Sean Reagan

Letting Happiness be Our Spiritual Teacher

Stability and durability are user-generated illusions that are helpful. They facilitate happiness and happiness – like attention – can be our spiritual teacher if we want.

What do I mean when I say that “stability and durability are user-generated illusions that are helpful?”

young_zucchini — the zucchini are coming in . . .

Well, I don’t perceive the back stairs as clouds of atoms which are mostly empty space in which electrons swarm. Rather, I perceive and otherwise experience them as solid wooden beams nailed to a wooden frame. Doing so is functional. I’d never get in and out of the house if I experienced nothing but clouds of atoms and swarms of electrons.

In a similar way, a lightening bolt’s existence seems very short – a mere blip in the long span of a human life. Yet that human life barely measures against the expansive duration of, say, a star.

What appears stable and durable from one perspective does not appear so from another.

That is why we say that stability and durability are a matter of perception inhering in an observer and working for that observer. The observer’s perception constructs a world in which that observer enacts their living. Thus, there are as many worlds as there are observers.

The comparisons humans make (to suns and lightning bolts, say, or to floorboards and atoms), and the conclusions we draw from these comparisons (usually some variation of “our world is the one true world”), tend to confuse the fundamental issue that everything is a process. Even the observer who is observing the various changes is a process.

But so what? What good is knowing all that? We still have to figure out how to be kind to people who are not kind to us. We still have to figure out how to share resources with other living creatures, including other humans (especially those who don’t look like us or think differently from us et cetera). We still have to deal with our confusion and unhappiness nudging us toward clarity and joy, as if clarity and joy were ideals. We still have to deal with ideals.

For me – which explicitly means not for you, though my experience may be helpful in the context of your own, and vice-versa – dialing down the drama of these issues and questions has been helpful.

I don’t need to solve fundamental problems of the cosmos – what banged and where it banged and what happens when it all runs down, if in fact it does. I don’t need to untangle the metaphysical and theological bracken of the past few millenia.

I find those issues fun and interesting – they have a place – but the pressure to do more than merely give attention to them has abated considerably.

No, what I need is to be patient, generous, forgiving, nurturing, humble, diligent, just, fair – in a word, loving.

So the question is fundamental and clear: what helps me be more loving?

grape_arbor — sitting in the shade of the grape arbor

That is the only question that matters anymore, and everything that appears – from A Course in Miracles to baking bread to legal weed to swimming in the brook to teaching research and writing to making love – is evaluated accordingly.

The answer is basically this: If it’s for love, then use it and share it. If it’s not for love, then set it aside.

And here’s a fact I am only just beginning to see in a deep sustainable way: everything, without exception, is for love.

I certainly don’t think that the answer to all our problems lies in emulating first century Christian communities, but I do think it’s worth reflecting on how they understood love (in the wake of Jesus): shared wealth, commensality (eating together), all property held in common, service to the poor, non-participation with evil, pacifism and so forth.

And I agree with Tara Singh that “in service there is holiness that takes away loneliness and depression.”

We have to rise to a state of right-mindedness to extend the compassionate nature of Mother Earth with her flowing rivers blessed by rain. Right-mindedness knows nothing of the duality of loss and gain, success and failure. It identifies only with the abundance of goodness (The Joseph Plan of A Course in Miracles for the Lean Years 17).

That is, by giving our lives to our brothers and sisters, we are made whole. Giving love is the way to receive love. And the giving varies according to the observer, because the world that needs love varies according to observer.

Thus, I march to protest the mistreatment of women and immigrant families. I teach from texts that explore what it means to be a peaceful, thoughtful, responsible human being in community with other beings, including plant, mineral and animal. We grow our own vegetables and fruit, raise our own meat, and work closely with local farmers and gardeners to make up the balance through barter, potlach and local non-corporate sales. We join and patronize cooperatives as much as possible. We try to reduce and reuse and repurpose with an eye ever on sustainability.

I am learning to “lean out” of the commons as a white man in order to make space for women and people of color to assume leadership roles and guide the creation of a more just and loving world.

