction – name it, categorize it, et cetera.

On this view, others are just . . . there. As are we. And some of those others are attractive to the point where we cannot think clearly in their presence, and some are so awful that we cannot think clearly about them or their existence.

A Course in Miracles – and other traditions too, like, say, radical constructivism – assert that we have it backwards. Thought creates the external; consciousness, not matter, is the foundation. And so what we are is consciousness, or awareness, or thoughts in the mind of God or what-have-you, and that is what others are as well.

On this view, those “others” are actually our own self, idealized or despised, but always idolized. We “fall” for this appearance (or projection or dissociation) of our self – into either love or hate – and our falling becomes the full focus of our living. It eats up all our attention. It doesn’t want to share.

When we are in love, we experience this idolization as pleasing. When we are in hate, we experience it as painful. How could it be otherwise? We are always happier when we accept ourselves; and we are always unhappier when we reject ourselves.

The other is just an extension of this basic principle: know thyself, and do unto others as you would do unto your own self.

And, as mentioned above, this idolization and the intensity of the feelings it engenders, distracts us from what is really going on which is the action of creativity that is naturally inherent in consciousness, or Mind, or God, or the Mind-of-God.

[Note my intentional point here that what we call this is far less important than that we perceive It at all; naming matters but not to the extent we usually assert]

So what do we do?

1. We get clear on our confusion. We realign our thinking with coherence. We do this through study and reflection (or clarity and contemplation); and

2. We examine for viability what we learn; we bring it into application, as Tara Singh often said. We become service-minded.

I have been better at the first step than the second, though the distinction between them is thinner than first appears. They are less like steps, one leading to the other, than like puppies chasing one another in a happy circle.

So, you know, what theories or belief systems or traditions appeal to you? Resonate for you? The spiritual ones, the philosophical ones, the psychological ones, the linguistic ones . . . Study them. Understand them. As best you can, know what they are and how and why they matter to you.

You can never do this perfectly or finally because learning is always ongoing – always in flux – but you can become familiar with the general ongoingness. You can swim with the current, rather than against it.

And then, naturally, give attention to how your living is affected by this study. In what ways are you happier? Calmer? Gentler? More helpful?

In my experience “happier, calmer, gentler and more helpful” are intimately connected to others. That is, our living is fundamentally relational (thus indicating the oneness that is our fundament).

But this connecting focuses less on the apparent individuals involved, and more on the collective that together those apparent individuals comprise, and – somewhat more abstractly – on creation itself, which is to say, on “happiness, calm, gentleness and helpfulness” without embodied reference points (apparently collective or individual).

This represents an inversion of traditional models of thinking, especially with respect to cause-and-effect, but it is eminently doable, and there are lots of paths/traditions/practices to provide guidance and companionship. There are no royal roads, but plenty of fellow travelers and maps of varying quality. The way, as such, is arduous but not nearly to the extent we fear.

It begins and ends in the other, a role I cheerfully play for you, increasingly intentionally, and a role you play for me, my gratitude for which is hard to put into words.

This mutuality is our truth, as such, and when we understand it not as some deep metaphysical pronouncement but more akin to puppies chasing their tails, then we’re pretty much already saved.

I want to look at the Rules for Decision in A Course in Miracles, specifically the first “rule.” It reflects the course’s radical pragmatism, especially with respect to suspending judgment as a means of securing happiness and inner peace, our own and everyone else’s.

Today I will make no decisions by myself (T-30.I.2:2).

The basic premise of decision-making (which is inseparable from the overall framework of A Course in Miracles) is that we never decide alone. We always choose with a partner.

You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do (T-30.I.14:7-9).

Importantly, the partner – or teacher – that we choose to join with us in decision-making will always advocate for our happiness as it understands happiness.

Your day is not at random. It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness (T-30.I.15:1-2).

God perceives our joy in terms of what we can give; ego, or anti-Christ, perceives our joy in terms of what we can get. God’s plan works. The ego’s plan has never worked, though it does sustain the ego.

Given those stark differences, it make sense to consider carefully how we make decisions.

