Arguing Your Case

March 11, 2013
by Michael
comment 1
Creative

In order to escape your prison, you will have to argue your case.  No one can argue it for you.

I’ve got a hearing coming up- Docket 249 in the Court of Self Appeals- and I’m getting antsy.  I can tell you it’s no cake walk.  I’m prowling around this cage like a tiger fresh off the jungle, drowning myself in images of freedom that induce feelings of freedom, that induce tears one instant, and panic the next.  I’ve been reciting ecstatic poems silently to myself, in my head, in circles.  I’m a mantra in motion.  I’m in this cycle of determined, euphoric mightiness followed by dank silence.

I keep coming back to this one moment.  Imagine you’re spinning plates and you give them a mighty spin, and you just watch and time stands still and they spin in seeming motionlessness, and it seems like this could go on forever, but then, even before that first wobble, you can tell… they’re slowing down.  They’re going to fall.  I’m in this cage pumping myself up and hoping it will last, hoping against hope that my latest method was correct- that the coded mantra I gave to the touchpad was accepted by the heavenly teller machine- and that this time it will stick and dispense my Grace… And then I come back to that one moment.  It’s just a subtle reversal.  Perfectly calm air changes course, but only if you were really paying attention would you know it.  Only a butterfly could sense what I’m talking about.  But when you’re desperate for these signs, desperate to not see a thing- there it is.  I mean, when it hits me I haven’t even begun to feel bad yet.  There’s simply this softening.  The song is no longer new, it’s old.  It’s on the twentieth playback in a row, and it’s getting to be a bit much.  It’s still good, but it’s stale.  I’m still dancing around my cell, but I know by then it’s over, and the rest of the dance is a fake.  I’m headed back down into sterility.

Maybe I don’t want to get out of this cage.  You know what it is- I keep coming back to me.  Just me.  I’m at the bottom of a circle, and I just can’t bring myself to rest there.  So I work myself up again.  I start doing jumping jacks.  I duck and weave- jab, jab, jab.  I let visions flood my cage.  I put the past behind me, and forgive myself all the circles, and I offer it all up.  I’m all in this time.  I promise myself.  I’m all in.  I’m ready.  I put new posters on my walls.  I set new routines.  I get up before dawn and read parables.

But the thing is: no one can argue your case for you.  That’s the thing.  You have to stand up there in front of that Judge and convince him.  I just imagine it and my fists tighten.

This whole time, Jesus has been on a metal folding chair outside my cell, reading or sitting or just being.  You imagine that?  Just being?  That’s what I want…  By the whole time, I don’t mean just today.  I mean the whole time.  For the longest time I didn’t even know he was there, but he was.  He told me the other day he’s always been there.  I needed that.  I was trying to make an art project out of my shoe lace and just talking to him, not really looking at him but not really pumping myself up or anything, just getting really focused on little tiny things.  It was rare and it was nice.  He told me he knew what it was like in here and that he looked forward to the day when I was free, and it meant a lot to me.  Sometimes I can see him and sometimes I can’t, but somehow I know he’s always there.

The thing is, this Docket, there’s not actually a time set.  Sometimes I get infuriated that nobody will tell me when my hearing is going to be.  How am I gonna’ get outta’ here, Jesus?  Huh?  I just need that Judge to see me, to see how good I can be, and show him some of these things I wrote in my diary.  They prove it right there, don’t they?  I know that will be the end.  He’ll turn me loose for sure.  Then we can go play cards for real.

One day I grabbed the bars and shook my whole body back and forth, howling.  I couldn’t see Jesus, then.  If he was there I was screaming bloody murder right into his ear or something.  It was an awful thing to think I was doing that, but this place- sometimes it compresses you in like a spring and you just have to uncoil.  Let it rip.  Sometimes you have to say the hell with this place.  Good behavior ain’t cuttin’ it.  Bein’ good an’ bein’ little an’ trapped ain’t doin’ it anymore.  The bars weren’t even moving.  My whole body was whipping back and forth like I was doing push-ups against a horizontal gravity.  It was good exercise for sure.

Then I crawled over to where Jesus sits and told him I didn’t know if I could do the time.  I was reduced to telling the truth.  I couldn’t see Him but I knew he was there.  I got real honest with myself, about pumpin’ myself up and squirrelin’ all around my feelings.  I got real honest and I started shaking, and I said to him: I need that hearing soon.  I need it, dammit.  ‘Cuz I don’t know if I can do this time.  I need somethin’ besides ME to work with.  I’m all outta’ visions and dreams I can’t reach.  I’m all dried up.  I looked at him and told him I thought I was gonna’ die in there.  I started to cry and then I just couldn’t.  I didn’t even have it in me for tears.

Later I could see him again.  He was sitting on that metal folding chair and looking out the window, and I could tell the sun was going down, and he was just waiting, or listening.  He does that a lot.  Sometimes hours go by and he hardly moves, and I’m re-enacting Shakespeare in my pajamas and slamming my mattress up against the walls like I wanna’ be a defensive lineman.  He had a little leather notebook in his breast pocket, and he took it out, wrote a note, tore out the sheet and passed it to me.  I wanted his pity, I guess.  I wanted him to tell me it was going to be alright.  I wanted him to go down the hall and get that damn Judge to set up the hearing.  I wanted him to make something happen!  What can I do!?  I’m in here.  Stuck.

It’s Docket 249.  I yell that sometimes, out through the bars.  I say, Jesus, cover your ears, and then I say, Hey!  Docket 249 you idiots!  You hear me!?  Two!  Four!  Nine!

I read the note.

“Michael, there is no hearing.”

I shrieked.  Was it canceled?  I can do better, I said.  I can do the right things.  I’ll pay attention.  He started writing another note.  Why are you writing notes? I asked.  He gave me another one.

“There are no right things you can do.”

I knew it was hopeless.  You see?  I knew it.  This whole thing, whatever this is, is a lie.  I wanted to do some stunt jumps against the wall or something.  Get some take out.  I just collapsed on my bed.  Jesus was writing up a storm then.  Freakin’ great, right?  I said, Hey, at least I have you as my friend, right?  I can make it with you here.  I can survive.

Then I started to read the last note.  Something was happening then… and too fast.  I wanted to go back to another time, go back and not do something I must have done.

“I’m going away for a while.”  I wasn’t done reading but I looked up at him and suddenly my lip was trembling.  How could he do this to me?  I can’t do this alone…  And he knows that…

“I’m going away for a while.  It’s time for me to go to the Place where you will come and join with me forever.  But you’ll never be alone because I have left you with my heart.  All of this time, every moment that you have ever known in this place, I have been placing it inside of you, whispering everything I’ve ever known to you while you’ve slept, placing it all into the safest spot inside of you, into your heart, and now it is complete.  You may think it is not, but I assure you it is perfectly safe and fully complete.  It contains an answer to every prayer you’ve ever had.  It contains everything you seek.  If you open my heart inside of you, inside of your heart where I put it, everything will be made new.  When you do, you will find me again, in the discovery of your Self.  For we will meet in that Place to which I go now.  Where you are you, inside of me, and I am me, inside of you.

Please accept that there is no Docket 249.  There is no prison.  There is only a pain you think is real, a pain you think is you, that makes a cage in which you rattle.  And it is time for you to find that this need not be.”

And he was gone.

I’ve never felt to so alone, and yet so clean.  I was still stuck, but I was honest about it in a new way.  I was honest that it was within me to give birth to something Else.  I sat on my bed and a strange thing happened then.  I began to learn how to be quiet.  I began to learn how to be patient.  And I began to learn how to be who I am.  I don’t know how- it just descended upon me.  Something began to teach me, and I began to let it.

I discovered many, many things in the days and years that followed.  Eventually I was writing letters to people around the world, telling them all about freedom.  I discovered I enjoyed sculpting, and chess.  I liked to read books about the first space flights.  I liked to know how clocks worked.  I liked to scrub pans.  I hated doing my laundry.  I knew there was something inside of me that was coming out, and I knew it was okay to just let it bubble up.  I stopped pumping myself up, and inside of this new patience, I found I could be what I was, and it was wonderful.

