Sean Reagan

There is a sense in which we think that awakening is special – that only a few ever achieve it, and that when they do, they are no longer like the rest of us but are lit from within by a rare and precious lamp. A lot of teachers, some well-intentioned, some not so much, contribute to this idea. Salvation can’t be sold, so we end up selling something else – images, ideas, methods. Suddenly the one doing the teaching matters: or the teaching matters: and we miss the luminosity that is naturally inherent in all of us as a simple condition of being.

Awakening is natural and simple: it is simply seeing what is, where “seeing” is not merely visual but a sort of gestalt of perception unconcerned with getting “all.” We might not recognize it as such, and we might be invested in it as something rare and complex, but that’s okay. What we think and feel is never as important as we assume it is, or presume it should be. No matter how many cool stories and myths we know about apples, an apple is still just an apple. I’m not saying apples aren’t amazing – they are, very much so – but their amazingness has nothing to do with what goes on in our brains.

What am I saying here, really? A Course in Miracles is just a course – that’s all. It’s not a religion and it’s not a way of life. You take the course – maybe you take it again if, like me, you’re kind of slow – but sooner or later, you finish it. And you move on.

This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you . . . Therefore obey your will, and follow Him Whom you accepted as your voice, to speak of what you really want and really need. His is the Voice for God and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth (W-ep.1:1-2, 2:4-6).

What does this mean? Hell if I know. I can tell you what it meant for me – and what it looks like – but the intimacy of awakening is such that we must meet it alone. Indeed, a time comes when even the most eloquent and gentle of teachers grates on our sense of spaciousness. These days I can only bear Tara Singh in sentences, one or two only. It is enough.

I said earlier that awakening is natural. I mean simply that our natural intelligence and common sense are sufficient. Life – as being, as awareness of being, and as attention within awareness of being – is given to us in the same measure as every other form of life, including deer and black bears and violets and maple trees and so forth. All that is really required is to settle into what we are in truth. And if we look at that previous sentence closely, we will see: how can we possibly be anything else? An apple can’t be an orange, nor an orange a goldfish. Just so with us, and what we are in truth. Discovering this, and then deepening in and with it, is what it means to be joyful. It is the peace that surpasses understanding.

There is a tendency to think that other energies have to enter – that a divine project is required. Guardian angels, gurus, ascended masters and so forth. They don’t. And it is a relief to finally see this: to realize that life itself, precisely as we are aware of it right now, is sufficient. We can choose to read Wittgenstein or not. We can choose to meditate or not. Life accepts it all. Life has no preferences, one way or the other.

I went through a brief but difficult period where I resisted this for the simple reason that I wanted awakening to be more in the nature of a wild disco, a perpetual orgasm. But it is not. For me it is not. It is more like my walks in the woods before dawn: very quiet and gentle, very ordinary, and – when I am attentive and still – so lovely I can hardly breathe. What I had sought was always before me: what I longed for had been given to me at birth. Seeing it, I fall to my knees. Then I get up and keep walking.

A Course in Miracles merits our attention. It is a course worth taking, and taking with all of the energy and willingness we can give to it. Yet we need to be sensitive to the still voice within which at some point urges us to step outside the formality of the course. There is a time to learn and a time to bring our learning into application. Life is rich and variegated, and it is in that flux that we discover our wholeness, our perfection, and our joyfulness.

Of course, when I say perfection (et cetera), I am not referring to the temporary forms in which we find ourselves. Our bodies are fine – they are more than fine – they are neutral containers facilitating experience. But we can choose to identify with awareness itself – with this sense of being – and this is not conditional on a body, even as it is briefly experienced there. While our subjective experience of being and awareness end upon the expiration of the body, being and awareness – in the generic sense, in the fullest sense – continue. While this fact disturbs the ego, it is the essence of freedom.

Thus the ordinary: snow melt dripping off the eaves, prismatic in late afternoon sunlight, gray hairs, the sound of a deer bounding away through the snow, hot coffee while driving, kisses at bus stops, poems and songs and pictures. Thus the luminosity of being, the love of which we are composed: all of it at once: now.

So long as we believe a spiritual path and practice is necessary, then a spiritual path and practice will be necessary. Thus, for most of us – certainly for me – it is essential to find something that is helpfully resonant and clarifying. It will undo itself in time – and we will see the silliness of ever believing there was anything to do or anywhere to go (in a spiritual sense, a religious sense) – but still. Until we are there, we are here, and so it is here to which we give attention.

What is the right path? It is a question of resonance. It is like falling in love: there is an element of mystery to it. It will challenge you, succor you, and inspire you. You will know, and you will also resist knowing, so some discernment is called for. We have to be intelligent and willing; we have to roll with the bumps. We have to be mature: we can’t be like kids spitting out the kale because it doesn’t taste like ice cream. The path arises – appears – and so we walk it, and give attention to our walking.

