The Joy Inherent in Doing Nothing

Given the premise of A Course in Miracles – the world is not real and we remain as God created us – the question often arises, “but what do I do?” We can only ask this question because we still identify with the world and bodies. The answer – “nothing” – is unsatisfying (as “nothing” always is to that which fears it is nothing) and so we seek out other answers and call that seeking “our life” or “our life’s purpose” or “our function in life.”

If we could see that the question of what to do is merely a form of resistance – and not a reasonable interrogatory about how to spend the interim period between sleep and wakefulness – then it would not be so hard to answer. There is no interim period between awakening and what awakening is not. It is one or the other. To suggest otherwise – and to make that otherwise our practice – is to choose hell in the midst of Heaven.

Much of what we call the ego is simply the habit of thinking – insisting, really – that unhappiness is joy, that pain is pleasure, and that tears of anguish are an unreserved blessing. Why else would we keep doing what doesn’t work? We must have persuaded ourselves that it does work, or that it will work someday, or that – at a minimum – it’s still better than the alternative, which is really really bad.

It is like bashing our head against a wooden wall and telling ourselves it’s okay, we like it, because the only other wall we can imagine is made of stone. That we could just stop doing this thing that hurts does not occur to us. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves?

All along we thought that inner peace was an accomplishment, and so we made it a goal, and now we learn that it is a gift, and we already have it, and so all our accomplishing and effort was simply a painful distraction.

Sometimes it’s good to ask – and answer – “why” questions. But sometimes we have to put them aside and give attention to the present moment. To do this is not to avoid answers but rather to step outside the framework – call it mental, neural, habitual, addictive, whatever you like – that is causing the problem in the first place.

If you are stuck in a loop, the answer does not lie in the loop, but in just stepping outside it. This is why A Course in Miracles teaches that “[w]hen you lay the ego aside, it will be gone” (T-8.VIII.8:6). It is that simple.

It would appear that I have perhaps contradicted myself here. In the first paragraph I said that the answer to “what to do” is “nothing,” and now I am talking about making decisions to stop hitting our heads or to step outside loops.

But you see, doing nothing is the end of the ego. The ego is a busybody, a chatterer, a planner, a doer. It is never still, never attentive, never just grateful. When we do nothing, we have laid the ego aside. Krishnamurti purportedly said once that his secret was that he didn’t mind what happened. That is a way of saying that he allowed reality to be what it was without interference or judgment. He did not pursue pleasure.

If we watch our thoughts closely, we will see that we do “mind” what is happening. We have opinions and ideas and judgments, and they translate in to plans for action, and then we act and react to whatever is thus set in motion, and then we have opinions and ideas and judgments about that and then . . . it is a cycle, an endless loop and we are doing it.

So instead we do nothing. For a minute or two at first, then more and more. It does not take long to see that life does not ask anything from us. It is a miracle, really. All along we thought that inner peace was an accomplishment, and so we made it a goal, and now we learn that it is a gift, and we already have it, and so all our accomplishing and effort was simply a painful distraction.

What joy there is in seeing this! And we forget it – or drop it for a little while – but then what joy to see that it is not diminished or compromised when we pick it back up. There are no mysteries and no secrets, just this quiet still happiness growing more so all the time.

Faith Concludes the Journey

Reason takes us so far; faith finishes the journey.

Faith is in the nature of assent, a quiet yes offered internally. It is like reason delivers us to the desert’s edge, but faith is what sustains our first steps into that apparently dangerous wilderness. This is why A Course in Miracles teaches us that “[w]here learning ends, God begins . . .” (T-18.IX.11:4)

Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself (T-18.IX.12:1-2).

What then are we learning? We are learning to offer to the Holy Spirit that which we would withhold from God, the fragment of reality we think we stole and now rule in shadows and uncertainty. That part of us which cherishes darkness and separation and its own will is all that must be brought to light.

This is the little part you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven (T-18.IX.1:6-8).

This giving back (or bringing to light) is a symbolic gesture. It s important to see this. We are not actually returning a stolen piece of Heaven to Heaven. God, like Heaven, is indivisible. What never happened need not be fixed or repaired. But because we believe it happened – and because this belief is the separation – we need to mimic the amends.

In this sense, healing is simply the recognition that sickness never was.

We heal in this way by offering all the apparent symptoms of separation to the Holy Spirit: our fear that our bodies are the wrong size or shape, our anger at our parents, our frustration with money, our dissatisfaction with work, the injustice of war and poverty, the crossword puzzle we can’t complete, our headaches, stubbed toes and cancerous lesions . . .

