A Wasteland of Hidden Thoughts

February 12, 2013
by Michael
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Course Ideas

Recently I convinced myself that I was in desperate need of an Inception.

(I don’t know if you have seen the movie, but I hope you have.  If you have not, I have provided a summary of the relevant points at the bottom of this post.  I’ve tried not to get too carried away and engage in any wanton acts of plot spoilage…)

I wanted Jesus to go into my subconscious and ride around my symbolic inner world hanging one-handed from a helicopter vaporizing my inner bad guys and when he reached the core of my false thinking, to plant the Idea deep down in there that my reality is about to get really good.  Like, unabashedly brilliant good.  Meta Universal Knowing.  I-share-inside-jokes-with-people-I’ve-never-met good.  In the fertile ground of the hidden aspects of my overactive mind this seed Jesus would plant would take root, and it would be inevitable- just like Christopher Nolan wrote it- that this thought would blossom into a clear experience of a Loving Reality.  If Jesus would do that for me, I’d be on a sure track.

The reason I was resorting to science fiction ploys is that I had a nice bit of unreality percolating on my insides: I felt poorly about myself, conflicted and unclear, in pain, and uncertain.  The ego’s traps are exquisite, I must admit.  They are polished and professional.  They get us where it hurts the most.  One moment we are full of joy, transfixed by the glow that abides around briefly tasting the experience of genuine non-attachment, thinking (romantically) about how great it would feel to know ourselves as living specimens of Peace.

We’re thinking, (some of us), (me anyway): “I don’t need much.  Just a simple life.  I don’t need to be famous or cool.  I don’t need riches.  I need very little, actually.  Good coffee.  Or tea, perhaps.  A roof.  A friend or two with whom soul-baring is acceptable.  Broadband Internet access.  I could be just a little, simple wellspring of unqualified contentment.  I could be happy.”

Then, the ego outflanks me.  The ego says, “Yes, but you probably need to pay your heating bill.  And your car transmission just broke.  Mind you, your simpleness happy whateverness routine can’t afford to pay a mechanic to actually fix it…  And you probably need to get your child those hearing aids, right?  Who could deny a child?  You really are an asshole.”

The ego is right.  Who could deny his or her own child???  Well, we couldn’t, and we wouldn’t, but now we have a legitimate reason to be upset.  We are, all of a sudden, mired in conflict…  This isn’t something from which we can simply walk away.  Our backs are up against the wall.  The math won’t work.  We can’t have our simple happy life and pay for our children’s hearing aids.  It’s not like we gambled on the horse races.  Or sunk everything into some crazy venture with a 1% chance of massive upside.  We’re a good person.  We’re after simplicity.  And yet still, without notice, we’re desperate.  That desperation wears down our cells, engenders restlessness, kneads our inner life into a confused pulp, drives us to step in and take control of our world(s).  Anyway, the reasons don’t matter.  The ego’s set-ups are exquisite like this.  The only way out is a miracle- a transcendant perspective.  And when I was recently in the clutches, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I needed an Inception…

The thought of Inception was intriguing because I was thinking about the following conundrum: I can recite platitudes with my intellectual mind as long as I like, but this exercise alone is insufficient to transform my experience.  At some level, it kind of exacerbates it, actually.  I can say, “I am at home with God,” all day long, and each time I say it there will be that twinge of doubt… from where?  From my subconscious, right?  I realized that in between my rational mind and the moments of heartfelt clarity that I savor, there must be a hidden wasteland of bitter pills floating around that are screwing things up.  I can’t seem to be able to get at them to change them or flush them out- I just feel them shaking their collective head ‘no’ when I start in with the platitude recitations.  You can’t fake it, they’re saying.  We’re in here, and we’re onto you.  We are you.

I thought I was onto something insightful with this subconscious thing, and then I was reading and contemplating and was matter-of-factly corrected.  In Dialogue on Awakening, Jesus says to Tom, “What appear to you to be the thought processes of your subconscious mind appear so because you are unwilling to be in touch with them.  These thoughts or issues lie clearly within your conscious mind, but they have been there in a form unrecognized by you… “  (DoA, 1996 ed., Chapter 3, pg 71)  Within this Chapter Jesus goes on to say that there is nothing that happens to us- nothing, zero, zip, nada- that did not arise first in our mind.  We are not the victims of anything.  It is not more complicated than that.  Starkly simple, it is.  He also says, “You do not make unpleasant or uncomfortable circumstances to teach yourself lessons.”

Great.  At least before I was able to assign to my bouts of suffering certain redeeming qualities.

The ego would make us out to be blameworthy for having such a capacity and misusing it.  The Christ in us would simply have us forget/forgive all that we have ever imagined as transpiring and walk through that door to freedom.  By simply choosing peace.

There is a conundrum I wrestle with periodically: awakening may be immediate and need not be a long and drawn out affair, yet wanting this to happen seems to be the one thing that drives it away.  Desiring Inception as I did earlier is a statement that I am somehow, right now, less than perfect, and this is the fundamental mistake on which all others hinge.  Because, actually, right now, we are perfect- exactly as God created us.  The Course says, “This course is not beyond immediate learning, unless you believe that what God wills takes time.” (T-15, IV.1:1)  Later, “God is ready now, but you are not.” (T-15, IX.1:7)

What are the barriers then?  How do we remove them?  There is no need for time, except as we resist, judge, teach ourselves falsehoods, etc.  We may simply put the key in the lock and turn it…  One thing I’ve realized is that when my inner debilitation is roiling around and casting shadows, there is a train of thought that works like this, “This [insert circumstance or situation here] wouldn’t be happening if I had awakened.  Therefore, I must not be there yet.”   In other words, the present seems to be clear and irrefutable evidence that what I desire most is not so.  This is the tragedy of out picturing reality from a conflicted- e.g. separated- mind.  It is truly ill and knows not what it does.  Even when told it is doing it, it shudders in self-contempt and believes that if that is true, then it really is in trouble.  A whole new kind of disaster.

We decide what the symbols around us mean, and we have decided they mean that we are not free, not home with God, not at peace.  We forget that we chose that meaning first, and that our external reality subsequently supplied the evidence second.  We think, because we have forgotten the proper relationship of cause and effect, that if we could fix the problem out there in the world, or manage it at least, minimize its dilatory effects, then we would be whole, because the evidence to the contrary would be gone.  So, that is what we attempt to do…  Yet it can never work while the fundamental belief that we are imperfect holds sway.  It feels an impossible task to change this belief, as despite our best efforts our feelings and experiences seem to express the contrary.  Maybe not all the time, but frequently enough…

How the…?  Well, for this we need the miracle- the crack in the clouds through which light and understanding suddenly pour.  We don’t make all this right on our own.  (There is nothing to be made right!)  We allow the recognition that it is already right and perfect to dawn upon us, by relinquishing all thought to the contrary.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, we relinquish any and all meanings and interpretations we have overlaid upon Reality, so that It may simply be what it is.  And we can Be Who We Are.  As the Way of Mastery says, “Love allows all things.  Love embraces all things.  Love trusts all things, and thereby, immediately transcends all things.”  (Way of Mastery, 2011 ed., Lesson 32, pg 370)

Immediately.

If there is even one thing we find unacceptable, in this finding lies the assertion that something has gone wrong, and if something could actually and truly go wrong, then we should be scared.  Because then Reality would be at risk.  Because then we really could wink out of existence.  Yet we are one light switch away from a radical experience of Forever.  Right now we have the switch in the position that says, “I am a simple person, and I ask for just this one little thing of this world.  Is that too much to ask?  Just one scrap of safety…  Just one niche of peace in which I might rest, safe from all the rest…”  In the other position, the switch says, “You cannot have that little patch of nothingness, if you would have Everything.”

* * * * *

In the movie Inception, ideas placed within a “target’s” subconscious take root and have tremendous sway over the subsequent unfolding of their life, to the point of defining their entire belief systems despite the fact that evidence is available to the contrary, and the choice to think or believe otherwise is clearly available to them.

Commitment Fuels Our Journey

February 9, 2013
by Michael
comments 17
Course Ideas

I went through a stage in this journey without distance in which I sought to find the ‘right path’ for myself.  It was like I was evaluating a major purchase.  I was given some good advice at the time, which basically went like this:

“Pick one.”

It was the best advice I could have received, because nothing really gets started without commitment.  In fact, without commitment, it is impossible to learn to see what is really happening along our journey.

At the time, I did not know about the Course in Miracles, but I did the one thing that needed to be done: I picked one.  Within a year I was wallowing neck-deep in the most difficult darkness I’d ever known.  I was seated alone in the woods on a fasting retreat of sorts anticipating a tap on the shoulder from God that never came- at least not on the channel I was monitoring.  I had prepped for this experience for several months and had experienced headlong plunges into self doubt- moments in which my entire body seemed to be a sucking, panicky vacuum into which flooded a debilitating anxiety about being on the verge of imminent and permanent annihilation- that were intermixed with surges of indomitable power, and a grace that lifted me up to the clouds.  In hindsight, those latter moments were the miracles.

