Lenten Writing: Living Praxically

Praxis is the way we live the life that is indicated by our study. Study directs our praxis by suggesting certain practices, approaches, methods, strategies. This reflects the clarification and contemplation aspects of our living.

Our study directs our praxis but, in turn, praxis informs our study, suggesting new directions, methods and so forth. For example, we might read a study advocating meditation as a means of enlarging our range of compassion so we adopt a meditation practice.

This is the service aspect of our living.

In this sense, praxis and study are one movement. Each makes the other not only possible but necessary. They are unified, sort of the way you cannot separate a river from its banks.

In my own living, theory and idea – created, contained and expressed in language – are predominant. Thus, clarity and contemplation are the preferred – most comfortable, most familiar – aspects of my practice.

In my own living, praxis has been mostly relegated to effect – passive, casual, and sometimes even scorned.

For a long time I was unaware of this; then, when I became aware, I found myself struggling to right the imbalance. Often I failed; often, it was clear that I wanted to fail.

This is unhealthy. Favoring one aspect of a dynamic circularity over the other minimizes the circularity’s flow and creativity. We become less effective, which means less loving, which means less happy and peaceful.

And yet.

Praxis frightens me, which is silly in one sense, since praxis is always happening anyway. It is not coherent to fear what you are already presently experiencing.

But still. Praxis cries for attention, which is to say – in this context – for intention. It wants to be executed, embodied. It wants to be brought forth and lived. What we study yearns to manifest in an embodied way that is not merely semantic and mental.

For me, my decades-long obsession with the Catholic Worker – with nonviolence, radical egalitarianism, dialogue and so forth – are the concepts that my praxis longs to breathe into being.

I have explored those topics deeply and sincerely – I have studied them closely – but my living has mostly been a poor reflection of what I have learned in that study. For the most part, I have declined to allow the two domains – study and praxis – to mingle. Rather, I have tried to keep them apart.

Again, in an important sense, that is actually not possible. We are always in praxis, however unintentionally. Thus, praxis – however feeble and unconscious – has at last reached my study and, in turn, my study – however rigidly self-contained – has finally seeped into my praxis.

A fuller and more creative unity is possible and I am at a juncture where keeping the two at a sterile distance is hard enough that I am willing to experience the utter fear of whatever it means to be intentionally praxical.

This was written on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, 2019.

Sex and ACIM Part Two

A follow up to Sex and A Course in Miracles

Some folks point out that the urtext manuscripts of A Course in Miracles are more sexually explicit (and, generally, behaviorally explicit) than later versions. This is a just observation, which raises two issues: what edition should we read, and what, in fact, do the early drafts say about sex?

We might summarize those issues this way: what am I missing if I do not give attention to early drafts of A Course in Miracles, especially with regard to sex?

Reading the early material of A Course in Miracles reminds us that Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were essentially performing a sort of psychotherapy with one another. They were working through their own complicated relationship, the educational and health-related context it which it was enacted, and the various underlying issues that they perceived informed those relationships and contexts.

The material’s spiritual and supernatural overtones were a way of displacing responsibility for this project; it was too scary to face in ordinary dialogue.

I am not critical of this, by the way. I am hardly exempt from projection. It is important to find ways to talk about our living, including the material that is frightening, embarrassing, shameful and so forth. One way to handle psychological vulnerability and risk is to displace it. That is, we pretend that we aren’t talking about our issues with our father, we’re talking about our past life as a slave in Roman war camps. This can be a creative and helpful way to work through material that is otherwise too difficult to face directly. As Emily Dickinson pointed out, there is nothing wrong with coming at our living “slant.”

Relatedly, assigning supernatural origins to our present unhappiness can be an effective way to talk about our unhappiness. I am not writing this material, Jesus is writing it. Or Arten and Pursah are writing it. The risk in doing this is that we may also displace responsibility for healing.

So I am not mocking Helen and Bill for their projection. It was, in its way, deeply creative. And they were smart enough and responsible enough to bring along folks at different stages that vastly improved the material. The rough drafts of their therapy became a model for lots of folks to work through what it means to be an observer. I was helped by their work; possibly you were, too.

However, I think it’s clear why they didn’t want that early material shared publicly. It is very personal – sometimes intimately so – and also makes perfectly clear that the historical Jesus was not involved in any way with the material. On the other hand, a projected Jesus – one jointly constructed by Helen and Bill, significantly based on their experiences with Christian Science as children – was very much involved.

Once one no longer asserts that the historical Jesus authored the text, then the early material become simply rough drafts, and it’s easier to respect Helen and Bill’s intention that the public edition be the one published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.

However, because of the way the early manuscript was shared, copyright for it was lost to the public domain. This was established through nontrivial litigation and opened the door for many versions to emerge, including the urtext material.