All of these are merely symptoms – or symbols – of our belief in separation. They are in the nature of idols whose sole purpose is to obscure the unchangeable fact of our oneness with God. They are illusions and thus bound to failure.

Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the Thought of God holds of you remains exactly as it always was (T-30.III.10:1-2).

Yet the question is never will illusion prevail, but rather how long will we postpone our celebration in God that illusions are not real? For the separation from God continues only so long as we insist it must.

Reason is what guides us through the text and workbook of A Course in Miracles. Reason teaches us that the myriad forms of fear we perceive are not separate problems in need of separate solutions but rather symptoms of the only problem we have. Reason persuades us that we need a Teacher to show us the other, the better way, which is accomplished by showing us that “[y]our one central problem has been answered, and you have no other” (W-pI.80.1:2).

Faith is what allows us to accept that all our problems have been solved, that peace is inherent, and that joy is now. Faith stands on the foundation reason built and leaps. Its gratefulness is akin to wings. It is not afraid so much as eager. It is ready to learn that the final lesson was what we expected all along it would be: We remain as God created us and God’s Will is done. Perfect wholeness abounds.

Attention and Choiceless Awareness

Last year, somewhat like observing a large trout surface through shadowy depths of the lake at dawn, I realized that attention was a gift and because it was a gift, it could only be given away, and this “giving” was in the nature of  true creativity. It was in the nature of love because it led only to choiceless awareness.

In the wake of this insight, I became sensitive to where my attention went. I noticed when it drifted and saw that it did not really drift but rather was abandoned, set aside, and like a stray dog attached itself to anything that offered it a little comfort and succor. This almost always led to disappointment, anxiety, grief – all the hallmarks of conflict.

The truth is, we have an inherent power to give our attention anywhere and to anything, and we can do this in loveless ways or in loving ways. That is the decision we make; that is the lesson to which we are brought by A Course in Miracles: it brings us to the point of seeing with clarity this point of decision and it places us with a Teacher who can help us make the choice for love.

How does this happen? Attention given in a sustained and loving way transcends itself and becomes awareness. The semantics are not essential – you may attach other words or concepts to this process and that is not a problem. There are many ways to see this and to share about it. If we are starving and someone offers us bread, we are not going to argue that the plate on which it is served is the wrong shade of blue.

We discern, then, that attention is capable of direction. It is subject to choice. It can go here or there. It can be ignored or cherished.

But awareness simply is. There is no good or bad in it, no becoming in it, no judgment in it. Awareness sees the fact and brings nothing to it. It puts nothing between it and the fact – no filters, no conclusions, no ideals. When we are aware in this way, we are discerning between what is real and what is illusory, and giving attention only to what is real because we see at last that there is nothing else to give attention to.

So awareness is what brings choice to an end: it undoes choice. The logic of this is impeccable: what is one cannot have many separate ones to choose between. But we want to be honest about what we know through experience and what we have learned by reading or hearing the words of others. We want to be in relationship with God, not ideas about God, and we don’t want to appropriate someone else’s relationship with God. It has to be authentic. It has to be real.

So awareness in the sense I am using it may not yet be the fullness of our experience. This is not a problem. For a while, we move back and forth between the disciplined yet malleable energy of attention and the boundless love of awareness. In time, the former is precedent to the latter. But in eternity, in infinitude, even attention is an illusion.

So giving attention – to thought, to thought’s movement, to thought’s origins, to thought’s agendas, to thought’s thoughts – is a way of fostering awareness. It is a way of entering the flow of God’s thoughts and leaving our miserly own behind. There is no way to rush this process and no way to force it. One simply offers the gift – over and over one gives – and awaits the moment of acceptance.

All Relationship is with God

Relationship begins with seeing that duality is not inherent in life but is rather a mode of perception that one can choose to relinquish. It reflects an internal decision to no longer be regulated by ideas and opinions and beliefs – the clutter of a mind that has dissociated itself from God.

Relationship is what remains when our separation from God is ended, and we perceive only the truth that is eternal and unchanging. When we are of that state, we are resonating with all life, whatever its form, whatever its temporary appearance.

In this sense, relationship and atonement are the same.

We think of our relationships for the most part in terms of something other – a person, an object, a place, a belief system. Could be our spouse, could be A Course in Miracles, could be a diet, could be a landscape. But if the other is subject to change, subject to good and bad, subject to helpful or not helpful, then it is not a relationship but a bargain. We are negotiating in an effort to gain something – a good feeling, a sense of purpose, a moment of pleasure.

It is neither necessary nor helpful (nor possible, really) to arrange the external world to our satisfaction, but it is helpful and possible to arrange it in a way that facilitates our learning and the application of that learning.

But reality is not capable of negotiation. One cannot bargan with the truth. And what is perfect does not make deals.