Anyway, I figured at the time that if I committed wholly, and placed myself alone in the woods on this fasting retreat, that God would acknowledge my pleading and fill those vacuous holes inside of me with all the good things he surely knew about me.  He would, in other words, meet me half way and reach into my heart, exchanging all the blackened filth, the residue of my despair, for His Presence.  This faith carried me through the challenges to the appointed hour, where I arrived at the designated rendezvous location, and found instead that I hadn’t actually hit the bottom as far as the internal oceans of confusion and self doubt went.

My time in the woods, which I had envisioned would be a prolonged encounter with grace, felt instead like an extended session in a spiritual pressure cooker.  I was plagued by fear, and racked with doubt.  I contracted into a little ball of pain and anguish.  Yes, it felt that bad.  They were inescapable.  (Such is the power of commitment, I tell you…)  I returned to civilization utterly defeated, but carrying the seed of an idea around which I reorganized: somehow I had the feeling that during my retreat God had ‘cleared the block’ so to speak, and given me the incredible gift of offering a space wholly conducive to my being enabled to see just how pervasive all the muck inside of myself truly was.

It was, in hindsight, a profound and awesome gift that at the time threatened to propel me right off the path home as fast as my legs could carry me.  Somehow I held it together.  (Such is the power of commitment, I tell you…)  At least the task at hand was squarely in front of me.  That part seemed good.  On the other hand, I was cuttingly aware of the fact that I really didn’t possess the tools to banish the particular breed of darkness that clung to my insides.  I knew I really had no idea how to discern what was good for me from what was not, because in my heart of hearts I knew my commitment to the retreat had been founded upon a genuine heartfelt desire to know God, and on that basis could only have been a good thing.  Yet it was a very painful ordeal, and generally speaking pain is a signal we humans generally treat as a wholly reliable signal to go ahead and do something different.  Like run.

Within three months I was studying the Course.  I happened to pick it up in a bookstore one day, and that was that.  By that time I wasn’t interested in dabbling, or testing the waters.  I had an urgent need to transform my suffering.  I recognized almost instantly that I had found the compass I was looking for- a reliable method for discerning what was good and True from what was not, regardless of how I felt about something in a given moment.  The rest is not history, but an increasingly expansive present.

I share this because I think it is really helpful for all of us to remember that the way home, the journey without distance, is not a walk in the park.  There are real and wonderful gains to be had, and ultimately freedom awaits us all, but commitment is what fuels the journey.  Jesus speaks in the Course about ‘a little willingness’.  If you think about it, repeatedly digging deep to come up with another ounce of willingness in the face of a dream spiraling towards disaster, is commitment.  Commitment is what we need to invite the experiences most needed to transform our inner darkness, rather than choosing the experiences we want.  Commitment is what we need to learn to see them for what they are, rather than discounting them and fleeing to somewhere sunnier and warmer.

I would not be surprised if people generally think, as I did, that a spiritual path should feel like a coming home, like a hop and a skip along a well-lit trail, safe and easy, with all sorts of signs and wonders along the way to make the journey joyful- little teases of the Great Light that awaits at the end of the trail.  I’m not saying it can’t be that, but it is unlikely it will be only that.  The greatest bit of wisdom I ever learned was the realization that encountering pits of despair, flurries of rage, or bouts of fear that cause my entire being to contract and shrink into a hole, are not signs of genuine error on my part; rather, they are the way home.  In fact, it is essential that I learn not to interpret these moments as failures…  Commitment is vital in my opinion because it enables us to stay the course when we encounter these very real-seeming difficulties we have lurking around inside of us.

The ‘work’ of awakening is described consistently in Jesus’ many teachings to us.  Speaking with Tom Carpenter in Dialogue on Awakening, Jesus says, “Resist no thought or feeling that comes to you.  Resistance is based upon some past judgment  you have made that something could be harmful or fearsome…  These thoughts and feelings have come to offer an opportunity to choose again- an exchange program of sorts in which continued bondage is let go for freedom.” (DoA, 1996 ed., Chapter 10, pg 231)

This sentiment is echoed in the Course, “It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful.” (M.4, I.A.4:5)

It is also echoed in A Course of Love, “The purging of old beliefs frees space for the new… There is no quick route to this purging, as it is the most individual of accomplishments.  As you learned your beliefs, you must unlearn your beliefs… If you do not remember that you are involved in a process of unlearning that will lead to the conviction you have so long sought, you will indeed feel tested and try to take control of the learning situation.  Not taking control, however, is the key to unlearning.” (CoL, 23.22-26)

I think we get better at this as we learn…  First, we discover we can live through it.  We learn to recognize it for what it is, and as a result find ourselves overwhelmed with gratitude, even as we are wrestling with our inner demons.  We learn this is a holy process.  We learn we are never alone in it.  We learn we are all doing this together, and that there is great support along the way.

Our lives become a slideshow of past errors whisking by to be reinterpreted, and for a while they still hurt and sting.  Occasionally, they bring us to our knees again, but that is okay.  It means nothing…  Eventually we won’t buy the ball fake from our ego.  He’ll put his finger on our shirt as if we have a smudge of dark chocolate smeared across our chest, and we’ll have zero inclination to look down.  We’ll resist the bait at every level of our being, and be free.  We’ll simply laugh.

We’ll all laugh together…  (Such is the power of commitment, I tell you…)

Unionville

February 7, 2013
by Michael
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Course Ideas

We talk a pretty mean game, here, in Separationville, but the reality is that we are wandering around this place only slightly better informed than a display case full of polished rocks- which is to say that our particular brand of ignorance has elegance and intelligence to it, something vital, a real panache that sets us apart from and at the top of this planet’s rambunctious collection of evolutionary byproducts.  We know nothing in the most cleverest of ways.  We should be proud of this great body oof work, no?

Separation has so permeated our thinking we’re not necessarily aware that it has become the very hub of our mental life, of our awareness.  Each day we arise, unwittingly accepting this as our starting point, and go out into the world to try and make things right.  Or to overcome the difficulties we face.  Or to carve out a niche of sanity from the insanity we find in the ‘Ville.  It’s too late, then.  It’s a hopeless endeavor- when approached in this fashion.

There is nothing out there in the world we can fix or endure or distance ourselves from that will result in a transformation of the thoughts we once placed in the very core of our being.  At this point the choice for separation underlies the momentum of our lives, informs our value systems, interprets events, assigns meanings to the world, and ensures we are consumed by addressing trivialities rather than deep and transformative concerns.  It runs us, but by and large we have no idea it is doing so.  Our clever ignorance has patched over this ignominious bit.

Well, hell, just change it, right!?  It is just a thought after all, a “tiny mad idea”.  We can just change it.  Why isn’t it just that simple?

Objection, your Honor.  The Course states numerous times that it is that simple…

Sustained…

Allow me to rephrase: why is it so seemingly difficult?

I think one aspect of the difficulty is that we have to once again approach the radiant core within ourselves, the Self within us that is truly the extension of God.  That essential Self is a ‘technology’ more powerful, more profound, more beautiful and more holy than any we have ever ‘invented’ in this world.  It is not a technology at all, of course- it is who and what we are.  There is nothing artificial about it.  It is the power to create with God, as His Will flows through us and we express the Love that we are.

“In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create.  You have not only been fully created, but have also been created perfect.  There is no emptiness in you.” (T.2, I.1:2-4)

Here is the rub: do we trust ourselves to ‘use’ this ‘power’ appropriately?  So long as we perceive our separated state as real, along with the attending suffering, doubt, scarcity, and pain, not to mention our apparently very real ‘ability’ to attack one another and inflict pain, the answer must be no.  How could we?  We used it once before, and we made this…  We believe this condition is real, so how do we stop ourselves from doing it again?  We’re not entirely sure how we screwed up the first time, so if we don’t even know the answer to that question, on what rational basis could we possibly ensure we won’t inadvertantly do it again…?

A Course of Love 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, 18.18)

In our innocence, at One with God, we wouldn’t even have considered hedging our bets.  Treading carefully was a needless concept.  Placing a dimmer switch on our full creative power was about as much of an option as lighting homes with three phase power was two thousand years ago.  We were experiencing the genuine freedom of conflict-free co-creation with our Father.  We chose fully and with zero inhibitions to perceive this way.  We are free to choose to perceive another way, with equally profound effects, but for that to happen we must make that new choice with equal fullness of heart and mind- and I think at some level we’re afraid to commit wholeheartedly to making the revision.

The Course says, “Few appreciate the real power of the mind…  It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains… You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them.  This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent.” (T.2, VI.9:3,8,10-11)

Here is the thing, its damn near impossible to even start contemplating a solution that is not in some way tainted by our belief in separation.  Number one, faced with the problem, our initial reaction is to solve it.  Who is doing the solving?  If you believe you have something to do with making this right, it is the little you that believes its stuck in the problem who is doing the work.  The isolated individual ‘I’ that is stuck in Separationville is perfectly happy to put this on its to do list.  This is a destructive tragedy dressed up as a noble pursuit- the problem solving the problem.  The problem will sketch out an action plan, scour the countryside, hire a staff, fire a few consultants along the way, and commence an R&D program of which most government science agencies would be proud- all without questioning the very nature of its farsical non-existence.

“All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked… Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same.  It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference…” (T.27, IV.4:1,9)

Now, after all that this may sound a little inane, but the answer to separation is union.

I know.  Who woulda’ thunk?

