Sean Reagan

On Happiness, Seeking, and Justice

The so-called spiritual search is circular in nature. It begins with a self winding its way through the world and it ends there, too. Whatever the way, it always delivers us to where we began: this. This this right here.

When most of us begin the search, we are unhappy. Life is confusing and unfair. Bad things happen with disturbing regularity. What was supposed to work does not, and we can’t find a consistently useful alternative.

We are unhappy and we want to be happy. It’s an old story, but a good one. It matters.

We turn to Jesus, say. Perhaps we do so formally – indulging liturgy and sacrament performed by men in medieval garb. Maybe we follow Thomas Merton’s idealized lead and graft on a half-assed Zen practice. Maybe we dart to the fringe and study A Course in Miracles which in turn dropkicks us into Sri Ramana and his confused and confusing lineage who unwittingly shove us into science and rational thought . . .

On and on it goes in apparently endless permutations until one day – for reasons that often aren’t realized until later, and don’t have to be realized at all – it clarifies that we are simply human observers having a human experience. That was all that was happening all along.

At this juncture, religious and spiritual explanations tend to confuse things, so we set them aside. Just give attention. What is really going on here?

When we do that, sooner or later, we learn that it is possible to be happy. Here and now. This body, this world. We learn that the means of happiness were always right at hand. They are inherent in us.

We eat simple healthy meals. We do as much of our growing, harvesting and cooking of our food as possible. We get a reasonable amount of exercise – walking, yoga, weight-lifting. We avail ourselves of consensual intimacy – hugs, hand-holding, making love. We partake of beauty – sitting by rivers or lakes, reading poetry, listening to music. If we have a headache we take an aspirin. If we’re sad, we say we’re sad. We trust what passes will pass.

And slowly but surely – though not perfectly, for perfection is the enemy – we become happier.

When we are happy in this way, we see clearly how simple and elegant the human experience can be: nurturing, gentle, generous. We realize that what makes us happy – healthy food, clean water, safety in which to walk and sleep and play, free time in which to make love, visit a museum, or go to a library, unsullied nature in which to hike and canoe – are privileges. And privilege is not just. Everyone without condition or exception should have access to these things.

For happiness is not ours alone, and who hoards the means to be happy – by design or ignorance – denies happiness to their sister, which injures (by postponing) the happiness of both.

Thus, the end of our spiritual search is not only our own peace and happiness, but our insistence that our calling is to be servants of the collective. We necessarily work to reform society that it might uniformly ensure fairness and justice. We advocate for policies and practices that make it easier for human beings to be happy. We advocate against practices that restrain, restrict or otherwise inhibit our natural inclination to love.

This advocacy is nonviolent. It is conducted by reason and example. It is okay to try and persuade people there’s a better way so long as you are not secretly (or not so secretly) planning to burn them at the stake if they disagree.

If we are not working hard to ensure the happiness of others, then our own happiness is not yet whole and full. It remains conditional and fragmented. And we will remain unsatisfied, frightened and confused. For it is well and truly written of joy: It ain’t real until it’s shared.

It is possible to be deeply and naturally happy, and this happiness by definition entails a profound desire to extend the means of that happiness to all living beings.

This is the law and the prophets.

Giving Attention to Attention

Consider the optical illusion of the old woman/young woman. You see one or the other; and then you see the one you did not see first. Once you know what you are looking for, you can move between the two with ease.

One image, two interpretations (query: are there more interpretations? Could there be?) However, you cannot see both at one time. You can know that both exist, but your powers of perceptions limit you to perceiving one interpretation or the other.

This is a handy way of noticing how being a human observer entails both cognitive and perceptual limits, and that those limits are restrictions by which a world with which we can safely and productively interact comes into being.

One of the things we can learn from images like this is that perception is interpretative to some degree. “Interpretative” in this case means that our brains process information in certain ways – taking shortcuts, filling in blanks, correcting for familiarity and function. It does this quickly and efficiently (but not always correctly) and entirely without the consent or involvement of any decision-maker. One can imagine the negative fitness consequences of constantly assessing and reassessing perception. By the time you figured out it was a tiger bearing down on you, you’d be dead.

