One of the core concepts of A Course of Love is contained in the statement, “There is no loss, only gain.” While there are a number of contexts in which this sentiment offers an opportunity for a deepening understanding of what is meant by the term unity within the Course, recent events in my own life as well as events observed in the lives of those around me have led me to reflect upon its […]
A self is a heavy burden to carry with you across the desert. Despite being invisible and weightless in principle, it is the often overlooked, but necessary battery of accoutrements that are required to render the self manifest and functional that take their toll. There is the steamer trunk full of historical data, for instance, with its rather robust coefficient of sliding friction across the hot sand– the modern take on an old classic, a […]
They look at me funny when I tell them I’m a cosmic stunt man, like I have a condition because I can’t stop coming to Jesus about the elaborate nature of this phenomenal ruse. Like indifference is a rational response to having undergone such a prompt step into existence, to having donned that stretchy, knowledge-retardant suit and climbed down the business end of a circus artillery piece, only to fall asleep just prior to the moment […]
A skull is a resonating chamber, a human-shaped bottle for storing echoes. A Great Mystery holds me up to its ear– who is listening to Whom? Awareness merges with such a sound, vanishes. A skull is an organic amplifier, a condenser of ethereal transmissions, an inwardly-curving bone around a hollow void, meant to be dipped daily in a field of silence– held to the ear of a Great Mystery. Over time, carefully tended, the silence […]
All our assumptions were wrong. The strangest part is realizing we always knew this, even in the hour of our deepest pain. We’re like a secret of the universe that wandered through the trees to a scenic overlook and stood slack-jawed peering into a crevasse full of stars and comets choreographing the meaning of existence, then got whacked in the back of the head with a frying pan and splattered into a corpus callosum of inter-combinant […]
The instruction to just be myself resulted in a pretty meandering to-and-fro up-over-and-down there and back again maybe, but maybe not, should I educate myself better or get a few more life skills first type of thing until one day when I was brushing my teeth I came to a scrunchy halt, arm cocked like a frozen piston, and I looked into the silvered plate hung on the wall, the one framed by garishly bright […]
None of us really knows what kind of stunt Creation is going to pull next. The thing to do is avoid being reactionary. If you like to fly, for instance, put on your leather aviator’s helmet, your trusted goggles, and a long, flowing white scarf. Then sneak into the Situation Room and thrust up your hand to volunteer. Don’t worry, They’ll know for what.
I’ve never really known quite what to do with my hair. Were I pressed upon by violent circumstances, fighting to defend the fort or preserve the realm, this would be of no account. Instead my life sprouts daily, like weeds in a field, matters of no consequence that require careful attention, a trained eye, and defensible motives– matters best handled, as the world well knows, by well-ordered professional-looking people who instill confidence in others and keep […]
I don’t believe there is any greater power than that of an idea, deeply held, and slowly it is becoming clear to me that all we behold is the product of these generative seeds. In the three books of A Course of Love, Jesus speaks frequently about ideas, and in a passage that I love he says, “Giving ideas life is the role of creatorship.” This statement comes in a section of the Dialogues– the […]
When I stepped out of the building in which I work this evening, my head seemed to have been pressed into a perfect, steaming cube– a polished alloy ingot of ordered rectilinear thoughts. You could have bounced a laser off it. My normally fluid mind had been sintered by the heat of prolonged concentration into a dazed ceramic. Even my cells had conformed to the geometric demands of the day’s efforts, having tugged their cytoskeletons […]
Embracing Forever 