The thing is, as I’ve over-emphasized, we can’t see union while we’re convinced we’re separate, and while we’re separate we’re afraid, and while we’re afraid we’ll be hard pressed to approach the radiant core of our Being and make a new choice, so…

…what we need do is… nothing.  Relax.  Breath.  Trust.  Love.  Ask Jesus for a few  pointers.  Forgive.  Accept all things.  Just forget this madness ever happened.  See perfection in all things and in one another.  Repeat.  Repeat until we can’t remember ever doing anything else and we realize we’re not doing anything all all but being.  Just Being our Self.  In perfect harmony with all other expressions of our Self.

In Unionville.

(At) The End (of Time)

We Wait Only on Ourselves

February 3, 2013
by Michael
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Course Ideas

We are on “a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed.”  We are, in other words, on a journey of inner transformation.  There is nowhere for us to go, because in Truth we have never left our Home in God, but our experience tells us otherwise.  Our experiences of our separated state- moments marked by or laden with fear in any of its forms- are painful, and contrasted with the deeply buried Memory we carry of our oneness with our Creator, that pain gives rise to the feeling that there is definitely somewhere else we’d rather be.  When little discomforts ramify into despair, anger, depression or anxiety, all we know is that we want out.  We want something different.

And like any journey we undertake, we’d like to know along the way how we’re doing.  How much farther do we have to go?  Are we doing well?  Are we on the right track?

We’d also like to know what we should expect.  Will we take a right at the third traffic light?  Will mountains give way to meadows?  What type of weather could we have up in the pass?

Initially these all seem like pretty reasonable questions, but they are all asked without taking into consideration the fact that the entire thought system from which they arise is in need of comprehensive revision.  They assume, or take for granted, a starting point that is not true- the belief that we might one day reach a place or a point in which we are something more than we are right now, something fuller and happier, something clear and confident and complete.

We seek signs of progress towards this goal where they are not, because we believe in a world (a thought system) that isn’t real.  We think that progress will be marked by transformation in the circumstances of the world around us, by greater ability to control the stories of our lives, by a noticeable improvement in our ability to manifest the accouterments we associate with our own particular versions of a happy and full life on Planet Earth.  And so long as we maintain the starting point belief that we are in any way incomplete or lacking, we will never find evidence to the contrary in the world around us.

Jesus encourages us to avoid this pitfall.  In the Course he says, “Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned.” (T-14, XI, 6:5)  Speaking to Tom Carpenter in the book Dialogue on Awakening, Jesus says, “You are expecting to see a reflection of the natural Self within this quiltwork of illusion.  You will not find it here…. When I say you will not experience it here, I mean you will not experience it within the framework of the thinking  you are currently utilizing.” (DoA, 1996 ed., pg 16)

Our desire to assess our progress is a continuation of our reliance upon judgment, that most hallowed tool of the separated mind.  We desire and value the ability to track our progress.  We, who scarcely comprehend the gifts we have been given, who have squandered  an inheritance on countless occasions, who have misplaced the awareness of our Perfection, still want to be the ones to decide when progress has been made.  Progress, however, is meaningless on a journey without distance.  Progress is a useless metric, and judgment is a useless tool.

Consider this: if we were to ask Jesus right now if we were complete, whole, and perfect extensions of the Mind of God in this very moment, he would say yes.  If we were to ask him if it is possible for us to experience the Truth of who we are, a peace that surpasseth all understanding- right now- he would say yes.

As an aside, my guess is that if we could look him in the eye when he said yes, and experience the depth of his love for us, and the clarity of his Knowledge of who we are, our own doubts would be over.  You may believe this with me and even rue the fact that he is not simply appearing in your living room to hit that particular buzzer beater and end this thing!  Yet the simple truth is that it wouldn’t work.  Jesus has told us the truth of who we are in the Course on countless occasions…  We still think we might “get it” one day.  We are called to accept our Selves for who we are, and no one can do that accepting for us.

Thankfully and wondrously, we have countless opportunities every day, just as good as Jesus appearing in our living rooms.  We have six billion pairs of eyes to look into any time we wish, in which we are welcome to discover the Truth that will set us free.  Do we think they’re not the right eyes?  If that is our belief, then we misperceive.  We believe in illusions.

To the earlier questions about ourselves, about our present completion and perfection, Jesus would say, “Yes,” but the simple fact is that we do not believe him- not in our hearts.  We think the evidence speaks to the contrary, that our experiences pale in comparison to those had by the truly spiritual beings on this planet, that our vision is too limited, our kundalini quagmired in the wrong chakra, our wisdom too shallow, our dreams not clear enough, our powers too lame, our responses too guilt ridden, our confidence too waivering, the health of our bodies too fragile.  We mustn’t be there yet if these things are true.  We look at the evidence in the world outside of us, and conclude we must not have made it Home.  But these judgments are simply wrong.  They bar the gates to our experience of lasting Peace.

Were we to let go of all of the images and concepts we have come to associate with the End of this Journey, all those fantasies we must live up to in order to prove that the job has been done, we would be unable to find any evidence supporting the notion that we were not at Home in God.  Jesus spoke a beautiful line to Tom later in the same Chapter I quoted above (pg 18) when he said, “Once you have made a commitment to do only those things which bring you peace, you will find peace in whatever you do.  You see, the lack of peace has nothing to do with the activity.  It has only to do with the confusion in your mind about the many things that are taking place in your life.”

Jesus offers similar wisdom in The Way of Mastery, when he says, “Peace, the very state of Love, is a state in which no experience is obstructed within you.”  (WoM, Lesson 32, page 369)

If we judge nothing as evidence that we are incomplete, complete will we be.  As we let go of the need to progress, we are enabled to become receptive to the fact that each and every experience we have is the unfolding of the Love that we are.  As events take place around us, each time we interpret them in a way that produces anger, or guilt, or that leads us to experience a twinge (or massive dose) of fear, it is tempting for us to believe that we are being “found out”.  This is not so.  That is no time to listen to the “I told you this wouldn’t work” voice in our heads and retreat to the belief that salvation can be earned in the future…

We are, in those moments, being given the opportunity to ‘unlearn’ a belief we carry that something has gone wrong, or that we are unworthy or lacking.  These are encounters with all the bits of evidence we previously amassed to make our case that we’re not, in fact, at Home in God.  Jesus says that “It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful,” (M-4.I.A.4:5), but I think this is the essence of the journey without distance- to accept all that is, and judge it not, that all concepts are left to whither, and Love may arise in their place, without distinction or obstruction.

The Many Faces of Being

January 31, 2013
by Michael
comments 7
Christ / Creative

Jesus dwells in Heaven these days.  My guess is that you are aware of that.  You may even have an idea of what that means.  You may have a concept of Heaven.  I do.  From the outside, it looks like a pretty lovely place.  Standing where I do, looking towards its shimmering reaches, it looks like it’s always running smoothly, like it never skips a beat.  It glows unceasingly and when I walk near unto its boundaries I hear soft sounds, as if hymns are being sung faintly by a chorus of stars.  I never get bitten by mosquitos in the tall grass along its borders, and I never see storm clouds over its brilliant gates.  The breeze is always mild.

Lately, however, I’ve become convinced my concept is badly in need of revision.  I think there is something going on in there I don’t know how to see or hear or touch, as if I’m missing a pivotal sensory system.  I think actually there may be a riot going on in there and its being broadcast on a cable channel that’s not available in my area.

Put bluntly, Love is having its way with the place.  It’s become epidemic.  The Holy City’s streets are teeming with the faithful, who are shredding concepts nightly and flooding the hills with Being.  They’ve been up for 40 nights straight, banging the Drum in time with the heartbeat of the Universe and drinking Love Potion Double Zero, whispering untold mysteries into one another’s ears and sharing secrets that make their way around the town in waves, leaving new worlds in their wakes.

There’s a committee at work attempting to reinstitute the Day of Rest, but Rumi is at it again tonight, running through the streets like a man possessed, whipping up the holy denizens into an ecstatic frenzy and pasting the town with posters.  He’s advertising for a new show he and Jesus have been working on.  I know because back at the beginning of this story, when I was going for a stroll along the border, enjoying what I thought was a beautiful glimpse of peace and quiet, all I could see was a quiet glow… and a poster that was caught by an updraft.  I saw it get whipped up high into the air.  It fluttered around, was whisked over the walls, and eventually landed near me in the grass.

There was a hand-written message from Rumi stuck to it with some old bubble gum, and that note pretty much told me what I just told you- Heaven is a hive of raucous collaboration.  He was breathless even in his note.  His words ran right off the page.  The poster told me that he and Jesus were giving their first performance of a new show they’d been dreaming up together called The Many Faces of Being.  It was billed as some kind of stage show, like an illusion.  Also, folded eighty-eight times and partially concealed by the overdone wad of gum, was an invitation.  It said, in fact, that the tonight’s performance, the opening, was just for me.  I should come check it out if I wanted.  My call.

What was I to do?

The auditorium was massive and it took me nearly twenty minutes just to walk down the aisle to get to the front.  I sat center-stage, a few rows back, in a plush velvet chair.  The rest of the place was empty and pitch black.  Occasionally I heard the ruffle of curtains, or the dampened thud of some production artifice being rigged backstage, or a sneeze, or the ratchet of some hoist, or an awkward splatter like someone had rigged a microphone next to a tube of jelly and squeezed it.  These little disturbances grew into what I could only describe as a cacophony just before everything suddenly went silent, and Jesus walked out onto the stage.