What edition should you read? The one that is most helpful. And then get on with it. If you find yourself arguing with folks about whatever edition they’re reading, then you are distracting yourself – and indulging their own self-distraction – from the work A Course in Miracles contemplates which is to become responsible for your own salvation by bringing forth love with your brothers and sisters.

All that said, what the does the urtext material have to say about sex?

Clearly, in the early stages of bringing forth and revising the ACIM material, Helen and Bill conflated sexuality with miracles, and were confused about this conflation.

Sex & miracles are both WAYS OF RELATING. The nature of any interpersonal relationship is limited or defined by what you want it to DO which is WHY you want it in the first place. Relating is a way of achieving an outcome (T 1 B37o).

This represents the course’s suggestion that we shift our focus from external changes to changes in mind. Thus, we can ask with respect to anything, what is it for? If our goal is inner peace – rather than only satiation of bodily appetites – then effective communication remains intact, which in turn makes possible remembering the love which is our “natural inheritance” (In.1:8).

In early drafts, this focus – asking what is [this or that action] for – is subsumed by an emphasis on separating mind from body, and making happiness and inner peace contingent on choosing one (mind) over the other (body).

For example the urtext material suggests that indiscriminate use our sexuality (emphasizing pleasure over communication) “INDUCES rather than straightening out the basic level-confusion which underlies all those who seek happiness with the instruments of the world” (T 1 B 37ae).

Trying to achieve happiness through external means is analogized to being in a desert. One can do anything they want in a desert but they cannot change its fundamental nature. Whatever you do, you can’t turn a desert into a lush oasis. Thus, according to the urtext, “the thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE” (T 1 B 37ae).

This endorses – obliquely because Helen and Bill had not finished thinking the material through – a mind/body duality (or body/soul, a semantic choice the early ACIM material flirted with). The overarching point – sex alone can’t make you happy – is fine, so long as it doesn’t move one in the direction of impossible physical ideals like expecting a chorus of angels to attend every orgasm or, at another extreme, abstaining from sex altogether.

The problem, as such, is never sex per se but rather the meaning and value one assigns to sex, which is what determines – and thus can shift – its purpose. If the goal of sex is to learn to bring forth love, then great. In that sense, sex can be a useful classroom. But if the goal is to celebrate the self and its apparent physical domain, well, that might net short-term bliss but it’s unlikely to facilitate the long-term change of mind the course aims to help us experience.

As I said, Helen and Bill were confused, too. Later, their shared writing project announces its intention to clarify its position on sex because it’s “an area the miracle worker MUST understand” (T 1 B 40b).

Sex was intended as an instrument for physical creation to enable Souls to embark on new chapters in their experience, and thus improve their record . . . The whole process was set up as a learning experience in gaining Grace (T 1 B 40d).

This is a spiritualized interpretation of a very conservative view of human sexuality, one that limits its function to biology.

The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It’s NOT truly pleasureable in itself. “Lead us not into Temptation” means “Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or to our brothers with ANYTHING external” (T 1 B 40f).

Thus, masturbation is a sin (or error) because “it involved a related type of self-delusion: namely, that pleasures WITHOUT relating can exist” (T 1 B 40g).

But this is silly on its face. Masturbation may take place in a solo context (and naturally may be included in consensual shared contexts) but it always involves the other. When we fantasize about someone, we are relating to them. In a nontrivial way, we are present to them and they to us. As the course points out,  “there are no private thoughts” (W-pI.19.2:3). On this view, masturbation is a natural and healthy expression of one’s sexual impulse.

The emphasis on procreation also restricts the natural range of sexual pleasure: oral sex, anal sex, cyber sex . . . None of that begets babies. Are we being indiscriminate when we give or receive a blowjob? Masturbate at a distance with the help of a phone?

Privileging the procreative impulse also raises important questions around birth control, the use of which is essential to women’s health, wellness and freedom. Are condoms an error? How about fertility treatments? How does abortion play into this?

The sex impulse IS a miracle impulse when it is in proper focus. One individual sees in aother the right partner for ‘procreating the stock . . . and for their joint establishment of a creative home. This does not involve fantasy at all. If I am asked to participate in the decision, the decision will be a Right one, too (T 1 B 41t).

On this view, the “right” view of sexuality – the one apparently endorsed by Jesus – is to a) perpetuate the species and b) make and live in creative homes and families.

But this is a narrow and heteronormative definition of family. It leaves aside folks who cannot procreate but would like to and folks who can procreate but choose not to. Critically, it also excludes gay folks. Indeed, the material emphasizes that that gay sex is inherently problematic.

. . . homosexuality is INHERENTLY (underlined) more risky (or error prone) than heterosexuality, but both can be undertaken on an equally false basis. The falseness of the basis is clear in the accompanying fantasies. Homosexuality ALWAYS involved misperceptions of the self OR the partner, and generally both (T 1 B 41ay).

So a couple of thoughts on this material.

