A couple of days ago, I had a rather long conversation with an individual, and during the course of this conversation I became increasingly angry at some of things he said. I was surprised at the extent of my anger and contempt.
The next day, I played it over in my mind. I actually listed the things that he said that pissed me off. I imagined scenarios where I really trashed him. I imagined another where I got into a teaching, even though he is barely familiar with A Course in Miracles. Then I turned on myself and asked how I could get so angry for so long when I have been at this mind-training for some time now.
Finally, I asked for help and sat down to read something that would remind me of the truth of what I am and what he is, the holy sons of God. I picked up, or rather I realize in retrospect , I was guided to pick up a folder of readings by Raj/Jesus who speaks through Paul Tuttle at the Northwestern Foundation of A Course in Miracles. I just love this material because Raj/Jesus reads a section of the Course and comments on it through Paul during a Study Group meeting. It is simply Jesus commenting on what he transcribed to Helen Schucman, only using a different set of metaphors, making it incredibly personal while expressing the truth of His unworldly masterpiece. I “happened” to select the transcript of March 13, 2005, as Raj/Jesus reads the section, “Two Evaluations,” Chapter 9, Section VII.
Early on, Raj/Jesus cites this sentence from the Course:
Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save YOURSELF.
(T-9.VII.1:6)
He goes on to comment:
You’re presented with the opportunity to see and be in your Sanity again. Every single thing that confronts you is nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven seen clearly, or through a glass darkly. (Raj/Jesus Transcript, March 13, 2005, p. 2)
After reading those two sentences, I simply melted into the peace of God with no trace of anger or contempt. The dark night of the soul was over. It is always a matter of remembering and forgetting.
When I was reminded that the conversation presented me with an opportunity to choose to see clearly, or see through a glass darkly, I was free to choose, and melting into peace was the choice.
At this point, I became curious about the origins of the word, “opportunity.” The key is to see “port” hidden in the word. In Latin, opportunus, means “favorable,” deriving from ob portum veniens, meaning “coming toward port with a favorable wind.” What I had labeled as extremely negative, seeing through a glass darkly, was, in fact, an opportunity to see clearly, returning Home with a favorable wind.
And now, sitting here experiencing the peace of God, I am grateful for this individual and our conversation, and I trust when it happens again I will remember to look at it as an opportunity, a chance.
Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now.
(T-9;VII.1:7,8)
Now, I am not making this up; as I am sitting here typing this, he just knocked on the door. He is my landlord, and he came, unexpectedly, to take care of some problems created by the recent flooding here in Lake Delton, Wisconsin. I took a deep breath, invited him in, and he, typically, said some things that would ordinarily have provoked me, but this time, I managed to look at him clearly, and we had a rather enjoyable conversation.
You can never forgive a person. You can only ask for help to let go of your unreal thoughts about him, projected from your insane, egoic mind.
Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show
you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide,
your Savior and Protector, strong in hope,
and certain of your ultimate success.
He has forgiven you already, for
such is His function, given Him by God.
Now must you share His function, and forgive
whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees,
and whom He honors as the Son of God.
(W-p11. 1 What is forgiveness? 5)
Now, Dear Reader, I invite you to practice forgiveness, just in case your ego-mind sometimes makes up a storm, driving you out to sea.
Please bring to mind an individual who seems to be out there, causing you to see through a glass darkly.
Imagine looking at him through the ego’s eyes, the body’s eyes, projecting on him all of the scorn and anger from this state of mind, separate from God. Just allow the negative stuff to surface without resistance. Resist not evil.
Thank you.
Now, look at him with the vision of Christ, looking through his body to the Christ that he is, seeing a reflection of your true Self, joining with the Christ that you are. Namaste.
Thank you.
Obviously, I have no idea how this worked for you. Just stopping for a moment, stepping back, is sometimes enough to experience a shift in your mind.
It turns out then that everything can be used to undo perception, enabling you to learn to see with vision. Sometimes, when I find myself persistently looking through the body’s eyes, I practice by literally closing my right eye and looking at his image through my left, representing the egoic state of mind. Then I imagine looking through his image with my right eye, representing Christ’s vision. This literal shift from left to right, from misperception to vision is sacred.
Brother, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light. And what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived and recognized for what they are. And what is worthy of your love receives your love, while nothing to be feared remains.
(W-p11.164.6)
Regarding this exercise, I find it helpful to look at the connotations of left and right in our culture. “Left” comes from Old English, lyft, meaning “weak.” And worse, “sinister” comes from the Latin, sinister, “on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious.” While “right” comes from the Old English, riht, “go straight.”
The act of forgiveness, this shift from one state of mind to another, to the only true state, can be expressed in a variety of ways.
Conversion.
Transformation.
Correction.
Redemption.
Atonement.
Salvation.
Resurrection.
Release.
Relinquishment.
Letting go of the unreal.
Being carried Home.
Loosing the world.
Undoing.
Remembering and forgetting.
Healing.
Raj/Jesus expresses it in reference to wishing to see the Evidence of Love.
Now, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love” doesn’t mean looking at somebody who’s behaving badly and say, “Man, I wish to see the Evidence of Love there. I wish they would change. I would like to see them behaving nicely.” That isn’t what it means. What it means is, I wish to see them without looking through a preexisting definition I am holding about them. I wish to see there what I know is the Truth about them. I wish not to see my misperception of them. I wish to see what revelation, insight, has uncovered to me about them which I am seeing there, in spite of the way I used to interpret their behavior, and in spite of the way they see themselves.
You see what I’m saying? When you say, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love,” it’s you engaged in an act of projecting the True Consciousness of them there, instead of getting hung up on your perceptions of what’s going on based on your own tiny, fearful frame of mind, coupled with their behavior that is based on their tiny, troubled frame of mind. To say, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love there,” doesn’t mean, “I wish they would change.” It means I wish to see them in a new way. I wish to extend to them whatever Consciousness of Truth God will reveal to me. You see? It’s far different from saying, “Gee, it would really be nice if they were a little more pleasant to be around.” That’s not wishing to see the Evidence of Love. There’s no gift in it.
“I wish to see the Evidence of Love” means you are going to take the proactive step, we’ll say, of insisting upon asking for the Vision that will let you see or grasp the meaning of the fact that if there’s anything there at all where your Brother or Sister is, it has to be God. The moment you do that, the lens through which you’re looking shifts and you are looking for something different. You are looking to see the Evidence of Love there. You’re looking to see the more of What’s Really There than what you had seen, or even what your Brother thinks is there and calls himself or herself. Are you getting what I’m saying?
To wish to see the Evidence of Love is not a wish to stand in receipt of something. It’s a wish to make a gift of a new way of seeing that is gathered not from your memory, but a willingness and an expressed desire to have the Holy Spirit reveal to you What Is Truly There, just as the Holy Spirit, your Right Mind, looks at you and sees What’s Truly There and extends it to you, and does not believe what you think you are and all the feelings you have associated with what you think you are. And that’s why your communion with the Holy Spirit is always healing. And that’s why the Holy Spirit can turn everything, every situation to your advantage. You have the OPPORTUNITY with your Brothers and Sisters to be that which turns whatever is happening in their life to their advantage.
