Attention is a Form of Acceptance

Attention is a kind of questioning, but not questioning as the brain and the egoic self understand it. The egoic self wants answers that do not exist and so cannot be found because its maxim is seek but do not find (e.g. T-12.IV.4:1-5). But attention is content to let what is be. It no longer projects its wants and uncertainties. Attention is a form of acceptance in which need itself ends and so seeking, too, ends.

But attention is not exclusive. This is a condition of its capacity to heal through undoing: nothing is left out. Nothing is forbidden. Whatever arises belongs. Whatever arises is welcome.

Attention includes even itself – that is, it gives attention to attention and to the gift of attention. Has it been made conditional – offered only to those people, places and things that the ego deems favorable? Has it excluded what causes pain and discomfort and fear? So long as it is conditional or exclusive it is not attention, but projection – another attempt, however veiled or nuanced, to make an ideal self against which the world stands in ruinous opposition. You and I are not that.

When we are attentive, we are merciful: unto that which we perceive, which is our brothers and sisters, and so by extension unto ourselves. Mercy is the willingness to offer love and succor in the face of grief, injustice and conflict. The merciful love because they know that love is all, and this knowledge is not of the brain. It is not subject to change. It is not intellectual. Language does not make it – rather, it consents to be temporarily contained by words in the interest of a greater and more fullsome release for all.

You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you (W-pI. 191.9:1-4).

Do not hide from what appears before you: do not reject what appears before you: do not even judge what appears before you. Analysis is not our task any more: love is. And since we do not know what love is, then we must become willing learners: and the salient quality of all devoted students is their attentiveness. Only that!

Life offers itself to us that we might offer it to our brothers and sisters, to chickadees and bears, seascapes and landscapes, to starlight and space. It is given that we might give it – that is its law, that is what ensures Creation. Through attention we learn what is already done because it is always being done. This is the end of learning: this is the beginning of joy.

Life is Not Personal

. . . What I am trying to say is that life is not personal. The same force that sustains the bluet, the pine tree, the box turtle and the moose sustains us. More, it sustains us all equally, so that a blade of grass truly does encompass as much of life as you or I.

This is what we don’t want to accept, because it is the death of specialness. It is the end of the separate self with its dreams and memories and stories and goals. It is not that that self dissolves or ends – it simply becomes a part of the flux, no better or worse than any other part.

And we rebel against that! It is so clear: life is both a trout, the brook the trout lurks in, and the man who studies the brook thinking about God. How could it be otherwise? How could the man be better or more important? How could he become better? He can’t. He just is, like the fish and the brook. That’s what life means. That’s what life is.

I am not saying that we can’t carry our story with us, but I am suggesting that the story might not be so attractive once we settle into life as it is. It might not be so necessary. We can pick it up and put it down the way we do a favorite song or book. Either way, life goes on.

The names for our acceptance of this truth – life is not personal – run the gamut from awakening to internal decolonization. It is a common idea across the religion/philosophy/psychology spectrum. The question isn’t what we call it or how or where we encounter it. The question is do we see it, and if not why not, and if so, how are we bringing it into application?

It turns out there are levels or gradations to the nondual experience. It really is a sort of ascension or progression. Yes, at the end we see there was no journey but before we reach no-spiritual-journey, we go on a spiritual journey. The intellect often gets there first: it understands nonduality. But then the rest of us – body, soul, mind, narrative – lumbers along catching up. It happens differently for all of us.

Paradoxically, it feels very personal, the discovery that life is not personal.

On the other hand it can also be fun. The intellect says, “we’ll be in Boston in two hours,” and so you can just relax and breathe and enjoy the ride. What else is there to do? Hence Roland Barthes, hence paragraphs, hence guitars, hence sleeping with your beloved, and so forth . . .

In the meantime, honesty and kindness seem to be good standards for the road. Honesty doesn’t have to translate into action; it’s just nice to be clear. I think this, I feel that. And kindness is nice, too. By this I just mean the usual: share your stuff, help old people, listen to kids, and if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. It’s only complicated if we want it to be.