He was brimming with enthusiasm.  I’m pretty sure he winked at me.

He said he was really glad I had made it, and that the show was a fresh take on the Loaves and Fishes Episode.  Kind of a cross between that and what we commonly call the “Shell Game”, only it was the “right side up” version.  He said if I paid attention, when I left I’d probably be able to pick up that hidden cable channel I’d been thinking about lately and tune in to the festivities.  He said the production was His Father’s Idea, and he was both honored and privileged to be able to present it, and right then Rumi flung a tomato at him from stage right that I clocked at about 102 miles per hour.  Don’t ask me how I had a radar gun or how the tomato was holding together.  All I know is that somehow I was suddenly holding a radar gun clocking the speed of a tomato that was rapidly putting distance on its point of origin, which was Rumi in a vintage rainbow-banded Houston Astro’s uniform doing his very best impression of Nolan Ryan.

Jesus ducked gracefully, just in time, and transformed his duck into a bow.  The tomato whizzed past, hurtling towards stage left, where Shams was playing catcher.  He was squatting down in a spotless white catcher’s uniform, exhibiting perfect technique, his right hand behind his back, mask pulled down over his face, brandishing an over-sized mitt made of beautiful white silk, and- as I soon observed- stuffed with feathers.  The tomato exploded in Sham’s hand, blew straight through the silk mitt, and splattered across his chest as feathers blossomed from the point of impact into a slow-swirling crowd around him.

The curtain fell, and a few moments later it went back up, and the show began.

Everything was dim except for a wooden box at the center of the stage that looked like an upright, perfectly rectangular coffin.  It was backlit and glowed around the edges.  Jesus began by explaining that God had provided this box, and that nobody else had even worked on it.  It had just appeared out back behind the studio one day, and the only thing anyone knew with certainty was that whatever happened in the box was entirely up to God.  Jesus said Creation occurred within that box.  That was all anyone could really say about it with words.

Jesus then explained that there were two more props for this show.  He help up a mirror and said that anyone looking into the mirror would see the Face of Christ that lived within them.  Then he held up a second mirror and said anyone looking into the mirror would see a reflection of their Physical Form.  He handed both mirrors to Rumi and started to walk towards the box, but he stopped and came back, and said, “I am going to tell you a word now.  Regardless of what happens next, by this Word you shall know me.”  Then he told me the Word, and stepped into the box, closing the door behind him.

Rumi, meanwhile, was transfixed by the view in one of those mirrors.  I thought he had utterly lost himself in the experience when he said to me quite matter-of-factly, without taking his eyes from the mirror, “That box is the real McCoy.”  He was pointing up and over his shoulder to the wooden box into which Jesus had just disappeared.

The theater was silent, and then the door opened and a young boy stepped out.  He was about eight years old.  He had worn sandals on his feet, was wrapped in a colorful tunic and he carried a short staff in his hand.  He looked around the theater, confused, shielding his eyes from the stage lights.  Rumi coughed gently and waved the boy over.  The boy approached cautiously.  Rumi showed him the mirror of Physical Form, and the boy saw his own image.  He studied it closely, moved his head back and forth to confirm the properties of the strange glass, and touched his face, as if questioning his existence.  Rumi then brought out the other mirror and let the boy look into it.  Instantly, a quiet tear came to his eye, and he whispered into the empty space of the theater the Word Jesus had told me earlier.

I wondered if God had transformed Jesus into this boy…  Rumi touched the boy on the shoulder and nodded his head in my direction.  As if understanding perfectly, the boy’s face lit up, and he ran to the side of the stage, down some stairs, up the aisle, down my row, and plopped himself into the seat next to me.  He simply looked at me, expectantly beaming, as if I was about to turn into a purple chicken or be presented with a crystalline bowl filled with chocolate pudding.  I was looking back at this boy who had spoken the Word, wondering exactly who he was, when the door on the box opened again and Jesus stepped out.

“This is Creation,” he said.  “The multiplication of One.”

Rumi set the mirrors down on the stage and went into the box.  Jesus followed him.  There was hardly room for a small man in the box, so I have no idea how they both stuffed themselves into it, but they made it look effortless.  Almost instantly the door re-opened and a man stepped out in a pin-striped black business suit, mumbling to himself in French.  He was followed by a short, deeply tanned elderly woman with a basket on her head.  I thought I was starting to understand the math behind God’s box when a young woman stepped out in blue jeans and a sweater, completing the procession.  The man stumbled around for a bit, and picked up a mirror.  He witnessed the Face of Christ within himself, and unconsciously spoke the Word Jesus had spoken earlier.  Then he turned to the elderly woman, looked deeply into her eyes, gently smiling, and waited expectantly.  She was put off initially, and then she gave a gentle laugh, spoke the Word, and embraced him.

How many Jesus’ were there now!?

The two of them extended their hands to the young woman, who took them questioningly.  They began to walk and sway around in a broad circle, practically dragging the woman along.  She was a little embarrassed to be led around the stage like that.  Rumi stepped out of the box then, dressed in a tuxedo, and gave a performance of polishing his nails on his jacket.  He picked up a mirror and ducked behind the box.  Just as the awkward threesome rounded the bend he extended his arm from the cover of the box, holding the mirror up to the young woman, who looked upon the Face of Christ within herself, spoke the Word, and began to dance with her partners.

Jesus stepped out of the box.  Rumi bowed and extended his arm in my general direction, and the three came over to sit beside myself and the boy.  They each kissed me and the boy on the forehead in succession.  The elderly woman pulled some candies from her pocket and offered them to the boy, who beamed at me expectantly in reply, as if saying, “Do you see?”.

“This is Creation,” Jesus said.  “The multiplication of One.”

Shams entered the scene from stage left on a unicycle, holding an umbrella over his head, complaining about the weather until he exited stage right.  Rumi vaulted off in pursuit of him, and Jesus went back into the box.  The entire auditorium was quite for a moment, and then space itself seemed to shudder.  The door began to open and close in slow succession, as people of all ages, races and sizes stepped out.  Some came out, and as the stage began to fill, some went back into the box.

A great wind developed inside the theater and thunder crashed up in the rafters.  The swinging of the door began to accelerate, cycling to and fro in a blur, as people practically flew in and out of the box.  The entire stage began to melt into a swirling mélange of color.  People became colors became light became inky blackness.  Blackness became sounds and I could hear strangely beautiful tones that I knew were songs that I knew were worlds that I knew were permeated with Jesus’ Word.

When the lights came on, the great auditorium was packed full of people whose voices were intermingled in one Great Conversation and my friend, the boy seated next to me, was laughing.  Rumi came back onto the stage and walked down the stairs to the crowd of seated people.  He looked at me and winked again, then whispered into the ear of the first person, a balding, middle-aged man in coveralls who stood up and looked around, taking in the enormity of the crowd.  He then handed the man a mirror.  The man looked into it and saw the Face of Christ within himself.  What I felt next was like a jolt of lightning.  The recognition of Love’s (and only Love’s) Existence traveled through the crowd instantly, from one to the next with electric intensity.

Jesus stepped out of the box.  “This is Creation,” he said.  “The multiplication of One.  There is no end to this performance.  It never began and it will never end.”

Rumi fired a shiny red tomato from stage left, a split-fingered heater that looked set to find its mark, but at the last moment Jesus ducked gracefully, sweeping into a low bow.  Shams, crouched stage right in a white silk bee-keeping suit, leapt into the air and swung a butterfly net on an intersecting course with the tomato.  The tomato was extruded instantly into a thousand radiant globules by the silk netting.  Shams put down the butterfly net and ran, along with Rumi, to center stage where the two gave one final bow with Jesus as the curtain descended.

We filed out together then, into the streets of Heaven, eager to join with every last one of our selves.

* * * * *

This short fiction was inspired by these quotes from A Course of Love, and reflection upon the notion that in our Oneness, we share a common identity.

“Your identity is shared and one in Christ.  A shared identity is a quality of oneness.” (CoL, 20.17)

“You are a unique expression of the self-same love that exists in all creation.  Thus your expression of love is as unique as your Self.” (CoL, 20.30)

“Only lack of expression leads to powerlessness.” (CoL, 20.28)

God’s Favorite Ingredient: Everything

January 26, 2013
by Michael
comments 3
Course Ideas

A Course of Love states in a number of places that the world we have made is a distorted image of Creation, something close but not quite, an array of symbols that hearken to what we know is True while simultaneously and sadly lacking some critical ingredient.  The Truth is echoed in this world we’ve made, but we’ve gotten something important twisted up.  Inside out and upside down.  We wanted to make something beautiful, and instead our imitation of Creation has turned into a mockery.

Its frustrating as hell for us.  What went wrong!?

I think maybe we’re missing a key ingredient…

…one day we were in the kitchen with God, preparing a great meal that everyone would attend.  Everyone.  (Big lot, that.)  We were so excited!  We were like a pack of giddy four year olds, spilling flour and stirring batter and dropping eggs on the floor and working in teams to pour milk from great carafes into measuring cups the size of 5-gallon pails.  Eight lanky arms reached up from below the counter-top as one, like the legs of an upside down spider, shaky with our laughter, as milk slopped over the sides and into the cups and onto our faces.  We were with our Creator, with our Father, who we looked up to and admired and loved beyond belief, and He delighted equally in our participation.  We had nowhere to be.  No plans.  No sense of time.

