Sean Reagan

Gratefulness ends our suffering and we cannot come to it alone. Gratefulness is always inherent in the extension of love to a brother or sister, which may be experience as either offering or reception. This is why A Course in Miracles so consistently brings us back to the importance of relationship based on our radical equality.

[T]he perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of the Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach (T-8.IV.6:7-9).

When I first began to practice A Course in Miracles, I considered miracles to be arrangements of time and space designed to please my desire and ambition. Walking on water and winning the lottery. I wanted what I wanted and the miracle was a divine promise it would be given to me. I was entitled.

It does not work that way, though we can be deceived it does for a long time. Lifetimes perhaps.

What shifts us away from this self-centeredness?

Willingness does. Willingness is critical. When we are willing, we become honest. And when we are honest we can begin to see the futility of our personal plans for salvation. We begin to see that every desire we have can be met and we will still be unsatisfied. We start to understand that there is more to life than the body. It sounds simple but to see it clearly can be very hard. We have been thinking in terms of bodies and the personal self for so long.

When we see the futility of our own action – our own resources – then we reach the space that Bill Thetford reached with Helen Schucman when he said “there must be another way.”

That is the very essence of willingness. What I am doing is not working and so there must be another way. I am determined now to find it.

Tara Singh taught his students that want and reaction could only end when one was determined to end them.

Question these things deeply so that they won’t deceive you anymore. In the end we will have to confront the unwillingness that is in each of us (Dialogues on A Course in Miracles 51).

So we come to that place and self-centeredness ends because we are no longer looking to it for solutions. That part is finished. And what happens then? We begin to notice our brothers and sisters. Again, this sounds so simple, but it so much more lovely and rich than just a sentence. When we see without the egoic filters, we see what is new. We come closer to reality. It is very beautiful and pristine. And it is given to us. It has nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with the generosity of God.

Slowly, I began to perceive in my brothers and sisters their own energies, their own lives. I saw their grief, their love, their light, their fear, their resistance. It was very subtle, like perceiving the faintest of faint rainbows at dusk. I am not perfect at this form of vision yet, because my identification with the Holy Spirit is not perfect, but still. It is a very peaceful experience – simultaneously new and the most familiar thing you can imagine. How kind God is!

And there is nothing to do with it. Nothing to do to it. It is there and you are there within it. You ask what you need to do and you are told and then you do it. It has nothing to do with the ego.

[T]he teacher of God . . . does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action (M-9.2:1-2).

So you know, sometimes you are asked to talk with someone, sometimes to hug them, sometimes to just listen, sometimes to let someone else do the talking. And it is okay because you understand that “you” are not the one doing anything anyway. It is being done “through” you; and when another brother or sister does it, “you” are still implicated. You are still being blessed. How could it be otherwise?

When I saw this with clarity, and gave myself to its application, I experienced gratitude at a level I had never known nor imagined possible. I was not getting anything in worldly terms – my old understanding of the purpose of miracles. Rather, I was being blessed with a capacity to extend love to my brothers and sister that far exceeded what the egoic self would even have contemplated.

So that is what A Course in Miracles does. It brings a clarity that allows us to make room for a Teacher who knows, who can really guide us. And because we are at last ready to resign as our own teacher, we can at last give attention to this Teacher. Gratitude – and the end of suffering – is the sure result.

A Course in Miracles teaches – in no insignificant way – that the Holy Spirit is our Teacher (see, for example, T-5.III.10:1, T-7.VII.7:2, T-8.VIII.9:10 and T-16.I.5:6). This is a liberating idea because the Holy Spirit is a symbol of our healed mind, the condition in which it remembers perfectly its oneness with God. Thus, the Holy Spirit is not a separate being external to us who intervenes when asked, but is within us – is us – in a real and practical way.

In order to learn, we have to decide to learn. We have to want to learn. And we are all at different stages of that process. Some of us think we know it all already and some of us aren’t even asking any questions yet. Knowing where we are with respect to learning is a very personal process and it can’t be rushed or overlooked. It is on this basis that we will begin to give serious attention to real learning, real undoing. In a sense, A Course in Miracles aims to bring us to that place, where we can choose the Holy Spirit as our inner teacher.

It can be helpful to adopt an interim teacher in this process – someone (or something perhaps) that will stand in for the Holy Spirit, and help us bridge that space between unwillingness and willingness.

This is in the nature of projection! We are projecting our responsibility to learn onto somebody else and asking them to carry it for a little while. Therapists work very hard with this issue. It is not inherently unhealthy so long as the one upon whom the projection is made is aware of it and is working to undo it.

I think of Tara Singh as my teacher of A Course in Miracles. In doing so, I project onto him my holiness, my sacredness, my responsibility for decision and so forth. This is not an error because Tara Singh did not accept those projections! He knew they were there but he simply looked beyond them to our fundamental equality as creations of God. He was very skillful and attentive in bringing students to a place of decision, but he did not decide for them.

When we discover a teacher who wants only to undo our need for her or him, then we are in the presence of real grace. It is a rare quality!