You know that feeling?

When you reach the bottom of the circle, and the pumpin’ up has worn off, if you sit still long enough you’ll drop through the crack into real Depth.  The cage will disappear.  That’s arguing your case.  Arguing your case is accepting the Reality placed within you.

The rest is like a dream.  There’s nothing more to be said.  I have given my heart to you, and we are free.

Desert Wandering. Desert Discoveries.

March 8, 2013
by Michael
comments 13
Christ / Creative

There is a desert inside of me where I wander, like a hermit, my vocabulary reduced to variations in the salinity of my tears and one Name that I give to everything.  I found myself there again last night, sheltered against the wind by a robe of old rags, walking alone amidst an endless quilt of rolling dunes beneath the stars.  I know I am not the Originator of this place, even though it is in me, and yet these desert treks are awash in the moonlight of Familiarity.  There are no destinations, or objectives, only a continuous finding.

Something calls me there, to that desert place, some heart gravity that longs for me to crawl inside of it.  When I get there, and fall to my knees on a tiny pile of sand below the most beautiful canopy of stars you can imagine, I can taste the echoes of that Call on my swollen tongue.  I look up into the Heavens and I see Writing.  I look down in the sands and I see the ashes of last night’s text.  I look around and try to see the One who is watching me.  I stare far, far into the distance and watch Him watch me.

Sometimes the wild scent of Love fills the air.  You cannot imagine it.  The agony is delightful.  It is as if you stumbled into a bakery before dawn, and you were fresh off a ten year famine, and the oven doors were just opening, and all the transformed loaves were being pulled out to cool, filling the room with that fresh aroma.  The scent of Love in a midnight desert is like that.  Surely Love’s trans-national pipeline must be on the other side of the hill.  It must have burst, and Love must be pouring into the air in billowing clouds.  This is dangerous, because the need to strike a match comes on like a seizure.  (There are no lighters in the desert, only howling animals.)  I fall on my back instead to make sand angels, or run and dive off the top of a dune in an effort to fly, and just tumble and grunt for a while.

I run to crest the next dune, and look down, but there are only bones.

* * * * *

Last night was the same, but I was hunting for some One.  Sometimes when I feel the desert calling, I look inside myself with x-ray vision, and I see a lamp swinging back and forth, held by a hand, casting shadows on the sands that look like kites flying across the ground.  The lamp has a warm, yellow glow.  It’s glass on four sides, in an iron frame, hanging on a chain, held by this One.  I’m high above looking down at this lamp, and that is when my whole being becomes the desert, and the lamp is gone.

Last night I saw a yellow light off on the horizon, jittering around like a bug.  I yelped and pawed at the air.  I lost several hours trying to find wood to build a signal fire.  Foolish.  (There is no  wood in the desert, only howling animals.)  Then I started running.  But you cannot run for long in the desert, and finally when I got to the top of the next rise, I sat down, panting and laughing and choking, and looked at that light, and I used the one Word to which my vocabulary had been reduced.  I looked at that jitterbug light and I spoke that word, and I waved my hand in surrender, as if to say, “I give up.  Here I am…

“…I’m ready.”

A desert thrush alighted on my shoulder then, and I knew something had been returned to me.  She looked out with me at the horizon, her head slightly twisted to one side.  We looked with one vision, and I knew I would never be without her.  How can something that is inside of you ever get away?  She knew how to find nourishment in empty spaces, and she was the return of that Knowledge.

* * * * *

I was walking again, with a desert thrush on my shoulder, and we rounded a dune and saw a lamp on the ground, an oasis filled with cool water, a tree or two, and a few shrubs.  There’s more in this desert inside of me than I can ever really say.  Rumi was seated on an old log in the shadows, eyes twinkling.

I’m praying for snow, he said.

I looked up at the cloudless sky.

Someday it will be the time of snow, he said, and tonight all beings are envisioning that moment.  Creation has put out the call and we have answered.  Wouldn’t snow be beautiful?

The time for calculating had passed.  I love you, I said.

You love everyone, he replied.  Like me.  Come and sit.  Pray for snow with me.

I love everyone?  I looked at the lamp.  I felt confusion.  My place in the moment became an open question.  Something threatened to crumble inside of me, and I asked myself how could I find this place, and now be standing here like an idiot, nonplussed, with my thrush returned to me and silence all around?  How did I get through the desert if I still had this shame in my gut?  Something in the bushes flickered, a rustling.

You there! Rumi exclaimed, leaping to his feet.  You!  Hiding in the bushes!  Let me hide with you!  Until our friend returns!  And I stood perfectly still, dumbfounded, as Rumi dove into the bushes.

The thrush on my shoulder just waited, looking into the bushes.

After a time, Rumi popped his head out between some leaves and looked into  me with his eyes for a moment, then offered this assessment to his hidden friend, still looking into me: He still thinks there are reasons.

We can turn moments like this into grand events, make the study of our shame an intense process, or we can realize we drank gasping draughts from the Source to quench our longing, and inadvertently got some Love down the wrong pipe.  I coughed and turned red inside, and chastised myself for a moment, and wheezed and gasped for air, and my shame transformed into laughter as one more unnecessary clinging disappeared.  Rumi winked at me, and I dissolved into the moment again.  Next, I dove into the bushes.  The thrush chirped a song of joy and leapt up into the trees.

This is my Friend, Rumi said.  We are praying for snow.

In the dark, under the leaves, under the moon, under the sacred texts of the heavens, in a desert inside my heart, I said to his Friend, I love you.

Jesus said, I love you, too.

We whispered one word back and forth for a long time underneath that tiny canopy of life in that desert, and when we emerged there were little flurries of ice waving around in the sky, falling down from a cloudless sky.  I realized there were thousands of people gathered around the oasis, seated on blankets, talking, reveling, dreaming.  I discovered how deeply I knew each of them.  I discovered that I didn’t know where my desert ended and theirs began, not here in this open Place.  We all just watched as Creation unfolded around and through us.  The thrush chirped to me from the top of the tree.  It caught a snowflake in its beak.

Little joys can fill us up to the brim.

Sometimes a moment comes and then it goes.  It doesn’t mean anything.  (There is nothing to fear in the desert, only howling animals.)

Come and sit, Rumi said.  Pray for sunrise with me.

The Teachings of Rubik’s Cube

March 3, 2013
by Michael
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Christ

Once when I was a boy I asked my father for a Rubik’s Cube.  My wish was granted, and when I arrived home I took it out of the package and played around for a little while making small, easily recovered changes, frequently restoring the original hexi-color symmetry.  I didn’t want to lose my way back to the original, “correct” state, so I made four or five moves to “scramble” the puzzle, then put it back.

Then, not in any words I could have used at the time, I felt like I was sand-bagging, so I threw caution to the wind and focused exclusively on the scrambling phase, paying little heed to what may be required in the recovery.  I twisted, torqued and spun the cube as randomly as I could, putting my brain into eight year old autopilot as best I could so I wouldn’t remember the series of moves I made.  I even closed my eyes.  You see, every child- every one of us in fact- possesses the knowledge that he or she was created for something other than caution, for some greatness beyond description.  That feeling took hold of me then with that Rubik’s Cube, and in short order my newfound toy took on a complexity I couldn’t fathom.

There is a distortion of our innate greatness, a distortion of that Already Perfected Seed of Being that God placed within us, and that distortion is called specialness by A Course In Miracles.  As I threw caution to the wind in an attempt to express the power inherent within me, I was also kind of thinking and feeling that I was a rather unique young man- a child of destiny who undoubtedly possessed a very special, world-beating, puzzle-solving acumen that had been given to me and me alone.  It was my secret with God.  I wasn’t entirely sure it was in there, but I was pretty clear that if I willed it to be, it could be so.

Buttressed by this confidence in my chosen fate, I picked up the cube once again and tried to use my freshly minted super powers to set it right.  I was soon spinning with gusto, and studying the problem with my mind, and spinning the cube around confident that the next step would be clear to me.  Little seemed to be happening.  Like colors came together in one area, only to undo a similar pattern somewhere else.