God was always Present.  He was continuously and vibrantly alive within us like a great ocean of sunlight flooding through us.  His thoughts poured forth in unceasing succession, adding unto each other like new and unexpected instruments of an ever-expanding orchestra, perpetually adding new timbres to the theme of Love.  Some of those thoughts were one another, in whom we rejoiced.  We lived in and through each other, in seamless and perfect understanding.

We baked with Him, this great Head Chef, for days and days and days and He never had anywhere to go, or anything else to attend to.  Cakes and platters began appearing, and as our wide eyes caught side of the world’s longest banquet table and followed the line of delectables towards a distant point on the horizon, we realized the kitchen opened up into a huge banquet hall.  How did we miss that!?

Now.

Imagine, in an instant, all that is gone.  Gone so completely it is hard to even remember.  It’s only an ancient feeling, a long-forgotten relic.  We are alone in the dark.  We wonder if it ever really happened.  The ocean within us is silent.  We can’t find it or hear it.  Things should be happening, flowing, surprising, creating- but they are not.  We should be having fun together, just being with each other, laughing and hiding and spilling things, but we don’t feel like it.  We feel distant from everything, and alone.

I think of a small human child who suddenly finds herself without her parents, who finds herself utterly alone in a world she cannot comprehend by herself.  She never had to make sense of a world before.  She only knew that before, behind everything, there was the love from her parents.  What does she do?

Perhaps part of what she does is imitate what she once saw…  She repeats the patterns of her parents because it’s all she has of them.  It’s a way to reconnect with them, to bring back the experience of having them with her.  She brushes her preciously fine hair in front of the mirror.  She smears her mother’s makeup in gaudy colors across her face.  She gets a soaking wet cloth and wipes it around on the furniture.  She puts on fancy clothes that don’t match.  She tries to use her father’s tools to fix items that aren’t broken.  She talks to herself about business on a phone that isn’t even on.  These motions are sad renditions- hollow and tragic.  Each and every one painfully belies the fact that something is missing…

And so it was with us.  We started to try and bake cakes in the dark, on our own, to bring Heaven back.  We tried to copy what we knew.  We poured milk and cracked eggs and desperately mixed and stirred and measured and poured, but… nothing.  We were getting in one another’s way.  We had too much of one ingredient and not enough of another.  The dough wouldn’t rise.  The batter was too thin.  The milk- sour.  We made rules to protect progress, refined our strategies, perfected technique, created oven-timers and thermometers and ceramic cookware and never, ever quit trying.  We’ve been trying a long time…  But still, something is missing…

The missing ingredient was, and is, unity- the awareness of our indivisibility from one another, from God, and from our Selves.  While this precious ingredient is missing, our minds think and perceive in ways that can only divide.  As A Course of Love says, “Thought, as you know it, is an aspect of duality.  It cannot be otherwise in your separated state.  You must think in terms of ‘I’ and ‘them’, ‘death and life’, ‘good and evil’.  This is thought.  Thought occurs in words, and words separate.” (CoL, 19.13)

Without the awareness of our unity we don’t know what we’re doing.  We don’t comprehend what we’re seeing.  We see countless seemingly separate “things”, but nothing separate is real…  “You have not known what you do or what to do only because of fear, only because you have been out of accord with the one heartbeat… You have not before now been able to even imagine knowing what you do.  You hope to have moments of clarity concerning what you are doing in a given moment, what you have done, what you hope to do in the future.  But even these moments of clarity are fractional.  They seldom have any relation to the whole.” (CoL, 20.34-35)

A Course in Miracles states, “Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply being.”  (T-4, VII, 2:1)

We see specifics- the brand name of the flour, the date on the milk, the size of each egg, the dimensions of the oven rack- but we are missing the whole, the natural orchestration of all things, through and of God, which always and only results in perfectly baked cakes!  Alone, we cannot recreate this orchestration, for such is what God is!  God is the unprecedented coordination of all things!

Imagine now, attempting to imitate the omniscient, perfect, extemporaneous coordination of all things… by yourself.  How the @#$%???  (No one ever said the ego had the market on sanity cornered.)  Each of us in undertaking this fool’s errand has no choice but to place one’s self in the role of conductor, and try to ensure everything in the world around us performs its apart.  No rehearsals.  No time-outs.  Smart phones help, of course, but holy hell, man!  Good luck, and godspeed.  And yet our motivation is not so absurd- perfect freedom and startling coordination were once our daily bread.  We imitate what we have lost, but in our separated mindset the end product is distorted, twisted, burnt, peeled, and rotted.

It should be apparent that our thoughts in isolation cannot construct a flowing Whole.  We need to link up with others for that…  Further, however, our conscious thoughts are simply inadequate for the task of enabling this re-linking with Everything.   Using thoughts and logic alone is like attempting to mix concrete without water.  There is no active agent to transform the ingredients and bond them together into a unified material.  There is nothing into which they can dissolve, nothing greater to bound and hold them.  For this, we need the language of the heart.  Into the wordless language of the heart, our thoughts of separateness can dissolve and be transformed into thoughts of unity.  As Jesus says in A Course of Love, “Unifying thought is [] a matter of integrating the thought or language of your heart with that which you more normally perceive as thought, the words and images which ‘go through’ your mind…  I have referred to the true language of the heart as communion, or union of the highest level…”  (CoL, 18.20-21)

When the glue of Love permeates, surrounds and holds every thought we have, and we recognize sameness in all that we see, the transformation from separateness to unity consciousness will occur, and we will rediscover our place in the ease and wonder that underwrites all things.  We can stop trying to conduct, which only tends to produce feeble screeches anyway, and take our seat in an orchestra that defies imagination.  We will find we’re infinitely qualified for the role.

The most important element in God’s kitchen was not the flawless technique, the freshness of the ingredients, or the unbounded creativity of the recipes.  It was the fact that countless dynamics were effortlessly and indivisibly unified as a singular whole, that every single element of the scene flowed from a common and brilliant Source.  All of the parts were integral to one another, and yet uniquely positioned and suited to carry out the Great Plan.  This, above all else, we desire.  We’re trying desperately to recreate the experience, waving our baton at the world around us, but this can only result in a harmless tragedy.

We need merely dissolve… into the language of the Heart… into the Truth of one another…

An Inevitable and Remarkable Celebration

January 20, 2013
by Michael
comments 3
Course Ideas

Imagine you are perfect Love…

Do it.

Formless, holy, joyous, permanent, forever giving to everything and everyone and receiving from everything and everyone in a simultaneity and a bandwidth so wondrous that synchronicity feels like slow motion black and white, forever joined with all Creation, forever fulfilling your function in only the way that you can fill it, incredibly appreciated for fulfilling your function in only the way that you can fill it, incredibly appreciative of others for doing the same, and blessed by God with the ability to make shit up at will.

And have it stick.

I mean, God is your Father, and you inherited that creative bug.  And Formlessness and Forever are the Perfect Storm of a blank slate.  Leave it to Creation to set you up for success.  The Creator made you and put every last good thing He had into you.  When you go to create something, you don’t just hope it turns out and buys you a C+ in Universe class.  You give all of yourself to it, and it always comes out better than you could have imagined.  Always.  Without fail.  It’s like there was placed inside of you a string of great surprises, each one of which causes you to realize there were even more out of the box features in your Self than you ever thought possible.

Imagine that, and now imagine that one day you make of yourself a pinball machine.  No, stop it.  Don’t ask me why.  And now is not the time for how, either.  You literally make, of yourself, of the Love that you are, a pinball game.  Its about 6 feet long, 4 feet tall, and 3 feet wide.

Is it all of you?

(Hint:  No.  Of course not.  How could all that formless, unending, limitless, Zen-Beingness-Love that you are become a specific thing like that?  Well, you see, it couldn’t… but it could probably make a kick-ass pinball game.)

So, given that, and given how this pinball game machine came to be, can you imagine any possible event, legal to the rules of pinball and subject to the actions of the polished ball bearings, strobe lights, twenty-foot diameter cast bronze bells, reverse-acting bumpers, springs, flippers capable of launching sacks of flour into low earth orbit, shaker motors, and 19th century steam whistles of the pinball playing device that you made of yourself, that could in reality change the fact that you are perfect Love?  Is there anything that could happen in this pinball game that could have disastrous consequences to you?  That could hurt you?

(Hint:  No.  Of course not.  It would just make loud noises and light up like the sun periodically and disrupt electrical service in whole time zones and pretty much carry on like a sonuvabitch- but that’s about it.)

Now, imagine something happens outside, like a police raid or a sand storm or something, and you are momentarily distracted.  When you come back, you believe you are one, little, solitary, isolated pinball.  Whoops.  In fact, from your new perspective it is all you’ve ever known.  You are utterly convinced.  Your entire self-concept revolves around this pinball mentality.  You think pinball thoughts.  You have pinball dreams.  You took the power God  placed within you, a power to create with Him, and of all that you could have chosen to create out of the fields of limitlessness, you chose to create an experience predicated upon limits.  Then, by forgetting the limitlessness that you are, you threw away the key to boot.  Whoops.

