Sean Reagan

I was walking with a friend recently, snowy back roads at twilight. While our spiritual paths are different, our general sense of what it means to be spiritual – what the goals are, what the work is, what the results are – is quite similar. Our talks are almost always fruitful.

We were talking about how as one’s relationship with God deepens, the simpler one’s external and temporal existence becomes. Problems are not so vexing; one’s sense of necessity softens. For example, this winter I have to come to regard sunlight on snow as perhaps the loveliest and most dazzling light ever created, and it is given to me on an almost daily basis. My attention to it has intensified to a white heat; my gratefulness in those moments is boundless.

I am only able to perceive winter light this way because I have changed my mind about beauty and giving. And that, I said to my friend, is the textbook definition of a miracle according to A Course in Miracles.

She said – less in response than simply thinking out loud – “they really need to change the name of that thing.”

Beyond a willingness to change, nothing else is required. Love will always do the rest perfectly.

In western (and Christian) culture, we are accustomed to thinking of  miracles in terms of the suspension of the laws of physics, or really out-sized gifts from God. Jesus walked on water, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. We win the lottery. They are big events that always resolve in our special favor. Thus, when we are diagnosed with cancer, we pray for a miracle – which almost always means that we don’t die. And so forth.

But A Course in Miracles means something else entirely when it talks about miracle. A miracle is first and foremost an expression of love (See T-1.I.1:4, 3:2 and 9:2). Bill Thetford once described them as “the love that sustains the universe.”

It’s the shift in perception that removes the barriers or obstacles to our awareness of love’s presence in our lives.

So it is critical to see that this love is not external but rather “in” our mind. It is a thought (T-1.I.12:1), not an event. They are not caused by what is external so much as reflected there. Sunlight in winter has never not been astounding. But as I practice the course, I become less invested in the active egoic mind, and there is more space to simply appreciate what is given and so, like a blind man who suddenly regains his sight, I can actually see that light, sparkling and prismatic like the eyes of a thousand joyful angels.

And of course, that is not all that I “see.” There is also the cry of owls in the distance at three a.m. There is starlight in the February sky. My daughter playing fur elise on the piano. Homemade peach sauce over homemade vanilla ice cream. Cardinals at the feeder. Chrisoula’s laugh. Emily Dickinson poems received at deeper and deeper levels. The smell of cedar walking, and wood smoke back home while resting. Deer tracks. The brook humming beneath a thick sleeve of ice.

But all those are simply forms: a litany of things through which I can more or less consistently glimpse the love that is God, that is that-which-is, that is Source, Light, the Ground of all Being, etc. And thus perceived, these things lift me in turn, and from that space of gentle elevation, love extends readily and naturally through me. Miracles are not  something one does but more in the nature of something one allows God to do without relation to specificity of form. Thus, beyond a willingness to change, nothing else is required. Love will always do the rest perfectly. We just need to get out of the way.

Resistance to the title – A Course in Miracles – is premised on the idea that miracles are not internal shifts of perception in the direction of love, but great big external events that please and sustain the egoic self. When we accept that they are “expressions of love” unrelated to what is external (in the same way a mirror is not related to what it reflects), then the title becomes altogether accurate.

Thetford again:

At the time, I certainly didn’t respond positively to that title. However, when you get into the Course and then into the definition of what a miracle is, it does make sense. In fact, it’s the only appropriate name for the Course.

He is right, of course. There is no need to change the name of A Course in Miracles. Instead, there is a need to study it and bring what is learned into application. This takes a miracle: nothing else is needed.

In a footnote in Up from Eden, Ken Wilber observes that one element of his reservations about Hegel – who he otherwise considers a “towering genius” combining “transcendent insight with mental genius” – is that Hegel had no yoga, no “reproducible technique of transcendence” (638, 641).

To me, that is an interesting criticism. It suggests that no matter how capable we are of using our intellectual powers to parse spiritual, theological and philosophical texts and draw useful connections between them, some essential quality remains absent if we cannot bring those insights and connections into what Tara Singh called “application.”

In other words, what is the benefit of talking about a spiritual path if we cannot also walk it?