In dialogue I try to listen. In writing, I try to keep it simple and honest.

I have a lot to learn, and to unlearn.

These are all actions that feel important because they place the radical equality of all life at the center of our civic and communal and private life. They aim to sustain local agriculture and business practices which help ensure food safety for all of us. They actively redress present and historical patterns of violence and repression. They dislocate the discrete self, expanding the apparent center so that it is more inclusive, and thus more creative and fertile and sustainable

I take literally these maxims of Heinz von Foerster: “A is better off when B and better off” and “Always act so as to increase choice.”

In light of all this, “awakening” as such is not a personal event but rather remembering the shared awareness of the vitality of love as a ongoing process in which we are all included without condition or qualification and through which our living as discrete entities is transcended and undone.

That is a mouthful! But if it sounds fancy or unduly mystical, it’s not. It looks and feels like what it looks and feels like when you are deeply happy and maximally helpful. Critically, you already know this. It is already your experience.

Happiness and helpfulness naturally intersect, reinforcing and infusing one another. We call this mutuality “love.”

greek_coffee — Greek coffee – in a lovely mug somebody was throwing away – a bittersweet delight at dusk . . .

I want you to be happy. The best I can do to this end is to act in ways that leave us both better off, and that optimize your ability to act in ways that leave us all better off. Since the “whole” and the “future” are cognitively closed to human observers, we are left with doing the best we can with what is given to us. It’s not a mystery; the love you need is the love you have to give, and the love you have to give is the precise love the world is – right now – asking you to share.

So we give attention, and we give love, and we try to stay open to the love that others give. We know we are doing it right when we are happy. Happiness is a great teacher, well worth following.

Accepting Uncertainty: Practicing ACIM Lesson 61

I want to make an observation related to Lesson 61 of A Course in Miracles. It has to do with the question of the extent to which understanding the course intellectually matters to our practice. I think this lesson is one of the times when the course implicitly suggests that intellectual grasp isn’t so important, that accepting a degree of uncertainty is actually helpful.

Lesson 61 is one of those grandiose moments A Course in Miracles frequently offers its readers. “I am the light of the world.” For a lot of us, we just run with that language because saying it feels good. In course parlance, the ego loves that phrase. “You’re damn right I’m the light of the world. I’m the brightest light there is.”

back_porch_railing — rocks scavenged from the brook past the horses, drying on the back porch railing

I do that too, of course. I’m not preaching from some rarefied altar here. It feels good to think about myself as the light of the world. I become very patient and generous and gentle when I think of myself that way. I sort of imagine myself as a cool contemporary Jesus shining his light hither and yon, a New England Christ with horses and pigs and a garden.

We all have some variation of that grandiosity happening in our minds. The problem isn’t that it’s happening, it’s that we don’t notice it’s happening. It can be very subtle. If we aren’t attentive and vigilant, the ego will slip right in under the guise of holiness and appropriate literally everything to serve its own ends. We think we’re too spiritual or psychologically evolved to fall prey to it but that kind of unfounded confidence is the ego.

So Lesson 61 feels like a big ego trap, because its essence is exactly the sort of big idea our ego loves to take for a spin. The key to noticing this happening is the good feeling it gives us, and the subtle way that we interpret “feeling good” as spiritual. It’s helpful to notice that happening and then question it. How sure are we that we really and truly know what’s going on here?

The thing is, that level of “feeling good,” and the positive effects that flow from it – gentleness, patience, generosity, et cetera – , are temporary and not very durable. They’re temporary because they pass. And they’re not durable because, in addition to being temporary, they get rattled far too easily. Somebody’s mean or needy or an unexpected demand is made on my time and . . . bam! So long light of the world. Hello darkness, my old friend (to quote an old and dear guide).

In Lesson 61 the course is pointing to something that does not pass and cannot be rattled or undone and so delivers a lasting and sustainable peace and happiness.

But in order to begin to get all that, we have to get out of the way. We have to perceive the ego’s move to take over our experience of Lesson 61 and actually actively stop it.