My confidence soon withered, and the nature of the task at hand utterly stumped me.  I started to try and remember mentally the series of wrist twists and arm rolls I had executed to scramble up perfection so completely, but that was a hopeless task, and hopelessly compounded by the efforts at a solution I had already made, so I was clearly in a quagmire.  I realized that every time I touched the cube, I couldn’t tell if I was actually making it worse, or making it better- if I was getting closer to the solution or father from it.  I admitted to myself that I had no idea what I was doing at all.

I felt little and small and defeated, and realized I was just a simple boy without world-beating, puzzle-solving prowess, and that I probably would not end up in the Guinness Book of World Records after all.  My joy in the Rubik’s Cube was thus gone a few hours after I received it.  I realized I could have taken off the stickers, and in a few days I heard about ways to take the cube apart piece by piece and put it back together, and I even later learned there were a series of universal steps that could solve any motley configuration of the cube.  But the magic of the moment was lost.  I saw only defeat in that cube, and all the “real world” solutions felt mechanical and lifeless and mundane- nothing like the feeling of greatness I felt inside myself.  Greatness surely could not be reduced to a recipe that just any odd person could learn, or to a bag of tricks.

I look back and am utterly amazed by this little memory and how much it stood to teach me.  I look at how effortlessly, by following a simple desire to know and experience some inner feeling of brilliance that every child knows is alive within, an incredible teaching metaphor filled my world.  Look how effortlessly every lesson I would ever need was offered me through the symbols and forms of this world!  This is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  The Holy Spirit is shaping the meaning of every moment with just this depth, providing an unending string of gentle opportunities to recognize the truth that lives within us, and to see where truth cannot be found.

This world is like my Rubik’s Cube.  We think we can use the world to prove that greatness lies within us, but this can never be the case, for the greatness is the Presence of Christ within us, and no worldly events can make that Self real.  When we seek to prove that the Life within us is real through the toys of unreality, we cannot but fail.  When we seek in the ego’s world, we do not find.  When we seek as separate individuals, and believe our greatness is a unique gift to us, a gift that sets us apart and beyond, this distortion gives rise to specialness.  Thankfully, the stories all end like my Rubik’s Cube encounter: when we seek in an external world for what lies within we do not find.  That is a blessing, folks!

What do we do when we encounter the pain of being “disproven”?  What happens when the events of our lives seem to disprove the validity of greatness within us?  Why couldn’t I have simply spun that cube back to its perfected state as a lesson in my perfection?  Wouldn’t that be the miracle I am to believe is given me?  What would have been so bad about that?

The answer is that it was never about the Rubik’s Cube.  In seeking to make the reality of my inner perfection about that little puzzle, I was attempting to hitch my eternal, ever-Loving inheritance from God to a piece of plastic.  It is a great blessing that this was not permitted.

In attempting to be a separate, towering hero of a puzzle solver in a way that would forever distinguish me from my brothers and sisters in Christ, and seal my fate as an autonomous, self-made being, I would have in one stroke undone the reality of God, which is the reality of relationship.  It is a great blessing that this was not permitted.

When our dreams are shattered, and the magic is gone from this world, hanging onto the ego becomes something like clinging to a hollow trick.  It is like clinging to a costume after the unreality of the character has been revealed.  It leaves us feeling swindled, and empty.  I could have taken the stickers off the Cube and put them back on, and technically restored the original integrity, but I would have known it was a lie.  I wanted the experience of something wonderful flowing through me, something greater than me, not a cheap imitation.

And the ego is a cheap imitation.  Every time we hitch our wagon to some ever-changing piece of matter or energy in this world in an effort to prove we are great, we are doomed to fail.  It is only when we accept the Presence of Christ within us, and see His Presence equally strong in all of us, that we discover that we were correct in feeling that greatness lives within us.  It does not live in separate, better-than selves, however; it is the greatness of our shared identity in Christ, of the Holy Relationship that links all things indissolubly with our Creator.

In this realization the world is no longer a tool for affirming a false belief; it becomes instead a blank canvas on which we are freed to paint the truth of all beings.  We don’t need the world to prove anything, and so the Truth within us is freed to flow through our very lives and make itself Known.

Choosing to Exist

February 26, 2013
by Michael
comments 2
Course Ideas / Creative

I think we should begin with a bit of Rumi.  This is like stretching out briefly before we tear ass across a back yard still slick with a morning dew.  It’s a best practice, and it just might prevent us from ripping ligaments or pulling hamstrings in the recklessness that follows.  It’s a safe beginning.

Sort of.

“We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve into non-existence, but non-existence fears even more that it might be given human form!”  Rumi

This post is about unity and about a rightminded view of our humanness, in light of our divinity.  Let me throw a hand up here and be the first to cop to experiencing fear about what unity might mean for me.  Rumi is right on: the threat of non-existence flashes across my mind and gives me pause.  This fear is as old as the separation.  We believe that when we surrender completely to Love we’ll be swallowed whole and be gone forever.  We’ll go from awareness to nothingness.  We’ll go from being something to being nothing at all.  We’ll go from being known by at least some people, to being completely and utterly unknown and forgotten- like we never happened.

(On the other side of the coin, we’re afraid we’ll be stuck with people, right?!  It’s hard enough to hang around certain  people for a half an hour.  How’s this supposed to work when we’re indissolubly united roommates for Eternity?  The separation and its coterie of courtesans and advisors are not exactly squeaky clean on the whole logical integrity piece.)

So, this is fear of being rendered null and void for all time is worth looking at, because letting it drive us makes about as much sense as thinking Heaven was sold out because God didn’t print enough tickets.  Jesus had this to say on the topic of fearing union in A Course of Love, “How silly is it to be afraid of the truth?  Fear of the truth is like a fear of the impossible being possible.  Like the fear of death, it is the product of upside-down thinking.” (CoL 31.3)  He goes on to say, “You do not understand that something can be inseparable and still not be the same… What is inseparable cannot be different but this does not mean it must be the same.” (CoL 31.4)

Say what…?  The unlearning discussed in the Course includes the English language, by the way.  Did you discover that already?  I’ve come to the conclusion lately that reading Truth with a separated Mind is kind of like reading the FDA warning labels on an herb sent by God to produce on-the-spot salvation.  I know, I know, but just imagine with me…  Warning: this plant contains substances known by the Good People of Death Valley to cause bouts of Innocence, uncontrollable fits of Happiness, and in some cases, sudden and irreversible acceptance of Eternal Life.  Proceed with extreme caution.

Point being, this fear is worth rooting out, aside from the fact that it’s totally unfounded, because it is one of the principal obstacles to salvation.  “Give up this notion of losing your Self to God, and you will be done for all time with resisting God.  Only in God can you find your Self.” (CoL 31.10)

My heart took this to heart, so, here’s what we did: I turned around to face this madness, rather than pretending I didn’t know it was following me around all day, and I smacked that fear of annihilation hard across the face.   I’m talking about I set all standards of caution and prudence aside and I elicited a wanton cataclysm of knuckles and cheekbones in the space in front of me.  I challenged that fear to a duel at high noon.  I then, in a right and proper way, declared the weapon of choice: full disclosure.

(Here’s something to consider: when you’re playing poker with your fears, bet on Love and push all your chips right into the center of the table.  Then start smiling like you can’t help it.  There’s no possible outcome in which you lose.)

We met at the appointed hour, and as Rumi made plain, I trembled with the fear of annihilation.  Then we began.  My fears rose up massive against the sky, casting long shadows, and said, “Look at yourself.  You’re petrified of non-existence.”

To which I replied, “Who is petrified…?”

And it was done.

Why do we insist on complications?  It is not more complicated than this.  Remember that “fear is the stranger here.”  (W-160)  “If you are real, then fear must be illusion.  And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.” (W-160.4:7-8)

Our separated minds are so baffled by this simplicity, they think there is actually a decision to be made here.  They’ve taken head-scratching to a whole new level.  They think, well, how do I know?  Maybe I don’t exist…  Maybe I thought I was real and I was mistaken.  How could I really know?  Maybe when I finally accept what is true, rather than fighting it, I’ll dissolve into non-existence and be gone.  Maybe that is just how it is.  Maybe I need to grow up and face reality.