Again, there is no discrete “self” who is directing this activity – deciding to see at all, deciding what to see and what to not see, what to call what we is seen, how to categorize it, how to respond to it. All of that happens below the surface, as it were – outside of our direct perception. What we think of as the “self” is basically how all those undercurrents look and feel once they’ve reached the surface in the form of thought and activity. That is, it feels like we are separate actors but in fact we are simply another part of the show itself – another ripple in the stream.

(If you doubt that, drop a few tabs of acid (or fast or meditate or have a sustained orgasm) and watch what happens. When we switch up our brain chemistry, sensation changes, processing changes, and the sense of self changes accordingly).

Yet all of these perceptions, sensations and appearances occur within consciousness. That is, absent consciousness, how could they possibly be? In this sense, they do in fact seem to emerge from consciousness. I more or less implied this a couple of paragraphs back. Yet if we look closely at what is happening, is it truly arising from anything? Yes it may seem to be arising – and taking this arising as a literal truth may feel both logical and intuitive – but is it in fact? Can you really say for sure? Would you stake your life on it? Would you stake your child’s life?

Given that so much naturally falls outside the realm of our perceptual and cognitive capabilities (see the aforementioned optical illusion), what is our actual confidence level that our present sense of the self and the world is true? As opposed to just how it seems or feels or appears?

What about your present experience of consciousness suggests that it is not arising simultaneously with its contents? Can you say definitely that a tree or a cat or a book only exists because you are conscious of it?

Is there anything in your present experience of consciousness which suggests it does not arise from a brain? Or that it can’t possibly arise from a brain?

And with respect to all these questions, what is your confidence level? I would stake my life – or any life – on an argument that Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. I would be less confident if the argument was whether Marxism is effectively moral to the degree it actually redistributes wealth downward.

And if the question is: what are the origins of consciousness . . . well, I’d stick around for the dialogue but I wouldn’t be putting my or anyone else’s life on the line.

The suggestion here – or invitation perhaps – is to avoid drawing conclusions, especially when we are relying on religious or spiritual language. “Consciousness is the Source” – “I am that I am” – “Nothing real can be threatened.” Rather than indulge the imagery, language and concepts associated with religion and spiritual practices, just give attention. Just observe. Just experience the observer observing.

Without exception, our religious and spiritual ideas are responsive to our experience, and our subjective experience is fundamentally the same as every other human observer. So look at it. What is happening? What does it feel like? What does it not feel like? What does it imply about truth? About peace and love and justice? What – if anything – does it allow you to say with utter certainty? What conclusions should you draw? What conclusions should you avoid?

And always: how do you know and what is your confidence level in the answers?

Truly, when we give attention in this way, we encounter primarily our stories – the narratives which purport to explain our experience. These stories provide some grounding for our experience – we are awareness, or Jesus is watching over us, or we need to submit to rigorous meditation practices, or do yoga, or get a therapist, or read more A Course in Miracles or fewer neo-advaitic writers.

What if the stories are perfectly predictable outcomes of atoms being stacked a certain way – that is, when atoms are organized in such a way as to be a self-reflexive languaging primate, stories about saviors and infinity and eternity and the All feel necessary and logical?

Would that be okay? Why or why not?

The point here is not to equate all these “stories.” The point is not prove some right while disproving others. Truly, if we get beyond the need to be right about all this stuff, what happens? The suggestion I offer is that we become happy and peaceful in authentic and natural ways, that our happiness is infectious and helpful, and that the world, such as it is and is not, becomes a better place.

Awakening means being less wrong

Awakening is perhaps the wrong word (when we are thinking in terms of some Absolute like God) because it suggests one is (or can be) asleep, when the whole suggestion is that distinctions like “asleep” or “awake” aren’t helpful. They are distractions.

sunlight_on_river — sunlight on the river in spring

There is just this experience presently happening, which may include awareness of itself and may not, without being increased or diminished thereby. Though we can apply terms like “spirituality” and “religion” to it, it is simply a fact of nature.