(Raj/Jesus Transcript, March 13, 2005, pp. 5,6)
And now I understand what it means to say I am responsible for what I see. It is significant that the following quotation comes from a section in the Course entitled, “The Responsibility for Sight.”
I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked. (T-21.II.2:3-5)
All along it has been difficult to understand how I could possibly be responsible for the things happening to me, particularly the bad things. Why would I ever ask for that? And now I realize I am responsible when I choose to see through the body’s eyes. I can just as well choose to see with vision. My choosing is my responsibility. My choice is the cause; I get the results, fully responsible for the choice.
Sometimes I go about pitying myself
and
all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
(A Native American Saying)
And so I say to myself:
Each moment is an opportunity
to be carried gently home by the wind.
The Raj/Jesus transcript is available at the Northwest Foundation for ACIM.
Scroll down to the March 13, 2005, transcript.
Click here for the website.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Eye of the Storm
Earlier today a tornado set down nearby, and right now it's early evening and another warning siren just went off, and soft thunder is rumbling in the dark sky, and the wind is coming up.
I am reminded of a poem I wrote some time ago, and I am posting it now.
THE EYE OF THE STORM
AND THE PEACE OF GOD
Flying research missions into the eye
of the hurricane, intrepid pilots
report of bravely hurtling through the eye
wall, the outer layer, a maelstrom, a
grinding stream, battered by torrential rains
and terrifying, one-hundred mile winds.
Suddenly, they break through, dazzled by blue
sky and sunlight, the calm at the center
of the storm, a clear space, sometimes forty
miles in diameter, where the winds are
light, the sky is sunny, stillness at last.
In wonder, they gaze up at the sides, the
blue-white clouds of the eye wall, towering
thousands of feet, gradually sloping
away, the walls of a great stadium.
This place at the center can be likened
unto the place in our center, God's peace.
There is a place in you where this whole world
has been forgotten; where no memory
of sin and of illusion lingers still.
There is a place in you which time has left,
and echoes of eternity are heard.
There is a resting place so still no sound
except a hymn to Heaven rises up
to gladden God the Father and the Son.
Where Both abide are They remembered, Both.
And where They are is Heaven and is peace.
Think not that you can change Their dwelling place.
For your Identity abides in Them,
and where They are, forever must you be.
The changelessness of Heaven is in you,
so deep within that nothing in this world
but passes by, unnoticed and unseen.
The still infinity of endless peace
surrounds you gently in its soft embrace,
so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might
of its Creator, nothing can intrude
upon the sacred Son of God within.
T-29.V:1,2
This poem was born from the seed of this
one revelatory Thought: Each moment in
time presents an opportunity for
conversion to eternity. The world
of time and illusion, like the eye wall,
just false perception, can be broken through.
The world is false perception. It is born
of error, and it has not left its source.
It will remain no longer than the thought
that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought
of separation has been changed to one
of true forgiveness, will the world be seen
in quite another light; and one which leads
to truth, where all the world must disappear
and all its errors vanish. Now its source
has gone, and its effects are gone as well.
The world was made as an attack on God.
It symbolizes fear. And what is fear
except love's absence? Thus the world was meant
to be a place where God could enter not,
and where His Son could be apart from Him.
Here was perception born, for knowledge could
not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive,
and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become
quite possible, for certainty has gone.
The mechanisms of illusion have
been born instead. And now they go to find
what has been given them to seek. Their aim
is to fulfill the purpose which the world
was made to witness and make real. They see
in its illusions but a solid base
where truth exists, upheld apart from lies.
Yet everything that they report is but
illusion which is kept apart from truth.
W-p11.3 “What is the World?” 1-3
The wind and rain and terrifying sounds
of the eye wall can be likened unto
the false world, made from sourceless thoughts, unreal,
simply mechanisms of illusion.
As sight was made to lead away from truth,
it can be redirected. Sounds become
the call of God, and all perception can
be given a new purpose by the One
Whom God appointed Savior to the world.
Follow His Light, and see the world as He
beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all
that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace
and certainty, which you have thrown away,
but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.
Let us not rest content until the world
has joined our changed perception. Let us not
be satisfied until forgiveness has
been made complete. And let us not attempt
to change our function. We must save the world.
For we who made it must behold it through
the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die
can be restored to everlasting life.
W-p11.3 "What is the World?" 4,5
Just as pilots know now that the eye wall
will give way to the eye, we now know that
false perception will give way to God’s peace
when we ask the Holy Spirit for help,
certain that we are headed towards peace
no matter the terror of our storm thoughts,
trusting that “This is not so,” knowing we
will break through to the eye of the storm, now,
seeing with the eyes of Christ, proclaiming,
I AM THAT, I am the eye of the storm,
the stillness and the peace of God at last.
I am reminded of a poem I wrote some time ago, and I am posting it now.
THE EYE OF THE STORM
AND THE PEACE OF GOD
Flying research missions into the eye
of the hurricane, intrepid pilots
report of bravely hurtling through the eye
wall, the outer layer, a maelstrom, a
grinding stream, battered by torrential rains
and terrifying, one-hundred mile winds.
Suddenly, they break through, dazzled by blue
sky and sunlight, the calm at the center
of the storm, a clear space, sometimes forty
miles in diameter, where the winds are
light, the sky is sunny, stillness at last.
In wonder, they gaze up at the sides, the
blue-white clouds of the eye wall, towering
thousands of feet, gradually sloping
away, the walls of a great stadium.
This place at the center can be likened
unto the place in our center, God's peace.
There is a place in you where this whole world
has been forgotten; where no memory
of sin and of illusion lingers still.
There is a place in you which time has left,
and echoes of eternity are heard.
There is a resting place so still no sound
except a hymn to Heaven rises up
to gladden God the Father and the Son.
Where Both abide are They remembered, Both.
And where They are is Heaven and is peace.
Think not that you can change Their dwelling place.
For your Identity abides in Them,
and where They are, forever must you be.
The changelessness of Heaven is in you,
so deep within that nothing in this world
but passes by, unnoticed and unseen.
The still infinity of endless peace
surrounds you gently in its soft embrace,
so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might
of its Creator, nothing can intrude
upon the sacred Son of God within.
T-29.V:1,2
This poem was born from the seed of this
one revelatory Thought: Each moment in
time presents an opportunity for
conversion to eternity. The world
of time and illusion, like the eye wall,
just false perception, can be broken through.
The world is false perception. It is born
of error, and it has not left its source.
It will remain no longer than the thought
that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought
of separation has been changed to one
of true forgiveness, will the world be seen
in quite another light; and one which leads
to truth, where all the world must disappear
and all its errors vanish. Now its source
has gone, and its effects are gone as well.
