Grace has the consistency of wakefulness. You can rub it between your fingers and never even feel it. But the problem, is that it gets into your bloodstream, and later- when you’re driving in your car, or listening to foreign language tapes, or standing on your tippy toes trying to hang a skillet on a hook- it travels to your brain and shuts out the lights. You have a near death experience, and forget momentarily […]
We were born adrift, resilient beads of awareness shimmering on a high sea, buoyant. Sparkling. No land in sight. The residue of saturated space- meaning that cooling Emptiness could no longer hold in solution, dew drops from the Night’s sold out Vacancy, falling, caught – splat!- upon a blank canvas. No land in sight. We were all swaddling vulnerabilities, nascent and curious Futures-in-Training, fields of Potential whose every vector pointed away from a singular Discontinuity: the […]
Early on in A Course of Love, Jesus assures us that we are not alone in our experience of shock and dismay at what the world we see seems to offer. He says, “There is not a soul that walks this earth that does not weep at what it sees.” (CoL, 2.10) Recognizing that we might be reluctant to accept this sweeping statement at face value, he also says, “Think not that those who seem […]
Sometimes after a period of engagement with the world- of rummaging through a serpentine forest of excessively close-packed motorists, of defusing tasks that have been thrown headlong like live grenades towards the hard wall of Deadline, of displaying all the requisite attributes of a trained specialist embroiled in the local deluge of a world economy – I take a deep breath and return to the Beginning. I stop and take a drink of the Solace that […]
There’s nothing quite like a good paradox to peel the shrink wrap off your inner life and release the beautiful flavors that you are, or to suggest the intersection of hidden dimensions with the particular version of Flatland we’ve been calling our own. Let’s try one. Consulting the book of Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks and John Moyne (The Essential Rumi), we find the following lyrical paradox poised atop the 105th page, like a […]
A man arose early with the sun. He slipped from the bed, leaving his darling wife to rest. His two daughters were dreaming peacefully in the rooms beside. The dog padded beside him, excited and curious about his master’s early appearance. The man’s life was a cocoon of warmth. The center of his mind was an offering. But today he paced the kitchen, looking to the East, into the brilliant glow of morning, and he […]
The laws of nature have received quite a bit of coverage over the years, and rightly so. In their silent immutability, there is no example more powerful in all the land of indomitability- of accomplishment freed from the constraint of effort, of action freed from the morass of choice, of character freed from the question of evolution and learning. Let me just say it: in my heart of hearts, I want to live as purely, […]
This week I have felt particularly troubled, and perhaps some elements of my experience are worth sharing in at least a general sense. Maybe in the sharing others can benefit. Maybe in the sharing I will better understand what has taken place. Unlearning can at times be deeply challenging, as if you are pitted in a wrestling match for your own soul. In A Course in Miracles Jesus describes the way in which the ego […]
The day to end all days begins like any other. I awaken in the same bed. I begin an awkward stumble down the hall, but… even before my synapses have warmed, I can sense it. Something is strange. Nice strange. Really nice strange. I am filled with the abiding sensation that everything is worked out. The center of my being is a field of possibility and satisfaction. Nothing hangs over me and nothing begs for […]
Jesus suggests in the Treatise of the New- (of the Treatises on A Course of Love)- that we stand poised to enter the causative formation of the new world we have so long sought. It’s right here, now, awaiting our response. I feel like I’m in it up to my neck- but neck deep isn’t enough. I can’t stand on the end of the high dive, bouncing in place, and just imagine what it would […]
Embracing Forever 