In a sense, awakening is being less mistaken with respect to experience, where “mistaken” is read literally to mean that we are holding or possessing something that cannot be held or possessed.

The thing is, whatever awakening is, it is collectively and globally accessible. It is natural and simple and clear.

If we consider it to be the purview of a select few – rare beings of spiritual genius – then it’s not awakening.

If it is something one earns through time and effort – as opposed to something one deepens and becomes dextrous with through time and effort – then it is not awakening.

If it is obtruse and hard to explain and only a few super smart, hyper-educated people can converse about it, then it’s not awakening.

There is nothing wrong with having a knack for prayer or peaceful comportment, or for enjoying and practicing meditation and other so-called spiritual practices, or for being attracted to knotty intellectual challenges.

But if we make them the sine qua non of awakening, then we are deluding ourselves, and quite possibly others as well.

Again, the suggestion is that awakening is clear, natural and accessible, and that we are all awake – awakened and awakening – right now. Full stop.

We might compare it to eating. Generally (it is understood there are exceptions in certain cases) nobody has to teach us how to be hungry and how to eat in order to alleviate hunger. We are born with that knowledge. It is inherent.

Not all of us become chefs or gourmands, but all of us know that we eat apples and not hub caps. All of us can slap a few pieces of bologna between bread and eat it. Or just stuff a handful of bologna in our mouths.

Sometimes feeding our hunger is mechanical – we do it reflexively, with whatever’s on hand, while reading or grading papers or driving to work.

Sometimes it is communal – we have family or friends to sit down beside and share food and dialogue. Preparation and presentation matter. We linger.

Sometimes eating is so good it verges on orgasmic. Other times – maybe a lot of times – it’s just meh.

But in all of that, whatever it is, it is. We can do a lot with eating, but it’s always eating, and it is always meeting the same basic simple natural need.

And nobody needs to educate us about that need. We get it, and we do it.

That is not a perfect analogy, of course, but what we are calling “awakening” can be thought of as approximating eating in order to alleviate hunger.

The simplicity and clarity of that is made difficult because we have convinced ourselves that awakening is something other than what it is. So what we are “taking” for awakening – seeking, confusion, idolization of teachers and institutions and so forth – is “mis” taken.

This is a kind of dysunction. It is like standing in the middle of a river and asking where the water is.

Awakening is just noticing what’s here at the moment. The “trick” or “catch” is that we are never not noticing it. When that really clicks, seeking comes to a natural end and we can just attend to what is without a lot of drama and angst.

So, you know, right now you are reading these words and that’s that. You aren’t reading the Bible and you aren’t reading Danielle Steele. You are sitting where you are sitting which means you are not sitting anywhere else. And so forth.

Nobody needs a priest or philosopher or guru to to teach them that when they are eating breakfast they are not running a marathon, or that when they are weeding the garden they are not eating lunch.

Though it has its own problems with convolution and complexity, A Course in Miracles frequently points out that giving attention is all that is needed to translate crucifixion (suffering) to resurrection (peace). What is revealed in, through and by attention is unmistakable.

. . . [B]eing true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood. Rejected yes, but not ambiguous. And if you choose against it now it will not be because it is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in your judgment, to be too much to pay for peace (T-21.II.1:3-5).

The tone the course takes here is a bit stern, essentially making “choice” feel like a moral failure if we choose “wrongly.” But really, looking elsewhere for what is right in front of us is very human. Nobody is immune from it and so nobody should feel bad about it.

Still, the general principle is sound – experience is so simple and clear and present that you can’t misunderstand it. Therefore, if we are confused, we must be looking in the wrong direction or at the wrong thing or in the wrong way, and so we just make adjustments. That’s all.

beaver_pond — looking north across the beaver pond

It’s like if your food is too bland you sprinkle a little salt on it. Or if it’s too cold, then you pop into the oven to reheat it. It is not a moral or spiritual crisis. The fix is manageable and obvious.