First, as I pointed out earlier, it is quite conservative, hewing to a fairly traditional view of Christianity and family. While it may have been helpful to Helen and Bill (there are explicit personal references to their sexual fantasies, flirtations and desires in the material), its general applicability is obviously compromised.

Thus, I think there are good reasons it was excluded from later editions of A Course in Miracles that were intended for public consumption. I appreciate Helen and Bill’s desire to maintain a degree of privacy with respect to their own learning, and I think the overall conservative focus on sexuality reflects a judgment with respect to behavior that the overarching tenor of the course utterly rejects.

I asked at the outset of this post what are we missing if we do not read the urtext (or other earlier versions of A Course in Miracles), especially with regard to sex?

I submit a fair and reasonable answer is: not much. The ACIM urtext reflects a narrow, conservative and traditional Christian view of human sexuality, one that is confused about healthy sexual expression and should not be taken either literally or seriously.

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Sex and A Course in Miracles

This post has a related follow-up

The question of how one integrates sex and A Course in Miracles in their living matters. We have the form of sexual beings for whom sex is generative, both in terms of reproduction and happiness. But sex invokes the body on very specific terms which can present a conflict for folks who believe the course obligates them to deny or otherwise restrict their bodily existence.

Thus, much like the question of food and A Course in Miracles, sex brings to the fore our relationship with the body – both our own and the bodies of others. It asks us to clarify what the body is for but also, what is A Course in Miracles – and, by extension, spirituality generally – for?

Three principles underlie my thinking in this area.

1. It is natural to express our sexuality;

2. It is natural to experiment with the expression of our sexuality, especially as it relates to our spirituality; and

3. It is natural to change our mind.

These principles – especially the third – effectively guide this analysis. They function as suggestions that can modulate our thinking about sexuality (and the body more generally), allowing us to remember the peace and unity that together are the love that is our fundament.

That is, they remind us that sex is a natural expression of the body, and the body is a neutral expression of our self and can be a means by which to remember love, which is our inheritance, and not contingent on bodies.

Or, simpler yet, we are learners and our curriculum sometimes includes sex.

A Course in Miracles is largely silent about the role specific behavior plays in our practice. It does not mandate vegetarianism or celibacy. It does not tell us we can’t be police officers or work in the military or otherwise carry weapons. It does not obligate us to resist capitalism. You don’t have to wash your feet before doing the daily lesson. There are no uniforms or secret handshakes or passwords.

We aren’t obligated to resist or amend or restrain or modify our sexual appetites.

This is an important and often overlooked aspect of A Course in Miracles. The healing methods it teaches and the inner peace it contemplates do not happen at the level of the body. Their effects may appear at the level of the body but their enaction is at the level of mind. At that level, there is no division or separation, the realization of which is our liberation from suffering.

In this way, the course aims at what we might call clear seeing or thinking, which it characterizes as forgiveness. “Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation” (T-3.V.9:1). We come to peace around sex not because we are doing something particular with respect to sexuality, but because we understanding more clearly the relationship between being and sexuality. It is – like all other appetites the body has and which the world appears to either serve or not serve – a means by which to learn we are not separate from God (or love or nature).

This is another way of saying that when sexual relationships are seen as means by which to bring forth love, rather than a means by which to derive only physical pleasure or ego security, and when it is seen that in this way sex is not different from any other aspect of our living, then our ability to be loving – both in terms of accepting love and extending it – expands exponentially.

This expansion is our function as students of A Course in Miracles. Thus, sex fits neatly into the curriculum. But also, the curriculum does not suffer if sex is not included in it. Since the course meets the student where the student is, the student determines the scope and range of the curriculum (often without fully recognizing they are doing so). Thus we invoke Krishnamurti: be a vegetarian or don’t be a vegetarian, but get on with it.

Our goal is to be clear with ourselves about what we are and how sex relates to what we are. This means being honest about our desires, fears, guilt, lust, shame, boredom and overall confusion about our experience of embodiment and how that experience involves our brothers and sisters in various ways and to various degrees.

Honesty – especially when paired with patience and a willingness to be guided, rather than insisting on personal prerogative – allows that sexual expression will assume the form for us in which we are best able to bring forth love in our living and learning.

Indeed, the form will not be distinct from the love that is brought forth through it.

Our bodies are neutral (W-pII.294). They bring forth a world particular to their structure, and that world reinforces their structure. We have the form of human beings – mammalian bipeds for whom sexual union is both the means by which the species propagates, and a means by which we elicit joy, unity, ecstasy, and relief from stress. It is a means of communication, a sharing that can be deep or shallow. This is not a problem! This is not a fact that we have to do anything with. We simply have to give attention to it and learn what is there in it to learn.

But what does it mean to “give attention?” What does it mean in this context to “learn?”

