Precious Steps

Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness (T-17.II.8:5).

I woke sharply at 4 a.m. and by 4:05 was outside, leaving the eastbound dirt road for old potato fields slick with ice from sleet yet pelting my shoulders and face. The dog led me into the forest like she did in the old days, and we went all the way to the old feeder pond, making too much noise to catch deer or geese. Even after I fell in to my knees I didn’t right away turn back, for something in the darkness and stillness called to me, a thrumming deeper than blood, a wordless hymn into which I am gently disappearing.

Attention is alive. We are not its maker, though its application does rest temporarily in our dream of free will. The welter of Life – from thought to sensation to image to the cold pond sucking at my thighs – is naturally lit by the interior lantern of attention, going where we ask it go, its rays falling where we say to them “fall.”

If we have a problem, we can inquire into its origins and resolution. If we fall to our knees in gratitude, we can study the pattern and movement of our gratitude. We can listen to the softening of the sleet to rain, or to eighteen-wheelers leaning on their jake brakes where 143 dips toward the dingle. When the light rises – pale and gray, a shroud enfolding pine trees and maple – we can look at it, and at what emerges dimly through it.

Nothing more than gentle and sustained attention is asked of us, because nothing more could be asked, because there is nothing more that we could give. When we stop insisting Life be this or that, when we stop setting goals and demanding outcomes, and when we stop hurrying as we could outrun stillness, as if we could really want to outrun it, we see that Life happens, and that we are included in this happening, and it is – all unto itself – sufficient. No – it is more than sufficient: it is lovely and peaceful, and within it a natural serious happiness becomes us.

I am not saying that we won’t do things: write poems, feed children, volunteer at the shelter, teach classes, paint flowers, run for President, go to the bank. We can and we will. Rather, I am saying that our perception of those activities will soften. It won’t linger on them. They will no longer be held as critical manifestations of a personal self, but simply as eddies and swirls in the flow of Life, no one of them more important or beneficial than another.

Attention reveals this radical equality to us: attention restores what is always given to our awareness. This is what A Course in Miracles means when it talks about our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for you making it. In the light of the real reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you there is no reason here at all. Each spot his reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reasons is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release (T-17.II.5:2-5).

I walk each day in order give attention to this “hidden spark of beauty.” It arrives in my thoughts, my fantasies, the sensations attending the body I am briefly making use of, and the landscape through which the body briefly perceives the flowing and flowering of Life. To see it truly is to see that it is given – it is already here, right now – and nothing can be either added nor taken away. No thought, no dream, no event, no person could possibly be other than it is right now. How liberating to perceive this, even for a moment! The insight touches us and the light remains.

And having been so touched – which is to be illuminated, enlightened – how happy we become. We know that there is only one blessing, and that it is inherent and inclusive, a natural radiance transcending even our most ambitious dreams of what love and truth might be.

This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun (T-17.II.2:1-2).

This is the gift that our attention reveals to us: the Given that never leaves, never changes, and is never conditional. Thus my walks each morning, as far as the dog will go, and thus my writing each morning, as wordy as wordiness allows, and thus your beautiful holy presence reading – which is not a solitary enterprise at all but a joining, a completing – for which I am never not thankful, and never not croaking these clumsy sentences of praise.

Learning to See

A Course in Miracles is simply an opportunity to learn a new way of seeing. Or – better maybe – an opportunity to learn a new way of being, one in which our relationship to thought and perception naturally aligns with life as it is, restoring us gently to the graceful love that is our inheritance.

The bridge (to the Real World) is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. . . . (T-16.VI.7:1-2)

And on the other we gain “the understanding of where Heaven is . . . it will join with you and become one with you” (T-16.VI.11:1, 3).

While this transition is not necessarily easy (e.g., T-16.VI.7:4), it is simple.

Imagine for a moment that we are wearing glasses that discolor the world, magnify certain elements of it and block others as if they don’t exist at all. Someone comes along and says, “hey. There’s another way of seeing the world – a way that is clear and pure. Just take off those glasses.”

At first we would resist. But then we might secretly slip them down a little – peek over the top of the lenses – just to catch a glimpse of this “real world.” And then at some point perhaps we would take them off for a few minutes and look around.

At first, even though we would perceive the difference between the two worlds, we would be confused about their relative value. We might still prefer the old way of seeing – we have been wearing our dysfunctional glasses for a long time, after all. Probably we will put them back on. It’s familiar and comfortable. On and off, off and on . . .

I am never not amazed at how lovely a tree is, how instructive moonlight is, at the patience and kindness of brooks in full spate. This is the gift: this is what is given, and what gives of itself, over and over and over.

Awakening is like that. It is just like that. For me it is, and maybe for you as well. It comes in little flashes at first. We resist it. It comes and goes. It takes time for us to recognize and then choose Love. It takes practice.