The course actually warns us that the ego is going to make this kind of move. It says that the phrase “I am the light of the world” is a simple statement about what we are and not “a statement of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception.”

It does not describe the self-concept you have made. It does not refer to any of the characteristics with which you have endowed your idols (W-pI.61.1:3-5).

Those qualifications are incredibly important. That’s why they’re right there at the beginning of the lesson. They are flashing yellow lights telling us to slow down and check ourselves, to see where our attention is, to make sure we’re not getting carried away with delusions of ourselves as worldly saviors whose holiness elevates use above the hoi polloi.

One way to do that in our practice of A Course in Miracles is to read the text and workbook closely, and really inquire as to our understanding. This is not a paradox! I am not suggesting that intellectual understanding trumps practice. I am simply suggesting that close reading is a way of staying close to the course. I am saying this proximity ultimately strengthens and enriches our experience as learners.

clearing — Opening a little space for the horses, shade into which to extend their pasture, and trails on which to wander . . . an ongoing project, a kind of therapy, a meeting place of minds . . .

For examples, in those sentences I just cited (W-pI.61.1:3-5), the course is asking if we are truly clear about the distinction between self and self-concept. Are you?

It asks if we are clear-eyed about our idols and the qualities by which we make them our idols – the historical Jesus, the westernized Buddha, the affluence and influence of Eckhart Tolle and other contemporary spiritual teachers. Are you?

For most of us, the answer is some variation of “not really.” Sometimes we’re clear and sometimes we’re fuzzy. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t. That’s why we’re here – working our way through learning what it means to be one-without-another et cetera.

Thus, when we do this lesson, it is actually not a bad idea to do it with uncertainty. Just be in the space of not fully understanding what it means to be “the light of world.” Be in the space of knowing how easily and frequently we turn this sort of thing into a hymn to our specialness. Be confused and unskilled. Be a beginner.

And then see what happens, right? Just see what happens. Do what the lesson asks, trying mightily to be honest and stay out of the way. You might imagine Jesus saying, “yes, yes – that’s it – get to where you don’t know anything and see what happens.”

What happens?

sideyard_chairs — a little space in the side yard to write, to sit quietly, to stargaze at night, to drink coffee when the sun rises

I don’t know what happens for you, other than that as you look closely at what obscures the light of the world in you, the more clearly that light will shine. We don’t need to do anything other than look at the impediments. The light is there; you don’t have to find it, turn it on, replace the bulb or anything.

You just need to look at what makes looking hard, and then let what happens happen. And things will happen! And, generally speaking, they will be things that make you happy in the sense of being gentle and peaceful in sustainable ways, and in touch with a sense of meaning to your life that cannot be shaken.

Giving Attention to Nonduality

If we study nonduality – through the lens of A Course in Miracles, say – because we believe it’s right or true, or more right and more true than some other spiritual concept – then we are likely to end up disappointed. Nondual spiritual practice may be helpful according to the context in which we find ourselves, and that helpfulness may appear to be “right” and “true” (indeed, it sort of has to appear that way) but it’s still just an appearance.

I am saying something like this: there are many ways to get to Boston, and no one of them is “right” or “true.” They all work and are all helpful according to the one making use of them. Some people walk; some take a bus. Some people need maps, some are okay with trial and error.

You want to find the way that is most helpful in terms of getting you to Boston.

You don’t want confuse the way that is most effective for you with the “best” or “most right” or “truest” way. You want to be wary of defending your preferred way, of trying to force it on others, or of otherwise judging others’ choices. That’s a distraction that either slows you considerably or sends you down some pretty gnarly side roads that eventually dead-end.

And you really really don’t want to confuse your “way” with “Boston” itself. That delusion can mess one up for lifetimes, apparently.

The Boston analogy can be confusing because in fact our authentic spiritual practice – if one wants to call it that – isn’t actually leading us anywhere. It’s more in the nature of spit-polishing the window we already are and, in the process, reminding us that we are, in fact, windows – not landscapes, not houses, not dwellers in houses nor walkers through landscapes.