Emily Dickinson understood deeply the natural beauty and clarity of awakening, and consistently expressed how it revealed itself through the present moment held in sacred and loving attention.

By intuition, Mightiest Things
Assert themselves – and not by terms –
“I’m Midnight” – need the Midnight say –
“I’m Sunrise” – Need the Majesty?

Omnipotence – had not a Tongue –
His lisp – is Lightening – and the Sun –
His Conversation – with the Sea –
“How shall you know”?
Consult your Eye!

One need only give attention to what is. It is not a question of knowledge or practice, but experience itself. Attention to experience is itself sufficient.

So in general, when we are talking about something only a few enlightened and deserving people get, then we are not talking about awakening.

Rather, awakening is accessible unconditionally to everyone. The proof is our present experience to which we are right now – and forever – awake, otherwise we would be unaware of it.

On Spiritual Story-telling: Our Stories Matter

As languaging self-reflexive primates, we like to explain things. More to the point, we like stories that explain things – why the sun appears in the east and disappears in the west, why the North Star appears so consistently still in the sky, how people came to exist, why they have to die, what happens after they die, what’s beneath or behind the various surfaces we encounter, et cetera.

A good story satisfies us. It explains how the world works, what the proper order of life is, and how we fit into it. Good stories solve mysteries and bring clarity to complicated issues.

The thing is, these explanatory narratives are often wrong. The Romans butchered white castrated oxen on the day new consuls swore their oaths in order to appease Jupiter – that was wrong. Jonathan Edwards believed that if a person’s behavior deviated from very narrow tenets, then God would drop them into a fiery pit for all eternity – that was wrong. Lord Kelvin argued that élan vital infused matter, bringing it to life – that was wrong. Charmaine Yoest, Trump’s assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, believes that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer – that’s wrong.

The point is not to gloat, to point out all the poor saps who have fallen prey over the years to illusion, misinformation, junk science and so forth. They’re just human observers being human observers. Human psychology is human psychology. Thinking that we’re unique exceptions, that we would never make those kinds of errors, well, that’s an error. There are no high horses, no royal roads. The fool and the king both put their pants on one leg at a time. Us too.

The point is to become aware of the ways in which our own thinking, our own explanatory stories, deviate from coherence. If we can’t do that – or think that we don’t need to do it – then that’s our first example of incoherence. We are human observers having a human experience and that includes a) having nontrivial perceptual and cognitive blind spots and b) being sometimes blind to our own blindness. Pretending otherwise is silly.

One way to check our blindness is to notice words and phrases that “seem” explanatory but in fact just provide a hit of feel-good emotion. “Nothing real can be threatened.” “Jesus saves.” “If you take one step towards Allah, Allah will take ten steps towards you.” “Consciousness is all.” And so forth.

Those phrases are not helpful in terms of figuring out how to act in the world. If your child had a bad fall, saying “consciousness is all” won’t help you calm your child, get a medical kit, and decide whether to call for help. If you forget to mail a critical package for work, saying “Jesus saves” won’t magically retroactively mail it.

No, what those phrases do is make us feel better. Bad shit happens, call Jesus. Scary events happen but really it’s all neutral because there’s only consciousness. This divorce really hurts but don’t sweat it because neither the world nor the bodies in it are real. How many times have we said “God has a plan” and felt better about whatever adverse circumstances were then enveloping us?

It makes sense we want to feel better. It is healthy to develop strategies that will help us feel better. But if we are indulging fantasies, specious logic, and other forms of incoherence as the means of feeling better, then we are setting ourselves up to feel bad again. And maybe bring others along with us.

There is a better way.

If you tell me that calling on Jesus calms you so you can better attend your injured child or deal with some other crisis, ask why that is what calms you. If you didn’t believe Jesus was real and involved – was really there in some tangible way – then calling on him wouldn’t work.

