On Seeing Only the Past

I see only the past (W-pI.7).

The seventh lesson of A Course in Miracles is a beautiful way to reconnect to how practical and powerful the course is, and how readily it can be applied in our day-to-day lives.

What is the past but interpretation clung to in place of reality? When we see only the past, we are relying on our ideas about people, places and things – about life itself. This person is good, that flower is best, life is unfair. And all of that interpretation simply obscures reality which is always quiet, peaceful and flowing.

Our intentions can be very sincere and our desire all but perfect but it won’t matter if we are still only seeing the past. The past is always personal – it always reflects our goals, our investment in outcomes, our attachment to our feelings. We enshrine memory – we put it on a pedestal – and from that special place it blocks the Light that is God so that we seem to live only in shadows.

This habit of seeing only what is of the past can be very subtle. Many students of A Course in Miracles – certainly I am one of them – come to an intellectual appreciation of this lesson. Yes, yes, we say. The past impedes our experience of the present. We get it. On the surface, we are very devoted and committed. But deep down it is a different story.

So much of what feeds the ego is outside the immediate reach of our awareness. It emerges from the welter of Freud’s unacknowledged and unexplored cavernous interiors. We don’t have to go excavating for it – this is not a course in spiritual archaeology. But we do have to be vigilant to what is happening in the present. When we are not joyful and when we do not know peace, it is because we are separated from reality – which is to be separated from God – and we are separated this way because we have again allowed the past to intrude on our experience of God and love.

It is not my job to heal the past or even to uncover it. I merely need to be a faithful witness to the present effects of seeing only the past, and then to give those effects to the Holy Spirit, willing that they be undone for me.

Fortunately, to witness the present effect of seeing only the past is sufficient for healing.

This happens to all of us – separation, anxiety, fear, anger. There is no point in pretending otherwise and no point in feeling depressed or discouraged about it. When we practice A Course in Miracles – studying the text, doing the lessons, giving attention to forgiveness and love, and working with brothers and sisters to bring all this into fruitful application – we become increasingly aware of the gap between peace and conflict. We realize that we are invested in conflict – that we want it – and we perceive too the apparently vast space between our conflicted self and the peace that surpasses understanding.

This is a critical insight! Only when we realize how far we have to go, and how futile are the resources we call our own, that a real journey of healing and love can begin. And it will feel like a journey – it will resemble a journey – but the farther we go along it, the clearer it will be that we are merely traveling in place. We are merely remembering that we already have all that can be given, and that we are already home in Creation, where differentiation of any kind is impossible.

In other words, when I am tense and angry in a meeting, say, it is not necessary to dig into the past to find some similar incident or supposed cause. Analysis is not required! Rather, it is imperative I hold my tension and anger without judgment – to see them as mistakes in need of gentle correction rather than sins condemning me to an eternity in hell. When I do this, the Holy Spirit softly intercedes and dissolves the present conflict by bringing my attention back to the present, which A Course in Miracles calls a Holy Instant.

It is not my job to heal the past or even to uncover it. I merely need to be a faithful witness to the present effects of seeing only the past, and then to give those effects to the Holy Spirit, willing that they be undone for me. And they will be. And to that extend, my reliance on the past as a means of interpreting or understanding – manipulating, really – reality is diminished.

As this happens with greater frequency – as we gain confidence in our holiness and in the positive influence of our holy teacher – our stranglehold on the past will begin to diminish on its own. We will notice this in the sense that things which used to bother us – which used to cause us all manner of grief and anguish – are no longer such a big deal. We might not even notice them.

What happened? We learned to identify with the Holy Spirit – that’s what happened. We learned to want only what God wills for us.

That is our liberation. That is the field in which we awaken.

This is such a simple idea – we see only the past – and yet there is such a profound opportunity for healing in it. In all things, at all times, give attention to the way in which the past is seeping into your perception and shaping your conclusions and driving your behavior. Simply see it: take notice of what is happening, and what its effects are. The essential conflict will be clarified: we are given the Kingdom now, we are blessed in reality now. We are being tapped by God on the left shoulder and stubbornly looking to our right. It’s funny when we see how obstinate we are, and how forgiving God is, and how easily the apparent mess is corrected.