In general, the gift of attention is a prayerful attention to what is happening, without trying to exclude anything or judge anything. Thus, we can ask: how does sex appear to us? Does it make us forget our calling to be patient and gentle and sensitive to others? Does it embarrass us? Shame us? Delight us? Who do we want? Who do we believe we should want? Who are we scared to want? How does this change? Who helps us understand it better?

By prayerful I mean inquiring into these questions in the presence of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, according to the meaning and value those terms have for you. Enter the quiet stillness of communion with God and raise to the light of inquiry the full welter of your sexuality. What do you see? What do you learn? Where do you see love, which is to say, where do you think the way God would think? And where do you see ego, which is to say, where do you think in ways contrary to God’s thoughts?

Note that in this context, “see” is synonymous with “intuit.” It is a felt process.

Of course, the answer to these questions is necessarily deeply personal. What works for me will not work for you, and vice-versa. This apparent differentiation is not a cause for alarm. It’s not a sign of spiritual compromise. We aren’t trying to achieve uniformity of sexual expression but rather of healing, and healing is not at the level of the body but of the mind. So long as bodies appear, differences will also appear and they will bring forth miracles – shifts in thought away from fear and towards love – accordingly.

The miracle excludes nothing – not even sex.

In my own living and thinking, generally speaking, it seems that sexual expression requires consensuality. That is, the parties with whom it is enacted should agree to be present to the enaction, agree with the form the enaction takes, and have an unqualified right to amend their choices with respect to the enaction.

Consent matters because it recognizes the freedom that inheres in our living: equality is our shared fundament. Therefore, we cannot take anything from another that is not freely given, and we cannot force the other into postures of giving they do not also choose.

Like most of the body’s appetites, sexuality does not happen in a vacuum. It evokes other bodies – both the one or ones with whom we are having a sexual relationship and others who are not present. The effects of sex, like the effects of living generally, are not merely local; they reach well beyond the site and moment of their enaction. Friends and family, past and future lovers, colleagues and pets, bodies of water and starlight are all touched, however subtly, by our sexuality and its varied expressions.

It is not unlike food. The decision to eat and shop locally has ramifications that radiate well beyond our kitchen and dining room. Being aware of these rippling effects is fundamental to the expression of love. It is no different with sex. When we assume forms of sexuality that are most suited to bringing forth love, all life goes with us. Hence the importance of going slowly, patiently, cooperatively, kindly . . .

This means that we are called to be aware of the inclination to insist on forms that secretly most appeal to us but perhaps do not fully encompass the broader community to which we are inevitably and naturally conjoined. I can choose to eat food that relies on chemicals which kill bees, but that does not make my choice loving. I can choose sexual relationships that jeopardize my marriage and family, but that does not make my choice a loving choice.

Naturally, the specific application of these principles varies for all of us, according to our learning. Over the course of our sexual lives, as our learning both deepens and simplifies, the application may shift, often in dramatic ways. New relationships appear, others fade. New desires arise, or old desires return. This is okay. It is more than okay. It is altogether consonant with our experience as learners, and as students of A Course in Miracles. It is all grist for the mill of attention, the working of which begets love.

Thus, in an important sense, ACIM may not affect our sexuality and its expressions at all. Making love might not change in the least when we become course students. Or it might change a little. And, yes, it might change a lot.

But as course students, we understand those changes as arising not because of sex but rather because our mind is healing with respect to our understanding of our unity with God and this has observable effects in form. The less meaning the separation has for us, the more our sexual relationships will soften and open and become natural conduits for an all-inclusive love, without our effort or intention.

The only rule A Course in Miracles observes for behavior is the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you (T-1.III.6:4). I am better off when you are better off, so making my living about your wellness naturally redounds to my own benefit.

In this sense, our sexuality and the way in which we enact in our worlds, is not really the point. We could as easily go for a walk or share a cup of tea or simply think happily about one another in the quiet before dawn. The form that love assumes is necessarily variable, be it sexual or otherwise, but love itself is not.

Giving attention inevitably shifts from form to content until eventually we realize that content is all there is, and all the content is love.

Thus, the guilt that often inheres in traditional Christianity around sex and sexuality, need not be manifest in our study and practice of A Course in Miracles. Love and do what you will, in quiet consultation with the Teacher of your choosing. Making love is neither more nor less important than anything else that we do. The work is to do it attentively, ever remembering that we are not separate from God or nature, and that love is forever our fundament.

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On the Inherent Responsiveness of Observers

To be an observer is to be responsive. We can understand our lives as a collective response to a world brought forth by the responsiveness of its observers. This is analogous to the principle in A Course in Miracles that “projection makes perception” (T-13.V.3:5), which gives rise to critical insight that “our function is to work together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all” (T-8.VI.8:4).

Say that we place a single volume A Course in Miracles on the table.

A says that it is the holiest of all holy scriptures.

B says it is a fraudulent text aimed at scamming folks who are primed to fall for New Age grift.