And if you really do believe that God and his son Jesus are present and attentive to you in a personal way, then why do bad things happen at all? Why doesn’t God nudge the branch aside over which your child is about to trip? Why does Jesus wait on your call, rather than just showing up when needed?

If you say, “well, it’s just one person telling themselves God loves them or Jesus saves so what’s the harm” then you are missing the key point that nothing we do is without effect in a broader way. Everything we do affects those around us. It was just one Mayan who thought cutting the heart out of living prisoners was a good idea, but he managed to convince a lot of other Mayans it was a good idea, and so a lot of people died very painful deaths. Don’t sell yourself short!

Our fictions reverberate and those reverberations have a direct impact on other lives. If you are indulging a God who can actively affect your life, then you are simultaneously providing cover for folks who think God is active in their lives – and their God may want women to hide their bodies and submit to men, or blow up abortion clinics, or keep gay folks from marrying or adopting children or even just holding hands in public.

If you say, well, your God is different than the God of those crazy people, or that those crazy people are worshiping the wrong God, or the right God the wrong way, well, congratulations. Your argument means that everyone is entitled to their God, which means that some of those Gods are going to be very Jonathan Edwards-like. Some may even lean in directions that Mayans would find familiar. It is a slippery slope and our feet are bathed in grease.

I am saying that if you are turning in the direction of God – however you frame that turn and that-to-which-you-turn – then you are turning in the direction of incoherence. You are turning in the direction of pain – for you and for others, some of whom you love and care for, and wouldn’t hurt in a million years.

Feeling crappy is okay. Bad luck is okay. Rough patches are normal. They are all part of the human experience. Wanting to avoid what hurts – and minimize the hurt when it does happen – is also okay. That, too, is part of the human experience. A nifty thing about human observers is that we can reflect on our experience, dialogue with others, learn new practices, make predictions, adapt our behavior and so forth. It is possible to be happy – deepy happy – and in our happiness to be kind and helpful to others in tangible sustainable ways. It doesn’t take a deity.

When we feel better because we believe God or Jesus or the Buddha or the Beloved or the All is there for us, intervening for us, guiding us, then we are reenacting the same story our ancestors enacted. We probably aren’t cheering for the ritual sacrifice of virgins we kidnapped from neighboring towns, but we shouldn’t get too smug. Incoherence is still incoherent, even if its affects are not as dramatic as they once were.

Give attention to your stories. Notice how some of them purport to explain life and death and love and loss. Notice how these stories sustain you in the face of both internal and external adversity. Then notice how these stories are not actually explanatory at all. They’re more like code words to set off a temporary boost in our dopamine levels. They provide a temporary – a transitory – respite from what ails us.

If we can notice our incoherent stories, then we can ask what an actual coherent story would look like. How can we actually explain what scares us – death, loss, uncertainty, et cetera? If we don’t presently have helpful explanatory stories, is that okay? How should we go about getting one? What can we do in the interim? Who should we turn to for help?

Check your stories. Make a practice of telling more effective ones. Don’t be embarrassed to discard what no longer works – it happens to all of us. Don’t go with the first idea. Ask what this would look like to someone who doesn’t care what you do with your life. Look for questions you don’t want to ask, and answers you shy away from.

It is counter-intuitive to do this! It’s hard. We are not wired to doubt our intuitions and instincts. But it is helpful to persist. Not because we are going to become perfect or Godlike, but because we are going to become happier, and in our happiness be more helpful to those around us, which will increase their happiness in turn. That is a reasonable goal. That is meaningful living.

Behavior and A Course in Miracles

Ken Wapnick was fond of pointing out that A Course in Miracles was not injunctive with respect to behavior. One doesn’t have to be a vegetarian or a Democrat or go to church on Sunday or celebrate Christmas or donate to the poor in order to be a course student.

In an important sense, he is correct. The course bypasses a lot of behavioral directives that often characterize spiritual and religious practices and traditions.

