Freedom is Always Relational

It seems as we look into our experience of living that we are free to adopt various means of looking into our experience of living, each of which may provide a slightly different perspective of and thus experience of living.

That is to say, the way we look at our living affects our living which affects the way we look at our living. It is circular. But it is not a vicious circle – one that traps us, like “I am a liar,” where if it’s true it’s false but if it’s false then it’s true.

Rather, it is – to borrow Francisco Varela’s turn-of-phrase – a creative circle, one that deepens and extends itself by including (rather than excluding or occluding) more and more – eventually all, if such a thing is possible – of the cosmos.

Thus, the self-referential self can learn about Buddhism and socialism, it can adopt veganism or celibacy, it can learn to play cello or run a marathon, it can go to therapy or read R.D. Laing . . . All of these apparent activities enlarge and expand the fundamental self-reference and recursion that is always underway and always underlies – and incorporates and expands – self-experience.

To put this somewhat more abstractly, or perhaps just differently, we are observers and our observation is free. It can assume different forms, pick and choose among a priori assumptions, study and amend itself, treat itself to chemical alteration through drugs, fasting, meditation, ritual. Doing so changes it and its observation.

In this way and for these reasons, a fundamental freedom underlies our experience as human observers. Realization of this freedom evokes an ethics of responsibility. Since we construct our worlds and selves, then the world and the self we construct is our responsibility.

This is less onerous than it seems. Love is natural; what is not love is love-obstructed or love-inhibited or love-denied, at either cultural or individual levels. The work is not to invent love or replace love but rather to undo the blocks which prohibit its natural extension (this reflects a natural understanding of a core principle of A Course in Miracles).

Thus, we are not called to be Buddhists but to allow others to be Buddhists. We are not called to learn to play the cello but to allow others to play the cello. Naturally, this allowance is mutual, which means that if we want to be Buddhist or cellists we can be – but not as an assertion of a personal right. Rather, it happens as a gift or blessing from the collective, the all-of-us. They – the other(s) – allow us to be Buddhists or cellists (or Buddhist cellists).

This is what it means to be free. Freedom is always relational, and what we give to others is what they can and do give to us. This is not complicated. But what obscures it can be – and often appears to be – complicated indeed. One can become obsessed with untangling the various semantic and cultural forms that obstruct love, often without seeming to obstruct it, and often while explicitly declaring they are not obstructing it.

Love is what arises naturally, and what extends itself naturally, and one merely has to notice this. It effectuates itself; it is not our job to do it. Our job, so to speak, is simply to notice it happening and, as much as possible, not get in the way (by insisting that Buddhists are better than Christians, or more spiritually mature than Zoroastrianists, or that cellos are superior to electric guitars, or that Beethoven beats Chopin but nobody beats Mozart et cetera).

This “job” can seem quite abstract. It is tempting to merely talk about love, and to describe love, and to profess one’s love for love, and so forth. It is tempting to do that because it is easier than actually loving! In order to bring love forth, it is helpful to become clear on who and what we are – and who and what the self is, which is also to answer who an what the other is, and the collective, and the many worlds we bring forth, et cetera.

Hence the importance of giving attention to self-reference, and becoming clear on how it functions. This is not a spiritual quest but a human one that can be cast in spiritual terms, if that is helpful.

Regardless of how one frames it, it is the work we have to do if we are going to establish the primacy and maximize or optimize the free expression of love as our fundament. What this means in practice is what Francisco Varela suggested was a possible human Utopia.

If everybody would agree that their current reality is a reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everybody on the planet . . .

The center of any such meta-agreement – and the ground of our ability to see that reality is always “a” reality and not “the” reality – is the question of self-reference. Varela called it “the nerve of this logic of paradise.”

I find this characterization – because it hints at spirituality without toppling in headfirst – helpful. The self is an illusion but it’s no good saying so; we have to see it, and then, having seen it, integrate it into our ongoing experience. Doing so is hard to varying degrees but peace and joy – ours and everyone else’s – is contingent on it. Why wait?

Lenten Writing: Remembering Unity

Yet this writing – which is thinking out loud – implies a division between praxis and study, which negates – or occludes, maybe – their unity, which is actually how they are given.

It is not sufficient to say that study is praxical and praxis studious. That reflects a distinction subsequent to their appearance which is always undivided.

For example, we typically don’t look at a river and its banks as a unity. We see river or banks. Yet absent one, the other cannot exist. The shape of one is the shape of the other. Given attention, their mutuality eventually blurs. Unity emerges. But it is the unity that was always there.

What other praxis is there but to give attention to all our living in order that the many instances of mutuality might blur and oneness appear? Or reappear maybe, slowly but resolutely, like the horses some mornings when they come up from the far end of the pasture hidden in mist. Their heavy footfall first, then faint outlines as if the mist were assuming equine form, and then the horses themselves, the mist falling away into the background.