I first saw this in a clear and sustainable way in Cambridge, Massachusetts last year. There were several glimpses before but they were dramatic and self-inflating. They felt like special moments that belonged to me and nobody else. I was elated, enlightened, amazed, with the focus ever on the “I” to whom the experience seemed to be happening.

(That, by the way, is a variation of confusing one’s mode of travel for the destination).

In Cambridge I saw that the self isn’t really a discrete stable object but is more akin to (but not precisely being) an information loop – many such loops, actually, seamlessly intersecting – and that those loops extend through the body into the world (and its other bodies), the whole of which is also comprised of loops, all shimmering, unified and radically equal – and that this loopiness (which I have most effectively described as eddies in a brook), this oneness, appears simply as this life of this human observer: it is this. This this.

By “clear” I mean that intellectual understanding was integrated with embodied awareness. There wasn’t an “understanding” of “something out there.” The something and the understanding were patterns in the same sea. The separation of physical / spiritual disintegrated (the one not privileging the other). You could say – adopting a Christian or ACIM motif – that Heaven wasn’t elsewhere, temporally or spatially. It was simply this. And it still is this.

And by “sustainable” I mean that the insight didn’t disappear after a few minutes. It didn’t run down the drain of the ego. It was more like riding a bike. At first you only get the thrill of balancing for a few yards here and there. It’s wobbly and frustrating. But then all of a sudden the whole experience comes together and you are riding a bike. And you can’t ever go back to not being able to ride again.

Often, in A Course in Miracles discussion groups and similar dialogue circles, folks will talk about how the body and the world are illusory. There is textual support for this position, of course (e.g., W-pI.132.6:2; W-pI.199.8:7-8). It has a certain appeal; it probably always will.

But it is more accurate to say that our relationship with the body and the world is illusory. The body, as such, isn’t so important. Nor is the world. It’s our identification and alliance with them as something fundamental that matters. That’s where the confusion – and the illusion – lie.

The body is more like a pair of glasses than vision or eyes. It helps see but it doesn’t bring seer, sight or seen into existence. And the world is more like a user interface than an actual external environment. It’s useful, not truthful.

If we pretend the world and the body are illusions – like mirages or a stage magician sawing somebody’s legs off – then we are deceiving our self. The body and the world are very practical and have their place. Don’t worry so much about bodies. They actually take care of themselves very nicely. Same with the world. Let it show you what it was made to show you, in the very way that it shows you.

That said, it is helpful to investigate – by whatever means are most resonant and helpful – the apparent discrete self. Who are you? What are you? These are nontrivial questions that underlie the whole religious/spiritual program that human observers have been working on for thousands and thousands of years now. There are lots of helpful curriculums and teachers, new and old. And somewhere out there are students and teachers who need your presence and insight.

For me, after Cambridge, the work was simply to keep reading and thinking and sharing about all this material, and to see what happens. I am not so concerned about the outcome of the work, per se. Strictly speaking, there are no outcomes. Just loops – loopiness – coming and going. I use the phrase “give attention” to describe what I loosely think of as a spiritual practice. There are no secrets and no mysteries, which is not to say that there’s nothing to learn. Or to remember. But the stakes are not at all what we feared they were.

Loving God Means Loving Others

I am moved by these lines from Matthew’s Gospel:

You shall love God with all your heart,
all your soul and all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment.

The second commandment is like it:
You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.

On these two commandments
depend the whole Law
and the Prophets.

An equivalence is established here: loving God and loving one another are not functionally separate. You cannot meaningfully have one without the other.

strawberries — our strawberry beds are rich this year . . .

How shall we think about this? How shall we bring it forth in our living?

Often we are tempted to go into the question of what is God and is there actually a God and so on. Are the gospels objectively true? Is A Course in Miracles really the work of the historical Jesus?