Of course – and Ken acknowledged this, too – if one diligently studied A Course in Miracles, there were often external correlates tending in the direction of gentleness, kindness, moderation, et cetera. Those correlates were not why one studied ACIM but they were certainly pleasant perks (both for the student and those around them).

This distinction – between what it means to study A Course in Miracles is and what the effects of that study are – matters. Not being confused about that distinction also matters.

Strictly speaking, A Course in Miracles is a one-year self-study program that is Christian in language and imagery, modeled on a traditional twentieth century psychological paradigms and explores – with varying degrees of effectiveness – nondualism. It is not a spiritual practice per se, and so is not intended to supplant pre-existing practices.

It is not, in other words, the latest or the best or the most-improved method of attaining inner peace. It’s just another tool, helpful or unhelpful according to the context in which it is applied.

And indeed, as its author, Helen Schucman, made clear in the preface, its only objective is to introduce students to an “inner teacher” it generally refers to as the “Holy Spirit.” Once that student-teacher relationship is in place, the course is largely irrelevant. The Holy Spirit – such as it is – takes things from there.

Thus, a study of A Course in Miracles is more akin to taking a class than it is to going to church or meditating or whatever other spiritual behavior happens to be personally resonant. And, the measure of the course’s effectiveness is the degree to which it delivers a given student to their “inner teacher.”

You read the text, do the lessons, read the manual and . . . that’s it. For all ACIM-related intents and purposes, you’re done. You did it. You are either in touch with your inner teacher or you aren’t. In either case, the utility of A Course in Miracles is changed for you.

So knowledge about the course, time you’ve spent studying, and prestige within the course community are not hallmarks of course effectiveness. In fact – I speak from experience – they are often symptoms of distraction and confusion which inevitably generate more distraction and confusion.

Ken Wapnick, for example, often called himself the first teacher of the course but it is perfectly clear that he was actually its first student. Most of what passes for Ken’s “teaching” is really Ken’s “learning out loud in front of others.”

This doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. It can be, in its way. I am certainly grateful for Ken’s intelligence and devotion. But if we insist on seeing his course-related work as “teaching” – rather than as the student next to us who talks a lot, who is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and whose experience of the course cannot ultimately be our own – then we are apt to get confused, possibly deeply so. There is no law that says you have to wake up before you die!

So a lot of the time, for a lot of students, what we think of as “the course” or what the course “says” or “means” is really just our personal recapitulation of Ken’s learning process. Other, lesser-known, students are also “learning by teaching” and the effect on their students – confusion – is the same. I have contributed to this problem myself. At its best, this kind of “teaching” simply generates more material that will need to be undone at some later juncture. At it’s worst, well, there is no law that says you have to wake up before you die. Or did I say that already?

It is helpful to note (to remember, really) that undoing is not something that “we” do – it is more in the nature of something that happens or, better, something that we observe happening. Or not happening, as it were. To the extent we are attached to undoing, then undoing itself becomes a thing to be undone.

For me – which is not say “for you” – there is really only observation left. Of course I screw this up – how could I not? And yet it is also possible to reach a space of relative stillness where one can simply give attention to what is going on without interfering in it. At that point, deeper stillnesses and quiets are revealed. Even the wordy and unworthy are welcome.

Also at that point, the course – and its teachers – are more or less irrelevant. I don’t think noticing and reporting this is controversial. And behavior – do this, don’t do that – ceases to matter as much. One is never not amazed at how much prattle and static passes for spirituality . . .

Really, it is good to be honest, because honesty precedes clarity, and clarity is what allows us to finally figure out what little to do and how, in the personal context of our living, to do it. So what is our experience? Who are we “following?” What “rules” are we obeying? What “rules” are we breaking?

It comes back to us; it really does. It comes back to experience: to this experience: this one right here and now. This this. What is it? What are its boundaries? Its seams? What is its source? How do we know? How can we say?