Yes, to facing Reality…

The second half of Rumi’s passage is beautiful because it turns the absurdity right around, and says, “non-existence fears even more that it might be given human form!”  This only makes sense if we accept that there is something Real about being human, and that banishes the threat of non-existence altogether.  Rumi’s rhetorical table-flipping implies that we are Real, that the true human is an expression of the divine, and that the heart has been right all along when it has whispered, “Listen to me.  We exist.  I know it.”

Unity can only be understood after we accept that we are Real.  Then it will make sense.  This is the precipice on which we are poised.  Somebody please, push me…

Daring to Think Competently

February 24, 2013
by Michael
comments 4
Christ / Course Ideas

When I read Bucky Fuller, I tend to laugh out loud in joy at least once per page.  I’m a geek, yes- that is surely a contributing factor to this physiognomic response- but it is the joy of recognizing Bucky’s mind that really sets into motion the cascading processes that result in air being fired from my lungs in short bursts.  His writing bristles with intelligence, connection, humility and honesty.  One reason I enjoy reading him periodically is that he didn’t exactly take received notions for granted.  He relied on the workings of his inner faculties and challenged convention where his own conclusions differed.  He dared to trust the awareness living within himself.

Some might challenge that reliance upon our own inner faculties is akin to remaining caught in the ego’s web, particularly when this reliance gives rise to three-wheeled aluminum cars and air-conditioned geodesic domes spanning major metropolitan areas, but I think we have to be careful to jump to conclusions.  If we really wish to be free, we will each one day come to rely upon that which lives within us.  It is true that what we come to rely upon is not the logical mind alone, but the wholehearted union of heart and mind in which we discover the Christ within us- that living, inner conduit to our Creator- but ultimately we will have to make that decision to let go of our external crutches and trust in that inner Reality.

We accept our Father, Who has always accepted us.  Always.

Yes, the ego can be the over-confident, arrogant one who is lobbying for the abrogation of God’s Rule.  The ego can also be the downtrodden, doubting one who insists in our powerlessness.  I think Bucky had the courage to acknowledge the limits of what he knew, and was know-able, with his methods of exploratory logic, as well as the courage to follow the threads he discovered.  Bucky was obviously fairly rational in his approach, but is there anything wrong with that?  All of us treading our path to awakening would benefit from focalizing the light of our awareness into a fine point and burning out a few lingering falsehoods.  Hunting for logical inconsistencies in our thinking is certainly a valid way of rooting them out.  There is nothing about salvation that is inconsistent or illogical.   (T.22, Intro.5:1)

Bucky wrote in Chapter One of Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth that, “…we do not tend, customarily, to dare to think competently regarding our potentials.”  We accept what we are taught by the world.  Our “spontaneous initiative has been frustrated” a few times too often, so we set realistic expectations.

Where then, would daring and competent thought place our vision in light of what we have been taught in A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love?  What exactly are we called to see and to accept in ourselves and others?

I think at some level we would be more willing to accept that one day in the future we will put on red capes and fly around above Manhattan than to accept all that these courses teach is accessible to us right now.  Superman’s powers, although clearly far-fetched, are powers that make sense in the world we have accepted as ours- the one with bodies and storms and diseases, and with courtrooms with big wooden balustrades and white-wigged judges who are the arbitrators of justice.  Superman’s physical prowess is manifest and obvious.  It is not formless.  We can see that power and touch it.  It is, therefore, real to us, however silly to the rational mind.  Bullets bounce off of him.  Heat cannot burn him.  His body defies gravity.  His body is invincible…  That would be power, right?  To at once be physical and yet indestructible…

It is hard for us to conceive of the fact that the power alive within us is far, far greater and more meaningful than Superman’s, and yet all the while we could be run over tomorrow, or riddled with disease, or momentarily unable to secure the living we desire.  We do not dare to think competently about all that we have been taught, because in doing so our fears overwhelm us.  Our willingness atrophies- mine does, anyway- when we look in the mirror and screw ourselves up to recite “And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.” (T.21, II.2:5)

“It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him.  It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice.  His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident.  No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing.” (T.21, II.3:1-4)

Who has asked for this?  Who has asked to be lost at sea?  Who has asked to contract disease?  Who has asked to lose a loved one?  Who has asked to battle with meaninglessness and depression?  And if I had the power to change all this, to avoid it, then surely I must have screwed up in finding myself here…!

These are the thoughts of a conflicted mind.  These are not logical or reasonable, and if we dare to think competently about what we have been taught, we quickly move to call into question the world’s (and our own) stance on this.  We realize that if accepting our power as Sons of God is difficult or painful, then we must be viewing the situation incorrectly.  We must still believe in sin.  We must still hate somebody.  We must believe we could make a mistake, and make it real.  We must believe we could truly be harmed, and truly harm another.  We must still equate power with the ability to control other bodies.  We still believe, in other words, in the reality of death.

I find within myself this underlying belief that the bodies around me and the stories they portray are more real than the Reality of God.  This is okay.  Simple errors can be turned over to the Holy Spirit and corrected.  To find them and root them out requires vigilance and the right use of logic.  It requires that we dare to think competently, so that we do not settle for the distortions that result in our equating Self-recognition with the achievement of our sales quota, or with finding a partner, or with mastering a new hobby, or with accomplishment of some other short-lived goal.  To dare to think competently about our potentials is to embody the willingness to accept that greatness is in us, that the power to choose a loving Reality is who we are, and to challenge the thoughts and beliefs that have created any experience that is still teaching us something to the contrary.

What is this power within us, anyway?

It is the power to exist forever, within and of the Creator, expressing and being only Love, without ever having to fear loss or threat.  It is the power to bring more to every situation in which we could ever find ourselves, to extend Creation without end or limit.  It is the power to bless, and be blessed by, all things.  It is the power to Know.  It is the power to Be who we are right now.  When I dare to think competently about our potential, I am reminded that the Course emphasizes resurrection- not sacrifice and the crucifixion.  The power that lies within us is the power that conquered death…

(I tried to draw that, but you can see that drawing is not, perhaps, on my own personal list of super powers…)

Emphasizing the Resurrection

Emphasizing the Resurrection

The power that we are is the power to resurrect and to be resurrected…  I don’t know if Bucky quite imagined that, but we have as our teacher and brother One who has been there and done that, and is leading us on the most direct path each of us can walk out of the valley of death and into eternal life.

He’s teaching us right now, if we dare to listen…

The Conundrums of a Conflicted Mind

February 23, 2013
by Michael
comments 2
Christ

Who is studying the Course?  And to what end?  Who hears the words?  Who is stirred to hope for a new life?  Who recognizes Love and surrenders, turning round then to confront their darkness?  Who finds it too complicated or difficult?

Who knows?

My little, egoic self is a Seeker.  The starting point for this little one is the deeply held belief that my unique and particular historically-derived collection of personal experiences is all that exists, all that can be known, and all that is meaningful in and of itself.  This little one is the glue that holds this collection of past moment-trinkets together, and organizes them into a vector of personal purpose, an oft-changing mission, a rallying cry that continuously falters and regroups into new slogans and banners.

This collection of trinkets- thoughts, interpretations, meanings and experiences- is not assembled willy-nilly.  Do not succumb to that folly.  This little one has a vast system for organizing trinkets and half-moments into a neatly organized shell, as if a chainmail identity had been forged from painstakingly melding together the scraps and shards found in a discarded box of ancient, musty photos in the attic of an abandoned house.  The memories of what those fragments of images once stood for have long been lost; those images are just empty swatches of color, and the chainmail is as soft as damp cardboard.  This is a little one’s world.  This little one is the glue and the thread, tucked away inside, gluing and sewing.

This little one knows very clearly that should the waters of Truth trickle into the cracks of that shell, in between the cracks of its quilt of ancient color swatches and half-meanings, that the glue and those musty papers may very well all just dissolve, and that those images would be given over to something Greater, to an alternate Interpretation, and this little one would simply be gone.  All its work undone.  This little self would be exposed, and all of its efforts to make a grandiose little self would be found meaningless.