These are fun and interesting questions, and have their place accordingly, but if our goal is inner peace and the joyful extension of love in community, then analysis that has as its goal being right or wrong about deities and their scriptures is mostly a distraction.

Really what I am saying here is that practicing the second commandment (love your neighbor) makes analyzing the first one (love God) superfluous, save as an academic exercise. Because while you might be unclear about what or where God is, or how to be in communication with God, you are not unclear about what or where your brother or sister is, or how to be in communication with them.

And, if you are honest in your inquiry, you are not unclear about what it means to love them.

So one can understand these lines from Matthew’s Gospel as a gentle suggestion to move beyond the merely intellectual or ideal and into the messy domain of consensually loving one another other.

Of course we will disagree with one another. Of course there will be relationships or situations from which we must distance ourselves. But disagreement and distance are not opposite to love.

For example, loving my racist brother does not require me to go to a white supremacy rally with him. Indeed, loving that brother requires me not to attend that rally and, within the context of our shared space of dialogue, to try to persuade him not to go.

This is love because it sees my brother not as a lesser being because of his racism but as a confused being who can become clear and loving in his own right, and has as its goal facilitating that clarity and lovingkindness.

It is a truly a fine line but it is manifestly possible to walk it, both alone and with others. If you are curious what this walking looks like, consult Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

fallen_apple_tree_blossoms — fallen apple tree embraced by blossoming wildflowers

In a similar way, loving an abusive husband or father does not require that one remain in the physical space where the abuse happens. Indeed, it requires removing oneself and others from that situation. And it requires holding the one who is violent accountable – civilly, criminally, spiritually – for their actions.

If I am aware of abuse or violence, then my first priority in love is to help those who directly suffer the violence find safety and otherwise facilitate accountability. My second priority is to help the one enacting the violence. But note that “help” in that context means making unambiguously clear (in the shared space of dialogue) that violence cannot be an effective or sustainable solution to any problem. There is another, better, way.

So we make amends, learn the better way and then bring it forth in our own living. If you are curious what this sort of forgiveness (of those who are violent and oppressive) resembles in practice, consult any decent biography of Nelson Mandela.

As these examples make clear, love is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. In application it is often frustrated, blocked, and otherwise attacked. But also, to be loving in this way is very much in our nature. It is in that sense given. And, as A Course in Miracles points out, a true gift must include the means by which to bring it to fruition. God, as such, does not just hand out seeds but also soil and water and sunlight.

In “Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception,” Heinz von Foerster pointed out that “A is better off when B is better off.” If there is one pie between the two of us, we are better off when we share it. This is true in our families, friendships, and larger communities. It always applies.

We can observe this principle in any aspect of our life – our family, our classroom, our work space, our zendo, our town, our country. Its natural corollary – or foundation, perhaps – is the Golden Rule which is isomorphic to all human cultures and practices. Treat others as you would like to be treated. I cannot lift you without lifting myself, and vice-versa.

We are very much together and not separate.

So if we are curious what it means to love, it means to ensure the mutual well-being of all of us. And “all of us” should not exclude maples trees and salamanders and blue whales and oceans. We are very much together. We are not separate.

This may not be difficult conceptually. But it is quite difficult to bring into application, and so sometimes we invent conceptual difficulties as a distraction.

For example, it is easier to get into a debate about the existence of God than to love someone whose actions – separating children from their parents at the border, for example – grievously offends us and necessitates in our living a loving response. It is always easier to condemn and let the condemnation be the sum total of our response, than to condemn and go on loving.

brook_flowing_east — the brook behind our home flowing east

Loving people who appear unlovable is not easy, especially because love is a process not a discrete event. It’s “hiking” not “the hike.” So all the time in all our living we have to figure out how to engage in this process of love which – in addition to being natural, wonderful, inspiring, et cetera – is messy, confusing, discouraging, et cetera.

This is what it means to be student of A Course in Miracles specifically, or a Christian more generally, because this is what it means to be a human observer in the world. Loving notwithstanding is what it means to live. We commit to bringing forth love in our living, and doing so in ways that extend love to everyone and everything without qualification or conditions. It is natural but not easy.