The world was made as an attack on God.
It symbolizes fear. And what is fear
except love's absence? Thus the world was meant
to be a place where God could enter not,
and where His Son could be apart from Him.
Here was perception born, for knowledge could
not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive,
and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become
quite possible, for certainty has gone.
The mechanisms of illusion have
been born instead. And now they go to find
what has been given them to seek. Their aim
is to fulfill the purpose which the world
was made to witness and make real. They see
in its illusions but a solid base
where truth exists, upheld apart from lies.
Yet everything that they report is but
illusion which is kept apart from truth.
W-p11.3 “What is the World?” 1-3
The wind and rain and terrifying sounds
of the eye wall can be likened unto
the false world, made from sourceless thoughts, unreal,
simply mechanisms of illusion.
As sight was made to lead away from truth,
it can be redirected. Sounds become
the call of God, and all perception can
be given a new purpose by the One
Whom God appointed Savior to the world.
Follow His Light, and see the world as He
beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all
that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace
and certainty, which you have thrown away,
but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.
Let us not rest content until the world
has joined our changed perception. Let us not
be satisfied until forgiveness has
been made complete. And let us not attempt
to change our function. We must save the world.
For we who made it must behold it through
the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die
can be restored to everlasting life.
W-p11.3 "What is the World?" 4,5
Just as pilots know now that the eye wall
will give way to the eye, we now know that
false perception will give way to God’s peace
when we ask the Holy Spirit for help,
certain that we are headed towards peace
no matter the terror of our storm thoughts,
trusting that “This is not so,” knowing we
will break through to the eye of the storm, now,
seeing with the eyes of Christ, proclaiming,
I AM THAT, I am the eye of the storm,
the stillness and the peace of God at last.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I Am Saved, or Damned, Simply by a Thought
Yesterday, I found myself in conflict with a good friend. Since I went to bed with it unresolved, I started thinking about it as soon as I woke up this morning, feeling sad and fearful. Just after getting out of bed, I prepared coffee in our French press and started reading Lesson 96, Salvation comes from my one Self. Even while doing the lesson, I kept hearing this nagging, frantic voice in my mind saying things like, “You’re not a good friend;” “You really fucked up this time.” This was obviously the voice of the ego.
Ordinarily, I try not to use the term “ego” because this usage tends to objectify it, making it easy to disown, as if it were outside of me. When, in fact, I am the ego when I think I am that, while in truth, I am That, the holy Son of God. It is remarkable that the word “ego” comes from Latin, the personal pronoun meaning “I.”
When I realized what I was doing to myself by paying attention to this painful voice, I put down the Workbook, grabbed my notebook and began transcribing what was going on in my mind, trying to slow things down so that I could be aware of just one thought at a time.
The ego is always eager to pounce, particularly when I am feeling down.
The pounce is in the form of a thought.
This thought is the ego’s attempt to keep me down, literally, as I hang my head in shame and fear.
This is the ego’s attempt to defend itself against God.
While my head is down, I am not likely to look up to see the face of Christ, not likely to look up to ask the Holy Spirit for help.
While feeling the pain of this attack thought, I encourage other attack thoughts by indulging in past memories and associations, and the ego keeps pouncing.
This defensive strategy works me over pretty well, until I recognize the ego’s intent.
In this recognition, I do look up and ask for help.
The Holy Spirit is the bridge between the ego’s defensive intent and my awareness of my true Self.
The Holy Spirit’s help also comes in the form of a thought, reminding me that I am invulnerable, the holy Son of God.
I am created perfectly; I am not as I made my egoic self, a cruel parody of my birthright, my true Self.
Salvation, too, is simply a thought, just as the ego’s pounce is a thought.
We are always dealing only with thoughts.
Right now, the Holy Spirit’s Voice is an easy choice, reminding me of the truth of what I am, and I am saved from the attacking voice, experiencing the peace of God, as the conflict with my brother dissolves.
I do not know whether or not he is still having conflicting thoughts.
He is totally responsible for his thoughts; I am totally responsible for mine.
While experiencing peace, I cannot project pain; while experiencing peace, I have an opportunity to join with him.
I can now join because conflicting thoughts are not in my awareness.
Actually, it is more accurate to say that conflicting thoughts do enter my awareness, but now I just don’t pay them any attention. I saw a good analogy in the newspaper today. A woman said, “It’s like a ticking clock keeps you up at night. You eventually fall asleep, not because the ticking stops, but because you figure out how to stop hearing it.”
When I figure out how to stop hearing attack thoughts, I, of course, wake up, rather than fall asleep, but it does not mean that they are not still ticking away.
In this waking state, I can now extend an invitation to my friend to join because I am clear in my mind, and my clarity is my responsibility, his state is his.
The chances are good now that the light will do the work, and we will join.
And then I put down my notebook and picked up the Workbook again to finish Lesson 96, Salvation comes from my one Self.
I invite you now, Dear Reader, to read today’s lesson in blank verse, meaning ten syllables per line, with the accent on every other syllable, for examples:
we WILL at TEMPT to DAY to FIND this THOUGHT W-p1.96.8:1
Lesson 96 follows, below, in blank verse. You will observe that the first paragraph is in prose. Jesus has been making the transition from prose to blank verse in the recent lessons. Starting with Lesson 91, Miracles are seen in light, Jesus has been increasing the stanzas of blank verse, while decreasing the paragraphs of prose. Finally, the first lesson entirely in blank verse is Lesson 98, I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation. Each lesson from 98 to 365 is entirely in blank verse, the rhythm echoing the beating of your heart.
To take a look at all of the passages in the Course in blank verse, please go to my website to peruse Steve Russell’s book, The Rhythm and Reason of Reality.
Although you are one Self, you experience yourself as two; as both good and evil, loving and hating, mind and body. This sense of being split into opposites induces feelings of acute and constant conflict, and leads to frantic attempts to reconcile the contradictory aspects of this self-perception. You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists.
The fact that truth and illusion cannot
be reconciled, no matter how you try,
what means you use and where you see the problem,
must be accepted if you would be saved.
Until you have accepted this, you will attempt
an endless list of goals you cannot reach;
a senseless series of expenditures
of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt,
each one as futile as the one before,
and failing as the next one surely will.
Problems that have no meaning cannot be
resolved within the framework they are set.
Two selves in conflict could not be resolved,
and good and evil have no meeting place.
The self you made can never be your Self,
nor can your Self be split in two, and still
be what It is and must forever be.
A mind and body cannot both exist.
Make no attempt to reconcile the two,
or one denies the other can be real.
If you are physical, your mind is gone
from your self-concept, for it has no place
in which it could be really part of you.
If you are spirit, then the body must
be meaningless to your reality.
Spirit makes use of mind as means to find
its Self expression. And the mind which serves
the spirit is at peace and filled with joy.
Its power comes from spirit, and it is
fulfilling happily its function here.
Yet mind can also see itself divorced
from spirit, and perceive itself within
a body it confuses with itself.