It truly takes very little to shift our attention from wrong- to right-minded thinking. What is hard is seeing the need for it – that is where the egoic mind/self is most aggressive and wily. The impulse to think we’re doing fine, making progress on our own and so forth can be both pervasive and persuasive. But once we have established the need for releasing the past as the only way to fully dwell in the Holy Instant, it is largely done for us. Really, we are simply seeing reality, which is not dependent on either our perception or interpretation to be real.

In any case, there is no power that can withstand our mind’s decision to return to love, to return to the holy present that in reality it never left.

Questioning Ourselves in A Course in Miracles

Part of my practice of A Course in Miracles revolves around questioning – questioning myself, questioning my practice, my motivations, my goals. I don’t do this to be mean or judgmental. Sometimes that happens, of course. But mostly it is undertaken with the Holy Spirit, and the objective is simply to ensure that I am not wandering too far from the path that will lead me home. It is a way of being vigilant against mind-wandering.

The text and workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles often encourage us to be vigilant in this regard, always with a goal of deepening our relationship with the decision-making mind. This can be a long process, subject to fits and starts, and not without its moments of confusion and misapplication. That’s how it goes in the world of form! But that is okay. When we make the decision to utilize this spiritual tradition as our means of awakening, all else needed will be given in time. Indeed, questioning is sometimes the means by which both the need for the gift – and the gift itself – is revealed to us.

Critical to this process of questioning is the habit of doing it with a power that is not oneself – that is, doing it with the Holy Spirit or Jesus (or another spiritual symbol if that is more helpful). When we venture into unhealed neighborhoods, a healed guide is not thing to have! It helps ward off the subtle patterns of egoic thinking that can neatly unravel our progress and learning.

So questioning, then, is a form of vigilance – of form of accepting the gifts of God rather than resisting them. It is not the only form of vigilance – prayer, meditation, walks in the forest, Emily Dickinson poems et cetera abound – but it is a helpful one. It reflects our faith that we are not bereft, that if we slip we will be helped upright, and that no adverse consequences attend the appearance of our imperfection. For we are just as God created us, and this is all that we are bound to remember, and all that we need to remember.

Undoing Ego Through Attention

It is important to remember that the ego is something we made – it is our project, our construct – and so we are enabled to bring it to an end as well. This makes no sense at all from an ego perspective (forever bent on its own preservation), which is why we need the help of A Course in Miracles in seeing what the ego is and how it can be undone. Ego, it turns out, can be undone through attention.

Help is simply the action of asking for help. Help is the insight that our own resources are futile and cannot be truly helpful, and so on that basis are set aside in favor of the possibility that there is – as Bill Thetford so fruitfully remarked a good half century ago – another way.

Help is not of us. It is really nothing more than seeing and accepting that simple fact. As soon as we truly relinquish our stranglehold on doing and acting and directing, then help – very useful help, very powerful help – is there. It is already given, a simple fact that all our activity and busy-ness obscures.

The ego opposes what it perceives as helplessness and surrender. It resists fiercely any movement on our part to to give ourselves to God. Its resistance can seem very logical and reassuring; that is why there is often a sense of risk involved in the spiritual life, a sense of danger.

We have to be willing to leap off a cliff in order to learn we cannot fall – nor journey in any meaningful way – because we already are what we seek, and what we are is one. There is nothing to go to and nothing to leave.

Don’t be afraid of the ego’s apparent tenacity and seeming ingenuity! It is just a product of your mind and reflects nothing more than a misguided application of that mind’s power.

Rather, simply give attention to the ego’s machinations, to how it works, and give attention as well to the flickers of holy light beyond it. When we do this gently and without judgment, we naturally begin to perceive the wholeness of which we in truth composed.

It is a wonderful thing to find oneself in contact both with the frantic activity of the ego and the deep well of the mind out of which the ego was made. The ego insists we can choose between these two seeming options and argues ferociously in its own favor. But the love inherent in our mind is not up for a vote, and our allegiance to it is beyond question save for when we are “thinking insanely” (T-7.VI.9:2).

What you are is not established by your perception, and is not influenced by it at all. Perceived problems in identification at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since their presence implies a belief that what you are is up to you to decide (T-7.VI.9:3-5).

The ego is wrong – just wrong – and there is nothing to understand in it, nothing to correct in it, and nothing to share in it. Let it go and it is gone.

Thus, I walk in the forest morning after morning – I read and study and write during the day – I cook for my family at night – and in all of that I ask over and over to be shown my helplessness in order that I might at last say yes to the self I share with you in Creation, that together we might settle into a shared gift of attention, the sure promise of which is remembrance of God.