C observes the disagreement of A and B and laments that both miss the broader point that A Course in Miracles has value according to the context in which it is read and understood.

We are observer D, a step removed, watching A,B and C enact their disagreement.

What shall we say? How shall we describe our observation? How shall we respond, if at all, to A, B and C?

We are tempted in these situations to make the case for right or wrong (sound or unsound, kind or unkind, et cetera). We are rarely truly neutral. We are choosers by nature.

So we want to prove that A, B or C is right and the others wrong. As a slight variant, we might try to broker a settlement in the interest of social harmony. Everyone is a little bit right and also a little bit wrong.

Can we start, though, by seeing that all observers accept as valid what they observe as they observe it?

[Including you and I – writing and reading – this sentence?]

That is, whatever view of A Course in Miracles one personally holds, it is valid for them. That is why they hold it. If and when it is no longer valid, then they will hold a new view that is valid.

If we see this – that whatever view one holds one holds because it is valid – and if we see that it is also a fact of our own living – then we can no longer coherently take a side or, through brokering, create a new side and urge everyone to take it.

A, B and C are no longer a problem to be solved by our intelligence or magnanimity or spirituality. They are no longer objects to be managed by our superior emotional or aesthetic distance.

We are right in the middle of the whole thing with them, whether we like it or not and, importantly, whether we see it or not.

That which we consider valid may yet prove to be invalid, and we cannot say when or if this will happen, and it is for this reason that we are called to incorporate considerable epistemic humility into our living.

It is important to go very slowly when it comes to the experience of “knowing-beyond-a-doubt.” Certainty, as such, is often a warning sign, a call to soften and open, to enlarge (through welcome) the reflexive domain we presently notice we presently live.

Going slowly means being dialogic (in the Bohmian sense), which is to say, listening carefully, speaking honestly, and remaining open to the direction the dialogue takes, and what outcome, if any, it brings forth. We don’t insist or resist; we just give attention, as best we can.

To be dialogic is to be vulnerable, meek in the old Sermon on the Mount sense, that we might better perceive the world we live as we live it, as it is given both to and through us.

In this space, our commitment shifts from being “right” to being open, non-judgemental, sustainable, nurturing, patient, and slow. This is easier on us, and on those with whom we live. We are no longer playing a zero-sum game; we have changed the rules to make it non-zero-sum. We are cooperating rather than competing.

This works better than the alternative. This is, to borrow Bill Thetford’s phrase, the other way.

Of course, “open, non-judgemental, sustainable, nurturing, patient, and slow” are not traditional characteristics of our patriarchal culture, which values progress, achievement, zero-sum outcomes, bottom-line analysis, emphasis on cost-benefit, indifference to observer/observed divides and so forth.

It is not clear to me that these characteristics – the ones I associate with patriarchy – have a place in our living. The outcomes they produce – certain technologies in health care, say, or shelter, or conflict resolution techniques – can be produced in other paradigms. Clearly one can be grateful for, say, toilet paper and septic systems, but those progresses have come with a price and too often we are not willing to examine that price, and to ask if there are other, less pyschologically and socially onerous ways to bring forth improvements in our shared living.

I am seeing the wholeness – the holiness, even – of that is always another way, almost always a loving context in which to think and work and play and heal, and that living that other way is what it means to live in and as love.

We want to be happy, and can be happy, where happiness is not a temporary elevated emotional state, but rather a sustainable and durable state of equipoise and wellness that is natural and serious and does not arise as a personal accomplishment that excludes others.

Happiness arises – happens – as a sensitive, tender and attentive presence to our living as we live, and it includes the whole world of objects and processes that appear in our living as if they were our own self.

This is a natural way of being human that has been occluded in our awareness, somewhat the way the sun can be occluded by the moon. Our work is to shift the blocks – the moon, in this analogy – in order to allow the natural light of love to warm and illuminate and inspire (in a literal, not a religious, sense) our living.

This work is neither easy nor (at this juncture anyway) familiar. Yet it is deeply personal and necessarily collective. It is dialogic in the sense that it must be consensual and it must be mutual. Its effects are local and global and cosmic.

It is unromantic and non-dramatic, in the sense that it happens here and now and not in the presence of a robed priest or expert guru, and not at a special workshop in Ojai, and not in a circle of Bohm dialogue adherents, all of whom broadly agree with one another and share the same general appreciation of method and model.

Rather, the dialogue happens in our families and in our grocery stores and our passing one another on Main Street and all of that. It is the ordinary work of being human as being human arises where and as it arises. The peak experiences of summit and desert are not excluded but their primacy is devalued. We don’t live on the summits and in the deserts; we visit the summits and deserts.

What, then, does this mean for us with respect to the original question about A,B and C? How shall we, as D, respond to or engage with them?

Well, I do not have a specific answer. I do not have the answer. Obviously your answer would be different – subtly or otherwise – from my own. There are many roads, none of them royal.