It was a simple mistake, but one cemented through the decision to believe that you succeeded in making something real. Something that couldn’t just be taken back.  Nobody told you that you screwed up, but you assumed it (incorrectly) and made that thought real also.  Now you’re in for the long haul…

Since God made you, and you made the  pinball game from the gifts God gave to you, it is a pretty fancy one.  The pinballs themselves are actually tiny machines, complete with hydrogen fueled hybrid engines, gyroscopic controls, power steering, radar, infra-red scanners, satellite radio, air-conditioning, etc.  They have a finite life span, however, after which time they tend to power down and drop off the table if they haven’t already.  In your new pinball mentality, you think this little contraption is what you are.  You have identified with it, decided that the history of the collisions of your own pinball tell the story of who you are, and thus, among other things, this dropping off the table bit scares you immensely.

The playing surface seems enormous, and it is packed with other pinballs.  You could spend your entire hydrogen cache exploring this world.  Since you know very clearly that this is your life, your one shot at what you so deserve, you are wholly invested in this pinball universe, committed to succeeding and making your mark.  You want to leave a legacy- put your name up there on the board, or do some simple goodness, or just be a good little pinball.  You assign yourself a mission.  You assign everything a meaning.  You decide who you are- what it means to be you.  And everything in this world you’ve made is either for you or against you.

You get yourself a custom paint job.  When you roll around it creates an optical illusion that makes other pinballs think they are looking down the barrel of a flame-thrower.  You get focused.  You are trying to navigate yourself towards a 10,000-point bonus and… all… those… damn… other… pinballs… just…. keep… getting… in… your… way.

The table shakes at random intervals, flinging you into the air where your maneuvering systems are useless.  Other pinballs careen into you.  You believe there’s only so many points to go around, and so do they.  This is getting serious.  You coin the term ‘game face’.  You start managing your time- planning and strategizing how you will spend the life that’s yours.  Or maybe you say screw this, I’m just going to troll around this other part of the table, where its a little more peaceful, predictable and safe.  You have free will after all.

This fancy pinball world evolves.  You play a long, long time.  Some pinballs are bigger than others.  Some are warped.  Some are faster.  Some slower.  Some older.  Some young.  There are always new ways to score points and new ways to be ushered off the table.  High scores have reached incredible heights.  It is all very exciting, but…

…at times being a pinball really sucks.  Some of your best friends have fallen off the table.  You’re tired of running for your life.  You wish things could be easier.  You’re starting to get concerned about what happens when you fall off the table yourself.  Despite your best efforts, the meaning you assign things isn’t sticking.  It’s not panning out.  Once in a while, you realize that, frankly, you’re in pain.

Somehow, this acknowledgment brings with it, eventually, the desire for and subsequent recognition of this thing called Love.  You are flooded with joy and with hope.  You think, oh, I could use this Love!  By applying the principles of Love, I can exert some control over this chaotic world!  I’m a creative being- let me use that to shape this pinball life.  I could make things just a little easier for myself.  I could maybe get myself up into that safer area on the table, the one up top there with less bumpers and pinballs.

And yet…  Love cannot be used…  It isn’t a tool that pinballs get to wield like a wand, shaping their pinball destinies…  It simply is.  Look, maybe, you’ve set your sights too low…  The top of the table is just a place in pinball land, a dream that will fade, made special in your mind by the meaning you have assigned it…  Love is unconcerned with pinball obstacle neighborhoods.  It is concerned only with what is, with the Love in you and in your pinball brothers and sisters, and your collective Presence in the one continuous thread of Relationship that flows like a great river between All Beings.  It would offer every pinball Everything, Forever, and exclude none of them.

You realize you’re confused about this Love thing.  There are still good bounces and bad ones.  Occasionally, there is still deep pain.  Maybe it’s not working…?

On the other hand, you’re starting to believe in something beyond yourself, to think you’re more than just a pinball, to remember a glorious pre-pinball past, but you are trying to interpret events in the pinball machine as signs, as evidence.  You make an offering to Love, and look to see if your pinball battery decays at a slower rate, if it results in higher scores, or in less random collisions.  These tangible metrics are all you know, all you have.

On your own, there is no way for you, while you believe you are a pinball, to interpret the furious barrage of activity in the pinball machine in a way that could give you back the Knowledge of who you really are.  Sometimes you realize that pinball collisions are meaningless in and of themselves, but that just makes you feel worse, like you’re turning your back on the other pinballs, or calling their dreams pointless, and sometimes it brings on an even deeper fear that you have finally discovered the Answer…and it stinks.  That is when you feel completely lost and without hope.

You don’t realize that there IS meaning available to you…  That you are the extension of pure Love…  That the You that made the pinball machine- that perfect, joyous, eternally changeless You- is still right there…  Has never left you…  Is still who you are…  Is within you and every pinball and every aspect of the pinball machine..

Into this pinball world hell comes a Holy Spirit.  He is part of the You that made the pinball machine in the beginning.  He sees the big picture.  He reinterprets pinball events in a way that leads directly to the remembrance that nothing you see is truly apart from you, that nothing you see can truly harm you.  He leads you unerringly back to the remembrance that you are the same as all your pinball brothers and sisters.  You are all from the same Source.  And when you are finally willing to rejoin with each and every one, it will be like the closing of a great circuit.  A trillion lights will go on at once.  The pinball machine will overload and, if I had to guess, probably blow up.  In a really good way.

The machine was designed in the Beginning with this one last surprise, this hidden Moment, an inevitable and remarkable celebration of the Truly high score.  When that score is reached, a long dormant circuit will ignite, flooding the entire machine with current, and the entire charade will dissolve into light.  You will wonder what happened.  You will be back at the start of this blog post.  You will know you are perfect Love.  You won’t remember pinballs at all.  Did you go somewhere?  What happened?

On the journey back to this great celebration, into your pinball dreams this Holy Spirit whispers in your ear, “If you would exclude even one pinball, you are judging against your Self, and choosing to keep your pinball dreams real.  So long as you choose this, the circuit cannot complete.”   It takes a while to develop trust in this Holy Spirit, because you have been interpreting the events inside the pinball machine on your own for so long, and frankly, you value your own opinion.  You think surely some of your interpretations were the right ones.  Some of those other pinballs are just screwed up.  Who can deny it?  You and all your pinball colleagues are right and justified to be angry about the malfunctioning bumper that cost you 10,000 points.  Every time you choose to loiter like that, He simply waits.

He’ll wait as long as you need, but I say…

Right Now.

Imagine you are perfect Love.

Do it.

A Journey Home

January 18, 2013
by Michael
comment 1
Creative

I’d been wanderin’ ‘et desert fer longer ‘an I could remember.  It’s all I knew.  Don’t ask me how I got ‘ere, crawlin’ on my belly suckin’ the dew off o’ rocks at dawn, fishin’ m’self ‘tween ‘e shadows o’ boulders, doin’ nothin’ but doin’ an’ re-doin’, ‘cuz I cain’t reckon it.  Cain’t say as how I got there.  The soles o’ my boots ‘es thin as parchment.  I could feel each ‘n every grain o’ sand when I walkt.  All o’ me was shriveled.  I think e’en my eye balls ‘es wrinkled.  I felt like I ‘es assorbed by some’n’ dry an’ look like everlastin’.  An’ yet I weren’t.  It weren’t.

I just walkt.

There ain’t no direction out ‘ere.  I had some shelter once.  I gotta’ memory… an old one… turnin’ my back on a heap o’ boards.  Walkin’ away.  I was desperately afeared, leavin’ ’em sticks.  Thought fer sure I was gonna’ die on ‘count of it.  They was my marker, my spot in the world, the only thing I knew ‘es mine, an’ I was turnin’ my back on it.  They was my home, but I reckon I was just clingin’ to it like a broke urchin.  That dust ‘es comin’ fer me.  All my tools was broke.  ‘Et water ‘dun dried up.  Left me marooned with ’em sticks.  Me an’ ’em sticks was desperate.  I reckon I was gonna’ die no count.

I just walkt.

You walk like I did, an’ you is broke down an’ busted, ‘an you ain’t got nothin’ left ‘e fight with, ‘en stoppin’ hurts.  It makes ye’ think.  You cain’t hide y’self from it, and you start walkin’ a’gin pretty quick.  ‘Em thoughts hang on you in ‘et desert like buzzin’ flies.  Like ghosts.   You wake up an’ they chokin’ ye’ mouth dry.  They drive ye’.  Haunt ye’.  You cain’t stop an’ have peace with ’em hangin’ on ye’.  But you walk long enough an’ maybe you start givin’ ’em up.  Sheddin’ ’em like skins.  They burn off m’be an’ you whittle down to raw sticks, down t’ them bones deep in ye’.

I ‘es jes’ like ‘et.  Whittled down ta’ jes’ walkin’.

Fist thing ‘et came was a bird.  He came an’ fluttered ‘n sung me somethin’ at dawn.  I couldn’t hardly give it a what fer, couldn’t hardly turn my head ‘n look at it.  I was thinkin’ ’bout dyin’ an’ livin’ inside them rocks.  One little bird changed me’ round, tho’, peeked at me sideways an’ told me somethin’ I cain’t remember, an’ I got up off the ground.  Then I started walkin’ a’gin.