Healing Begins In Honesty

I’ve been thinking a great deal about honesty lately. I say “thinking” –  “feeling” would be a better word. “Looking” might be better yet. I am learning that healing begins in honesty.

Jesus said “let your yes mean yes,” and I like to repeat that, and preach on it, but it’s fair to say my yes is almost always conditional, almost always shifting ground, and even sometimes at war with itself.

This inconsistency – this dishonesty – is taking place at a fairly deep level, a fairly hidden level. It is in the nature of inauthenticity, and reflects only fear.

This is what happens in our practice of A Course in Miracles (or any serious spiritual path or tradition). We forgive and forgive, we study and study, and then one day – like turning the corner in a forest and coming on a bear – you hit this wall. It’s no good to pretend it’s not a wall, no good to quote the course, or any other spiritual platitude. You can’t fake your way to Christ.

I am talking here about little things: subtle things: things so slight you barely notice them, and yet the whole separation is contained in their execution. I mean being asked by Chrisoula how my day was and playing up certain angles to elicit sympathy. Or writing about my morning walks without really exploring what Jung would have called their “shadow side,” a darkness of which I am perfectly aware, because I prefer thinking of myself – and would prefer to be thought of – as some kind of Thoreauvian mystic with a clear channel to the divine.

A few weeks ago I put some Chinese characters up on my website – they stood for miracle (well, maybe – I don’t speak or read Chinese so maybe they stood for jelly doughnut) – and after a week or so I thought, who am I? I’m not Chinese. I’m not a Buddhist. I’m just trying to capitalize on the whole Eastern mysticism Zen thing.

So I took it down – and replaced it with an image much more spiritually and culturally resonant – but still. We think we’re beyond being shallow or vain and then Jesus says gently, “not so much. Not yet anyway.”

I am working on putting a few books together, and while reviewing proofs came upon a line that read: “I made contact with Christ/outside of history.”

And my first response was: the hell you did.

And the my second was: Oh, Sean. You mean well but you are such a blowhard.

And then I just laughed – at the poem, at myself, at the whole welter of intention and function and brokenness and love. What else is there? Maybe I did make that contact and I forgot. Maybe I made that contact and I’m scared to consistently own up to it. It doesn’t really matter.

But I do want my yes to mean yes.

We have to be patient with ourselves. There’s nothing to be gained by reliving the spirit of crucifixion over and over. We’re beyond that now. We’re into the resurrection now – why pretend otherwise?

Being dishonest – fostering internal dissonance – is not a crime against God. No punishment awaits outside the one in which we already live: the pain of believing we are separate from God. So it’s okay in the sense of no consequences, but if we want to wake up – if we want to know inner peace and joy in a real way, a sustained way, an unchanging way – then we are going to have to look at our priorities. We are going to have to make some changes.

Really, we are going to have to figure out how to live with the single goal of truth. I think it is in the nature of a decision: I am going to live my life wanting nothing but what God gives me. That is a radical statement. And maybe I can only mouth the words but not  yet mean it. Okay. I can still be honest about that, right? I can say “Okay, I’m not there yet but I want to be. I am willing to be.”

And that counts. It really does.

It counts because healing begins when we are honest and clear about the need for healing, whatever form it happens to take. This includes our capacity for self-deception. There is no other way. It all has to go on the table so that all of it can be undone.

God’s Will is Freedom

Freedom lies in wanting only what God wills. When that is our condition, we can do anything, because we are not doing anything but rather God is willing through us, and our lives become expressions of God’s perfect love.

This is not something that we do: rather, it is something to which we give our consent, and then remain in a state of readiness and willingness. A kind of energetic passivity attends. When swimming in the sea, have you ever allowed yourself to sink? To be pulled by the always flowing tides? It is like that: a surrendering, a letting go, a sinking into currents not of our own making.

Resistance is not a meaningful reflection of freedom. The choice to hear another voice beside the one for God, the choice to hear it but refuse its message, and the choice to obey in part and refuse in another part are not aspects of freedom. A Course in Miracles points out that “[C]hoosing depends on a split mind” (T-5.II.6:6). So long as we are choosing between outcomes – one the basis of what we will get – then we are not truly free.

When our will opts for anything other than alignment with God’s will, it remains entrapped and enslaved. There is no compromise in this regard.

