Lucifer’s Error

The sin of Lucifer was called pride but in reality it was a simple error, a common mistake of thought to which we are all of us beholden: the psychological premise that what we are in truth is separate from what God is and that what God is is given unequally and that we are thus called to respond, react – to somehow rectify – the injustice.

But nothing is that isn’t God. Even a dream in the mind of God’s creation retains a trace of the Source from whence it has devolved. Even in dreams the Voice for God speaks, and where that Voice goes, knowledge of God goes as well. We are not bereft; we are not separate, even here. Even now.

It is critical to see this fact plainly and to question our inevitable doubt and skepticism with respect to it. The mind that questions God will answer itself, and the answer will be God, and it will also be nameless. We are moving beyond even the duality inherent in “oneness.” That is to say, moving beyond considering God as “not this but that” or as a unitary continent for many separate things.

Thus, we even have to question our acceptance. When we pass through doubt, when we pass through grief, and “get it” – realize we are there, It, one with the Godhead – we have to question that as well. We have to keep going. Questioning begets an energetic awareness that is never not revelatory. Properly understood, that which stops or ceases, that which can be defined and set aside and picked up later, is not the altar before which we will mutually witness the dissolution of self, other and altar altogether.

Over and over I fall (leap?) into the trap of believing that what is external will save me: some concatenation of circumstance, some lover’s lingering kiss, some ripe sum of money, some supernatural mystical event. So what? That is the nature of thought’s specificity. A rock dropped in a lake will elicit ripples, each ripple a natural extension of the cause by which it was made. I don’t cry out to Jesus over that; why approach thought any different?

In all things, give attention only to that which is present in all things. For example, if it is present during my morning walk but not while settling disputes about what’s for dinner, then it is not God. It is not there. If it is present while making love but not while grading papers, then it is not God. It is not there. And so forth.

Lucifer did not fall, nor was he pushed. He leaped. And leaping, believed that he landed, and believing he had discovered some space other than Heaven, rendered it a rude Kingdom over which to rule in grief. Moment by moment we do the same: we leap, we tell ourselves a lie, we believe it, and we defend our belief unto seeming death.

But it is given to us to stop leaping, to see a lie for the untruth it is, and to believe instead what is true. This is not a story though it often takes the shape of one, nor is it a poem, though poetry is a welcome home to it.

It is more in the nature of a love letter, one which writes itself as we read it and into which we willingly – even ecstatically – melt, to better become its wordiness, its inkiness, and its emptiness.

How vast and happy we are allowed to be, amid so many flowers blossoming, so many birds giving song . . .

ACIM and the Perennial Philosophy

I have been lately suggesting – thinking out loud, really – that A Course in Miracles is a particular expression of the perennial philosophy that may or may not be helpful as one works their way back toward God.

In his book of the same title, Aldous Huxley defined the perennial philosophy as

the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical to, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being.

Emerson, who was familiar both with Christian and Hindu texts, had pointed in this direction in the nineteenth century. One need only give attention to nature – “which always works by short ways” – he wrote in Spiritual Laws.

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe . . . The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

Which of course mirrors Emily Dickinson’s insistence that one need hardly go to church to observe a sabbath.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

One who worshiped in that mode needn’t anticipate Heaven as a future event or a distant locale. It was rather, a present experience that required only recognition and acceptance. In a sense, Dickinson was saying that Heaven is God’s gift and it is continually given right now.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

A Course in Miracles is a western phenomenon – its Platonic and Freudian antecedents merge naturally with Christian symbolism and imagery, the latter having dominated western theological and philosophical thought for most of two millenia. Nor is its timing an accident. It provides a coherent and practical response to the personal yearning for wholeness and God so endemic in our culture. Though I understand people’s frustration with new age writers like Marianne Williamson and larger-than-life personalities like Oprah Winfrey, the course truly is at home in their semantic accessibility, their cheerful confidence that we are going to succeed in our spiritual quest, and – most importantly – their inclination toward inclusiveness.

ACIM isn’t any better at seeing you into Heaven than a walk in the forest or the first Spring crocus or a long kiss at twilight. But it’s not any worse, either.