Be serious about awakening. Give attention to the whole of your life, out of which attention awareness will surely and naturally arise. But it’s okay to smile and eat cookies and listen to 1980s arena rock and start painting or taking dance lessons and all the rest of it. Have fun. Be fun, too.

Forgiveness is Healed Perception

It is important to see the simplicity of forgiveness in A Course in Miracles: it is “the healing of the perception of separation (T-3.V.9:1).” It is not an action, not an accumulation of information and rules. It is a right or coherent way of seeing, a healed way of seeing.

“Seeing” in this case refers to a mode of internal perception. Perception begins internally with names, classifications, memories, opinions and ideals and all of that. It is a vast and complex system and we are aware of very little of its operation. Mostly we perceive only its end result, and maybe the step or two leading up to that result: we call it life, or our experience of life.

A Course in Miracles does not ask us to undo this system. It simply invites us to question its effects and, based on the insights we derive from that questioning, consider there might be a better way. The choice for a better way reveals the better way. It is itself the better way. It is always there.

You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought that will release you from them (W-pI.184.9:2-4).

We might agree that this tree is a “maple tree.” Okay. But that is merely a symbol for this beautiful thing, right? We could call it “Bob” and it wouldn’t be any less lovely or helpful (in terms of syrup, foliage, shade and fire wood). Even calling it “tree” is a convenience. I could call it “blob” and its elegance and grace would not be compromised in the least.

It is important to see this and to practice it. We are not looking at maple trees (or sunsets or wild turkeys or grains of sand), we are looking at life. And there is not an empty space between the trees and our bodies, but rather vital and dynamic air – filled with oxygen and bugs and water molecules and light and all of that. It is all Life, all connected, however subtly, and we are part of it. We are it and our attention is simply a gift, life being grateful for itself.

. . . [C]reation has one Name, one meaning, and a single Source which unifies all things within Itself. Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you (W-pI.184.11:3-4).

This is always so: if we close our eyes and run through our relationships with friends, neighbors, family members, lovers, pet, politicians and so forth we will see it. We give them names and attributes but it is all a matter of convenience. Our internal landscape is one fluid movement – a singular flux – just like its external reflection. There is nothing but the Oneness we mistake for “everything” or “all.”

There is nothing wrong with enjoying the simple pleasures of our lives: eating healthy food, going for walks, making art, holding hands, listening to Chopin or chickadees or the rain. Our goal is simply to see these “things” for what they are: convenient symbols whose implication of a fractured or separated reality is an illusion.

. . . [Y]ou must accept the Name for all reality, and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see, but have not interfered with Truth at all (W-pI.184.13:3).

These many names have no effect on reality: they are merely a convenient way to describe oneness. Once we see this clearly – they are a matter of convenience, not truth itself – then we are no longer resisting our Source. We are no longer struggling to defend our fractured perception and confused sense of Love. We have something to offer – we can be of service. We will see the real world, and it will be both instantly familiar and profoundly new.

The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so (T-12.VIII.8:1-4).

This is a learned skill. We have to study it and practice it. At first it seems impossible, then awkward and impractical. But more and more it becomes natural and joyful. We begin to see that this is what we are in truth. Love is our inheritance. It awaits only our acceptance.

On Ending Projection

It is helpful to remember that projection is a mode of perception, not an action that we take, like writing a letter or mowing a lawn. It is a way of seeing that is at odds with reality and is thus dysfunctional. It enhances rather than dissipates our sense of separation from life. Thus, ending projection is really a matter of choosing a more helpful way of thinking.

All metaphors are clunky, but we could think of it this way. Yesterday, when I came in from my walk I looked at the calendar. I pulled my glasses from my pocket to read and saw only a blur through shadows. I squinted, moved my head back and forth, shifted my glasses and nothing helped.