“No fear is greater than the fear of meaninglessness… the quest for meaning is how you have described your purpose here.  To have no meaning to attach to your life is the tragedy you see within it and attempt to keep hidden from yourself.” (CoL, 26.7)

Who can blame it for resisting?  What could ever be wrong with the desire to have and to know a self?  Not one to state the obvious, as in “Truth should be avoided at all costs because it will mercilessly flood my meaninglessness and destroy me”, this little one packages avoidance as approach, parses Finding into an unending series of steps it calls Seeking.

But… who is this little one appeasing?  Who is its audience?  Who is the beneficiary of its schemes?  Who is willing to wait?

There is a Self I also know who is not a Seeker, for that One has already Found.  That One is not distracted by needless appeasements.  That One Knows, and in Knowing… Is.  That One is not debating any of these points.  That One is not reading these words.  That One is not harboring any worries, or anger, or doubt.  That One doesn’t make requests.  That One is immune to scrapbook worlds and stitched together identities.  That One was inoculated against this kind of idle talk because it was there at the Beginning.  It Saw what Is.

Is there, then, someone in the middle?  Is there someone in between the walking identity crisis and the One Who Knows?  Who can suffer and yet in observing the suffering, suffer not?  Who can seek, yearn, and long for the Truth, and yet know it not?

These are the conundrums of a conflicted mind.

These are the dilemmas of a mind that still wants its dreams and illusions to be on equal footing with Reality.  We fear that to find and accept the Truth, will be to lose all that we have worked so hard to build.  We fear that acceptance of our greatest gift, our Inheritance, is equal to suffering our greatest loss.  It is a loss our little self fears it could not tolerate.  Jesus says, “There is only one Mind, just as there is only one Will.  This you are afraid of, as you believe this statement threatens your independence, something you consider a state of being to be highly prized.” (CoL, 31.1)  “Each life is irreplaceable and no one argues this point, yet you allow yourself to resist the whole idea of God because you believe that what is one cannot also be many.”  (CoL, 31.9)

And yet, despite this fear, we return to God for answers, for we know that is where they will be found.  “Only in God can you find your Self.  This is known to you, and is the reason for man’s quest for God throughout all time.” (CoL, 31.10)

Life in the middle is tenuous and unstable.  It is painful.  It is conflicted.  It is filled with elation.  It is doubt-stricken.  It is a moment of release disintegrating into a moment of panic.  One moment we believe freedom could really be ours.  We sail above the world.  In the next we are pulled over for speeding, or we burn the chicken, or discover we are still carrying the talismans of hatred around with us, inside of some pouch on a leather thread around our neck we momentarily forgot about.  We watch the news and our hearts go up in flames.  We put Truth on temporary hold for Game 7.  We think Game 7 is something other than Truth.  We think our hearts actually could go up in flames.  This is life in the conflicted mind.

This is life inside of the question: what if I didn’t exist?

This is nothing at all.

“That which closes the gap, though it may be said to you in many forms, is the decision to give up seeking and acknowledge that you have found.”  (Way of Mastery, 2011 ed., pg 382)

The conflicted mind cannot understand the simplicity of this decision.  The conflicted mind cannot comprehend the safety of this decision.  The conflicted mind cannot recognize the inevitability of this decision.  The conflicted mind is desperate for this, yet thinks it cannot have it.  The conflicted mind stands next to the open door, and decides the view is the answer, rather than stepping across the threshold.  The conflicted mind will look to freedom, and beg for it, working itself to tears, and then turn on its favorite radio show at 8 PM.  The conflicted mind knows everything there is to know about this decision… without making it.

The conflicted mind cannot make this decision… but you can.  Maybe a little fact the conflicted mind cannot comprehend will help…  Here’s a hint for you: the decision has already been made.  The surgery is over.  The prison door fell off the hinges.  Jesus made this One Decision for all of us, and it is spreading through us Now like a great secret being revealed.  It is like this: imagine you made this Decision and mailed it to yourself.  It arrived in the mail, and you set it on your kitchen table- jammed it in the napkin holder.  It has been there ever since.  You need merely open the envelope.  The decision to give up seeking and accept that you have found is no harder than that.

We don’t need reasons for this…

“If you do not think you are yet prepared, if you think you are not ready, cease to think.” (CoL, 32.5)

The conflicted mind wants to know who is walking across the room, picking up the envelope, and opening it…  That is its conundrum.  Here’s a hint: it doesn’t matter.

Give it a math problem, then dash into the kitchen tear open the envelope.

A Journey of the Heart

February 20, 2013
by Michael
comments 4
Creative

It began with thickets and brambles.  I was mired neck-deep in a conclave of every manner of growing thing possessive of sharp, pointed, prickly, skin-penetrating armor.  I was hacking a path to nowhere with a partly rusted machete, swearing, sweltering in the mid-day sun, growing increasingly angry at the steady rain of recently hacked-in-two, thorn-laden vines that seemed bound and determined to fall down on top of me.  I was way behind schedule.  My arms were scratched and bruised.  My forearms in particular were indistinguishable from an ice rink with two broken Zambonis after a week of college hockey.

Coming to the woods was supposed to be fun- a time of relaxation, a way to find myself.  The fantasy I’d had in the morning about blissful trekking and wildlife encounters had rapidly degenerated into the lowest possible grade of wilderness experience possible: incessant, belligerent flailing in order to produce ground speeds of about a quarter of a mile and hour.  All I was doing was berating both Nature and myself.  I don’t know why I thought there was supposed to be some kind of easy hike through this little valley.  I thought the trees were so massive the canopy would keep the weeds down, but some relatively recent logging to the south had resulted in a pioneering free-for-all in this particular corridor.  Just my luck to pick this spot to enter the valley.

After several blustery hours, I finally broke through the wall, and made my way up the slopes beneath some towering pines.  Exhausted, I found a rock in the sun and decided to soak up what enjoyment remained of the day from that location.  I sat and watched the sun go by for a few minutes, then got antsy again and started exploring.  I found a makeshift cave underneath a tumble of man-size boulders and marked the spot for next time, then gave up and began my trek back to civilization.  I was thinking about dinner, my unpaid bills, and what to get my brother for Christmas before I was even back down the slope to the site of my massacre.

* * * * *

I was certain I would come back soon, but nearly a year went by before I came back.  I had completely forgotten about the cave.  Autumn’s progression had knocked back the weeds, and progress was relatively easy.  I bounced on a fresh bed of pine needles, and rejoiced in my rediscovery of the rocky enclave.  I committed to coming back again the next weekend for an overnight…

* * * * *

It was supposed to be a beautiful experience, myself in the wild beneath a sky full of stars.  Instead, clouds came in and out, periodically dowsing the heavens, and the moon was so past it practically toppled over the horizon after the sun.  My glorious vision didn’t exactly materialize, and I found myself once again uneasily alone with myself.  I clambered over rocks and tried to find a better vantage point to watch the valley.  I found a decent place to sit and made my mind up to pray and meditate for a really long time, until my mind stopped its numbing chatter, but gave up after probably ten minutes.  Scampering back down, I banged my knee in the dark and limped to the tent, where I gave up.

For just a moment then, I exhaled and let things be as they were.  I just flopped onto the ground and lay on my back.  A graceful breeze skirted through the trees.  It felt as though the valley and I had just whispered to each other.  The moment just happened.  It snuck up on me.

I tried to recreate that experience for the rest of the night, to no avail.

* * * * *

I came back often to this spot, and made it my own.  It became familiar, a friend.  I learned to just let my feelings soak into the stone and earth, and I began to seek out stretches of prolonged solitude in that spot.  The sound of the wind rushing down the valley had become a language I imagined I could understand, and I felt periodically that I could sense when the weather was changing in the valley.

I kept a journal and a few knick-knacks tucked underneath some stones inside of the makeshift cave.  I wrote in the journal often- sometimes letters to myself, sometimes poems, sometimes just aimless rambling about life.

* * * * *

The first time I saw Him I was annoyed.  I had come to rely upon the anonymity and solitude of this place, and when I saw His figure off in the distance, sliding along between the trees just at dusk, it was as if something special had been ruined.  I left my journal underneath the ground for the entire visit.  I had nothing to say.