As I’ve said before, people ought to practice A Course in Miracles on the terms and conditions and with the goals and teachers that are most helpful to them. I don’t see any other way. The extent to which we’re frustrated with how others are doing it, and feel compelled to correct them – a common perception one needn’t feel ashamed of – is the extent to which we haven’t given ourselves to our own practice, as directed by the guide who knows better than we do the way home.

Efforts to wall the course off – through copyright or trademark, through intellectual bombast, through the lovelessness of “this is the only and right way home” – all miss the critical point that it’s merely another strand of light in the prismatic radiance to which we are all responding and submitting en route to joining. ACIM isn’t any better at seeing you into Heaven than a walk in the forest or the first Spring crocus or a long kiss at twilight. But it’s not any worse, either. When you see the truth of that, then you are ready for the penultimate yes.

Separation, says the author of the course, was tantamount to following a long ladder down just as awakening is our journey back up that ladder (e.g. T-28.II.12:7 and T-28.III:1:2). Lovely image! And pervasive, too . . .

Consider, for example, Sri Aurobindo’s observation about the relationship between the individual and God.

The universe and the individual are the two essential appearances into which the Unknowable descends and through which it has to be approached . . . This descent of the supreme Reality is in its nature a self-concealing; and in the descent there are successive levels, in the concealing successive veils. Necessarily, the revelation takes the form of an ascent; and necessarily also the ascent and the revelation are both progressive. For each successive level in the descent of the Divine is to man a stage in an ascension, each veil that hides the unknown God becomes for the God-lover and God-seeker an instrument of His unveiling (The Life Divine  49).

Is that a precise correlative? Hardly. Does it suggest, however, a common philosophical ground? Indeed it does.

Huxley’s point – as Emerson’s and Dickinson’s, as Aurobindo’s – was simply that one needn’t wait on knowledge of God, because such knowledge was already implicit. It was already given. All that was required  was sustained attention. Nor has that changed because it cannot change.

It is true, of course, that a yoga – some sort of method, like the workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles or zazen – can be helpful in establishing our power of attention and our understanding of how to use it. But the method is not the essence, just as a map is not the territory.

Question everything then, especially that which most resists question. We cannot fail for the simple reason that we have already succeeded. We are merely looking for confirmation of what we already know. God is real and joy abounds! The evidence is anywhere you want to find it.

Thought, Awareness and the Ability to Comprehend

Spring gesticulated; fell back. So it goes in March: one day you’re jacketless and whistling back at Robins, the next you’re watching gusts of wind blow thin streams of snow beneath the back door. The chickens huddle in beds of straw and the dog looks back at you, as if to say: really? Even in this weather?

Yet walking is prayer for me: and prayer the way I extend toward God as God extends toward me, ever intent on restoring to my divided mind a memory of wholeness, our shared movement of reaching twining strains of an unbroken canticum novum. To say this, even poetically, especially poetically, is not nothing: when we give word to our insight, we effectively translate it to understanding, and thus lay a path in darkness, much like Hansel with his pocket full of white stones. The path is not the destination but it can move us towards the destination. At least it can help.

All this, of course is words – words purporting to describe a process that is ongoing, measurable, observable, susceptible to influence. But in a sense – an important one – nothing is happening. But in another, we are waking up to this nothing, and that waking resembles an event – an activity that is unfolding within time. We cannot escape that sensation. To our bodies, the world will always be real, just as to the machinations of our brains, thought will always seem as if it is just about to “get it.”

But Life is not containable: and it cannot be reduced to anything the body (which includes the brain) can grasp, the way it grasps baking bread, or paddling when in water, or adding three to three and getting six. Until we accept this we are going to proceed in circles. As soon as we render the Infinite in language – God, Truth, Pure Being, Shiva, Source et cetera – we have curtailed what cannot be curtailed. We are gesturing toward God, but the gesture itself is not God, even as it intimates God.

Sri Aurobindo said it was okay to do this so long as one appreciated the way that words appear distinct and sure but are in fact misleading and even violent in their apparent representation of reality.

He said that when we use language responsibly – which is to say, with burgeoning awareness of its limitations – then

[W]e begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind which concentrates itself on one aspect of the Unknowable and proceeds forthwith to deny or disparage all the rest. We tend always to translate too rigidly what we can conceive or know of the Absolute into the terms of our own particular relativity (The Life Divine 33).