Often – both on this site and in related dialogues – I tend to come down on the side of walking the walk rather than talking the talk. I don’t want to become eloquent on the subject of salvation; I want to be saved.

And yet.

Wilber makes an interesting (and to my mind, related) observation about this issue. He points out that we often talk about spiritual ideas and material before we are able to practice or otherwise integrate it into our lives. He calls this a sort of “learner’s permit.” That is, by talking about it – even in limited ways – we learn that lightening bolts aren’t going to come flying from the sky, that this particular material is not transgressive or dysfunctional. We are given permission to engage.

In fact, the initial intuition of Spirit often, even usually, drives the individual to attempt to grasp, in mental forms, that which is actually transmental . . . He is laboring to reach the transmental through compulsive mental activity – an activity itself driven by his transmental intuition (The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume Two, 651).

In a way, a lot of this website can be understood in that light – an attempt, through mental activity, to give form to a spiritual process.

Indeed, when I look at my own spiritual experience – especially since I became a student of A Course in Miracles – it is clear that intellectual effort and (dim to be sure) understanding often precedes a more abstract, less formal awareness of spirit, or God.

The clearest example of this might be the workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles which, even as they are themselves somewhat abstract and poetic in form, offer a concrete daily means by which to realize atonement for oneself. They consistently invite us to apply course principles to the facts of our lives – circumstantial challenges, difficult relationships, confusing desires, etc. In this way, they serve as the “yoga” that Wilber believes Hegel lacked.

But I’d like to offer a more specific example.

When I first began to study and practice the course, I was drawn to this idea of the world being a dream, or an illusion. Saying this to people made me feel radical and intense and special. I drove my wife nuts for about six months with it.

Of course, as anyone who gives more than a glancing look at the text or spends any time with the workbook lessons knows, that sort of casual (reckless, even) approach to the course quickly becomes fruitless. If the world wasn’t real, why was Chrisoula upset and – more to the point – why was I unhappy to be a source of stress to her?

When we can’t lie to ourselves any longer, the truth is able to emerge. And so I began to try to understand what the course meant when it talked about the world this way. It was unequivocal: the world is not real (W-p1.132.8:2). Yet that was neither my intellectual understanding nor my practical experience. In truth, I was baffled by the assertion and even scared of it.

I couldn’t feel it, so I did the next best thing: I studied it mentally. I read Ken Wapnick. I read Gary Renard. I discovered Tara Singh and read him hungrily. Singh pointed me to Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Bohm, Bohm to Wilber, Wilber to Whyte and so on. I read both widely and deeply, and began to write about my evolving understanding as well.

I learned that the idea that the world was not real was not unique to the course – that it existed, in different forms, in any number of religions, philosophies and sciences. Somehow, I was liberated by that. The sense that there was both cross-cultural and cross-disciplinarian support for the idea meant that A Course in Miracles wasn’t out to lunch. Rather, it was merely one particular expression of a perennial idea.

Thus, I was able to breathe again. I was able to give some acceptable mental form to an otherwise frightening and inaccessible idea. As a result, I was able at last to begin to experience it – dimly at first, then with increasing intensity and clarity – as a spiritual truth.

And the truth was simpler than I’d thought but far deeper and more vibrant.

Thus, I have begun to appreciate the wisdom in Wilber’s insight. We need both the intellect and the yoga (the technique of transcendence). We need the text and the workbook. We need to give space and attention to ideas so that we might integrate them at levels other than only mental or intellectual.

It is okay, in other words, to use our intellects with respect to A Course in Miracles, or any other spiritual path or tradition.

Of course, what works for me, or makes sense to me, may  not for you. I don’t want to suggest otherwise. I often say that A Course in Miracles, like all true scriptures, meets us where we are and goes with us as far as we are able, and that is a deeply and intimately personal experience. We can light the way for one another, and from time to time we can even carry each other, but we cannot be substitutes for each other’s learning.

Tara Singh pointed out that words “are to be brought to realization” but that most of us are content to remain in the status quo, only nudging the perimeter of our spiritual comfort zones.

The next step is:
“not to learn but to be.”

We have to bring the learning to its appointed end.

You are the Christ.

(The Voice that Precedes Thought, 244-45).