I didn’t see Him again that time, but the discovery of another person hiking around that spot was like a loud cymbal repeatedly crashing in my mind.  I couldn’t get away from it.  I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering…

Later, back in my apartment, I was struck by things I didn’t notice that night.  I’d seen Him just after sunset, and He hadn’t had a pack, and my spot was pretty far from the nearest road.  He had moved with an effortless grace, as if He and the land were intimately interwoven into one another.  He had literally faded into the night.  I began to wonder if I would see Him again…

* * * * *

I don’t know why I decided to go climbing.  Usually when I’m by myself, I just hike and explore, but the rock face was only about thirty-five feet tall and it looked like an easy ascent.  Near the top, my right foot slipped off an inch-wide crack in the rock and I slid down along the face nearly three feet.  I caught myself with my left hand, and flung my right up wildly onto the same indention in the stone, but my legs were hanging over an inversion in the weathered stone and couldn’t find purchase.  I could pull myself up, but without my legs I didn’t have the strength in one arm to hold myself while I fished around with the other to find another grip.  I was stuck.

My arms were beginning to wobble and burn.

His voice was calm as water.  He lowered a rope down from the top.  I grabbed hold and adrenaline scoured my veins as I scampered up the last few feet and onto the top.

I was shaken, out of breath, and completely embarrassed, nearly to the point of being angry, but He just tossed me his canteen- his only possession apparently- like we did this kind of thing all the time and sat down.  He asked me if I’d ever been to the watchtower, and I told Him I hadn’t.  He said I should check it out sometime, especially since I liked to climb.  How He could encourage me to climb after the stunt I just pulled was beyond me.

I asked Him if He lived up here, on this land.  He said here, and places like it- any place where he could help people.  I wondered how He knew I would need help today, and as if He had read my mind He said He could always feel when people were in trouble.  He said looking inside yourself takes a lot of courage, and He said it was His gift to know when that kind of thing was happening.  He said He was a guide, and would always be there when help was needed.

Somehow I didn’t feel the need to question Him.

* * * * *

I awoke one night and looked out from my shelter.  Wind was lashing through the valley, driving rain before it, and the boughs of the trees were swinging deeply to and fro in aperiodic rhythms.  Periodically lightning ripped through the sky.  In one such moment I saw Him crouched down in a small clearing, motionless, staring down a bear.  The bear was clawing at the earth and growling, swinging one paw at the empty space between them, demanding the space for its own.

He never moved.

The bear rose up on two legs and bellowed, fell back down towards Him, but He remained motionless.  The bear came no closer, just sauntered back and forth, agitated, flinging soil and stone with his great paws.

I looked at the bear, and realized it was there because of me.  It had come for me.  I realized in a flash that I was afraid, that I had always been afraid, and that my fear was drawing the bear straight to me.  It was as if the bear was answering my call.  I felt an odd connection and gratitude to the bear, for responding to my call and fulfilling its purpose, even as I knew the bear would destroy me.  I felt something else also, and even as some sick, hollow part of myself wanted to be annihilated, another part of me did not.

I looked again to Him, and realized He had also answered my other call.  I saw He was armed with a Truth I could scarcely comprehend.  It was a Truth with which the bear could not argue.  It was a Power I remembered, but hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time.  I remembered it in that part of me that did not want to be destroyed.  He was battling for that part…  I realized no power I could ever invent could match that One, that even though I knew it and had it in me, it did not come from me.

* * * * *

I learned to let my fears dissolve, slowly, over time, and I began to take longer and longer hikes into the wilderness.  Sometimes I saw Him, miles and miles deep in the forest, and we talked.  I asked Him if he thought I could live up here, up in the mountains, and He told me I’d be able to live anywhere once I was free.  He told me again about the watchtower.  He said when I found it, I’d have to make the choice to climb it.  He couldn’t do that part for me.

* * * * *

One day I came upon the wooden legs of the watch tower in a dead-end canyon and I gasped.  Rocky walls rose nearly two hundred feet on three sides, and the legs were nearly forty feet apart at the bottom.  Braces bound one to the next in a tapered structure that stretched up to a small shack high above the canyon floor.  Ancient timbers were nailed together, and an awkward ladder ran up one of the legs.

I began to climb.

I felt Him with me, like He was right beside me, but each rung was a deliberate choice I had to make to climb up.  Halfway up I was trembling and tired, and yet some deeper, underlying force was coming unstuck inside of me at the same time.  I was giving up fatigue, and trading it for strength.  The rungs were just tacked to the wooden post, and it seemed like any moment one could tear free and I would plunge down to the ground below.

I was immersed in two feelings- the palpable presence of fear and the growing recognition of unqualified Safety.  Focusing on a newfound sense of inevitability, I continued up the structure.  At the top, inside of the shack, I could see for miles in all directions in a way I’d never seen before.  I was above the trees for the first time.  I realized to my delight that the landscape was dotted with watchtowers as far as I could see, and I realized I was not alone- had never been alone.  I saw towers everywhere, dotting the forest, and as night fell they each lit up, along with mine.  Stars twinkled overhead.

I recognized that this was the moment I had always sought.  All of my coming to the forest, even in my earliest days with the machete, had been pursuit of this Recognition, this Moment, this Peace.

In each light I saw in the forest, each watchtower, I felt His presence, and my Own.  I no longer wanted to be alone, by myself.  I wanted to find these other watchtowers, to meet their inhabitants, even as I felt as if I had always known them.  I realized this was only one valley in these mountains, and that I could just make out the twinkling lights of the next valley, and that there was another valley after that, and another, and that this went on forever, in all directions, without end…  I realized the world was far vaster than I had dared imagine, and also more available and more beautiful…

I began to cry, and as I did I imagined Him moving down below in the trees, through the darkness, nurturing this endless community of souls.  I saw a process that could never end, of Hearts coming to light, finding one another, and uniting…

God Is Brewing Tea Again

February 17, 2013
by Michael
comments 4
Creative

In the Creation, God is a tea plant.  She is a tea plant and also the soil in which the tea plant grows, and the air in which the tea plant breathes, and the rains in which the tea plant drinks, and the Light in which the tea plant Knows.

We were a leaf on God’s tea plant, and the Life of the tea plant lived in us and through us.  It was beautiful and effortless.  Then, one Moment we wondered what it would be like to be our own tea plant, to be separate from the Life we had always Known, and our leaf broke free and fell gracefully through the air.  It floated down to a resting place on the ground.  You see, our wish was granted.  Immediately.  Lovingly.  Fully.

Simultaneously, an Answer was Given.  The door of the manor clicked open as God sent out His Gardener.  The Gardener came along and harvested the fallen leaves, picking up every last one of them, and carried them back into His Home.  He placed them in the Light where they slowly dried up and faded.  We withered and crumbled into little pieces.  We felt like something that once was Whole, was Lost.  At times we experienced great pain.

One of us was mostly twig.  The other mostly leaf.  Some of us were quite proud of our catechin content.  Others were flavonoid rich.  Some of us were just woody bits.  Regardless, we were dying and we knew it.  We were shriveling and alone.  We thought we had lost the only Life we ever Had.  It was hard to trust in processes we couldn’t see or understand.  We were convinced our desires had been a harmful mistake, that we had shamefully bought a one way ticket to Nowhere, and were forgotten, without Hope or Purpose.

One day God collected up those leaves and boiled some water.  She gently poured the water over us and something amazing happened.  We dissolved into one another and into something Greater once again.  All of our disparate contents and fragments were unlocked, diffusing into this new liquid warmth around us.  We were drawn into one another again, and made meaningful in our communion with one another.  A great aroma filled the manor.  A golden color filled God’s cup.  Something that had always been in us, from the very Beginning, awaiting just this Moment, was set free.

Then God drank us, and we became One with Him again.  We flowed Everywhere and into Everything.  We looked out through stars, and permeated vast expanses of latent darkness, filling them all with silent Knowing.  All of Creation was steeped in our presence, and we forgot we ever were a tiny little leaf on a tea plant.