We do not discover the world. We do not detect it. The world arises with us: we bring it forth, including the body whose senses bring it forth, whose senses coagulate around certain forms of lexical identity (I, we, you, Sean . . . ). All of this is given; all of this just appears. However we describe it – or explain it, if we can – our description and explanation are momentary, always eclipsed by the ongoing giving.

Husserl indicated the possibility of an “absolute radicalism” which for him implied one’s submission to a decision “which will make of one’s life an absolutely devoted life.”

This is a decision through which the subject becomes self-determining, and even rigourously so – to the very depths of his personality – committed to what is best in itself in the universal realm of intellectual values and committed, for his entire life-time, to the idea of the supreme Good . . . the subject chooses [supreme knowledge] as his veritable ‘vocation’, for which he decides and is decided once for all, to which he is absolutely devoted as a practical ego.

We give attention, perceiving the distinctions of thought and language arising, and we bracket them in order to attend the ongoing givenness of the world. It becomes our practice, our praxis, and our experience enlarges and intensifies, as if to indicate not a finite self removed from the cosmos in order to observe some sliver, but the cosmos itself in grand continuous and luminous self-regard.

This is a new way of being, this attentiveness which has no primary subject or object, but is bent only on encountering itself over and over in the ecstatic spilling of living as love. It negates nothing – not the errors that kept it from awareness once upon a time and not the stories that would slip the brackets and throw reins on a wild throat. It is light itself, love itself, the ordinary transforming itself into All.

I say (for it is not precisely what Husserl says, nor what the many Husserlian interpreters whose insight and clarity exceed my own by many factors say) give attention to the unity that is never not giving itself to you in the very form of the living that your living assumes.

Anyway, that is a way of thinking about it, for one who is tired after a long day of teaching and reading, and who wants to think about it, on this, the third day of Lent, 2019.

Lenten Writing: Praxis as Application

In a sense, praxis has to do with the exercise – with the application – of ethics and morals. Through study we develop an intuitive sense of what is good and just, what is most likely to defuse conflict and elevate the collective, the all-of-us, rather than only the individual. Through praxis we seek means by which to bring these ideals to real fruition.

“Real fruition” is a problematic phrase, though. What is unreal? For that matter, what is real?

Let’s say that I reach a conclusion that A is better of when B is better off. In general, this does strike me as practically unassailable wisdom. A world in which all people made this their singular ideal when choosing how to act would be happy, peaceful and creative. I would like to live in that world; I believe it is worth my effort and attention to try and bring that world forth.

If I simply go about my living meditating on the satisfaction of a scholarship that arrived soundly at “A is better off when B is better off” and I don’t make a deliberate effort to bring it into application, and to help others bring it into application, is that enough?

If I only say “A is better off when B is better off” but then vote for local policies which ensure B will not be better off, or treat my students differently than I would like to be treated, or treat my wife or children in ways that I would not consent to be treated . . .

I think that is incoherent.

So we could say that “what is real” is what allows for a sense of coherence in our experience. The theory, as such, has an embodied correlative. Whatever the world is, it is that in and through which theory is enacted.

A sage ACIM student – a generation older than me, who had broken bread with Tara Singh and Ken Wapnick and who studied as well with Krishnamurti – years ago ended a sustained dialogue with me because I would not renounce Tara Singh’s use of the word “application.”

That is, Tara Singh often emphasized the importance of bringing our study of ACIM into application. He developed the Joseph Plan of A Course in Miracles for the Lean Years; he literally fed the poor as a staple of his ACIM practice. This meant a lot to me; it resonated deeply and in a sustained way with my longstanding interests in the Catholic Worker and other radical approaches to hospitality, peace-making, dialogue and learning.

My friend believed – and his point was not without merit, not at all – that Singh had been confused and never found a way out of his confusion. Service unto others sounds good but it was actually a distraction from the radical nondualism A Course in Miracles envisioned. One doesn’t apply anything because the world is not real and neither is the self.

But I suggest – carefully, hopefully respectfully – that real and unreal are an unhelpful binary and that the world is merely what appears, and that within that world response also appears, and these appearances and responses are structured and lawful, and so in that experiential matrix, it can be practical and helpful to think in terms of “application.”

Maybe.

I suggest that praxis – integrated with devout study, arising from and informing that study in turn – is not only possible but necessary. That it cannot be separated from the appearing and responding but is part and parcel – warp and woof  – of the welter.

My old friend said, “Sean, you have a lot to learn.” Nothing since suggests that he was wrong.

But of course all of this is simply prattling about praxis, rather than being praxical, and so does not answer the fundamental question: how shall I bring forth love today?

This was written on the second day of Lent, 2019.

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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