Second thing ‘et came was a snake.  I musta’ fell down an’ slept, an’ I musta’ kept ’em warm ‘cuz I woke up with ‘et snake wrapt up right round me.  Long time ago an’ I woulda’ killt it right off, but I was lonelier ‘an ’em boards I left on ‘et desert hill, lonelier ‘an you can reckon, ‘an I just moved ‘et snake to the side.  An’ he jes’ let me.  I got up off ‘et ground ‘an I just walkt.

I seen that man up on ‘et ridge next.  A coal-black figure framed by a sun so bright it like ta’ knock me down.  I fell straight over.  I laid back an’ lookt up at that man, an’ I couldn’t barely make ’em out.  My hand ‘es like a visor, holdin’ back ‘et light.  He ‘es just a black shape, but I knew he ‘es jus’ lookin’ right back, straight inta’ me.  I was in ‘et tractor beam o’ his.  I cain’t reckon it, but ‘et’s when I started knowin’ things.  Little things.  Knowin’ which way ta’ walk.  Knowin’ when ta’ rest.  Not always, but jes’ ‘et little bit ‘l make ‘et difference you need out ‘ere.  It’s ’nuff to let ‘et breeze sneak up on ye’ once in a while.

I found ’em dried up crick beds hewn outta’ ’em rocks, them veins o’ shadow ‘et make their crooked way ‘crost ‘et land.  I just walkt in ’em fer a while, watchin’ out fer m’ ankles.  Long ways I just walkt.  Knowin’ jes’ little things.  Every time I like ta’ give up, when I lay right down an’ like ta’ dream off and get gone, ‘et man filled up my mind.  I felt him jes’ lookin’ at me, an’ jes’ like ‘et bird, he gave me somethin’, an’ I got up on my feet.

I walkt.

Somehow I reckoned I weren’t walkin’ all alone like I ‘dun thought.  ‘Et thought just descended down on me.  ‘Et thought came down slow an’ gentle, like a green leaf dropt outta’ the sun five thousan’ years ago, driftin’ to an’ fro up in ‘et sky fer years an’ years, wanderin’ jes’ like me, ridin’ some wind I couldn’t reckon.  All ‘et time an’ it landed right on me, ‘et thought.

It was a thought like to make ’em other thoughts clean out. I kept ‘et with me.  A thought like ‘et don’t come too often on ye, an’ I kep’ it safe inside me.

Somehow I found ‘et water.  I laid on my belly an’ found it.  It ‘es in ‘et crick bed, waitin’ on me.  Weren’t nothin’ else around.  It were jes’ a little bit, and I drank it.  I thought m’be I ‘es gonna’ make it, then, but I cain’t reckon it.  I didn’t know where I ‘es gonna’ make it to.  I just knew I could feel ‘et feelin’ movin’ up on me.  Somethin’ were changin’ in ‘et land, m’be in me, too.  I could know little things, an’ I thought m’be them things ‘es gonna’ be enough.

‘Ventually I came on a house.  Lookt like my house ’bout the time my tools an’ ‘et water give out.  Just boards an’ knot holes.  Places fer things ‘e leak out an’ back in.  I opened ‘et front door an’ I seen ‘et man, jes’ waitin’ on me.  That’s the first big thing I ever known.  I knew he ‘es waitin’ on me ‘et whole time.  Checkin’ up on me.  He didn’t need ta’ say nothin’.  I could tell he knew me an’ probably every thin’ I ever ‘dun.  He gave me ‘et glass o’ water an’ I saw ‘et tear in his eye, an’ I knew he ‘es happy.  An’ I felt ‘et tear move right in me, an’ come back outta’ my own eye.  I knew I made it.

These ‘er jes’ little things ‘et happen to ye.

I ‘es out ‘ere in ‘et desert findin’ my way back to ’em, ‘cuz like I said, I lost ’em an’ I cain’t reckon how.  An’ I jes’ hadta’ walk.  He helpt me, ‘et man.  He askt me if I ‘es ready ta’ give up ’em ole’ boots ‘n rest a while.   That’s when I felt m’self give some’n over, some’n I’d been carryin all ‘et way an’ didn’t know it.  I felt ‘et thing give way down in me, an’ slide out through the holes in ’em planks, an’ slide down in ’em rocks an’ sand, an I remembered then ‘et we’d always knowed ‘et moment.  We’d always known it’d be like ‘et.  That ‘es the second big thing ‘et came to me.  We’d never been apart.  ‘Et man an’ me, we’d always knowed it’d end like ‘et.  We’d wound an’ wound round some kinda’ time, wound round each other, ’round some kinda’ dream, an’ we knew it’d end up in ‘et house.

I cain’t reckon now how I found m’ way back ‘ere.  Or how I lost it.  I just know it ‘es always in me.  We walkt out back, ‘en- outta’ ‘et house, an’ et’s when I seen ‘et grass.  Jus’ green in all directions, an’ filled with ’em people I loved an’ dun fergot ’bout, all standin’ ‘ere waitin’ on me.  All of ’em.  ‘Et crowd filled up ‘et meadow, all ’em faces up to the horizon, ‘n I remembered ‘en ‘et I was home.

I laughed so hard m’ body shook like ta’ tear apart, an’ I forgot ‘et desert ever was.

Letter of Resignation

January 12, 2013
by Michael
comments 4
Creative

So, this was a pretty big week for me.  Huge, actually.  On Wednesday, January 8th, at 10:42 AM, Eastern Standard Time, I submitted a letter to myself in which I formally resigned as my own teacher.  It was great.  (I took it pretty well, actually.)  I’d kinda’ been toying with the idea for a while, and then, you know, I just went for it.

But I rejected my request immediately!  Ha!

Just kidding…

I should probably have been working at that time, to be fair…  I mean, people at work were asking for help on things that seemed really important to them at that moment, but I just really felt like it was also important to get my priorities straight.  Strike while the iron’s hot.  The entire world of finance isn’t going to collapse just because I put my co-workers on hot standby for five seconds.  They’re insatiable, anyway.

I did get kind of bogged down in the logistics, though, because I wanted to use nice letterhead, and I really don’t have any just personal letterhead.  Who has personal stationary?  So I went downtown to this cute little paper shop and the perfectly branded, hand-pressed swatch of paper was just- wham!- right in front of me when I walked into the shop.  It was literally screaming at me from its perch on this tiny plastic easel, front and center on the first display table in the store, all lit up by this golden beam of sunlight.  I could see the little flecks of recycled Christmas ornaments that were probably made from construction paper by a flock of Illini second-graders in 1985.  I knew right away it was exactly what I wanted.

But on closer inspection it was nearly twenty bucks and I only needed one sheet, and I realized it would be a complete waste and I started feeling kind of silly about the whole thing, so I found something a little more modest.  I got this ink stamp that looks like two elephant trunks curled up together, almost like an infinity symbol, and I got a gold-colored plastic pen that’s filled with ink that looks like its metal flake paint.  Then I trucked on outta’ there, because I only have fifteen minutes to be on break, and the shop is easily eight minutes down the street from where I work.  And there were three people in line, which sucked.

I forgot to get an ink pad, so when push came to shove I had to ditch the elephant stamp.  I put my name and address on the top, and then started the inside address when I wondered if I should actually mail it to myself!?  Now that was a cool thought.  Mailing myself a resignation letter…  I got stuck there for a good minute and a half.  I really couldn’t decide.  But then in the interest of time I just started writing.

I kept it short and sweet.  Just said I resigned as my teacher and I needed some help because it seemed like no matter how I tried, I couldn’t even get small things to work out.  I started to feel hollow on my insides, and my throat got kinda’ choked at one point.  My eyes started to water, and then I signed it, stuck it in a drawer, and it was over.  I have a little window in my office and I looked out through it, and it was just as cloudy as before.  So maybe nothing happened.  I got the feeling I’d spent the better part of my day walking around like a fool, and put my data validation persona back on.

I forgot about it for the rest of the day pretty much.  I mean, I opened the drawer and peeked at it once in a while, but it was just this thing by that point, like a weird collector’s item.  I wondered if I should frame it and keep it in front of me so I wouldn’t forget it.

My big day.

Then that night I had a dream.  Jesus was having office hours in one of those little poorly ventilated shoebox rooms, usually in the basement of a gymnasium, with rectangular windows too high to reach and a metal, fire-rated door with a wire-mesh glass window.  I thought the whole set-up was a little chintzy, myself, and I was nervous, because my heart was beating about three times a second like to blow me up from the inside, but I girded my loins, or whatever, and got on with it.

He was really amazing.  He made me feel completely at home somehow.  I just sat down and showed him my letter, and I watched him read the whole thing.  He told me it was really great and he meant it.  He meant it in a way I’d never seen anyone mean something before.  He made me feel like I just gave him a real gift, something valuable that he would treasure and keep safe for me forever and protect from anything that might ever try and harm it.

That blew my mind because it was just some fancy paper and I knew I could have made the hand-writing five times better.  I couldn’t understand what could have been so good about my letter, so I told him it was supposed to have a neat infinity stamp on the top made out of two elephant trunks.  He smiled and told me it was great exactly how it was.  Just perfect.

Then he asked me who was going to be my teacher.

I asked him if he had any glasses of water, and he chuckled and said of course, and went back out down the hall I came in on, through some other door, and after some knocking around that I could hear, he found me one.  I kind of swilled it down.