Setting Yourself Aside

February 16, 2013
by Michael
comments 3
Creative

Strange.  Strangely familiar, I mean, this coming back.  It’s a lurching free-fall and a hot cup of tea all at once.  At first I don’t recall ever enrolling in this University of Unceasing Joys, but then my feelings and memories, even my very identity and my deepest sense of Self, snap back into their real shape, like that shape memory polymer when you heat it back up.

I’m taking one of two required semesters of drama- (every student at the University takes at least two semesters, regardless of their major)- and so I go through this process at least a couple of times a week right now.  In drama class, we literally become our characters…  We lose ourselves into their worlds and experiences.  At the end of class, we take our character ‘off’.  Each time there’s a moment when it feels like you’re losing grip on reality, like you’re tumbling off a ledge into a plunge of unknown depths.  Then, just as the descent really begins, you’re caught.  You’re back…  Home.

Today this identity reversion came at an unexpected moment.  In the second act of this play, my character loses his cool and throws a fit.  I overdid things a bit…  I flew into my best rage ever, pushing my heart rate well over 160 beats per minute, nearly blew a vocal cord, turned quickly to face another character, bristling with the requisite accusation, when I tripped over the set’s coffee table, lost my balance and in attempting to stay on my feet lurched right off the stage and out a side door into a dully lit hallway populated by costume racks, pencil-eared carpenters and a couple of lighting tech’s enjoying a cigarette and a conversation.

That’s when it all came back to me.  My character-cover was blown.  I shook myself off, ran back in and curtsied, much to the delight of Shams, who was the production’s Director.  So, once again it turns out I’m actually not who I thought I was- in today’s case an irate politician- I’m a graduate student in the University of Unceasing Joys.  Jesus is my Thesis Advisor, and I’m enrolled in the Forget Everything But Love curriculum.  I’m meeting him in his office today for some advisement.

* * * *

I arrived a few minutes early and found Jesus behind his desk, practicing his calligraphy, wearing a Los Angeles Angels hat.  He pointed to it and said, “A little redundant, isn’t it?”  Then he took a moment to remind me of the fact that his intra-mural softball team was single-handedly keeping several softball manufacturing plants in business.  He was maddeningly on point with this line of discourse.  Last night, what should have been a merciful single inning affair cut short by the ten run rule had become a torrid, extended walloping of our grad student team.  Apparently we’re in the “40-times-40-run-rule” division.  “Good forgiveness practice,” he said.  How he convinced the Archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael to bat at the top of his order, with Metatron in the clean-up slot, is beyond me.  I pointed out that somebody with some clout around here needs to remind Michael that we had all agreed to a “slow pitch” league…

As usual, he had an intriguing set up for today’s work.  He had cleaned up half of his office so that it was completely open except for a desk and chair on which sat in expectant repose a quill, a jar of ink, and a short stack of virgin parchment.  I pointed to the set-up, eager to end the reliving of last evening’s grievances.  “For me?”

“Yes.”

Instantly He was in the Moment with me, and we united together inside of  that dimensionless, immediate, indomitable, wordless inner Knowing I’ve learned to expect with Him.  He was magnificently present, full of Truth, reassuring, utterly focused on teaching me what I had come to learn.

“Tell me who you are,” he said, pointing to the parchment.  “Tell me everything.  Tell me what you desire, and most importantly, tell me what you fear.  Tell me every last thing you think you know about yourself and believe is true.  Tell me about everything you think makes you different from me, and about everything that makes us the same.”

Wordlessly, I sat and began writing.

I wrote about where I was born.  I wrote about my life history.  I wrote about my second grade classmates.  As I wrote, Jesus’ office dissolved and the flow of time seemed to become malleable.  The desk was in an open field, at dawn, and the sun just rising over some low hills.  Jesus was visible to me off in the distance, under a small grove of trees, standing still and looking to the sun.  I wrote and wrote, and the sun moved across the sky.  My desk was in the desert, on a mountain peak, on a beach.  The sun rose and set.

Slowly facts about myself gave way to beliefs about myself, and about the world.  During this phase, sometimes Jesus would pop into my thoughts and ask clarifying questions, and sometimes these sparked little tremors of fear.  I was getting into the meat of the exercise.  Here Jesus gently prodded my mind.  “Search for the inconsistencies.  No matter how small.”

I wrote about the guilt of wanting things that aren’t good for me, and the guilt of desiring to avoid the things that are.  I wrote that I doubted myself so completely sometimes I wanted to crawl under a rock and die, and other times I felt so certain I was convinced I could do anything.

I wrote that I didn’t want to be here, in this world.  I wanted to be somewhere else, like Heaven, where I could be free of worries and concerns.  I told Jesus I believed in a spirit that transcends the body and had come to this world to learn, and that even though it helped explain certain things, that I didn’t want to come back again to this world.  I could endure this life in front of me, but no more.  I wanted to be free of inner conflicts.  I wrote that maybe when I finally died, and my body wasn’t in my way, I could find the peace I sought.  In dying, I could get Home.

I wrote that I was petrified of dying, because I believed that if I joined with God again, I’d lose myself.  I’d be a nothing.  I’d be gone forever, meaningless and forgotten- only worse, like I never even happened.  I also wrote that death was probably the only way I could find God, because then, after death, I would see things with a clarity that isn’t available to me here.

I didn’t want to be meaningless and forgotten, and I wrote about the vision of a life I wanted.  I pictured the career I would have, the home I would have, the recognition and admiration I would receive for the great things I would do.  I thought about the lives I would save.  I wrote that I wanted to really help the world and its people, by telling it about His Love.  And then I wrote about how scared I was of the world, of its people, of its unexpected tragedies.

I was afraid of how others looked at me.  I was afraid of strangers, and changes to my life, and I wrote about the fact that I wanted a perfect world filled up with the events I selected and the certain people I knew and trusted.

I wrote about how important it was to make this last life great.  To do that, I needed to stay healthy, so I could be free of pain and live a long, full, glorious life.  I wanted my life to be an example of all the good things within me.  I wanted to prove that good things were natural and effortless, but I also wrote that I was afraid if I didn’t exercise, my body would get sick one day and die.  I was afraid if I ate the wrong things, my future would be full of suffering.  I hated pain.  I wrote that I believed healing was of the mind and not the body.  I wrote that I also didn’t want to believe I was a body, or be driven by my thoughts about being a body, but that I had to take care of it or it would end up haunting me, that I had to hedge my bets to ensure a happy future.

I wrote about asking God to give me some of those things I wanted, or to take away some things I didn’t want.  I wrote that I believed I was part of God, and that I could join together with God and take responsibility for my life and my experiences, but that I was afraid to ask for specific things, because I was afraid they wouldn’t happen and all the beliefs I had built that kept me from plunging into despair would be proven wrong.  I wrote that I believed anything was possible, but I was afraid to really ask for it.  I was afraid to commit all of myself into anything specific, and was afraid I was drifting around aimlessly as a result.

I wrote that I believed I had experienced moments of Truth.  I wrote that I believed Truth was within me, and would one day find me and set me free.  I wrote that I believed I was on the right track and doing the right things, like trying to believe in my invulnerability as a Child of God, or coming to this University.  And I wrote that I was afraid of fooling myself.  I was afraid of doing or saying the wrong things.  I was afraid of how others might look at me if they knew who I really was.  I was afraid I couldn’t live up to my own beliefs, but on the plus side I was getting better with practice, and that when I finally could live what I believed I’d be good enough, and God would take me back.

I wrote that I thought all in all, I was making good progress, and moving in the right direction.

This went on for quite some time, with Jesus checking in periodically.  The sun rose and set.  My desk moved through world after world.  Jesus was always visible somewhere near me, walking or sitting.  It was actually a peaceful experience for me.  I felt completely safe with Jesus nearby.  Finally, it was all done- all out on paper.

I looked up expectantly.  I felt like a great space had opened up within me, and had a sense of well-being and contentment.

And Jesus said to me, “Good.  Leave those thoughts now and do not return to any of them.  Not one.  And judge them not.  There is not a single one among them that you need or that could ever hurt you.”