Without its function then it has no peace,
and happiness is alien to its thoughts.
Yet mind apart from spirit cannot think.
It has denied its Source of strength, and sees
itself as helpless, limited and weak.
Dissociated from its function now,
it thinks it is alone and separate,
attacked by armies massed against itself
and hiding in the body's frail support.
Now must it reconcile unlike with like,
for this is what it thinks that it is for.
Waste no more time on this. Who can resolve
the senseless conflicts which a dream presents?
What could the resolution mean in truth?
What purpose could it serve? What is it for?
alvation cannot make illusions real,
nor solve a problem that does not exist.
Perhaps you hope it can. Yet would you have
God's plan for the release of His dear Son
bring pain to him, and fail to set him free?
Your Self retains Its Thoughts, and they remain
within your mind and in the Mind of God.
The Holy Spirit holds salvation in
your mind, and offers it the way to peace.
Salvation is a thought you share with God,
because His Voice accepted it for you
and answered in your name that it was done.
Thus is salvation kept among the Thoughts
your Self holds dear and cherishes for you.
We will attempt today to find this thought,
whose presence in your mind is guaranteed
by Him Who speaks to you from your one Self.
Our hourly five-minute practicing
will be a search for Him within your mind.
Salvation comes from this one Self through Him
Who is the Bridge between your mind and It.
Wait patiently, and let Him speak to you
about your Self, and what your mind can do,
restored to It and free to serve Its Will.
Begin with saying this:
Salvation comes from my one Self.
Its Thoughts are mine to use.
Then seek Its Thoughts, and claim them as your own.
These are your own real thoughts you have denied,
and let your mind go wandering in a world
of dreams, to find illusions in their place.
Here are your thoughts, the only ones you have.
Salvation is among them; find it there.
If you succeed, the thoughts that come to you
will tell you you are saved, and that your mind
has found the function that it sought to lose.
Your Self will welcome it and give it peace.
Restored in strength, it will again flow out
from spirit to the spirit in all things
created by the Spirit as Itself.
Your mind will bless all things. Confusion done,
you are restored, for you have found your Self.
Your Self knows that you cannot fail today.
Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet
a little while. Be not dismayed by this.
The joy your Self experiences It
will save for you, and it will yet be yours
in full awareness. Every time you spend
five minutes of the hour seeking Him
Who joins your mind and Self, you offer Him
another treasure to be kept for you.
Each time today you tell your frantic mind
salvation comes from your one Self, you lay
another treasure in your growing store.
And all of it is given everyone
who asks for it, and will accept the gift.
Think, then, how much is given unto you
to give this day, that it be given you!
Ordinarily, I try not to use the term “ego” because this usage tends to objectify it, making it easy to disown, as if it were outside of me. When, in fact, I am the ego when I think I am that, while in truth, I am That, the holy Son of God. It is remarkable that the word “ego” comes from Latin, the personal pronoun meaning “I.”
When I realized what I was doing to myself by paying attention to this painful voice, I put down the Workbook, grabbed my notebook and began transcribing what was going on in my mind, trying to slow things down so that I could be aware of just one thought at a time.
The ego is always eager to pounce, particularly when I am feeling down.
The pounce is in the form of a thought.
This thought is the ego’s attempt to keep me down, literally, as I hang my head in shame and fear.
This is the ego’s attempt to defend itself against God.
While my head is down, I am not likely to look up to see the face of Christ, not likely to look up to ask the Holy Spirit for help.
While feeling the pain of this attack thought, I encourage other attack thoughts by indulging in past memories and associations, and the ego keeps pouncing.
This defensive strategy works me over pretty well, until I recognize the ego’s intent.
In this recognition, I do look up and ask for help.
The Holy Spirit is the bridge between the ego’s defensive intent and my awareness of my true Self.
The Holy Spirit’s help also comes in the form of a thought, reminding me that I am invulnerable, the holy Son of God.
I am created perfectly; I am not as I made my egoic self, a cruel parody of my birthright, my true Self.
Salvation, too, is simply a thought, just as the ego’s pounce is a thought.
We are always dealing only with thoughts.
Right now, the Holy Spirit’s Voice is an easy choice, reminding me of the truth of what I am, and I am saved from the attacking voice, experiencing the peace of God, as the conflict with my brother dissolves.
I do not know whether or not he is still having conflicting thoughts.
He is totally responsible for his thoughts; I am totally responsible for mine.
While experiencing peace, I cannot project pain; while experiencing peace, I have an opportunity to join with him.
I can now join because conflicting thoughts are not in my awareness.
Actually, it is more accurate to say that conflicting thoughts do enter my awareness, but now I just don’t pay them any attention. I saw a good analogy in the newspaper today. A woman said, “It’s like a ticking clock keeps you up at night. You eventually fall asleep, not because the ticking stops, but because you figure out how to stop hearing it.”
When I figure out how to stop hearing attack thoughts, I, of course, wake up, rather than fall asleep, but it does not mean that they are not still ticking away.
In this waking state, I can now extend an invitation to my friend to join because I am clear in my mind, and my clarity is my responsibility, his state is his.
The chances are good now that the light will do the work, and we will join.
And then I put down my notebook and picked up the Workbook again to finish Lesson 96, Salvation comes from my one Self.
I invite you now, Dear Reader, to read today’s lesson in blank verse, meaning ten syllables per line, with the accent on every other syllable, for examples:
we WILL at TEMPT to DAY to FIND this THOUGHT W-p1.96.8:1
Lesson 96 follows, below, in blank verse. You will observe that the first paragraph is in prose. Jesus has been making the transition from prose to blank verse in the recent lessons. Starting with Lesson 91, Miracles are seen in light, Jesus has been increasing the stanzas of blank verse, while decreasing the paragraphs of prose. Finally, the first lesson entirely in blank verse is Lesson 98, I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation. Each lesson from 98 to 365 is entirely in blank verse, the rhythm echoing the beating of your heart.
To take a look at all of the passages in the Course in blank verse, please go to my website to peruse Steve Russell’s book, The Rhythm and Reason of Reality.
Although you are one Self, you experience yourself as two; as both good and evil, loving and hating, mind and body. This sense of being split into opposites induces feelings of acute and constant conflict, and leads to frantic attempts to reconcile the contradictory aspects of this self-perception. You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists.
The fact that truth and illusion cannot
be reconciled, no matter how you try,
what means you use and where you see the problem,
must be accepted if you would be saved.
Until you have accepted this, you will attempt
an endless list of goals you cannot reach;
a senseless series of expenditures
of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt,
each one as futile as the one before,
and failing as the next one surely will.
Problems that have no meaning cannot be
resolved within the framework they are set.
Two selves in conflict could not be resolved,
and good and evil have no meeting place.
The self you made can never be your Self,
nor can your Self be split in two, and still
be what It is and must forever be.
A mind and body cannot both exist.
Make no attempt to reconcile the two,
or one denies the other can be real.