There is a correlative in A Course in Miracles, which emphasizes that miracles are done through us without our understanding precisely what miracles are (T-16.II.2:4-6). This is not necessarily to denigrate the intellect but rather to move in the direction of understanding the natural limitations of its helpfulness.

You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing (T-18.IV.7:5-6).

It cannot be said enough: we cannot think our way to salvation. But we can reason our way to seeing the futility of thought, the folly of repeating what has not worked, and the concomitant need for an alternative that operates in and through us, even as it is not of us. Thus we open: little by little: making a space for the Infinite that never left. Emily Dickinson is – as always – instructive:

The Absolute – removed
The Relative away –
That I Unto Himself adjust
My slow idolatry (488)

It is not imperative that we learn fast or thoroughly, for even learning can become an idol obscuring our awareness of God. But it is imperative that we question everything: learning and resistance to learning and the language that seems to envelope them both. Attention given – gently, consistently, in a sustainable way – to these things will never not finally reveal the fullness of which we are in truth composed.

Why I Switched to a Creative Commons License

Earlier this week I shifted the license on this website from a traditional copyright to a Creative Commons license, specifically an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. My reasons for doing this are important, and I want to share them.

I’ve been aware of Creative Commmons licenses for some time and, in spirit, I have always preferred them to the more draconian, commodified and separative alternative.

But in application, I almost always opted for the latter.

Why? Because I was scared. I was especially afraid of two related possibilities: one, that somebody would make money from my work while I was not (or could not), and two, that somebody would copy my work and present it as their own.

Indeed, copyright law emerged in our culture precisely to protect against those two possibilities. Many writers and artists see copyright as their only line of meaningful defense against intellectual theft. If you are making a living this way, the stakes are not insignificant.

My own interest in alternatives grew in direct proportion to changes in the markets for freelance writers. In the late eighties and early nineties when I was beginning to cut my teeth on journalism, you could write a story and publish it in multiple journals or papers. You owned the rights to it. A great deal of the viability for freelance income came from that reselling ability.

Moreover, it reflected a fundamental truth: that the writer was the one who had created the work – she or he had researched, reported, wrote and rewrote and so it was their work. Of course they could sell it and revise it as they saw fit.

That paradigm began slowly shifting until it reached a point where writers were creating a piece of work, selling it – often for less than they’d gotten decades earlier – and surrendering all their rights in the process. A company would buy a story for me for a thousand dollars and then run it in multiple mediums they owned. It was out of my hands.

My friends on the management side of the equation argued that they had no choice. Journalism was dying a death of a thousand cuts. They had to maximize their earning potential. And freelancers were an easy target. I began to wonder: is there an alternative?

When I published poetry – regardless of where it was published – the terms were almost always the same. The publisher got a one-off right to publish the work and then all rights reverted to me. Sometimes they paid me – in money or copies – and sometimes they didn’t. I was grateful for the chance to share my work, but even more grateful for the integrity that accompanied the process.

When I began to write on this website, I didn’t give much thought to copyright. Legally, once you create something, the copyright inheres in you. The legalese you attach only puts the world on notice; it doesn’t automatically affect your rights.

But as more people began to visit, and some of them to “borrow” my posts or significant parts of my posts, I started to wonder: how do I respond to this?

I was cognizant of the lawsuit initiated by the Foundation for Inner Peace in an effort to protect the copyright of A Course in Miracles (FACIM’s take is at least in part represented here). I understood the impulse in a sense, and the legal issues, but it also struck me as wrong-minded in some ways. It wasn’t just about copyright, but trademark, too. People were being told they couldn’t advertise notice of their “A Course in Miracles study group.” The issue seemed to be about control of the message as much as the means by which the message was being transmitted. I don’t know that I could have – or would have – handled the situation any differently, but I certainly gave that possibility some thought.

Of course, the Creative Commons licenses empower creators. They are legally sound and binding, and they are utterly flexible. They take full note of the media publishing culture in which we live. They do not disempower artists; they empower them. Essentially, they recognize the role of the creator as the master of her work, while allowing her to facilitate the kind of sharing and modification that seems fair and reasonable.

Yet each time I moved in that direction, I got scared. I’d put it off. “Don’t be naive,” I’d tell myself. “You’ve got something special here. It’s okay to protect it.”