Thank you for helping me understand this material in a way that allows me to be less distant from it (less disembodied with it, perhaps), and for not leaving me when I stumble (as I so often do) trying to bring it all into practice.

Love is the Law and the Prophets

I give you a new commandment:
you shall love one another
in the way that I have loved you.
(John 13:34).

Love is the way we remember love. This is the law and the prophets.

spiritual_rest — I set stumps here and there – near flowers when possible – in order to have places to sit and quietly give attention

These words of Jesus are clearly a call to action. They are a call to a radical way of living in the world, one that is based on forgiveness and sharing and leaving nobody out.

But we have to ask: what is the foundation of that action? What needs to be in place in order for us to love one another as Jesus loves us?

How shall we bring forth this new way of living in love?

We have to know what it means to know the love of Jesus. We cannot love like Jesus if we are not intimately aware of what it means to be loved by Jesus.

So we ask ourselves: Do I know the unconditional whole-hearted love of Jesus?

This is a simple question but it can be hard to answer. Most of us do not live as if we are loved unconditionally by anyone, let alone Jesus. We do not live as if our sole function is to extend love through forgiveness to all our brothers and sisters.

Instead, we live in a state of confusion. Sometimes we are happy but our happiness is fleeting. Sorrow seems always at hand. We fluster easily. We get distracted easily. We are guilty one moment and fearful the next.

It is like we are at the wrong dance hall. Or it’s the right dance hall but we’re dancing with the wrong partner. Or we’re dancing with the right partner but we’ve forgotten the steps to the dance. Or . . .

Suffering, it seems, is the measure of our lives.

love_blooms — Flowers are observers albeit not in the same way we are. Always helpful to note the many ways we are observed, that we – the apparently penultimate subject – are also the other.

Have you ever spent time with a child who knows that their parents love them unconditionally? They are so happy and secure! It is always a joy to be around these little people, because their happiness radiates outward, like sunlight through a prism. It asks nothing of us. It is such a blessing.

In the presence of true love freely extended, we remember that our true nature is loving. We remember that in love our living is made clear and simple and direct. We remember that love is the fundament, the foundation, of being.

But we forget this. Over and over we forget it. Why?

We forget because we focus on the second part of the new commandment given by Jesus. We give attention to how we are trying to love one another. We watch ourselves as from a distance, evaluating and judging. Am I doing it right? Is so-and-so doing it better than me? We fall short and vow to improve. We improve and congratulate ourselves on “our” success.

It becomes a ritual that revolves around our own self. Our brothers and sisters become players in the drama of our personal enlightenment.

That is not love.

What are we to do then?

The suggestions is that we focus on our present-moment experience of being unconditionally loved by Jesus.

It feels selfish to give attention to this seemingly personal experience of being loved by Jesus. It feels arrogant to assume such an important figure would be so devoted to us. Perhaps it feels a little silly. We are sophisticated people, after all. We know that all this talk about God and Jesus and Heaven are just metaphors.

But it’s worth asking: However we frame it, how is our refusal to look at Jesus’ unconditional love for us going? Is it working? Are we happy? Are we making others happy?

We should be honest about answering these questions. If the answer is no, then let’s say it and see what happens next. If we don’t know the love of Jesus or we aren’t sure we know it, then we should say so.

If our own efforts to bring forth love and peace, and our own understanding of those efforts are not making us happy and creative, and are not bringing forth love and peace, then perhaps there is another way.

And perhaps that way has already been given to us.

In you there is no separation, and no substitute can keep you from your brother and sister. Your reality was God’s creation, and has no substitute. You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there (T-18.I.10:1-3).

A Course in Miracles suggests that if we want to experience the unconditional love of Jesus, then we should give attention to our relationships with one another. Not from a space of judgment or analysis. Not from the distance made by our belief in our specialness.

Rather, we should simply attend who is here with us in the world, and how they are with us, quietly and nondramatically responding to their needs, keeping in mind that of ourselves we do nothing but in God all things are already finished.