It is imperative that we not fall into the trap of believing that our learning is an end in itself. If it does not help us to separate what is false from what is true – and thus to know the truth of “Nothing real can be threatened/Nothing unreal exists” (T-in.2:2-3) – then it is useless. But in the same way a spoon can help us dent a bowl of ice cream, or a saw allow us to clear another stretch of field, the intellect can help us to realize “its appointed end,” our remembrance of ourselves as Christ.

So Kenneth Wapnick has died.

I’ve tried to write about Ken many times since I started this blog and it never works out (UPDATE: this post and this post both go into my experience of Ken and Tara Singh as “teachers”). My feelings about Ken were always complicated, even as they increasingly leaned towards gratitude and respect. My debt to him is large.

Ken’s editing of A Course in Miracles always struck me as essential and useful. I know that’s a contentious statement in some circles, but still. Having spent a lot of time with early versions of the material, I truly believe that Ken’s contribution was transformative, completing a process that began but did not end with Helen and Bill. As a writer and editor, I am never not amazed at the breadth and quality of his work in that regard.

I didn’t always agree with Ken’s intense focus on western writers and thinkers and traditions in his teaching. It struck me as inconsistent with the course itself and perhaps a bit narrow-minded. However, as my own practice and understanding deepened, I began to understand what he was doing and why. I wrote to him a couple of years ago and offered my forgiveness. He was very gracious and kind.

My sense was that Ken had a vision of A Course in Miracles in relationship to the western spiritual and philosophical tradition, and I think in the end he was right about that. I often lean on Buddhist and Vedantic language and ideas – and my own ACIM teacher, Tara Singh, was well-steeped in Eastern thought and practice – but the structure of A Course in Miracles (its form) is western. That is its home. Ken’s intellectual discipline in that regard was admirable. Indeed, in the past year I have begun to appreciate more and more his fidelity to that aspect of the course.

Though I never formally studied with Ken, I have relied on his guidance more than any other teacher besides Tara Singh. I think his instruction (I am paraphrasing) to make our lives in the world about other people – being gentle and kind to everyone from our kids to our neighbors to the plumber – was brilliant. I think it perfectly summarizes how one should approach the course in terms of living in the world. When I am unclear about a particular idea or even a specific phrase of the course, Ken’s teaching always helped move me towards understanding. His book The 50 Miracle Principles of A Course in Miracles and A Talk Given on A Course in Miracles remain staples.

And it was Ken – through his writing – who taught me in a practical way that it was okay to make mistakes with respect to A Course in Miracles, okay to throw the blue book across the room in frustration, and okay to feel insane some days. Indeed, when I write about being honest with our brokenness as a means to healing, I am really just paraphrasing Ken. His vision of Jesus was deeply loving and forgiving, in all senses of the word.

I don’t mean in any way to suggest that I think Ken was perfect or infallible. I disagreed entirely with his reliance on masculine language and find his defense of it utterly unpersuasive. Some of his historical scholarship felt spotty to me (such as in Love Does Not Condemn). Some of the legal actions taken by the Foundation for Inner Peace made no sense to me.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I could have – or could have – done things differently. It’s always easy to judge another; what’s hard is forgiving them – in the sense of overlooking any seeming error – and getting on with our own learning.

My complaints about Ken feel like relatively minor quibbles, given the breadth of his helpfulness. If I wasn’t projecting some flaws onto the man, I wouldn’t have needed his assistance so much.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly, I admired Ken as a fellow writer. He maintained a remarkable level of production with a consistent and impressive (previous criticism notwithstanding) degree of quality over the years. That’s not easy to do! I might not have agreed with him all the time, but I never doubted his passion for or knowledge of A Course in Miracles. He wrote with gentle authority that was born, I think, of an authentic desire to be as helpful as possible.

That time I wrote to him, I sent a couple of blog posts for review. He was succinct and helpful – agreeing that Emily Dickinson was a wonderful poet, pointing out a couple of places where he believed I’d erred. He told me to keep writing, to have fun doing it, and to always remember not to take it all too seriously. Near the end of his letter he wrote, “always be true to your own truth, Sean.”

That was good advice. And he was a good teacher, and a lot of what he taught remains with us now he is gone. What more is there to say?

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