I told him honestly I didn’t know.  I told him it was a big decision.  I told him I probably had never been without a teacher before, and I didn’t want to just dive into anything. But I felt like an idiot because I didn’t really mean all that and I realized I was trying to sound smart.  For Jesus.  I wanted him to think I was good enough, and not just diving into something without understanding it.  And I was turnin’ myself inside out.  I don’t really know where it came from.  I just spilled it out.

He agreed it was a big decision.  He said in a way it was the only decision I ever needed to make.  He was about to say something else when I cut him off and blurted out, “You.”

I wanted what he had, to be honest.  Just a simple office downstairs, and the feeling he made me feel.  I had a glimpse of the possibility of that, and I guess I wanted him to just do it.  Fix me.  Do it now.

“I want you to be my teacher.”  I thought if I said it, something bad would be over.

As soon as I said it, though, I realized I didn’t really know what I was asking for, or even if I wanted it.  We had a moment pass between us that I can’t really describe, black as black on the one hand, like suddenly I was exposed, like I wasn’t standing on a solid floor, and beautiful like I’d never known on the other, like a sneak preview of unending goodness.  But somehow I knew he wasn’t going to fix me.  He was just right beside me looking at it.

I felt like a big black hole came out of nowhere and was about to swallow me up, and it all seemed scary all of a sudden.  I felt like I just hung a weight around my neck.  I looked around the room and saw Jesus had a book on his shelf about fishing.  I wished we were just fishing and not all serious.  I wanted to do something fun.  Go shoot some hoops upstairs or something.  I wanted to show him my left-handed lay-up.  I really wished I could run and hide and rewind about twenty minutes and forget the whole thing.  I wondered if Jesus was going to give me a test and tell me to go sit in the desert and don’t come back until I figured everything out.

Then, in my dream, he told me he would help in any way that he could for as long as it took until the need for helping was over, but he couldn’t do everything for me.  He told me he would never make me do anything, and there was no need for that anyway, and he told me there were things I would have to choose to give him, like my letter today, and those things he couldn’t do for me.  He said if he did that, he’d be taking the me outta’ me, and that isn’t what God had in mind.  He said God put the me in there to start with, same as in Him, and that what God does can’t ever be changed or broken.

I told him that made some good sense.

He said that was one thing we could depend upon.  He said I could depend on Him, too, because he had given everything over already to his Teacher, a long time ago.  Now there was nothing in the way between him and every good thing we might need.

He asked me if I had felt that big dark feeling a little while ago, and I nodded that I did.

He told me he knew about that one, and that I had some little black holes rolling around deep inside of me that tormented me, even if it didn’t seem that way all the time, and that we had to go on a walk together and find them.  He said when we found them they’d look like something else- like people I knew, like things that bothered me about the world, or like scary situations in my life.  They might look really little, like a pen running out of ink, or they might look really big, like a disease or an economic collapse.  He said they’re all the same though.

He said my instinct would be to try and fix those things on my own, or blame them on somebody else, or say they were too big  and screwed up to fix anyway, the way I used to do it before.  He said my only job was to pick up those black holes when we found them, and put them in his hand.  That was the one thing he couldn’t do for me.

I told him that sounded pretty easy when he said it like that.  I told him I knew I could do it.

He just laughed and told me he knew I could, too, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the basement of some gymnasium right now.

He told me the real Teacher would be in my heart, where we dwelt together.  And he told me my part is very simple.  He told me I have to learn to recognize that all the stuff I taught myself when I was my own teacher… I don’t want those things anymore because they all amount to a hill of beans.  He told me I just have to ask to be taught, and then to not use my experiences to confirm what I have learned.  (T-14, XI, 6:3-5)  He said after a while of that, I’d remember what God did when he put that me in all of us.

I nodded like I knew what that meant.  Then he said there would be a test.  To help me know if I was listening to him in my heart.  He said if I feel completely free of fear, and if everyone I meet or even anyone who just thinks of me shares in my perfect peace, then I can be sure I listened to Him in my heart.  (T-14, XI, 5:2)

I asked him how I would know he was around, when all these things started happening, and he said you’ll know because you asked, and because you asked, I have come.

Then he kissed me on the forehead, and I woke up.

Who Am I…?

January 6, 2013
by Michael
comment 1
Christ

There’s a question within each of us that insists on being answered.  When you log in to the Planet Earth game and start creating your profile, the blank on the form next to this little question is the one with the red asterisk next to it.  It’s not optional.  You’re required to supply an answer.  (How else are worlds created?)

Who am I?

In the Beta Version of the Plant Earth game, when we were building the login page together, we knew what all beings in Reality always know, that the question was rhetorical.  A set-up.  An inside joke.  Ha!!!  Of all the possible non-sequiturs that could have been dropped on that initial page, that one took the cake.  It was off the charts, more absurd than the closest second by a bushel of parsecs.  It went way beyond, for instance, the question “what if we existed… but didn’t know it?”  Or… “what if we knew each other… but… then we didn’t!?”

Who am I?

It’s a trick question, of course.  Reality is stacked ten dimensions deep with an unlimited supply of beings unable to keep a straight face when presented with this question.  They delight in trying, but their hearts are not into it.  Their daytime television channels- all of them- feature perpetual episodes of a show in which a darkly dressed host with a rich baritone voice accosts people on the street to ask them this question, winking into the camera: “Madam, excuse me please, but could you tell me who you are?”

Instantly, the questioned realize they’re on TV.  They recognize the game.  They steel themselves to put on a good show for the folks at home.  They desperately try to keep a lid on their delight, but the question is too preposterous.  It is impossible to even imagine a context in which the question could make any sense.  Sure, its grammatically possible, but it has no meaning!

The knowledge of who they are is the most powerful, abiding, peaceful- the only- force in their lives.  It is all they have, and all they could ever need.  It is an inheritance they all share.  The knowledge of who they are is a treasure they cannot bear to lock away, a secret they perpetually desire to unveil, a continuously arising joy they cannot contain.  Nobody would ever hide their greatest gift!  This pretending is deliciously crazy!

Their lower jaws begin to wobble, their eyes to twinkle, and then, having never actually played the game before- (its their first time on television!)- they realize they’re holding their breath.  Their lungs are beginning to burn.  All at once a smile breaks loose as air erupts from their lungs with laughter.  Their eyes water a touch.  They embrace their host.  The camera man forgets himself entirely and flings his camera into the street, just as he did the day before, shattering the lens, and he leaps for the top of the celebratory pile.  There is real danger that the entire city could be overwhelmed as this contagion spreads.  If critical mass is reached, an entirely new universe could touch off.

It doesn’t matter.

The Knowledgeable create without fears or plans.  They know of no other way.  All they know is who they are.  Love is extended with abandon.  Love flows through them from its Source and bursts into a bouquet of surprises.

Who am I?

Laugh with me.  For that is the only answer worthy of the question, and together is the only way to answer it.

In the evenings, when things have quieted down and the day’s new universes stabilized, vast droves of radiant beings gather together to watch game shows.  Jeopardy is a real crowd-pleaser.  Four thoughts of God, disguised as humans, make it onto the game show Jeopardy, as One contestant.  (You can do that There.)  They hit the Daily Double.  Without hesitation, they risk it all.  Alex Trebek looks to his cue card, and is silent.  The Answer Monitor is blank.  Canned laughter fills the studio.  The jingle starts.  Trebek, the consummate professional, dispassionately stands by.  The four huddle in discourse.  One scribbles down their question in nearly legible writing.

Who am I?

Jackpot!  Can you see?

A Course in Miracles says, “The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world.  And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself.  Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts.” (T-31, V, 14.1)

A Course of Love says, “Forget yourself and memory will return to you.  Beyond your personal self and the identity you have given your personal self is your being.  This is the face of Christ where all being resides.  This is your true identity.” (CoL-20.24)

Here is what I suggest.  Return to the Planet Earth game.  Log in to your account.  Click on ‘My Profile’, and in the little blank with the red asterisk, next to the question ‘Who am I?’, when you’re ready, type ‘Christ’.

Is it too much to ask?  Does it seem unreasonable?  What do we protect in our resisting?  What do we fear will arise from our acceptance?  ‘Christ’ is but a word.  The question is: what is the Reality to which it points?

“The ego is what you made.  Christ is what God made.  Your ego is the extension of who you think you are.  Christ is God’s extension of who He is.” (CoL-P.8)  “Your real Self is the Christ in you.” (CoL-2.10)

Your real Self is what God placed within you, as you, of Himself.  We are called to accept only that- nothing more and nothing less.

If this is getting serious, laugh once again.  Laugh as we realize together that we’ve been wrong about ourselves, and we begin to remember what that means.  Let’s laugh so hard we lose our trains of thought, so hard we nearly cough up lungs, so hard we forget for a moment who we thought we were, and there, just as our laughter winds down into a chortling, as it slows and coughs and sputters, just as the feeling of having lost something begins to set in and we start to mindlessly tap our vest pockets and squint across the table, as we realize there are pieces to be picked up, remain there in that emptiness for just a moment and look around.  Standing in the corner waiting patiently is Christ, the Self beyond all concepts, ready to take our hand and lead us out of the tavern and into the sunlight.