In my experience – which is not to say “your experience” – the course does not really answer those questions so much as gently (well, mostly gently but sometimes roughly) deliver us to a space where they can be answered, where “answered” means “undone” or “dissolved.” And that undoing or dissolution – which is inherent and ordinary! – leads readily to a quiet and natural happiness.

In Cambridge, A Breeze

A great deal of energy in the ACIM community goes into being right, which generally means proving others wrong. Or at least persuading them not to ask certain questions certain ways. It is painful, whatever side one takes.

Of course, I have contributed to this demoralizing situation. How else would I know it? The damage isn’t really to the community or the course, both of which are simply patterns of cognition, but rather to our deep interior longing for peace, which cannot be satisfied in a competitive environment.

One of the points I often tried to make – sincerely but brokenly – was that it is not in fact possible to be right or wrong, other than in a relative way.

I say “broken” here because in that writing I wasn’t simply speaking to my own experience and understanding. I was trying to persuade you; I was trying to win you. I wanted something: I wanted to be right, which is to say, I wanted you to be wrong.

Forgive me.

Saying it is not possible to be right or wrong in any absolute – as opposed to a temporarily relative – way sends a lot of course students, a lot of folks generally, around the bend.

For example, many devoted followers of Ken Wapnick are acculturated to his rigid “it’s this, not that” way of thinking. Thus, the possibility of exploring ACIM’s natural concordance with Krishnamurti, or noting that the course perpetuates some very traditional western dualisms, or pointing out that Ken’s scholarship with respect to gnosticism was, um, wanting, can’t really be countenanced. You end up arguing where you meant to be helpful.

And there are folks who can’t bear that Gary Renard might be anything less than an opportunistic lying blowhard. Or that some issues – like supporting gay marriage, opposing literal readings of the Second Amendment, or a moral obligation to feed the hungry – necessarily admit to degrees of right and wrong.

And, of course, there are folks like me who decide that we “get it” – because of how smart we sound when we listen to ourselves, and because we read so much and are very impressed with our reading. This intellectualism and wordiness, regardless of how shallow, becomes a spiritual qualification for instructing others, whether they are asking for help or not.

Sigh.

Earlier this year, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was gently shaken by a breeze that does not allow the one it touches to speak any more about truth or oneness or wholeness. It went full Wittgenstein, saying, “Of that which we do not know, we must not speak.”

And then it made really really clear how little I actually know . . .

It seems clear that if we look into experience, without blinking or substituting or lying to ourselves, then it is not possible to be right or wrong with respect to others. For ourselves, sure. For others, not so much. If we allow them the same freedoms we allow ourselves – which we must, finally – then how can we tell them what to believe? Or not to believe? What to think? What not to think?

It is not that right and wrong don’t appear – they do, manifestly – but that by virtue of their appearance, its very nature and substance, they cannot be weaponized against another.

God, truth, the whole, the absolute, awakening, enlightenment – all are nontrivial ideas forever beyond our ability to know in anything other than a relativistic way. They are surprisingly less interesting – and infinitely less dramatic – when this becomes clear.

And what happens then? When there is no course to teach or to learn? When others are not there for us to measure up against?

For me, there is going slowly. There is study and meditation. There is the deep hard work of doing one’s living and loving in a local way that is premised on love and service, both of which naturally inhere in the human observer. There are models and maps but their helpfulness is contingent and easy to get lost in. Eventually it’s clear: we have to find our own way. We have to let it happen or not happen.

The question is not what does Sean think – not even for Sean is that the question – but rather how what Sean says appears for you, what it loosens and lightens, what it tangles and what it tightens. That is all on you. That is all your own making, your own experiencing.

The language of A Course in Miracles – being so dense and inconsistent, so obtusely Christian, so unsure of whether it’s descriptive or injunctive – no longer serves. Perhaps it never did.

Or did it? And who can say, really? Does it matter?

Earlier today a chickadee perched briefly in the maple tree in the side yard. How perfect it was: how precisely seeing it was seeing. I go with you, because without you I am not. A great loneliness is ended: a great stillness opens.

This happened in Cambridge, a long time ago.