I also project a great deal onto the bluets this year! I don’t think anybody else is walking around calling bluets their ACIM teacher, though of course I may be mistaken. If you have some of these pretty little flowers available, go sit with them a while. See if you are ready to be their student!

The bluets have intelligence and presence but it falls outside the brain and the world as the ego sees and thinks of it. They are creative and generous and loving but in a radically simple way. When you see their love, it is almost too much to bear. And the thought that you are not separate from them but might express the way they do . . . it brings you to silence. It brings you to stillness.

The bluets can be my teacher because they do not want anything from me! That is the sign of a true teacher – she does not want your money or your praise or your attention or anything. She is just giving of what was given to her, because she knows that the expression of God’s Love is all there is. And so you are blessed by that knowledge, and work through the details in a way that makes sense to where you are at at this particular time and place until you learn there is nothing to learn and never was.

What I am saying is that giving attention to just where we are projecting our inner teacher can be very helpful. Is it working? Are we being led home or directed outward? Is our learning in the nature of a sacrifice or a joyful acceptance of all that is? Learning is a kind of dance that happens away from what is time-bound and matter-bound. Are you hearing that song? Are you feeling that flow?

What does it mean, in the context of A Course in Miracles, to trust God?

Though I have my reasons for taking leave of the Catholic church, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the many gifts I learned within its rituals and influence. My parents in particular were devoted believers, models of the discipline and attentiveness that helpfully grounds any spiritual undertaking. In other words, I learned to trust God very early in my life!

My thinking has shifted somewhat since those early days. Back then God was a distant taskmaster, alternately loving and judgmental, capable of thunderbolts and car accidents. You just never knew. Trusting him – for it was a decidedly male God in those days – was as much a defensive, as a proactive, gesture. You didn’t want to be on God’s wrong side.

I do not perceive God in that way any longer. It is hard to say what God is – love, light, truth, creation are all reasonable enough, but also vague and capable of considerable misapprehension. I have always appreciated A Course in Miracles admonition that we say “God is” and then zip it. What else can you say? Besides, I am not really trying to define God so much as remember God, or experience God.

Putting one’s trust in God has to be complete and total. We can’t give over one part of our lives while holding on to another. If we are still trusting our own resources (however well we hide that fact, however much we deny it) then we are never going to know God. Because you can’t trust by degrees.

Also, when I talk about trusting God these days, it is less in the nature of deferring to the greater power of a separate deity, and more akin to saying that the future – such as it is or isn’t – is not the proper focus of my attention. All healing is in the present moment. When I am not obsessing with the future – with this or that outcome, with this or that goal, with this or that plan – then I am naturally able to give more attention to what A Course in Miracles calls the “Holy Instant.”

Nothing is wanting in the present moment. There is no lack. There are no problems. Everything is fluid but serene. Discovering this is critical to our inner peace and happiness. Who lives in the future (or the past) is by definition unhappy. And there is another way.

The other way is trust. It is taking on faith that the past and future are illusory states that have no bearing on truth. Reality cannot be segmented into periods of time, each period to be judged, and life lived in vain pursuit of those that are most or more desirable. To place one’s trust in God is to declare an intention to avail oneself of all the healing and all the power that is offered to any of us: the present moment, in which all creation extends to and through us, and we remember God, and are One.

I perceive the rhythm and movement of A Course in Miracles as a subtle presence in my life – powerful but not overwhelming. It is reminiscent of a brook slowly carving away at the landscape, quiet and beautiful, and one only notices its transformational effects after months or even years .

In a sense, this is simply how I want to learn – and how I learn best. The course meets us where we are, but we also take it in the form and manner that works best for us. There is no use fighting this, no use resisting it. Part of accepting the Holy Spirit as a Teacher, and Jesus as a guide, means relinquishing our inclination to control outcomes and dictate means.

That said, there are certainly times in my life the course precipitates fairly significant – even dramatic – shifts in thinking. These moments are somewhat rare, but I am grateful for them indeed. They are in the nature of lightening flashes, quick and powerful, in the wake of which nothing is the same.

For me, one of those moments occurred early in my practice. One morning, while walking the dogs, I realized that the God to whom I prayed – and with whom I had been in relationship for well over three decades – had more in common with Jonathan Edwards (he of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God fame) than with the God inherent in A Course in Miracles.

This insight literally rocked me. Every time I turned toward familiar modes of prayer, there was nothing there. I felt weak and fluttery. I was embarrassed and chagrined. I was scared to move forward but even more scared to fall back to the familiar.

Driving home the other day past fields bright with dandelions it occurred to me that in many ways, I had finally integrated the course’s view of God: present, loving, trustworthy, kind and with whom I shared a powerfully creative Will. I don’t mean to suggest I’ve got it down perfect; only that I am not so torn between competing visions of God. I have settled on a belief system that empowers me to look closely and without fear and what still seems to obscure the divine.

So most of the time my practice is like a brook – steady, pulsing, strong, reliable – but then other times yes, it floods the banks, it pushes me hard where I need to go. I am grateful for that! As I am grateful for the quieter moments as well, all of them reminding me my Teacher knows the way.