If you are physical, your mind is gone
from your self-concept, for it has no place
in which it could be really part of you.
If you are spirit, then the body must
be meaningless to your reality.
Spirit makes use of mind as means to find
its Self expression. And the mind which serves
the spirit is at peace and filled with joy.
Its power comes from spirit, and it is
fulfilling happily its function here.
Yet mind can also see itself divorced
from spirit, and perceive itself within
a body it confuses with itself.
Without its function then it has no peace,
and happiness is alien to its thoughts.
Yet mind apart from spirit cannot think.
It has denied its Source of strength, and sees
itself as helpless, limited and weak.
Dissociated from its function now,
it thinks it is alone and separate,
attacked by armies massed against itself
and hiding in the body's frail support.
Now must it reconcile unlike with like,
for this is what it thinks that it is for.
Waste no more time on this. Who can resolve
the senseless conflicts which a dream presents?
What could the resolution mean in truth?
What purpose could it serve? What is it for?
alvation cannot make illusions real,
nor solve a problem that does not exist.
Perhaps you hope it can. Yet would you have
God's plan for the release of His dear Son
bring pain to him, and fail to set him free?
Your Self retains Its Thoughts, and they remain
within your mind and in the Mind of God.
The Holy Spirit holds salvation in
your mind, and offers it the way to peace.
Salvation is a thought you share with God,
because His Voice accepted it for you
and answered in your name that it was done.
Thus is salvation kept among the Thoughts
your Self holds dear and cherishes for you.
We will attempt today to find this thought,
whose presence in your mind is guaranteed
by Him Who speaks to you from your one Self.
Our hourly five-minute practicing
will be a search for Him within your mind.
Salvation comes from this one Self through Him
Who is the Bridge between your mind and It.
Wait patiently, and let Him speak to you
about your Self, and what your mind can do,
restored to It and free to serve Its Will.
Begin with saying this:
Salvation comes from my one Self.
Its Thoughts are mine to use.
Then seek Its Thoughts, and claim them as your own.
These are your own real thoughts you have denied,
and let your mind go wandering in a world
of dreams, to find illusions in their place.
Here are your thoughts, the only ones you have.
Salvation is among them; find it there.
If you succeed, the thoughts that come to you
will tell you you are saved, and that your mind
has found the function that it sought to lose.
Your Self will welcome it and give it peace.
Restored in strength, it will again flow out
from spirit to the spirit in all things
created by the Spirit as Itself.
Your mind will bless all things. Confusion done,
you are restored, for you have found your Self.
Your Self knows that you cannot fail today.
Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet
a little while. Be not dismayed by this.
The joy your Self experiences It
will save for you, and it will yet be yours
in full awareness. Every time you spend
five minutes of the hour seeking Him
Who joins your mind and Self, you offer Him
another treasure to be kept for you.
Each time today you tell your frantic mind
salvation comes from your one Self, you lay
another treasure in your growing store.
And all of it is given everyone
who asks for it, and will accept the gift.
Think, then, how much is given unto you
to give this day, that it be given you!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Things I Say to Myself to Wake up from the Dream and Sink into the Peace of God
Walking around in the dream, I too often forget the truth of what I am. Remembering that I am God’s holy Son requires great vigilance and determination and dedication. The temptation to forget that I am already safe at Home is very powerful. It is always a matter of forgetting and remembering, moment to moment.
It’s like walking into a movie theatre, finding your seat, settling in while the lights dim and the credits roll, then watching the images projected onto the blank screen, getting caught up in the story, losing all sense of your surroundings, until the ending credits begin to scroll down the screen and the lights brighten. You slowly come to our senses, putting on your familiar persona like your coat, and walk out of the theatre, forgetting that there’s absolutely no difference between the images on the movie screen and the images that are now flooding your screen. They are equally unreal.
I find myself walking through the day usually absorbed in these images. When I become aware of this absorption, I ask for help to remember that they are simply thoughts I have made, thrown out onto the blank screen by my personal projector.
God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are. T-10.V.11:6-7
It helps me to remember what I am by saying these things to myself.
. . .state of mind
I frequently repeat this sentence from Brother Laurence, “It’s not what you do, it’s the state of mind in which you do it.” This reminder quickly takes me to the realization that there is only one state of mind, the peace of God, but there appears to be another, the state ruled by a little speck in my brain called the ego, having no source in reality. From this state are projected thought-images that are over the moment they occur.
. . .not of the world
In that sense, I am in the world, but not of the world. I am walking around in a projected world, but I am not of this world because I can choose to ask for help to be in the state of mind of the peace of God. In this state I am lifted out of the world of my projections.
. . .the eyes of Christ
When I am in this state, the only state there is, I see through the eyes of Christ. I am always looking into a mirror. Through Christ’s eyes I experience the reflection of peace, joy, love, light, truth, perfection, oneness, reality.
. . .the body’s eyes
When I see through the body’s eyes, I experience fear, guilt, conflict, pain, anxiety, depression. It is always either/or, Christ’s eyes, or the body’s eyes. It’s on or off; it is always my choice, Heaven or hell.
. . .joining with my brother
I experience hell when I see my brother’s body and his behavior and find myself making judgments, using the pronoun you, attacking and blaming him, putting everything outside of myself. I experience Heaven when I look through his body and behavior and see the face of Christ reflecting back to me, using the pronoun I, taking full responsibility for what I am experiencing. In this state of mind we join, and I can experience His bright reflection.
. . ."I” need help
I always need help, and it always helps me to take a look at who this “I” is. First of all, there is only one I, the one created by God. But this separate “I” can appear to be seduced by the ego, taking on the ego’s persona and allying with it. I need help to break away from this unholy alliance and join with my Christ Self, and then I am at safe at Home, still as God created me.
. . .familiar versus the Real
This seduction is a result of my conditioning as a body. I find that trusting the body’s senses of sight and sound and smell and taste and touch make a world that is completely familiar, natural, habitual, normal, ordinary, and universal. I forget that this is an unholy alliance made by my projected thought-images. I come to learn that what cannot be sensed is Real, and what is Real is perfectly natural.
. . .the Holy Spirit
Thank God, help is already here in my mind. The Holy Spirit’s is the bridge between my states of mind, my state of dreaming and my state of reality and peace. It is simply, and profoundly, a matter of remembering and forgetting. When I truly ask for help to remember, all of the power of the universe rushes in to help me because that is what I am as God’s Son. When I forget, I am making up a world where nothing is happening. An image appears and quickly vanishes; it’s over. As a waiter said to me the other day as he served me my lunch, after he had recited to me a long list of personal woes, “I said to myself, it ain’t happening.”
. . .gratitude
When I come into the awareness of the only thing that is really happening, now, I am filled with gratitude. When I am grateful and my mind is still, I find that I am most receptive. In this state, I can more easily hear the Voice for God speaking to me all through the day. This Voice prompts me, and I simply do the next thing.