So the suggestion, then, is that the healed relationship contemplated by A Course in Miracles (T-17.V.h) really has nothing to do with what is external. Rather, it is that which follows in the wake of our internal decision to align our thinking with truth as God created it.

Is it not certain that you will remember a goal unchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was never absent (T-17.V.9:5-6).

Relationship and attention are intimately connected. Moment by moment we give attention to thought – are we thinking with God or against God? This can sound difficult or tedious until we realize that to give attention to thought is to think with God. By giving attention we enter that state of awareness which knows that it is not possible to be separate from God, only to think that it is possible.

In that moment, we are in relationship with love itself as love itself, and the question of “the other” naturally ends.

I think this requires effort at the beginning: I think it is in the nature of learning. One acquires a map and then studies it, and then ventures tentatively out into the territory, checking and rechecking the map. But gradually, one’s knowledge and experience begin to supplant the map. In a sense, they become the map. And so one ventures more readily into the territory, going deeper, taking less with them, and lingering longer and longer.

It is neither necessary nor helpful (nor possible, really) to arrange the external world to our satisfaction, but it is helpful and possible to arrange it in a way that facilitates our learning and the application of that learning.

This is why I wake up early. Our house is small, Chrisoula and I both work from home, our children our home-schooled, and so things get busy and vibrant quickly. It is more like a fast-paced country diner than a monastery. I love it – I am deeply grateful for it – but I am still learning how to be still in the midst of it.

So those quiet morning hours become the space in which I give attention to truth as God created it, through my practice of A Course in Miracles, and thus nurture my awareness of love which – I know you know this, too – inflects the day with gentleness and peace, ever offering itself to itself.

Transformed Perception is what Transforms the World

A Course in Miracles does not offer a way “out” of the world. There is no way “out.” Rather, the course transforms our mode of perception, sharpening the distinction between what is real and what is false, so that we can choose – moment by moment – to be united with God.

In that divine union, there is no world. There is no subject and object that is the necessary precedent to separation. It is relatively to easy to learn about this: through the course, through its teachers, through other non-dual paths and instructors. But it is another thing to experience it, to make it the fact of one’s life.

This was why Tara Singh insisted that the serious student of A Course in Miracles accept as premise that the time for learning had reached its end.

We must first begin to see that we know nothing other than ideas. We are probably not interested in going any further, nor do we even think that there is anything further. We just say, ‘well, I wish a miracle would happen.’ A person can have ten PhD’s, but what difference would that make. The lesson is still of relative knowledge and the main function of relative knowledge is to keep the separation intact (Nothing Real Can Be Threatened 210).

Taraji understood the wisdom inherent in Thoreau’s observation that “[n]atural ignorance has its place, but educated ignorance is a very dangerous thing.”

Often, it is our yearning for escape – which so frequently translates into mere distraction – that impedes our natural ability to perceive the truth as

God created it.

I have to question – to look at, to inquire into – the problems that I believe shape my life. The people who are not doing what I think they should do, the economy that is not performing the way I want it to, the memories of past injustices and the anticipation of even greater wrongs ahead. A Course in Miracles is clear that “[q]uestioning illusions is the first step in undoing them” (T-3.III.2:6).

This looking or questioning is not in the nature of analysis anymore. There is a place for that but then one can move beyond it to something that is less wordy, less educated. I cannot just read about swimming in the brook, nor watch others swim in the brook. In the end, if I am serious about swimming in the brook, then I am going to have to wade in. In that action, something new happens that  learning can at best only hint at.

This is true of all experience whether we are talking about archery, baking bread, writing poetry or becoming a priest.

To focus on the external as the cause of my peace or lack thereof is nothing more than an evasion of my responsibility to be as God created me. This fact merits close and sustained attention. If it is true that “I am as God created me” (W-pI.162), then what else could possibly matter but coming to that knowledge now? What else could possibly heal the world and bring all conflict to its end?

Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his  mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure, his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world, because he gives the world that he receives each time he practices the words of truth (W-pI.162.3:1-3).

Thus, when I sense that things are amiss in my life, I do not dwell on them but rather give attention to the mode of perception – of thought, of the movement of mind – out of which they arise. This is the real problem, and so there is no solution apart from it. Discover that what is external is without effect and unreal and you discover the will of God within. There is no separation; there is the only idea of it.

In Relationship with Christ through Jesus

While I do not think it is necessary to believe that the historical Jesus dictated A Course in Miracles to Helen Schucman, or to believe that Jesus is an enlightened Son of a Divine Father, or in any other way special or separate from us, I do think that it is helpful to have a personal relationship with Jesus in order to fully enter into the course and give it the internal space to fully unfold its miraculous shifts in thought.