A great love – a great peace – is already among us awaiting only our invitation to flood the world with love and light. Our “invitation” is simply to stand aside so as not to impede this grace-filled manifestation. Nothing else is required; nothing else could be required.

proximity_of_love — I wrote this post on the front porch. This is the little table to my left.

To love like Jesus – which is to give all to all, without expectation of return – we must allow ourselves to remember the unconditional love of Jesus which is here for us now. To remember that love is to feel that love which in turn naturally extends that love. There is nothing else to do, and no one else to do it.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for making this so clear to me.

A Course in Miracles: The Immediacy of Salvation

In The Immediacy of Salvation,” A Course in Miracles makes the reasonable point that all our plans for safety are forward-looking, and since we can’t actually know what the future holds, our “plans” as such are essentially useless.

ACIM_salvation_immediacy — the light in which all this beauty appears, so near as to be oneself

Yet the course also recognizes that some fear exists in us that causes us to make those plans, however futile they might be. And it invites us to think about that fear not in terms of what might happen tomorrow but rather what is happening right now. That is, it asks to us to give attention to our fear now.

What might we learn when we do?

Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread . . . And it is this that needs correction, not a future state (T-26.VIII.4:2-4, 8).

The Jesus we encounter in the New Testament makes a similar observation.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them . . . Why are you anxious about your clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them (Matthew 7:25-26, 28-29).

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that the correction for a wrong emphasis on forward-thinking and planning is to “seek first the Kingdom of God.” In a similar way, A Course in Miracles suggests that we give attention to our present dread and take note of its here-and-nowness. Our fear is not of what will happen tomorrow but rather reflects a present lack of trust in our brothers and sisters. Thus we retain a sense of competition, and a corresponding sense that attack and defense remain viable.

Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now . . . You see eventual salvation, not immediate results (T-26.VIII.2:4-5, 7).

This gap between you and I – which we insist upon because we do not fully trust one another (which is to say that we do not fully trust our own selves) – can only be perceived in the present moment. Where else could it possibly be? We fear it now because it is here now.

This is the insight the course urges us to accept. When we plan for the future we are correctly recognizing fear but are failing to see where and what that fear actually is. It’s not a problem in the future for which we must prepare. It’s a problem here and now to which we are responding here and now.

Thus, we might say that to “seek first the Kingdom” is to sit quietly and attentively with our fear. We might give attention to the way that planning distracts us from the present moment. And we might explore the course’s suggestion that our present fear reflects a lack of trust in our brothers and sisters and that it is this lack of trust which must be “solved,” not some hypothetical future circumstance.

Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered from. And do not let it be disguised as time, and so preserved because its form is changed and what it is cannot be recognized (T-26.VIII.9:7-8).

It’s not tomorrow that vexes us. It’s the fault lines in our relationship today.

It is important to be clear that intellectually understanding the principles at work here is helpful (truly) but not dispositive. It’s like putting the yeast, salt, flour and water on the counter but not making the bread. We have to actually sit with our fear. We have to actually feel the lack of trust in ourselves and in the other. It’s scary. It’s not easy. But that way lies the Kingdom.

salvation_spiritual — a detail from a book shelf in the hay loft where I often work . . .

More likely than not, our initial response to all this will be grief. When I see how I fail you, despite my intelligence, my study, my practice, my sincerity . . . When I see how my lack of trust in us brings both of us pain . . . what else but sorrow can prevail?

Yet this grief testifies to the authenticity of our experience. And it is also the means by which the Holy Spirit – to use course parlance – or attention (to use Sean parlance) will undo our lack of trust and restore our awareness of love. It is when we perceive the utter depths of our personal failure that we can resign as our teacher and a new teacher with a new curriculum becomes possible.

The Holy Spirit’s purpose is now yours. Should not His happiness be yours as well? (T-26.VIII.9:9-10).

It is a good question! And in the answer – which we live through the gift of attention – fear is converted to hope and hope translated to love. Would you offer me anything else?