It’s like walking into a movie theatre, finding your seat, settling in while the lights dim and the credits roll, then watching the images projected onto the blank screen, getting caught up in the story, losing all sense of your surroundings, until the ending credits begin to scroll down the screen and the lights brighten. You slowly come to our senses, putting on your familiar persona like your coat, and walk out of the theatre, forgetting that there’s absolutely no difference between the images on the movie screen and the images that are now flooding your screen. They are equally unreal.
I find myself walking through the day usually absorbed in these images. When I become aware of this absorption, I ask for help to remember that they are simply thoughts I have made, thrown out onto the blank screen by my personal projector.
God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are. T-10.V.11:6-7
It helps me to remember what I am by saying these things to myself.
. . .state of mind
I frequently repeat this sentence from Brother Laurence, “It’s not what you do, it’s the state of mind in which you do it.” This reminder quickly takes me to the realization that there is only one state of mind, the peace of God, but there appears to be another, the state ruled by a little speck in my brain called the ego, having no source in reality. From this state are projected thought-images that are over the moment they occur.
. . .not of the world
In that sense, I am in the world, but not of the world. I am walking around in a projected world, but I am not of this world because I can choose to ask for help to be in the state of mind of the peace of God. In this state I am lifted out of the world of my projections.
. . .the eyes of Christ
When I am in this state, the only state there is, I see through the eyes of Christ. I am always looking into a mirror. Through Christ’s eyes I experience the reflection of peace, joy, love, light, truth, perfection, oneness, reality.
. . .the body’s eyes
When I see through the body’s eyes, I experience fear, guilt, conflict, pain, anxiety, depression. It is always either/or, Christ’s eyes, or the body’s eyes. It’s on or off; it is always my choice, Heaven or hell.
. . .joining with my brother
I experience hell when I see my brother’s body and his behavior and find myself making judgments, using the pronoun you, attacking and blaming him, putting everything outside of myself. I experience Heaven when I look through his body and behavior and see the face of Christ reflecting back to me, using the pronoun I, taking full responsibility for what I am experiencing. In this state of mind we join, and I can experience His bright reflection.
. . ."I” need help
I always need help, and it always helps me to take a look at who this “I” is. First of all, there is only one I, the one created by God. But this separate “I” can appear to be seduced by the ego, taking on the ego’s persona and allying with it. I need help to break away from this unholy alliance and join with my Christ Self, and then I am at safe at Home, still as God created me.
. . .familiar versus the Real
This seduction is a result of my conditioning as a body. I find that trusting the body’s senses of sight and sound and smell and taste and touch make a world that is completely familiar, natural, habitual, normal, ordinary, and universal. I forget that this is an unholy alliance made by my projected thought-images. I come to learn that what cannot be sensed is Real, and what is Real is perfectly natural.
. . .the Holy Spirit
Thank God, help is already here in my mind. The Holy Spirit’s is the bridge between my states of mind, my state of dreaming and my state of reality and peace. It is simply, and profoundly, a matter of remembering and forgetting. When I truly ask for help to remember, all of the power of the universe rushes in to help me because that is what I am as God’s Son. When I forget, I am making up a world where nothing is happening. An image appears and quickly vanishes; it’s over. As a waiter said to me the other day as he served me my lunch, after he had recited to me a long list of personal woes, “I said to myself, it ain’t happening.”
. . .gratitude
When I come into the awareness of the only thing that is really happening, now, I am filled with gratitude. When I am grateful and my mind is still, I find that I am most receptive. In this state, I can more easily hear the Voice for God speaking to me all through the day. This Voice prompts me, and I simply do the next thing.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The Inevitability of Hearing the Voice for God
A couple of days ago I came across an article in The New York Times by a journalist, Sara Rimer, “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers.” Apparently, the novel, written over 80 years ago, is speaking to high school students now, particularly immigrants.
BOSTON — Jinzhao Wang, 14, who immigrated two years ago from China, has never seen anything like the huge mansions that loomed over Long Island Sound in glamorous 1920s New York. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, with its themes of possibility and aspiration, speaks to her.
She is inspired by the green light at the end of the dock, which for Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire from North Dakota, symbolizes the upper-class woman he longs for. “Green color always represents hope,” Jinzhao said.
“My green light?” said Jinzhao, who has been studying “Gatsby” in her sophomore English class at the Boston Latin School. “My green light is Harvard.”
Gatsby, of course, is the doomed dreamer in the novel who is obsessed with his love for Daisy, a woman he courted eight years previously, and now believes that he can repeat the past and win her love, again. When we first encounter him in the novel, he is staring at the green light at the end of her dock across the bay, symbolizing his romantic dream.
This article brought back memories for me because in March of 1965 I wrote a critical essay and lesson plan on The Great Gatsby, “A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching from The University of Chicago.” Over the years, through all the moves from city to city, I managed to keep a copy of that essay. I found it yesterday and read it for the first time since I wrote it so long ago. Just holding it in my hands takes me back. It is a copy of the original that was submitted, a carbon copy, thin, yellowing paper with gray carriage marks of the typewriter, dark, shadowy columns running down each page. Sometimes letters are hard to read because I had used Whiteout to type corrections on the original. I had typed it on my portable Remington, a thoughtful and practical gift from by parents for my high school graduation.
This seventeen-page essay actually holds up quite well after all these years. I can see that my young, scholarly self took his task seriously. In preparation for writing it, I had read Fitzgerald’s other novels, his short stories, and a dozen books of literary criticism. My young self argued his thesis rather tenaciously.
Now, there is only one reason for this nostalgic look at this past event, and the word “nostalgic” is just right, because the word means “a longing for home,” from the Greek nostos, meaning "homecoming," and algos, "pain." The home I am referring to here is being Home in God.
This world you seem to live in is not home
to you. And somewhere in your mind you know
that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place
that called you to return, although you do
not recognize the voice, nor what it is
the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel
an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.
Nothing so definite that you could say
with certainty you are an exile here.
Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not
more than a tiny throb, at other times
hardly remembered, actively dismissed,
but surely to return to mind again.
W-p1.182.1
One of my favorite themes is that we are always being spoken to by this Voice, whether or not we hear it. It is inevitable as God’s Son that we hear His Voice, even though we are doing everything in our power to defend ourselves against hearing His Voice. In fact, hearing it is completely natural, and not hearing, or defending ourselves against it, is completely unnatural.
It is quite possible to listen to God's Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. W-p1.49.1:1-3
The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. 2:1,2
Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. You do not live here. We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God. 4:4-8
Now back to writing my essay on the novel.
The thesis that I tenaciously articulated is a result of hearing the Voice in the form of an idea that struck me. Across the years this has remains a vivid memory for me.
I remember facing a deadline and sitting down at my typewriter on a Saturday night in my room where I lived in a house on Harper Avenue, a few blocks from the University of Chicago campus. I had worked on the paper for five hours. But when I finished, I was in despair because I knew it had not come together. It lacked a clear focus, I had begun rambling and, basically, summarized the chapters as I went through the novel. I stood up, grabbed the sheets of paper and tore them up.