There are two aspects of our declaration to make no decisions for our self that especially bear looking at.

First, in declining to decide by our self, we acknowledge an intention to refrain from judging what to do when it appears that choice or decision is called for.

Second, we will not substitute our own judgment about the situation to which we believe we are called to respond, because if we do, then we have established the rules guiding our response which can only produce “confusion and uncertainty and fear” (T-30.I.2:6).

It is the second element that is most challenging for us.

This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind and *then decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first. This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. And therefore angry (T-30.I.3:1-5).

We look at a situation, decide what it is, and then ask for help, pledging to accept without judgment whatever solution is offered.

But having already set up the problem, we are also setting up how it should be solved, and so we have effectively already dictated what the answer must be as well.

In that sense, in terms of insisting on our own judgment, we are in as deep as we can go.

So the real work is not so much encountering problem after problem and asking for divine assistance in resolving them as they appear, but rather in giving attention to the belief system and conditioning that gives rise to “problems” in the first place.

This is subtler and harder to notice. But the rewards for doing so are greater.

Let me offer a personal example. Let’s say that I cannot pay my bills this week, which is a recurring challenge, and Chrisoula and I are both stressed and struggling to communicate fairly and honestly with each other about work and money.

I look at that situation and decide I have a) a money problem (there isn’t enough) and I also have b) a marriage problem (a wife who is way to focused on material things).

I then say to the Holy Spirit: I don’t know how to solve this problem so I am giving it to you. I will accept your solution without qualification or quibble. You fix money and my marriage.

But the Holy Spirit’s “solution” will likely confuse me because it won’t align with the problem as I’ve set it up. My judgment is already infesting the whole process because I have already decided what the problem is: lack of funds and a complaining wife.

The Holy Spirit’s solution might be, say, study lesson 76 more closely. And I’ll think that’s the answer to a different problem. My problem is not money and a wife that complains too much.

And then I’ll dismiss the Holy Spirit and double down on my own judgment.

A Course in Miracles is saying in this context: we can’t even effectively get to the “solution” stage because we haven’t looked without judgment at the situation.

For most of us – for me, certainly – looking at my life without judgment is very difficult. Indeed, it is a radical step. Of course my lack of funds equals a problem. Of course my marriage is stressed and suffering. Of course those situations need to be fixed (more money, mellower wife).

But note that A Course in Miracles is not saying our so-called problems won’t be fixed. Indeed, it is saying that if we don’t judge the situation, then the “answer” that we get will make us truly and deeply happy. It will being us inner peace that we can extend to the world.

So, again, in context, my so-called money and marriage problems can be redressed but only when I see them clearly. Perhaps the real problem is that I have forgotten that what I am is subject only to God’s laws, which only give and never take (W-pI.76.9:6).

And when I remember that, then my focus shifts from what I don’t have to what I can give, and I stop perceiving others as causes of my problems, and thus can be grateful again for their presence and companionship.

When we choose to not decide for our selves about any situation, let alone the decisions those situations seem to engender and necessitate, we will know an abiding happiness.

Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received, so must you give (T-30.I.17:7-8).

We are generally okay with asking Jesus to help us so long as we get to decide with what we need help. But the possibility that we don’t even know what our problems are . . . that we don’t know what is working and what is not . . .

That is not something with which we are generally okay.

So in this way, the Rules for Decision are an intense way of guiding us to a non-judgmental mindset that applies to the whole of our living without exception. This is the point of the course’s emphasis on “generalizability” (T-3.V.2:3).

However, the upside to this radical surrender of judgment is significant. Inner peace and joy are given to us wholly and without condition and we will naturally give them away to others (T-30.I.17:6). All we have to do is realize and accept that a) we don’t know how to be happy and b) we are in relationship with an inner teacher who does know.

The point is to go deeply into this in order to see how it functions in our thinking, which is how we get clear on the need to change the patterns of our thinking. We become miracle-minded by seeing the need for a miracle, for a shift in thinking away from fear and towards love. We want to become habituated to miracle-minded thinking.