Then I realized that I was wearing my sunglasses, not my regular reading glasses (insert embarrassed smile). Once I put the right glasses on, everything clarified. I could see again.

So when we project, it is like we are focusing through a wrong lens. The solution isn’t to do anything, other than focus through the right lens.

Even that is a bit misleading because it makes an image of us picking and choosing between lenses – like trying on this or that pair of glasses until everything comes into focus.

But the shift we are talking about – from wrong-seeing to right-seeing – is simply a change of mind. It takes place internally. There is nothing to do. We don’t have to resolve to stop projecting, we don’t have to apologize to the object of our projection, we don’t have to make an amends to Jesus for screwing up his ACIM program. Nothing.

We are  not seeing clearly and so we choose to see clearly. No more than that. But no less, either.

The simplicity of this is both astounding and intimidating. When we see the truth of “the secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself” (T-27.VIII.10:1), then we are given the means of ultimate liberation. We may yet delay our release – we may backtrack into denial and projection – but the game is truly over. It is merely a question of when we choose to bring the truth into application. How clear!

And yet, after so many years of resistance – lifetimes, perhaps – how frightening to think that we can at last be happy and at peace forever. We become paralyzed a little. We freeze up. It happens to all of us, and it is understandable.

When we discern that we are holding some external influence (a person, place, thing, event, etc.) responsible for our inner peace, then we are given an opportunity: to continue to obsess over and blame this external influence for our problems, or to accept that we can be hurt by nothing except our own thoughts (W-pII.281.h).

If we choose the latter, then we are taking responsibility for own salvation. This alone creates a powerful shift in perception. Our focus moves from the external – the person who impedes us, the job that doesn’t function, the city that’s too loud, the weather that’s too wet, whatever – to our thoughts. We give attention to thought itself.

When we give attention to thought, sooner or later we learn that its flow is no different than anything else that is external – a river, a tree, the song of a bird. Its apparent importance and power are simply affects we’ve assigned to it and then pretended that we weren’t involved in it at all. But the truth is that of itself, thought is nothing. It is merely another external detail.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are, accommodates our illusions of preference, and moves us as far into healing as we are ready and willing to go. It is very practical and efficient, and its efficacy is premised mostly our willingness to let it work without getting in the way.

And so at last our attention moves away from mental thought and towards what A Course in Miracles calls “the thoughts we think with God” (e.g. W-pI.51.4:4). In those thoughts our joy and peace are found. In those thoughts is our home.

How do we do this? For me, it is a matter of making A Course in Miracles my spiritual practice, for lack of a better word. I read the text, I do the lessons, I heed my teacher and trust that eventually the requisite insights will blossom which in turn heal this fractured perception. And, notwithstanding a few bumps and wrong turns here and there, that is pretty much how it has gone.

More and more I appreciate and respect the deeply personal nature of A Course in Miracles. It meets us where we are, accommodates our illusions of preference, and moves us as far into healing as we are ready and willing to go. It is very practical and efficient, and its efficacy is premised mostly our willingness to let it work without getting in the way.

. . . [T]he memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe (T-12.VIII.5:2-4).

I am not saying that ACIM should be anybody’s spiritual path and, if it is, I am not saying that they should walk it this way or that. I am merely bearing witness to how it has worked – and continues to work – for me.

There is really nothing to do but give attention to our practice, right here in the world, and trust that we are not alone in it. Tara Singh encouraged his students to bring a sense of order to their lives – to make God their first love – and to know as a result that “the Divine Intelligence is there to help” (Love Holds No Grievances 54).

It can seem boring and insufficiently mystical at first – to clean our house, eat simple healthy food, focus intently on the daily lesson’s directive or whatever – but that is only because, as a means of resistance, we insist that God be a mystery, or distant, or conditional.

God of course is none of that. God is here now, a present reality presently unrecognized. The slower we go and the simpler we live, the more vividly and clearly our recognition of that fact – that truth – dawns in our minds.