The thing we want to be clear about is that nothing changes but the way that we see. The maple trees don’t change, our neighbors don’t change, vanilla ice cream doesn’t change, moonlight doesn’t change. But, because the way that we see changes, everything slips into its right place. We see reality as it is, not as we wish it was, and not as we insist it be.

That is all there is to peace. That is all there is to joy.

I write often about “giving attention.” That is just my way of saying that it is helpful (or is for me and may be for you) to be present: to just be still for a few minutes and notice what is going on. The more that I do this, the more I realize there is nothing to do: it is all being done. Being simply is, and it includes me naturally, and it includes you as well.

In an absolute sense, there is no practicing to this. We can’t be more or less than what we are. We can’t be anywhere else than where and when we are. But in the relative sense – in the ordinary course of experience – it is possible to discover this new way of seeing, and then – by giving attention to it consistently and gently – to deepen with and into it.

Life is both ordinary and luminous – the two qualities are really the same. I am never not amazed at this: at how lovely a tree is, how instructive moonlight is, at the patience and kindness of brooks in full spate. Life contains us: expresses us: and offers us over and over its glorious and unconditional love.

There is Nothing to Heal

It is not necessary to heal ourselves.
It is necessary to give attention
to what is broken
and loveless
where it is perceived.
The distinction between what is external
and internal will resolve itself
without our intervention.
Attention is merciful sustenance
because it is nonjudgmental
and incapable of division.
Its perfection is clear
and unhurried.
It responds to us
yet neither begins nor ends
with our intention.
To be attentive
is to consent
to be that through which
a necessary blessing extends.
Therefore,
let go of the investment
in a better self,
a happier self,
a lovely self.
Relinquish
your stranglehold on form.
Let what passes pass,
and in the subsequent space
of nonresistance
notice what does not pass
but only stays.
Discover again the wholeness
naturally encompassing
what we call the self,
what we call broken,
and what we call
loveless.
It is not necessary to heal yourself
but only to discover
through attention
that there is nothing to heal
and never was.

The Ordinary Luminosity of Being

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.

Undoing Symbols in A Course in Miracles

We experience the world through symbols of both love and hate. For example, I think of the chickadee as a particular symbol of love, but really it is just a bird. The world offers itself to us fresh and new, over and over, but we interpret it, and then live by our interpretations. This is a stressful and destabilizing way to live! Much of our anxiety and negativity would dissolve if we simply met life as it is, without the intervention of symbols.

Symbols, in this instance, are another word for thought. The chickadee is in no way dependent on my thoughts about it. In fact, its entire existence is independent of what I think about it. But over the years I have read and studied and written in such a way that I really don’t see chickadees anymore. I see my thoughts about chickadees. I see my ideas. I see symbols.

I am not putting thought down. It is a natural effect of having brains, and it can be quite useful. I am grateful that thought allows me to read and contemplate Emily Dickinson, and bake bread, and learn new songs on my guitar. I am also grateful for things like toilet paper, sitcoms, prosthetic legs and axes.

The problem isn’t thought but rather that we take thought so seriously: that we think it is reality itself, rather than a set of filters and prisms through which reality reaches us. Once we are clear that we are dealing with filters and prisms – once we see both the symbol and the innate desire to keep using and making symbols – then generally we’re okay, because the power of choice is restored to us. That is, we can remind ourselves that the chickadee is just a chickadee, but also enjoy them as symbols of divine life and love.

With characteristic directness, A Course in Miracles suggests that clarity in this regard is essential to knowing ourselves in truth.

The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed, and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God (T-16.IV.2:1-4).

How do we undo our reliance on these symbols?

It is enough to see them: to see that we are making use of them. Thus, what is called for is not a war against thought, or against particular aspects of thought, but rather a gentle and sustained awareness of how thought parses awareness into bits and pieces, arranging and rearranging them in a futile attempt to remake perfection.

It is important to simply see what happens when we stop trying to control life. It is tempting to decide in advance that we’ll be at peace or ecstatically happy or get this or that job. But fantasies of an idealized future are simply another set of symbols.

In essence, I am saying that we need to make contact with our preferred symbols and give attention to them. That’s all. We need to sit with them, and allow them to sift through us, and simply see what happens. This is hard to do! It can actually be quite terrifying, especially when we begin to look at our special love relationships and let them go. But we have to do it. Perhaps it is helpful to remember the confidence ACIM has that we will make it through.

Be not unwilling now; you are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace (T-16.IV.2:5).

Nisargadatta, when pressed to explain his method, he said simply that he trusted his guru. If we have taken A Course in Miracles as our path, then we are not confused by placing our faith in it in a way similar to Nisargadatta. Give attention to that which you love and that which you hate: make contact with thought and with symbols: to look in this way is to give attention to our symbols in a gentle and sustained way: looking becomes a bridge: and we discover that that “which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything” (T-16.IV.2:6).

Choosing the Right Spiritual Path

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.