Yet I will say that over time the answer for me has included the call to give attention in order to remember – to presently realize – that a) I am not a neutral observer but an involved observer; b) that I am not a privileged or special observer but an ordinary and equal observer; c) the viewpoint I presently hold is valid for me but may not be valid for me going forward; and d) this is true for all the ones I observe, each one of whom could be my own self.

In that light, a creative and just response – one that is premised on equality and inclusivity, and on not succumbing to the absolute right/absolute wrong binary – arises on its own. When it does, it is not my accomplishment, nor even ours collectively. It merely comes forth through us, as if the cosmos were grateful for a chance to remember itself yet again.

On Marianne Williamson for President 2020

I have been asked several times in recent weeks what I think of Marianne Williamson for President 2020. This post offers some thoughts on that, perhaps with more clarity than I’ve managed in person. Williamson’s political career and activism are a helpful model for thinking about A Course in Miracles, politics, social justice and advocating for effective change. I’m glad she’s running.

The conclusions I’ll reach – TL;DR, as the kids say – are as follows:

1. Marianne’s book A Return to Love was helpful at an early juncture of my study of A Course in Miracles, and I remain deeply grateful to her for it;

2. Williamson’s political activism raises important points about the nexus between acting in the world and ACIM principles of love, responsibility and inner peace. I think most students benefit from reflecting on her example (even if they reach different conclusions, which naturally happens); and

3. I haven’t decided who I will vote for in the Democratic primary, but I think Williamson deserves a careful look based on her values and commitment to peace and equality. The Democratic party and the country generally can do a lot worse than Marianne Williamson. I consider her candidacy valuable and nontrivial.

I. On Bodies and A Course in Miracles

It’s a common misconception of many ACIM students that the course prohibits or curtails our behavior to some degree. We shouldn’t eat meat, for example. Or be police officers who carry guns. Or seek and receive treatment for illness or injury. Doing so compromises our spiritual integrity.

One of these misconceptions is that we can’t be politically active. Liz Cronkhite, a public course teacher and writer, puts it this way in her book ACIM Mentor Articles:

Politics is about blaming an external person, group or situation for your pain. The idea that we are affected by external things is directly opposed to how the mind really works . . . The projector, not the projection, is what really needs to change (128).

I think this approach reflects confusion about bodies, A Course in Miracles and learning in at least two ways.

First, A Course in Miracles clearly contemplates active devotion to our sisters and brothers. The lessons and text invite us over and over to give attention to those who are not us.

The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. Devotion to a brother cannot set you back either. It can only lead to mutual progress (T-4.in.1:1-4).

Additional textual examples abound. Consider W-pI.157.5:1-2, T-2.V.A.18:2, T-29.III.4:1-2 and T-19.IV.A.4:10. We really cannot practice A Course in Miracles apart from tending our relationships with each other.

Indeed, Tara Singh has been the most helpful course teacher for me because of his gentle insistence that our course study is not merely intellectual or meditative but but also enacted. He places service at the heart of our embodied experience. So long as “one” and “another” appear, they are called to serve one another.

True service has life behind it. It is contact with the Christ within that responds to the Christ in others . . . Service is an action of heart to heart (The Joseph Plan of A Course in Miracles for the Lean Years 32).

There is no suggestion here that one has to be political in order to serve their sisters and brothers. But service to them in some form is not an option. It is in those relationships that we learn what it means to be an observer observing, and how what we observe observes us in turn. I have no argument with Liz’s overarching point about projection; but the learning clearly happens in these lives in this world.

The second way in which this overall dismissiveness of bodies and behaviors happens is – to use Liz’s example – that the decision not to participate in politics is itself a political decision. It’s not unlike the quandary folks have with food and A Course in Miracles: the decision to be vegan or vegetarian still leaves intact the body that needs nourishment to function. The decision to avoid politics still leaves politics as an externality to be accepted or rejected.

You are here. You are a you and you are situated in a culture. Things are happening. Wars are being fought. Capital is being distributed. Food is being shared. Rights are being defined. You are not separate from any of this. Even if you choose to merely observe from a still quiet distance, treating it all as an illusion, you have still made a choice.

Ultimately, we will learn that the body is wholly neutral (T-20.VII.4:4), and that its usefulness lies wholly in how we use it to learn that only love abides, and that knowledge of this abiding love arises in service to our sisters and brothers (M-12.5:4, 6). The body never disappears as such; rather, it is forgotten because its whole value is only reminding us of love.

Thus, A Course in Miracles is actually a course in making better choices that gradually enhance our identity with and as love, while minimizing the pain and discomfort associated with identifying as separate entities competing in zero-sum conflicts (e.g., T-7.VIII.7:3).