On Special Relationships in A Course in Miracles

In terms of A Course in Miracles, a special relationship is any relationship (with anything though we tend to think of it as between people) that we use as a substitute for Oneness with God. It might be a special hate relationship, in which we feel justified in projecting hate and anger onto someone, or it might be a special love relationship, in which we believe that only a special person can meet our needs. Though they look quite different in form, both follow from the same error: that our separation from God can be healed (or solved or amended) through an external relationship.

So, in a sense, when we are talking about special relationships (with a person, a landscape, an artist, an object, etc.), we are talking about what we are always talking about: we can’t fix an internal problem of perception by rearranging what is external. The problem of perception is internal: that is where the problem must be accepted and that is the only place where it can be solved.

A Course in Miracles suggests that all special relationships can be transformed into holy relationships – that is, relationships bent on truth, in which Oneness is revealed rather than hidden or hindered. So the issue isn’t about giving things up – becoming celibate or fasting or never haunting another used bookstore or voting for the right candidate. Rather, it is about learning how to see, or perceive, differently.

This healed perception is not limited to a particular relationship; it is more pervasive, more broadly applicable – it touches everything. But it does seem to come into existence through particular relationships. So it behooves us to give attention to these relationships, to give them a close and sustained look – no matter how uncomfortable or distressing that looking might be.

To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold dear. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning (T-24.In.2:1-2).

All our relationships hinge on ideas of value – they reflect what we consider necessary to survival and happiness and all that. Thus, when we question those relationships, we are really questioning our values, in particular those that might not harmonize with our ideal of ourselves as spiritual, generous, loving individuals and so forth. This is the part of A Course in Miracles that a lot of students tend to gloss over – the looking-at-our-blocks-to-love part. We can put it off a long time, but ultimately there is no way to peace but through what seems to block peace.

Questioning in this case is akin to looking at something with the Holy Spirit, and it really just means the willingness to honestly consider our motivations, goals and agendas and so forth. And we have to do this for the relationships that work and for the ones that don’t. We have to remember that both flow from the same error (that what is external can be causative), and it is that error that we are trying to see clearly in order to correct.

I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to get too worked up about this. Nobody should feel guilty for having a special relationship: it’s part of the deal with bodies. We all want to be held, kissed, fed, walked, read to, whatever. The problem isn’t that we have those needs, but rather that we become attached to them as means by which to either heal or perpetuate separation from God.

So what do we do? We give attention to each relationship in each moment as it happens.

Let me give you a personal example.

The other night the coydogs started up. We live on the cusp of deep woods and you can hear them in their packs – it is a bloody sound anyway but sometimes you also hear the animal they kill screaming as it dies. I don’t like it but I grew up with it. But my wife, Chrisoula, really hates it. It makes her want to check the kids, the cats, the chickens . . .

Anyway, I was reading and the howls started, and Chrisoula was in bed, and I thought: “I should go in and just be a comforting presence.” And I saw that on the one hand that was a very beautiful sentiment that Chrisoula would really appreciate. But on the other hand, I also liked how heroic it made me look – how deserving of praise – and then I thought that maybe I even deserved a little sugar for being such a thoughtful husband.

You see? Very quickly this potential kindness becomes about me: my need for praise, attention, gratification, and so forth. It becomes special.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! We just want to see those motives. Seeing them means we are no longer lying to ourselves. We aren’t stuck in the illusion, but rather are moving into or at least towards the light of understanding. So we can laugh at ourselves – “man, I can be selfish” – and then, with a minimum of drama, just go and be helpful.

When I see clearly the egoic action, then I can utter a little prayer and go do the right thing without bringing all the specialness into it.

I am not saying I have this down perfectly – you can ask Chrisoula if you doubt me – but I am saying that this can work if we are patient and attentive and are willing to keep a relatively good sense of humor about it.

I also think that we get better at this as we go, the more we do it. And the more we do it, the more far-reaching the helpfulness goes. Things that used to distract us for hours don’t. And when they do distract us, we remember quicker that there is a way out, that peace is not a distant goal but a present reality presently unrecognized.