The circle of Atonement is the unified alignment of miracle workers whose shared goal of peace creates “interlocking chain of forgiveness” (T-1.I.25:1) that strengthens both those who are in the circle as well as those are perceived as external to it.

Miracles are shifts in thinking, away from fear and towards love. Collectively, these shifts in thought become the Atonement, which is is the undoing of fear and leaves in its wake only love (e.g., T-1.I.26:2-3). It is “the natural of profession of Children of God” (T-1.III.1:10) and is a “total commitment” (T-2.II.7:1).

Thus, those of us called to the particular form of the universal curriculum called A Course in Miracles, have as our “homework” a radical yet sustainable change of mind, which both arises from and reinforces our shared guiltlessness. Any suggestion to the contrary – that we are guilty, undeserving of love, deserving of condemnation, et cetera – we take as an invitation to further heal ourselves, others, and the world that together we bring forth.

“Heal” in this case simply means to give attention to our thinking, discern between unloving and loving thoughts, and accept only the latter as helpful.

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).

In this sense, A Course in Miracles contemplates an active student body who not only learn but bring their learning into application. Our “loving thoughts” reflect the voice of Christ, making space for them and following their directive becomes our operative understanding of healing. It is the Atonement, as A Course in Miracles defines it.

We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. So will the world of separation slip away, and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son. The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness that must been denied to produce the need of healing (T-15.V.5:1-3).

This work – discerning the loving from the unloving – is only complex, difficult, mysterious et cetera when we insist on conceptualizing miracles as having varying orders, which is to say, insisting that some apparent problems are bigger or more severe or harder to solve than others.

Seeing the world in this fractious and judgmental way appears natural to us – it’s just what brains do! – and so we tend to bring miracle-minded thinking to bear in inconsistent ways. When we are upset, or are aware that others are upset, we seek the corrective power of miracles. But no person, place, thing or situation is fundamentally different from another. To the miracle – and so to the miracle-minded – they are all the same.

When we accept this equality and consistency, then our struggles with A Course in Miracles easy considerably. We no longer have to judge and decide when and whether and how to work miracles; rather, we see that they apply to everything and everyone without discrimination. What could be easier than to always work miracles?

The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its true indiscrimininateness (T-1.I.49:1-3).

Thus, our frustration with a flat tire, our sadness over a friend’s diagnosis of cancer, our anger over a recent spate of nationalist homicides and our joy with the luxury of a few spare hours to read Emily Dickinson poems are all the same. They seem to be of different orders (cancer vs. flat tire, say) and they seem to be of varying quality (homicide vs. poetry) but to the miracle, they are identical.

Thus, we give them all over to the light of miracles, which in each instance “compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false” (T-1.I.50:1).

We don’t always recognize love, and some of what we call love is actually fear. This is why even what we call love must be subject to miracles. We inevitably learn that a great deal of our thinking is “upside-down,” including what we considered “right-side up.” It is a fact of studying A Course in Miracles that we should prepare to be surprised at what we learn.

Yet becoming happy learners in this way creates a “circle of Atonement without end” (T-14.V.7:6).

Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgement of perfect purity, from which no one is excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created . . . Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone (T-14.V.8:1-4).

The circle of Atonement becomes a symbol then of how uncompromising miracle-minded thinking is. It reflects our “total commitment” (T-2.II.7:1). And it also becomes a shared foundation of our collective experience of working miracles, because it is itself an opportunity to expand the range of love.

Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or redemption. If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him without, you join him there (T-14.V.11:1-3).

The way we see our brother or sister is the way that we see our own self, and the way that we treat our brother or sister is the way that we treat our own self.

This is the secret to happiness; this is the key to salvation.

Refuse to accept anyone as with the blessing of Atonement, and bring into it by blessing him. Holiness must be shared, for there in lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside (T-14.V.11:5-7).

Thus, the circled of Atonement becomes a powerful teaching tool. We work together in order to heal our own self, and our togetherness allows healing to go beyond us. Our function is healing; our function is holiness. There is no other work but this.