So given this experience of being a body in a world, why not use that body to the best good that body can imagine? If that means rejecting politics or sex or meat, great. If not, that’s great too. It doesn’t matter if the world is real or not real; what matters is the love we bring forth with, through and for one another.

You can even run for President . . .

II. On Reading Marianne Williamson

I don’t know Marianne Williamson personally, but if I ever met her I’d thank her, and my thanks would be heartfelt. When I was a few weeks into reading A Course in Miracles, and feeling somewhat confused and ready to discard it, I went to the library and the only book I could find about the course was Williamson’s A Return to Love. I read it, contextualized ACIM accordingly, and went on with my study.

Now, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, my view of the course soon changed (and changed and changed). I don’t read Williamson’s anymore. But its helpfulness to me at that early point was critical. Critical. Had A Return to Love not appeared in my experience of the course in the time and way that it did, it’s possible I would have turned away from the course altogether. And had I turned away from it, I might never have read Tara Singh whose teaching in time led me to David Bohm, Humberto Maturana, Louis Kauffman, Francisco Varela and others.

And given the helpfulness of those authors in teaching me how to be happy and helpful, it would have been a loss indeed.

Never minimize those folks whose slight nudges and directives strengthen your beginning. They matter. A lot.

Williamson ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California in 2014. She founded Project Angel Food, through which volunteers bring food to home-bounds folks with AIDS and other severe illnesses. She is a co-founder of The Peace Alliance. She has written and organized extensively for women’s rights, global poverty and food security.

Her commitment to social justice and equality has been a mainstay of her public presence for a long time. In a culture that can be overly shallow and trivially-focused, and where celebrities don’t have to do more than indulge their ego and its image, Marianne Williamson has been consistently thoughtful and responsible.

This doesn’t mean one has to agree with all of her proposals or positions. Naturally some folks will disagree. But Williamson clearly models our role as servants unto one another. We are here to bring forth love, according to the contexts in which we find ourselves.

For most of us, those contexts are our work lives, families and local communities. We don’t have substantive public personalities; we don’t have followers numbering in the millions. For example, my reach extends mostly to the classrooms where I teach part-time. What does service mean in that context? I understand it to mean an ongoing responsibility to be inclusive, honest, diligent, attentive and open-minded. I have to be the first learner.

Similarly, in the context of family and local community, I work to be a better listener – especially with women and folks whose cultural voices have been marginalized and dismissed. This is an ongoing education project for myself. I also work to alter my and my family’s patterns of consumption to better address threats to our shared ecosystem – growing and raising our own food, shopping at cooperatively-owned businesses, carpooling, biking when possible and so forth.

Obviously the scale of my influence is smaller than Williamson’s, but the principle is the same. Where do you find yourself? What needs to be done? Who needs your help? How will you know? How can you do better?

We are not separate from our experience of the world! A Course in Miracles exists as one means by which we might better understand the nature of the observer/observed divide, and what that means for the bringing forth of love.

I understand Marianne’s campaign in that capacity; it is, in that sense, coherent.

III. Voting for Marianne Williamson

A cynical view of Williams’ 2020 presidential candidacy is that she’s merely polishing and elevating her brand. She’s selling books. She doesn’t care about the world; she cares about Marianne.

That’s possible of course. But I think her record makes clear that she actually cares about making the world a better place for all people. Running for president advances that goal, either because she intends to win and/or because she hopes to influence the shape and scope of the national discourse through 2020.

So I’m glad she’s running. Her campaign represents a natural extension of her ongoing commitment to being a thoughtful and discerning voice in politics and social justice. We all benefit by thinking broadly and carefully about these issues, students of A Course in Miracles included.

Arguably, the best case against Williamson’s candidacy, is her relative lack of experience in the political realm. We want candidates who speak to our concerns and problems, but we also want candidates who have the requisite skill set to enact those policies in a two-party, bicameral, constitutional democracy of a vast country in which significant – sometimes polar – differences abound.

It’s true that politics is the domain of applied vision. I think that Marianne Williamson’s strength is her capacity to express a coherent vision of a just world founded on love, peace and inclusivity.

I think it’s an open question whether and how she would bring that vision into existence

Somebody might object that I’m basically expressing a preference for career politicians here, and that it’s career politicians who brought us decades of war in the Middle East, the near-collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008, voter disenfranchisement on a wide scale and so forth.

Those are good arguments! On the one hand, they mitigate for electing better career politicians (they do exist, contrary to public perception). On the other hand – the hand upon which Williamson’s Presidential hopes rest – you might want to vote for a newcomer whose fresh perspective can help create a more functional and responsive system.

I think reasonable people can opt for either of those positions.

IV. Marianne for President?

For me, the really interesting aspect of Williamson running for president is that it allows us to reflect on our own experience as spiritual people who study or have studied A Course in Miracles.

What is the nature of our relationship with our sisters and brothers? How do we help them? Hear them? Support them? How does that study relate to the course?