I am not afraid of the fact that I have these special relationships – with my wife, my children, people who read me, Emily Dickinson and Max Ernst, New England, black bears, chickadees, writing, and on and on and on. Nor am I afraid that future special relationships may develop: new artists to love, new poets, new pets, new friends, new trails to walk . . . That is the nature of life in a body, and I see no reason to resist it because when lived through a lens of attention and awareness it becomes not this life but Life itself, no different than the holy and beautiful one that you live.

That is really where we are going with all this specialness: we are going to where we see past the pale specificity of form to the abstract wholeness that is Love itself, infusing everything without exception or qualification. We are just slowly learning that it’s all one thing and we are it.

That is the transition from specialness to holiness: it is not trading one external form for another – this partner for that one, this diet for that one, this landscape for that one – but rather seeing beyond specificity altogether. We already know how to do this, but we need to be reminded. Attention to the details will reveal to us the gift that was given to us in Creation that we might – sooner rather than later – return to God.

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Choosing Between Belief Systems

The problem is never the specific feeling I am having – I am angry, say. Rather, it is the belief system from which the specific feeling reflexively arises. Ultimately, that is where the problem is solved. That is where we will find Saint Paul’s “peace that surpasseth understanding.”

In A Course in Miracles, this means that we are always choosing between the ego’s belief system, which reflects separation, or the Holy Spirit’s, which reflects wholeness and unity and love.

The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has . . . your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again, remember that both are in you (T-5.V.1:2, 4-5).

The poetic and religious language of the course can obscure  its simple truth: we contain two thought systems which give rise to radically different experiences of self and world and other, and our feelings attest to which one we are choosing.

We all want to manage and minimize our negative feelings – that’s natural. Quite often there is a lot of good in it. We feel better emotionally, think more clearly, make more skillful decisions and so forth. We can learn more about how our internal mechanics function. All of this makes us better servants unto our brothers and sisters.

But we often don’t see that the positive feelings (which we tend to prefer) come from the same place, the same belief system. It is easy to chase a rush of endorphins and call it spiritual growth. “I’m closer to Jesus,” “I’m really healing.” But in truth, we’re just relying on the same egoic belief system. As the course observes, “Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace” (T-8.I.3:13).

We have to see the unconditional nature of that sentence: every response is a call to war, even those that temporarily make us feel better. So long as we are invested or attached to the ego’s belief system, and the spectrum of feeling emerging from it, then we will not know peace. Period.

So those ego-based feelings are always going to see-saw back and forth – good, bad, happy, sad, angry, content and so on. The extremes might soften, and the form the feelings take will surely change over time, but unless the underlying belief system changes – unless we deliberately choose the Holy Spirit – then we are always going to be surfing emotional ups and downs and never knowing a sustainable inner peace.

Gandhi acknowledged this. He said often to his followers that despite his practice of ahimsa, nonviolence, he was capable of anger, of perceiving injustice, feeling abused and all that. It wasn’t that he had escaped those emotions, but rather that he had mastered his response to them. He wasn’t run by them, wasn’t carried away by them.

So those negative experiences, thoughts, feelings and so forth are not, by themselves, going anywhere. Even Gandhi recognized this. Some other energy or action has to come forth.

The question is: can we get clear about the belief system from which the specific feelings arise? And can that clarity relate us to peace – a peace that is without opposite, that we can’t put into words, that we can’t – at least right now – even comprehend?

To give oneself over to the ego’s belief system is to deny oneself the natural grace that is the inheritance of Creation, forever and always offered to us by God, or Love, or What Is.

We have to be willing to look at what is happening internally – when we are angry, when we are joyful. This is to say that we have to be willing to practice A Course in Miracles – do the lessons, embrace its ideas – bring it into application, as Tara Singh would say. And this is hard because it isn’t all light – it is shadow, too, hard work, and sometimes tedious work, and we can’t delegate it, and when we are doing it, nobody else can be there with us.