I hesitated.

“Today, if you leave all this aside, you will have started to forget who you thought you were,” he said, “so that you may remember who you truly are…  I would hit the batting cages now, if I were you.”

A Rambling Exploration of Perception

February 15, 2013
by Michael
comments 5
Course Ideas

Perception is the only mode of awareness available to the separated mind.  To say it another way, perception is a way of consciously viewing ourselves and the world that is based upon the a priori assumption- or belief- that separation is real.  Once we have accepted this false premise- that we are truly separate from God and from one another, that the ‘I’ within ‘me’ is an island unto itself- then perception is the primary tool of awareness at our disposal.

Having said all of that, perception is one of those concepts from the Course that is not altogether obvious to me.  I mean, what is it exactly???  Is it perception to see any physical form whatsoever?  Or is it perception to see a world populated with separate people and separate things?  Writing often helps me clarify my learning, so here goes…

In our world of language, the word perception typically refers to a viewpoint, to an image or impression or experience that arises when we look at something in a certain way.  If two people look at the same building from different locations, they will see differences, even though the building is the same building.  There is general agreement in our world that if both people came around to look at the building from the same spot, they would see the same thing, and thus share the same perception.

Albert Einstein was convinced this simple principle was an underpinning of the universe.  He felt that if the truth is true, it must be true to everyone who shares a common reference point (e.g. perception), and so he developed a mathematical language for converting one perception (e.g. reference point) into any other.  This universal perception translator kit- the theories of Relativity- required that space itself change shape in response to the movement of its energetic and mass-laden contents.  This finding was completely unexpected, but ultimately came from the simple assertion that something true in our world should be true to everyone who looks at it from the same point of reference.  And the theory to date has stood the test of time.

Remarkable… but does it make the observed event True?

In relationships, two people may have very different views of the same event.  Both may have participated in the exact same conversation, yet walk away with completely different experiences because of their personalities, beliefs, past histories, etc.  Thus, if both people had had the same past experiences and had made the same conscious choices about how to interpret and/or respond to those experiences, then presumably they would both be capable of viewing experiences in a similar light.  At a minimum, when we grasp the experiences that shape each other’s viewpoints, we are able to better understand one another.  In this case, the perceptual differences are the inner context of beliefs, goals, desires and fears that color our individual awareness.

Are these the perceptions the Course is talking about?  One of them?  All of them?  I’m not sure.  At the end of the day I think the Course is saying that any mode of awareness in which the meaning of what is observed or experienced is capable of changing depending upon how you elect to view it or ‘frame it’ is a perception.

I find it really interesting when the Course says that, “Perception is a result, not a cause.” (T.21, I.1:8)  The result of what?  If perception is a mode of awareness in which meaning is subject to variation depending upon our viewpoint, then a world in which perception reigns would be a world in which multiple viewpoints are possible.  Clearly separation is the fundamental and necessary element of such a world.  The Course says that, “Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator.”  (T.3, IV.2:1)

I often find it helpful to take an assertion and wonder what the opposite would mean.  If my day-to-day experience is rooted in perception, which is the product of separation, and creating is its opposite, what would an experience of creating be like?  The top of my head doesn’t exactly peel off, but this tact is often very insightful.  My answer at this moment is that a perception is a mode of awareness in which we make something and place it ‘out there’, external to ourselves, where we can look at it.  Creating, on the other hand, is a flowing extension of a Self into its creations in such a way that the Creator and the Created share an Identity.  When we create we don’t chuck ‘things’ out there into an external world and look back on them from the outside: we are It.  We don’t generate images or phantoms or shells of unreality.  We extend Reality Itself.  We give ourselves wholly and completely to our creations.  They are us and we are they.  Wow.

Do try this at home.  Imagine it.  Feel your heart ripple with the ineffable.  You give yourself wholly, but completely counter to the world of perception, there is no transfer from you to another.  You lose nothing.  There is no depletion of your stores.  In fact, there is only gain…  There is extension of the Self into something new and equally whole.  There is more of You.  More of Creation.

“To extend is a fundamental aspect of God which He gave to His Son.  In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create…”  (T.2, I.1:1-2)  “In this sense the creation includes both the creation of the Son by God, and the Son’s creations when his mind is healed.” (T.2, I.2:7)

Healing our perceptions is the work of our journey home.  As the Course of Love states, “The loftiest aim of which you are currently capable is that of changing your perception.” (CoL, 19.23)  This is a key step in unwinding our core belief-experience of being a little, separate, individual ‘thing’.  When we perceive rightly, the world we see so closely aligns with Reality that God is able to flood our awareness with Knowing once again and, because our chosen perception is so close to Reality, we will not resist It’s coming any longer.

“Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons.  There He can communicate with His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question.”  (T.3, III.6:1-2)

A world of perception is a world of assigned meanings.  We perceive differently because we assign different meanings.  As we relinquish our need to interpret as separate individuals, we allow the Holy Spirit to bring our perception back to a right-minded worldview, to the vision of Christ.  There, the tumblers fall into place, the door swings open, and Love is Known.

Our pernicious belief in the reality of separation is gone forever.

Sounds wonderful, and yet…  Despite the fact that perceiving is not our natural mode of awareness, it is all we appear to know right now!  In A Course of Love Jesus notes that prior to the separation, when our awareness was rooted in unity, it was quite impossible for us to understand, imagine, or experience what a separated state would be like.  It was a completely foreign concept.  It was only when we experienced it that the “reality” set in…

“The only way to make the unbelievable believable is to alter what you experience.  The state in which you now exist was not only unbelievable but also inconceivable to you in your natural state.  Experience was required in order to alter your belief system and is required now as well.” (CoL 18.10)

We now have the opposite problem.  Separation is all we appear to know.  We are plagued by perceptions.  Attempting to have a moment of awareness without it is challenging to accomplish- in the area of effecting moments of genuine transcendence, we are like scientific researchers who have just found a new phenomenon, but have no idea about its governing parameters or the conditions in which it arises- and virtually impossible to conceptualize.  I believe this is why a great many spiritual paths in our culture rely upon experience.  The Reality we seek transcends concepts.

The key to transformation of our experience is to unify the heart and mind, so that they move together, in lockstep, towards the experience we wish to have.  “A mind that can conceive of a creator combined with a heart that yearns for knowledge of, and union with, that creator, can bypass the need for the separate thoughts of the separated one’s thought system…  In order to remember unity you must, in a sense, travel back to it, undoing as you go all you have learned since last you knew it, so that all that remains is love.  This undoing, or atonement, has begun- and once begun is unstoppable and thus already inevitably accomplished.” (CoL, 19.17,19)

There is one last thing we must refuse to do, and that is to continue placing ourselves in the Driver’s Seat.  Jesus says, “Your willingness to accept me as your teacher will help you to accept my sight as your own and thus to be right-minded.  The way you have perceived of yourself and your world until now has not been right-minded, and you are beginning to realize this.  Thus it is now appropriate for the realization to come to you that your mind, and your perception, can be changed.” (CoL, 19.23)

Remember that a world based upon perception is a world of changing meaning.  To return to unity, meaning becomes changeless (and beautiful, exhilarating, uplifting, profound, stunningly acceptable, etc.).  I’m not sure that we, as separated minds, are capable of conceiving of a single meaning to give all of the events we perceive.  Our lives are a constant encounter with perceptions that overwhelm our ability to even try: famines, storms, wars, disease, loss, etc.  We might come up with a meaning that is satisfactory to us in a few cases, but not universally…  Not in the face of such tragedy.  You see, we are stymied by a belief in separation, so long as we choose it.

A universal meaning must be rooted in unity.  If we could each simply come up with our own version of a universal meaning, it wouldn’t be universal!  We need a teacher like Jesus to supply the One Meaning that underwrites all Beingness, that is meaningful when overlaid onto any set of circumstances or perception whatsoever.  And we need the trust and willingness to accept that meaning in any set of circumstances we find ourselves.

Then, perceptions may dissolve.  Knowledge may return.  Our experience of unity with Creation may be remembered.  Our participation in Creation may continue.