It was midnight, and out of fear and depression and despair, I decided to take a walk along the nearby beach of Lake Michigan, just across Lake Shore Drive. Of course, my critical voice was attacking me, telling me that I wouldn’t be able to graduate; I wouldn’t be able to move on with a career; I would just be stuck.
At that time, of course, I had no idea that I could ask for help. I thought that I was totally alone in the universe. I didn’t have the slightest idea that I was God’s Son, no idea that I was anything except this wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind, constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain. W-p1.49.2:3
Nevertheless, walking along the beach, my hands in my pockets, my head down, I was suddenly struck with an idea in the form of a soft voice, telling me to focus the entire paper on the question of the reliability of the first-person narrator, Nick Carraway. This just seemed to click. "Eureka!" My despair lifted, I looked up at the stars and felt renewed.
The next day I woke up running the idea, the gift, through my mind, and it felt just right. Since the reader is seeing all of the events through Nick Carraway’s eyes, I could focus on him, his value structure, and how he evaluated the behavior of each of the characters. With this key firmly in mind, I sat down the next day, after a peaceful sleep, and rather easily typed the essay.
Here are some excerpts from the essay, demonstrating the implementation of the idea that came to me on the beach, a gift from the Voice for God.
Nick Carraway, our guide in the form of a first-person narrator, is deeply involved with the other characters. Participating in the action and evaluating events with knowledge of what preceded and what followed them, Nick proves to be a completely reliable narrator. When he describes Tom and adds that “There were men at New Haven who had hated his guts,” we accept this as a significant appraisal of Tom. When he steps back and openly reacts to a character after describing him or her, he helps the reader see the character more clearly. For example, after describing Jordan Baker, he says, “Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.” His response to Daisy, evident in his description of her, fixes her in the reader’s mind for the rest of the novel, “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget.”
By gradually revealing more and more about Gatsby through Nick, whose judgments remain consistent with the reader’s, Fitzgerald manages to keep Gatsby unreal and mysterious. Had Fitzgerald revealed more about Gatsby in the beginning, this effect would have been lost. He had to maintain this effect to prepare the reader to accept Gatsby as the tragic dreamer who eventually “breaks up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.”
So there we are. In spite my limited self, I had heard the Holy Spirit speak to me. No mind training. No Bible training. No Transcendental Meditation. It is inevitable, meaning “something that is certain to happen,” from the Latin, inevitabilis, meaning “unavoidable.” It is completely natural. We are as God created us.
What am I?
I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,
shining in the reflection of His Love.
In me is His creation sanctified
and guaranteed eternal life. In me
is love perfected, fear impossible,
and joy established without opposite.
I am the holy home of God Himself.
I am the Heaven where His Love resides.
I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,
for in my purity abides His Own.
W-p11.14.1
What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit mediates between
illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge
the gap between reality and dreams,
perception leads to knowledge through the grace
that God has given Him, to be His gift to
everyone who turns to Him for truth.
Across the bridge that He provides are dreams
all carried to the truth, to be dispelled
before the light of knowledge. There are sights
and sounds forever laid aside. And where
they were perceived before, forgiveness has
made possible perception's tranquil end.
W-p11.7.1
So, I did graduate from the program, and my first job was teaching English in a junior high school in Westport, Connecticut. Pursuing my dream within a dream, my green light was to blend my passion for teaching with earning a living. Four years after I graduated from the Master’s Program, my Supervisor, Janet Emig, called me in Westport, telling me of a new opportunity at the University of Chicago. They were starting a new program called The Teaching of Teachers, and it led to a Ph.D. from the Education Department. She thought I would be a good candidate. And much to my surprise, she said that she found herself often using my critical essay as an example when she was assigning the paper to her students.
So, after four years of teaching in Westport, I continued pursuing my particular green light. I felt the nostalgia of returning to Chicago, and somehow the Voice on the beach and the writing of the essay and Janet’s remembering it and her call were all taking me home, in retropspect, taking me Home. In September of 1969, just after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, my wife, Kim, and our two children, Lori (4) and Stephen (6 months) jumped into our ’65 Volkswagen Beetle, and I followed them in a U-Haul Truck, heading for Chicago.
It’s all good. In spite of ourselves, it is inevitable that we are going Home, a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. T-8.VI.9:7
BOSTON — Jinzhao Wang, 14, who immigrated two years ago from China, has never seen anything like the huge mansions that loomed over Long Island Sound in glamorous 1920s New York. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, with its themes of possibility and aspiration, speaks to her.
She is inspired by the green light at the end of the dock, which for Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire from North Dakota, symbolizes the upper-class woman he longs for. “Green color always represents hope,” Jinzhao said.
“My green light?” said Jinzhao, who has been studying “Gatsby” in her sophomore English class at the Boston Latin School. “My green light is Harvard.”
Gatsby, of course, is the doomed dreamer in the novel who is obsessed with his love for Daisy, a woman he courted eight years previously, and now believes that he can repeat the past and win her love, again. When we first encounter him in the novel, he is staring at the green light at the end of her dock across the bay, symbolizing his romantic dream.
This article brought back memories for me because in March of 1965 I wrote a critical essay and lesson plan on The Great Gatsby, “A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching from The University of Chicago.” Over the years, through all the moves from city to city, I managed to keep a copy of that essay. I found it yesterday and read it for the first time since I wrote it so long ago. Just holding it in my hands takes me back. It is a copy of the original that was submitted, a carbon copy, thin, yellowing paper with gray carriage marks of the typewriter, dark, shadowy columns running down each page. Sometimes letters are hard to read because I had used Whiteout to type corrections on the original. I had typed it on my portable Remington, a thoughtful and practical gift from by parents for my high school graduation.
This seventeen-page essay actually holds up quite well after all these years. I can see that my young, scholarly self took his task seriously. In preparation for writing it, I had read Fitzgerald’s other novels, his short stories, and a dozen books of literary criticism. My young self argued his thesis rather tenaciously.
Now, there is only one reason for this nostalgic look at this past event, and the word “nostalgic” is just right, because the word means “a longing for home,” from the Greek nostos, meaning "homecoming," and algos, "pain." The home I am referring to here is being Home in God.
This world you seem to live in is not home
to you. And somewhere in your mind you know
that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place
that called you to return, although you do
not recognize the voice, nor what it is
the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel
an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.
Nothing so definite that you could say
with certainty you are an exile here.
Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not
more than a tiny throb, at other times
hardly remembered, actively dismissed,
but surely to return to mind again.
W-p1.182.1
One of my favorite themes is that we are always being spoken to by this Voice, whether or not we hear it. It is inevitable as God’s Son that we hear His Voice, even though we are doing everything in our power to defend ourselves against hearing His Voice. In fact, hearing it is completely natural, and not hearing, or defending ourselves against it, is completely unnatural.