Yet we have cause for freedom here and now (T-26.VIII.9:3). A Course in Miracles offers us – through its curriculum, including diligent application of its lessons – a way to relearn freedom. It teaches us that we are already one with God and need only remember and accept this simple fact.

You cannot walk the world away from God, because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him (W-pI.156.2:4-8).

That is the singular truth to which A Course in Miracles is forever directing us: that we are already one with God and perfect freedom, happiness and peace is literally as far away as the next breath. It takes time for us to learn this, and to bring it into application, but that does not make it less true.

When you have learned that your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy (T-8.II.6:4-5).

The degree we remain unhappy, divided, confused, lonely and in conflict is simply the measure of the degree to which we are trying to obey a will foreign to our own. That is not freedom and its reward is always death. The alternative isn’t really an alternative: rather, it is simply to stop doing what we are doing and give our attention to God, to Truth as God created it. That can sound unduly mystical or even elitist but it’s really not. Spend five minutes looking for God and God will consent to be found: in a light breeze, in a child’s laugh, in a tangle of violets, the scent of cookies, the kindness of a friend.

And in time, all these symbols will recede in importance, as we will understand that they are but mediators between God and our self. Seeing that there is no space between God and self, what use are symbols? A happy day approaches, beyond words and means; our willingness it come hastens its arrival.

Inner Peace Within Creation

Inner peace is understanding all things created as what they are – free of judgment, and the demands that judgment places on them (e.g., T-30.V.1:3-5). But forgiveness precedes understanding (T-30.V.1:6), and until we have made it our practice, we will remain confused about what we are, what our function is, and what the purpose of the world is.

Implicit in this truth is the fact that forgiveness is not an intellectual exercise. Reason can show us the need for it, but some other action – some other motivation – is what brings us to its application. This is something that happens here – in these bodies and in this world. It is highly practical. It is a skill that can be learned.

To forgive is to want only what God offers. It is to live in the faith that creation is sufficient unto life and that nothing need be added and – more to the point – that nothing can be added. When this is the guiding principle of our lives, our motivation shifts and our action becomes inspired.

What do we bring to a given situation? We bring judgment in the form of expectation – things should be this way, not that way. This has to happen in order for me to be happy, and that can’t happen. This person can be involved but that one can’t.

The ego’s imperatives thrive in darkness and secrecy is its fuel.

Sometimes when I look closely at my thoughts – the wordy ones at the surface, but the deeper ones too, the ones that stir like oceanic currents, outside the immediate grasp of language – I am shocked to see how subtle and yet non-negotiable my demands and rules and conditions can be. We like to bathe ourselves in light but so long as we hide this greed and selfishness, the light cannot extend very far.

So forgiveness is about getting clear with all of that – allowing ourselves to witness it with a loving teacher (the Holy Spirit or Jesus, in ACIM parlance) and not freak out about it. The ego’s imperatives thrive in darkness and secrecy is its fuel. Forgiveness is a way of bringing light to shadow in order to undo the shadow’s more pernicious effects.

We can’t think our way though that experience. It is more in the nature of sitting quietly and watching our thoughts, and dropping through them, level by level, to see what else is there. What drives us? What are our wants? What are we willing to do to satisfy them?

If the level of intellect were sufficient to undo all this, then we would have solved the problem a long time ago, and A Course in Miracles – and myriad other expressions of the perennial philosophy – would not be necessary. The intellect has its place but spiritual inquiry with a goal of undoing illusion is not it.

Forgiveness is a new way of engaging with – of giving attention to – thought. It is clarifying in its devotion to perceiving wholeness in place of fragmentation. It is unfamiliar at first, but as we bring it to bear consistently in our lives – all corners of our lives – it will become more familiar. It will become less frightening, less discombobulating.

And in its wake we will begin to understand what it means to be in – to be – Creation itself. This is not primarily a material experience but rather a state of mind in which we see only means to happiness and joy, a path to peace from which deviation is neither necessary nor desirable.

We are not separate from God – and God is not separate from us – but arriving at this truth is not an intellectual experience. We may later use the intellect to talk about it – to leave notes for those coming after (hence my eternal gratitude to Emily Dickinson) – but the wordy logic of the brain is not the operative mode. Forgiveness is. And forgiveness is the quiet breath of Creation itself, gently infusing our will with a desire to know (through remembrance) only God, and to release – however slowly – each aspect of self that impedes that remembering.