Eventually, that word – “special” – seeped through. Indeed, it was the whole problem. I had a special relationship with my writing and I did not trust you – or anyone else – to respect it. And the only way to defend myself against your greed and hypocrisy – because you were obviously going to plagiarize me and get rich doing so – was an aggressive strategy of copyright enforcement. All rights reserved and don’t think for a moment I’m afraid to use it.

Of course, that is not a very satisfying way to live or create. Defensiveness – always a byproduct of specialness – never is. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that this was a chance for me to practice faith and to put my money where my mouth so long had been. My values called for a more flexible, generous and progressive approach to ownership – one that reflected an underlying belief in oneness, faith in my brothers and sisters, and a sense of abundance rather than scarcity.

So I mad the switch. And instantly – because it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it – I felt an instant rush of peace and gratitude.

Am I saying that you should follow suit? Or that others who are still using traditional copyright are wrong-minded idiots blaspheming Jesus and Buddha? Or that FIP and FACIM were evil and greedy for initiating legal action with respect to possible copyright violations?

No.

It is important to do what is right for oneself – and what is right for you may not be for me. Such is the nature of forgiveness. Sometimes it takes us a while to learn what is right and longer still to bring it into application. There are no mistakes. It is important to tend to our own garden and let our neighbors tend to theirs.

In other words, it’s not about being right universally but particularly. In this instance, under these circumstances, X is the right thing to do. So I am going to try and do it. I may learn there is another way to go in the future. I may go back to what I did before. But right now, this is where spirit is most resonant.

And, really, that is where we want to be – as writers, artists, teachers, students. We want to be where Spirit most resonates.

Thank you, as always, for sharing the way with me.

The Death of Specialness

As our study and practice of A Course in Miracles continues, our sense of ourselves as “special” begins to erode. This can take many forms – we are more patient with others, we laugh more readily at our “mistakes,” we don’t sweat the little things so much – but at some point it is always experienced as fearful and so we resist it. We cling to some shred of self, some fragment of egoic belief because it seems to minimize the fear. Unfortunately, that little piece is sufficient to extend our suffering.

What would your life be like if you related to everyone you met, and every experience you had, without specialness?

Every attack on our peace, without exception, arises because we believe we are separate beings – separate from one another and separate from God. We believe that yesterday’s experience is separate from today’s which is separate from tomorrow’s. This division permeates our belief system, rending everything into fragments.

What perceives itself as fragmented will naturally defend itself: that is what pieces do. They know they are not the whole, they know there are other pieces “out there,” that some of them are bigger and stronger and maybe even vengeful at the original break and so they defend.

It can be helpful to nurture a space in which it is possible to give sustained attention to what is – our thoughts and feelings, our relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, our goals as students, our answer to the perennial ACIM question “what is it for?”

In that space, I can see the way in which my sense of self is both perilously fragile and incredibly aggressive and vexatious. It is as if the faintest breath could brush it away forever and so it flails and rages up its own storm in a frantic (and ultimately doomed) effort to keep that faint breath away.

What does this look like? I’ll give you a personal example.

A couple of weeks ago, a student approached me after class. She’s never had me before, English classes aren’t her strong suit and so forth. She wanted to be sure she understood the poem we were discussing. We’re talking, it’s going fine and then she mentions that she shared the poem with another professor who made a simple comment that turned out to be very helpful.

I responded to that comment first with fear and then with righteous indignation. I watched my response happen (this is becoming much more frequent for me – the capacity to observe internal response to the external without actually needing to respond or engage with it). What if this other teacher thinks this is the wrong poem to teach? What if she thinks I’m an idiot? What if she talked to other faculty and right now they’re plotting to fire me because of this poem?

Then, in response to that fear, came indignation. If this student wasn’t happy in my class then fine. Let her take it with someone else. If some professor wanted to cop an attitude about the material I teach, then fine. I’ll teach somewhere else. Hell, I’ll go climb a mountain and eat nuts and drink rain water all while writing beautiful haiku in the mist.

This was all this very subtle. The tone of my voice didn’t change, my commitment to being helpful didn’t change. I never said a word about it to anyone. But it was there.