There is no one answer to that question. And the answer we come up with today might well change in a year or ten. Inquiry is never terminal!

But I do think that Marianne Williamson’s approach to service and activism makes clear why answering the question matters. That is, the specific answer is less critical than our willed and applied engagement. She’s running for President; I’m teaching and gardening. You’re doing something else.

The point is what are we doing and how does it relate to the bringing forth of love in our shared living?

I am grateful to and for Marianne Williamson. I respect and admire her work ethic, integrity and teaching. I look forward to her campaign in 2020. It offers yet another chance to choose love again.

The Absence Of Love Means Only That We Are Not Present

When we ask for love, we implictly acknowledge that the conditions we specify as loving are not present. But since love cannot be absent, as it is our fundament, “not present” means that we are not fully or properly in attendance.

So the problem is not an external lack – circumstances not aligning in the right way – but rather an internal misdirection of attention, for which we are responsible.

The problem is never the world or the other but rather what we are doing with our attention. If we are unhappy – if we are feeling unloved or unloving – it is because we are giving attention to our expectations, desires and preferences and asking others to exist according to them. They cannot do this, which leaves us disappointed, which we denote as the absence of love.

But love is our responsibility; not anybody else’s.

So the solution to this problem is to realize through attention that when we insist on seeing others through the lens of our projected expectations, desires and preferences, we are injuring their self and our self. Naturally we feel those effects as unloving.

Expectations, desires and preferences arise naturally according to our structure as human beings; they are not themselves the problem. It is only when we project them and pretend their validity applies to all people, places and things that they become problematic, making us – and likely others – unhappy.

We don’t need to “fix” our expectations, preferences and desires. We need to become aware of how we project – or disown – them. We have to give attention to them.

One cannot intentionally undo projection. Projection happens naturally enough. To try and stop projecting is to project responsibility for stopping projection onto a projected self. All one can do is see that projecting is happening, and then see what happens as a consequence of that seeing.

Seeing that we are projecting is usually – at least briefly – the end of projection. But the end of projecting entails responsibility for our expectation, desires and preferences – not to mention the guilt and fear underlying them – that instigate projection in the first place.

So there is often a brief intermission, which is confusing and often painful to one degree or another, and then projecting begins again.

It is actually quite difficult to just sit with oneself in a natural way – a way that is not religious or formal or otherwise explicitly therapeutic. To not do anything goal-oriented – not count one’s breaths, not talk to Jesus, not pray a rosary, not catalog past errors and future goals, not compose tweets for later . . .

Mentally, we have grown deeply unaccustomed to this sort of simplicity. To literally doing nothing. Our bodies can readily do it – they are actually incredibly skillful at it – but our minds will no longer allow it.

So that is an old way of being human that still works, that we literally still long to bring forth – to sit quietly and give attention, doing nothing in particular (not even “give attention, doing nothing in particular”). It is actually not old because it remains perfectly accessible and viable. But it appears old because it is no longer familiar; we have sent it away, in a sense, and so we need to invite it back and make it welcome.

But again, putting it that way – “sent it away,” “invite it back,” “make it welcome” – is too intellectual. It is too poetic. We can’t actually send living lovingly away, we can only ignore its ongoing presence. We can only pretend we know better than the ancients and our ancestors. We can only pretend that we are separate from our bodies, and know better than they do.

Of course in a lot of ways, we do know better. Time has passed, bringing with it many boons. I am grateful for penicillin, toilet paper, septic systems, soap, twelve-string guitars, printing presses and so forth. Not all technology is bad, not by a long shot.

But also, we remain alienated from one another, and from ourselves, and we are vulnerable to manipulation, and we are confused about love. We waste a lot of time, energy and other resources trying to fix a problem that runs in significant part on our commitment to trying to fix it.

When I say “give attention,” all I mean is to just be quiet and easy with what is going on. Treat experience as a toddler of whom you are deeply protective of, highly amused by and also whose moods and feelings are not to be taken literally. Notice experience and notice your noticing and notice what happens as a result. Exclude nothing and include nothing. What’s here is what’s here; it changes and shifts less than you think.

So is this our spiritual answer? Is this the method to end all methods? Giving attention?

I think that is an unhelpful question because it perpetuates the illusion that there is anything external which can serve as the end-all/be-all – whether it’s God, psychotherapy, a certain lover, giving attention or science.

Life as we live it just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t actually break into parts, it just seems to.

When we give attention in a gentle sustained way, things do happen. We project less. We become responsible, and response-able. After some early conflagration of discomfort, this responsibility and response-ability makes us happy, and since happiness begets happiness, we notice others being happy, too. In happiness, the original “problem” ceases to exist, and so “solutions” cease to exist as well.

It is only on the far side of joy that seeking joy makes any sense, and when we see clearly – and experience deeply – the joy-that-never-leaves, then seeking too dissolves.