At some point, the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of the chosen path will be clear. We will perceive the way in which it is meeting your perceived needs: to be loved, to be at peace, to live a meaningful and productive life, and so forth. Often at that point, the path will no longer be perfect. Its twists and turns and thorns will be obvious, perhaps frustratingly so. But it’s okay. At that point, we are no longer in the honeymoon phase but the marriage. We are ready to make the commitment. It doesn’t have to be perfect because we are ready to learn about the love that transcends the shallow level of ideals (happy feelings, preferential outcomes, etc.).

How long does all this take? This finding the path, and walking the path, and learning whether it is a helpful path, and committing to the path? It depends. There may be a lot of stops and starts. We may go quite far along one trail before discovering a truer one. For me, there were several serious relationships before A Course in Miracles arrived and asked for my attention. All of those prior relationships were helpful in their way, until they weren’t. Seeing this, I gave my attention elsewhere. I was able to say “yes” to A Course in Miracles. It was on that path that I saw at last there is no path, and was able at last to rest in the natural grace of what is.

There is a real risk that we will find ourselves wanting to move on from this or that path not because it no longer serves but because it is serving us too well. Before awakening becomes fluid and peaceful it is often rocky and challenging: it brings us into deep and sustained contact with all aspects of the self, not just those that we like to share publicly. So again, discernment is needed. Am I moving on because the going has gotten too hard? Or am I genuinely being called to this new path?

None of these questions are easy, and none of them can be answered by anyone else but ourselves. Friends and fellow travelers abound but they can’t walk that lonesome valley for us. It is helpful to see and accept this, and to become responsible for it.

There is no such thing as an objectively right way to awaken from the dream of separation. There are subjectively right ways, but not objectively right ways. It is imperative to give attention to our own experience, to be grateful for those who travel with us – briefly or otherwise, intimately or otherwise – and to be as patient and nonjudgmental as possible with all our brothers and sisters. Awakening to oneness is really a matter of becoming responsible for awakening – our own, not everyone else’s.

I want everyone to be happy in a natural and serious way. I want everyone to feel creatively united to everyone else. Those are just words, and words are always a pale substitute for love, but we have to try. Loneliness and guilt, fear and anger, emptiness and regret are not inevitable. It is possible to leave their pernicious effects behind, and to dwell in a calm and quiet gracefulness. To that end, sustained and gentle attention given to the particular form of our spiritual search is always helpful. The answer wants to be found: even now it whispers our shared and precious name.

Being teachable matters in the sense that we don’t know what we don’t know. Reality is that which contains all possibility (all potential) equally, including the possibility of impossibility. Since the only answer is “there is no only answer”, sitting around and admiring sunlight on snow (or rain on tulips or what-have-you) is all there is. You can’t go wrong consenting to happiness.

Many years ago I interviewed a very intelligent scientist, the chair of the science department at a nationally-recognized university. He told me that in fifty years human beings would know everything. Everything. There would be no more mysteries, and nothing left to discover.

I love science very much, and have great respect for those who can’t be bothered with haiku and sonnets, but that comment struck me (then and now) as foolish. It is impossible to know what we don’t know, which naturally obviates the possibility of knowing everything. We can always say “what next” or “what about” or “what if.” We can always look at a conclusion and postulate its extension or expansion. As my father used to say with respect to trout fishing, “there’s always another pool up ahead.”

Being teachable simply means that we are humble with respect to – on account of – what we don’t know. It means that we accept the possibility of what we don’t know. This is a kind of openness in which what is – call it Christ, God, Holy Spirit, Life, Source, Brahman, Ground of Being or whatever – the divine et cetera – teaches us effortlessly because we are it.

This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you. You have been very careful to avoid the obvious, and not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent (T-16.III.4:1-3).

“You have not let what you are teach you . . . ”

To be a student in this way requires a sort of active passivity: a willingness to give attention to experience (both internal and external) without leaping in to name everything and insist that its lesson arrive at this or that conclusion, produce this or that result. The challenge here is our conviction that the self – what we are in truth – is what we do. And what we do too often obscures what we are.

You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold Him and whom He holds are the universe, all else must be outside, where nothing is (T-16.III.6:1-3).

It seems relatively clear to me that dictating formal prayer or meditation practices can quickly become oppressive, where being “right” about the particular form substitutes for actual insight or learning. By the same token, I have come to understand that my morning routine (especially my devotion and relative fidelity to it) – rising early, walking the dog, sitting quietly in darkness, then studying, then writing – has become a rhythm through which – or by which – the Ineffable reveals itself.

In other words, discipline and routine may well be called for, helpfully called for, especially in the sense that they undermine the egoic need to make things new and exciting over and over. The ordinariness of life is somewhat paradoxically its most rippling luminosity, but realizing it as such cannot be forced: we have to let life teach us: we have to allow it to reveal itself.

This revelation – the diamantine glimpse of reality – is a sure thing but it does help to meet the conditions of learning. If you ask me what those conditions are my answer is: I don’t know. But if you give attention to your life – gently and consistently – then the conditions will naturally emerge and you will be happy to meet them and, in time, you will be awakened and – sometime after that – you will realize you always were awake, and that it’s no big deal either way.