And that is what the ego is and that is how specialness works. If it can’t ruin us at the surface, it will percolate as far down as it needs to go so long as it can still be there. That’s what it means to cling to some shred of ego. It shows up very quietly, almost unnoticeable. But it’s still there. It is still operative.

The spiritual practice of A Course in Miracles is simply to see this and to offer it to the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to take it to a therapist or spiritual counselor, or act it out in the world of form, or write it down in our wellness journal. None of those things are bad or wrong. They can be very helpful in their way. They just aren’t required.

All we have to do is recognize specialness and see how it makes us miserable. That is all. And it will be undone for us because – even deeper than crazy, is our longing for peace and even deeper than that is our knowledge that peace is ours right here, right now.

It can be hard to hear this but it’s true: when we are ready to be done with specialness, then we’ll be done with it. Period. It’s not like dismantling a mansion with a toothpick – it doesn’t have to a long, tedious and arduous process. That’s just a choice we make. Naturally, we can make another.

So why don’t we just let specialness go?

Fear.

In that space of sustained attention I mentioned earlier, there is often a dim sense of fear, as if something is terrified of being seen or exposed. It’s not rocket science. If I let go of this self – this ego, this specialness – what will remain? What will “I” be? The ego cannot answer that question (because it does not know the answer) and so it always responds “death.” But in truth, A Course in Miracles assures us that “the death of specialness is not your death, but your awaking into eternal life” (T.24.II.14.4).

So we have to trust that. Trust is a by-product of a personal relationship with either Jesus or the Holy Spirit (or both). That relationship is what allows us to take a deep breath, drop down into the interior miasma, take another look at the seeming horrors of the ego and allow them to be undone. Peace is the sure – the inevitable – result. Trust that.

The Ego’s War with God

Another way to think about the ego is that it is a belief which attempts to usurp those creative functions that belong to God. We could say that the ego is a maker of illusions that aspires to be a Creator of reality or truth and it does so by trying to overthrow God.

The mind has a natural inclination to create, and the ego properly senses this. But this inclination cannot be wielded in attack, because attack is by definition divisive, and division denies the indivisible nature of what is eternally whole and perfect.

Attacks on God are insane, not because God is powerful enough to meet any assault with superior force, nor because God is vengeful and bent on retaliation. Attacks on God are insane because what is one cannot attack itself nor defend itself against such an attack.

This does not mean much to us who still live and think in a primarily dualistic framework, but that’s okay. We are using words to gesture towards concepts that do not readily lend themselves to explication. Truth is abstract and utterly generalizable; at that level, we can say that Oneness cannot go to war with itself.

Clearly, however, the ego can – and does – think otherwise. And there is a very specific way to work its wrong-minded (or non-Christ-minded) thinking: in all things (here in bodies, here in the world of form), ask with deliberation and intent: what do I want?

You are answering [this question] every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable (T-5.V.6:3-5).

Few ideas are as helpful to those of us struggling with  illusion as this one: there are only two possible answers to the question “what do we want.” One is the ego, which we made through our belief in separation and the other is the Holy Spirit, which is God’s Answer to the dream of separation.

Always we are choosing between love or fear. Between peace or conflict.

We tend to approach our lives as if they contain a multitude of choices that literally shift and evolve from minute to minute. Some appear mundane – what do I wear to work – while others appear profound – how do I console a parent grieving their lost child. But all those questions emerge from (are symbols of) our answer to the only question that matters: ego or Holy Spirit? God or not God?

When we perceive ourselves as responsible for solving anything – from a mini fashion crisis to the apparent finality of death – we are tacitly acknowledging that the ego, and not the Holy Spirit, is the architect of happiness and peace. Only guilt and fear can follow from that premise.

A Course in Miracles might be understood as a simple means by which we restore to the mind its power of decision, by making clear to it how simple decision actually is.

Reality proceeds from its Creator as surely as a snowflake seeks a surface on which to rest, and just as peacefully, just as naturally. We are not responsible for it. I do not make the snow, nor the sun that plays across it, nor the prismatic light show that follows. I merely choose to give attention to the whole of it, and joy is the natural result.

So it is with God and Creation. We do not make it. We simply say yes to it and it is given to us, whole and sparkling and pure. We choose the Holy Spirit.