On this journey you have chosen me as you companion instead of the ego. Do not attempt to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way (T-8.V.5:8-9).

This is not a matter of faith or belief as we encounter it in the church of formal religion. There is no ritual to it. We are talking about a relationship with Jesus that is in truth a relationship with Christ and we are the Christ.

Christ is God’s Son as He created Him. He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another, and with God as well . . . Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope forever will abide in Him (W-pII.6.1:1-2, 2:1).

So when we relate to Jesus in this way, we are reaching the truth of the Self that God created, and that we share with one another as God’s Creation.

What does this mean practically?

It is not an error to talk to Jesus – to relate to Jesus – as if he were a body with whom we are sharing a worldly experience. Though I do not do it as often as I once did, I still offer verbal prayers to Jesus. I still sometimes fall to my knees to say wordy versions of “please” and “help” and “thank you.” This is not spiritually immature. It is not naive or foolish.

Even if we are not ready to enter that space of silence and stillness – that centerless center of inner peace and happiness – we can still sense its presence, and we can sense the welcome it offers all of us, being for all of us.

To adopt Jesus as a model for decision-making in the world can be a very fruitful practice. It can smooth out stressful moments and clear an interior space in which to deepen our understanding and application of right-minded thinking, or forgiveness. For many years I prayed the rosary several times a day, not because I was particularly invested in the so-called promises of such prayers, but because they were calming and quieted the egoic chatter that creates such pressure and confusion.

To relate to Jesus in this sense is to render him very much a symbol. To say that in no way denigrates his fundamental helpfulness. It is not an insult, though obviously many sincere people will perceive it as such. There are helpful symbols and unhelpful symbols in the world of illusion, and turning to those that resonate in peaceful and happy ways is how we heal. This includes Jesus, as it can include everything from walks in the woods to kirtan to biking.

Any of these symbols – and there are countless others – are akin to seams in the veil through which the very light of Christ and Heaven stream, blessing us even in our spiritual exile.

The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you (T-8.IV.2:12-13).

Gradually, we become comfortable in the knowledge that when we turn to “Jesus” we are not turning to a superior being favored of God but rather a symbol of our unity with God. We project our holiness and divinity; relating to Jesus personally is a way of reclaiming that holiness, essentially by extending it to our brothers and sisters. That is always the benefit of loving Jesus: we are made better lovers for the world in its delusions. We heal as we are healed.

We begin to sense, in other words, the oneness with our Creator to which Jesus alludes. We begin to sense the Christ, which is the totality of God’s Creation without limit or specialness. Christ is not Jesus; Christ is all the separated Sons and Daughters remembering their unity with God. That is why I always say that we are in this salvation thing together. I cannot do it without you. You lift and take me with you. There is no other, no better way to say it.

When we consider our relationship with Jesus in this sense, we are talking about something that reflects a deeply personal level of sharing and experience, because it is abstract and internal. But it is increasingly the space into which we settle as our relationship with Jesus itself settles. What is happening externally matters less and less because it is either an expression of our Love for all, or it is an expression of our continual call for Love from all.

In either case, we know that it is never the egoic self that answers, but rather the knowledge of Christ flowing through that self that answers. We aren’t really doing anything outside of being willing. So we relax a little and we don’t take the external world of events and personalities so seriously, because we know it is in better hands than ours, so long as we are attending to the foundational relationship that underlies the all.

That sounds very poetic and mystical, doesn’t it? Well, I am partial to that kind of language so I tend to write that way. But it is important also to see that this connection to Jesus is a very natural and gentle relationship. It is a way of seeing that is not aggressive, that does not rush to conclusion or definition. It is like I know that bluets are called “bluets” or “Quaker ladies” or whatever, but mostly I am just happy to be in the presence of their soft blue and violet petals. The intellect can be a useful tool in its place but it is hardly a necessary precedent to the experience of joy.

Even if we are not ready to enter that space of silence and stillness – that centerless center of inner peace and happiness – we can still sense its presence, and we can sense the welcome it offers all of us, being for all of us. Just knowing that we have a home that is not this world, the way the world understands and defines home, is very healing. There is no expiration date on salvation.

So our relationship with Jesus – which, again, can be very simple and ordinary, and the form of which is a matter of what works for us as individuals in the time and space in which we perceive ourselves – really becomes a reflection of the Holy Relationship, a perfect union of God, Self and shared will, that transforms our perception of all life. It is not the only relationship that does this, as A Course in Miracles is not the only path that facilitates this remembrance, but if it is our path, then it is a good relationship to give attention to in a nurturing way, a loving way, such as we are able in a given moment.