Sometime around the third grade I must have read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  Shortly thereafter I was at a friend’s house, and our game of Monopoly had basically ground down to that stage of painstaking, asymptotic approach to closure that takes three-quarters of the game play and offers one-tenth of the fun, when we began talking about whether or not our mental powers might be strong enough to forge a path to Narnia through his free-standing wardrobe closet.  That would surely put paid to impending boredom on a rainy afternoon.

We clenched our jaws and closed our eyes, but it didn’t work.

* * * * *

Already, hardly a decade into this earthly existence, my mind was a maelstrom of conflict.  I wasn’t entirely sure belief alone would suffice.  I was a twinge concerned about finding myself in a world where I might really have to confront a wicked witch.  I wasn’t sure my friend was as passionate about this endeavor as I was.  I just didn’t quite have that effortless something, even though I wanted to…

* * * * *

Another time I was leaving church on a Sunday with my family, and I was beset by the thought that if I believed strongly enough, then flight, or at least some form of levitation, was entirely possible.  Although I can’t be certain, I am guessing that the previous night I must have had one of those (for me) once in a very great while flying dreams, where, with a little effort, flight is quite viable and sustainable.  Again, however, I was stymied…  There is just that little gap between the part of you that dares to dream, and the part that whispers, “Yes, but how exactly!?”

* * * * *

I love the passage in A Course of Love where Jesus says, “You do not realize what a wholehearted choice in regards to experiencing separation did.  Wholeheartedness is but a full expression of your power.” (CoL, 2nd ed., 18.18)  I love it because it inevitably leads to my laughing out loud, alone, from the bottomless depths of an otherwise quiet room.  It sounds crazy, but it’s a relief to know we fired on all cylinders at least once before…  We’ve got something we can be proud of in there, something we can build on…  No one ever pulled a stunt like this before.  I mean, its at least a little bit of a confidence-builder to know we’re not half-assing this separation thing!

I’m thinking, ironically enough, that the choice made for separation was one of those thoughtless, effortless and probably beautiful creative moments in which, because we knew with absolute certainty our Oneness with all things, our entire experience was transformed, like walking through the back of a closet into another world…  But we didn’t read the fine print…

* * * * *

Our dilemma is that we locked ourselves in a cage and threw away the key.  We began in unity, in wholeheartedness, in a state of effortless, creative harmony.  We latched onto this idea of trying a strange new thing called separation, and (WHAM!) so it was.  But separate beings don’t have access to that same effortless power to remake worlds.  Because that’s not part of being separate.  It’s the worst Catch-22 you could ever imagine(!)- to use the full-on creative power at your disposal to produce an experience from which there is (seemingly) no way back…

No matter what we try, it won’t work.  Because we keep trying from the vantage point of separation.  We keep thinking there is something we can individually do, on our own, about all this.  We’ll take a walk and think it through, and come up with some working concepts.  We’ll be real good this time, and never waiver, and be the perfect beings we were meant to be.  We’ll fix everyone around us so things can get made right.  Notwithstanding the fact that we seldom, if ever, really succeed in living up to these images of what we imagine must be require- it doesn’t matter anyway.  We can’t fix this by ourselves.

Meanwhile, we’re beside ourselves at the loss of the fullness of our Original Experience.  We can’t ditch the feeling of missing something, of lacking something, of feeling broken or tarnished or beyond repair.  We’re convinced in a myriad ways that it is possible for something to go wrong.  If it hasn’t yet, it still might, and probably will.  And we can’t stop it.  We’re fairly nonplussed about that bit.  Every time something new is tarnished, fatigued, or cracked or smudged or dinged, we despair, even if just for a millisecond.  Because we know, something has been (seemingly) lost…

* * * * *

And the truth is, we can’t talk our way out, or dig our way out, or make it through on cleverness or guile.  We’re kaput… until we reactivate wholeheartedness.  We’re walking around with dormant technology inside of us that just needs to be lit up once again- the makings of wholeheartedness.  There’s good and there’s bad news about that.  The bad news is, we can’t even really conceive of such a thing while we feel and believe we’re separate, isolated, individual, intolerant and broken, beings.  We can’t conceive of wholeheartedness truly, let alone be it.

We need a miracle.

The good news is that miracles are precisely what has been given…

* * * * *

Now, if you made it this far, I wish I could thank you by telling you exactly how this works, but all I’ve really been able to piece together is this: something truly beautiful is happening, and it involves Everyone…