Feelings, like thoughts, come and go. They are part of having a body – which includes the brain. In that sense, they are no more or less impressive than, say, our toe nails. We don’t get all bent out of shape when those grow and extend – we just trim them from time to time and carry on with life.

Or, to use another example, we don’t call a therapist every time we pee. We don’t bring God and psychiatrists and spiritual gurus into the mix just because our kidneys, ureters and bladder produced urine. The body does what it does and more or less we let it do that.

It is possible to experience thought and feelings in the same way – as natural and predictable byproducts of our human experience, no more an impediment to wholeness than sneezing in the presence of dust. It just happens. It’s natural.

In order to see this in a way that is transformative – that allows us to make use of it – that is helpful – we have to get past the feeling of anger (or happiness or greed or lust or whatever). We have to trace the feeling back or down to the belief system out of which is arises, which is its source. We have to see the ego’s belief system – really see it, because otherwise we won’t be sufficiently committed to make another choice. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for this, and no shortcut.

How do we do this looking? What does the looking “look” like?

Sometimes when I am angry – and I am not instantly carried away by it, or after I am sufficiently recollected – I will ask myself some questions: what assumptions am I making that make this anger possible? Or, what necessities am I presently idolizing or defending in order to feel this anger?

Doing this thoughtfully, attentively and willingly is what A Course in Miracles means when it asks us to look with the Holy Spirit, or give something over to the Holy Spirit. We want to investigate it, see it clearly, learn what we can, and not make the same error going forward.

So let’s say that somebody is mean to me – some student comes up to me after class and says “I really hate Emily Dickinson and it’s all your fault because you’re a terrible teacher and a rotten person.” Right away feelings of anger arise.

What are the assumptions behind that anger? Maybe that students shouldn’t be disrespectful to professors. Maybe that I am a nice guy and a good teacher and everybody should see that and only that. Maybe that anybody who holds an opinion about me that is contrary to the one I hold is always wrong or stupid or morally bankrupt.

And what are the necessaries that I am defending with or through my anger? Well, clearly I believe that it’s necessary I be treated a certain (good) way, and that this certain (good) way does not take into consideration anybody else’s feelings. My anger is not really interested in inquiring into the student’s state of mind, or what attention they might need, or the possibility they might be right in some ways, or anything like that. It is all about me – about Sean, my self.

What do those assumptions and necessaries have in common? They all point to a belief system that A Course in Miracles calls the ego’s belief system – a separated self in competition with other separated selves in a world of scarce (and getting scarcer) resources. Because I believe in that separated self, naturally I will defend it when it is attacked, and naturally I will take pleasure when somebody honors and adores it.

The ego’s goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself and independent of any power except its own. This is why it is the symbol of separation (T-11.V.4:4-6).

So I want to see that, and more than that, I want to see how literally everything that flows from the ego’s goal, from its system – regardless of how I define it in a given moment – promotes separation, which is to promote discord and conflict.

To give oneself over to the ego’s belief system is to deny oneself the natural grace that is the inheritance of Creation, forever and always offered to us by God, or Love, or What Is.

That is why the course teaches us that “[t]he real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego’s idle wishes and the Will of God, which you share” (T-11.V.5:2), and makes clear that this is an illusory, not a real, conflict. (T-11.V.5:5).

So when we are stricken with anger – or grief or lust or sadness or ecstasy or whatever – it is an opportunity to heal not just the specific feeling but to look clearly, in a sustained and thoughtful way, at the belief system from which this feeling emerges. If we want to be rid of suffering, then we need to jettison the belief system from which it arises, which is always a system made solely to ensure and perpetuate suffering.

It is not a mistake to look at our feelings – the seemingly bad ones, the seemingly good ones – and and inquire into them as a way of discerning their source. Only then can we meaningfully choose a new source – one that was not made by us to keep God at bay, but rather was made by God to unite all beings as one and thus reflects a perfectly clear, peaceful and helpful love.