It is quite possible to listen to God's Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. W-p1.49.1:1-3
The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. 2:1,2
Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. You do not live here. We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God. 4:4-8
Now back to writing my essay on the novel.
The thesis that I tenaciously articulated is a result of hearing the Voice in the form of an idea that struck me. Across the years this has remains a vivid memory for me.
I remember facing a deadline and sitting down at my typewriter on a Saturday night in my room where I lived in a house on Harper Avenue, a few blocks from the University of Chicago campus. I had worked on the paper for five hours. But when I finished, I was in despair because I knew it had not come together. It lacked a clear focus, I had begun rambling and, basically, summarized the chapters as I went through the novel. I stood up, grabbed the sheets of paper and tore them up.
It was midnight, and out of fear and depression and despair, I decided to take a walk along the nearby beach of Lake Michigan, just across Lake Shore Drive. Of course, my critical voice was attacking me, telling me that I wouldn’t be able to graduate; I wouldn’t be able to move on with a career; I would just be stuck.
At that time, of course, I had no idea that I could ask for help. I thought that I was totally alone in the universe. I didn’t have the slightest idea that I was God’s Son, no idea that I was anything except this wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind, constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain. W-p1.49.2:3
Nevertheless, walking along the beach, my hands in my pockets, my head down, I was suddenly struck with an idea in the form of a soft voice, telling me to focus the entire paper on the question of the reliability of the first-person narrator, Nick Carraway. This just seemed to click. "Eureka!" My despair lifted, I looked up at the stars and felt renewed.
The next day I woke up running the idea, the gift, through my mind, and it felt just right. Since the reader is seeing all of the events through Nick Carraway’s eyes, I could focus on him, his value structure, and how he evaluated the behavior of each of the characters. With this key firmly in mind, I sat down the next day, after a peaceful sleep, and rather easily typed the essay.
Here are some excerpts from the essay, demonstrating the implementation of the idea that came to me on the beach, a gift from the Voice for God.
Nick Carraway, our guide in the form of a first-person narrator, is deeply involved with the other characters. Participating in the action and evaluating events with knowledge of what preceded and what followed them, Nick proves to be a completely reliable narrator. When he describes Tom and adds that “There were men at New Haven who had hated his guts,” we accept this as a significant appraisal of Tom. When he steps back and openly reacts to a character after describing him or her, he helps the reader see the character more clearly. For example, after describing Jordan Baker, he says, “Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.” His response to Daisy, evident in his description of her, fixes her in the reader’s mind for the rest of the novel, “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget.”
By gradually revealing more and more about Gatsby through Nick, whose judgments remain consistent with the reader’s, Fitzgerald manages to keep Gatsby unreal and mysterious. Had Fitzgerald revealed more about Gatsby in the beginning, this effect would have been lost. He had to maintain this effect to prepare the reader to accept Gatsby as the tragic dreamer who eventually “breaks up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.”
So there we are. In spite my limited self, I had heard the Holy Spirit speak to me. No mind training. No Bible training. No Transcendental Meditation. It is inevitable, meaning “something that is certain to happen,” from the Latin, inevitabilis, meaning “unavoidable.” It is completely natural. We are as God created us.
What am I?
I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,
shining in the reflection of His Love.
In me is His creation sanctified
and guaranteed eternal life. In me
is love perfected, fear impossible,
and joy established without opposite.
I am the holy home of God Himself.
I am the Heaven where His Love resides.
I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,
for in my purity abides His Own.
W-p11.14.1
What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit mediates between
illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge
the gap between reality and dreams,
perception leads to knowledge through the grace
that God has given Him, to be His gift to
everyone who turns to Him for truth.
Across the bridge that He provides are dreams
all carried to the truth, to be dispelled
before the light of knowledge. There are sights
and sounds forever laid aside. And where
they were perceived before, forgiveness has
made possible perception's tranquil end.
W-p11.7.1
So, I did graduate from the program, and my first job was teaching English in a junior high school in Westport, Connecticut. Pursuing my dream within a dream, my green light was to blend my passion for teaching with earning a living. Four years after I graduated from the Master’s Program, my Supervisor, Janet Emig, called me in Westport, telling me of a new opportunity at the University of Chicago. They were starting a new program called The Teaching of Teachers, and it led to a Ph.D. from the Education Department. She thought I would be a good candidate. And much to my surprise, she said that she found herself often using my critical essay as an example when she was assigning the paper to her students.
So, after four years of teaching in Westport, I continued pursuing my particular green light. I felt the nostalgia of returning to Chicago, and somehow the Voice on the beach and the writing of the essay and Janet’s remembering it and her call were all taking me home, in retropspect, taking me Home. In September of 1969, just after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, my wife, Kim, and our two children, Lori (4) and Stephen (6 months) jumped into our ’65 Volkswagen Beetle, and I followed them in a U-Haul Truck, heading for Chicago.
It’s all good. In spite of ourselves, it is inevitable that we are going Home, a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. T-8.VI.9:7
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Resting in the Expanded Consciousness of Holiness
Yesterday, it took four hours for my son, Stephen, and I to drive the 125 miles from the Wisconsin Dells to the Milwaukee Airport because of the record-setting snowstorm. We were totally stopped several times because of overturned semi-trucks. I learned the next day that over 800 motorists were stranded, and the National Guard was called out to help the motorists and clear the highway.
I dropped him off and decided to return right away because his Toyota Tundra had handled very nicely in the snow and ice. As he pointed out to me, because of the four-wheel drive and the tires, he could actually accelerate in the snowy passing lane, maintaining steady traction.
When I arrived on the outskirts of Madison, I was moving along rather well. Suddenly, I slammed on the brakes, and the Tundra became a huge sled, out of control on an icy, three-lane highway. I slammed on the breaks because I suddenly realized that I was about to back end a semi-truck. What happened is that ground suddenly became figure. What I saw as a car’s tail lights at a safe distance ahead suddenly became a semi’s tail lights a few feet in front of me. It was a perceptual distortion that often happens to me at night driving along the highway, staring at tail lights. Ordinarily, the sudden shift from ground to figure is trippy, but this time. . .well, I was completely present during the spin, my head staying completely calm and clear and alert. I said to myself, you just turned the steering wheel hard to the right, now you’re going to have to turn it hard to the left. I noted that there weren’t any cars coming up on me, and all I had to do is ride out the smooth slide, gliding down a three-lane highway. Finally, I came to a stop, facing three-quarters to the rear; I just turned around and proceeded on my way. My heart rate did not accelerate, and my head remained peaceful and clear, during and after the event. I just said, “Thank you, Jesus.”
This morning I was astonished to read the first paragraph of Lesson 38, There is nothing my holiness cannot do, from Jesus' Course in Miracles.
Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator.
Two days before this event, I was completely inspired by reading a classic book given me by a friend, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas (1924-1997), first published in 1972. I read it from cover to cover in a three-hour sitting, taking copious notes. I was so excited reading it because it is the Course with different metaphors. Golos uses the metaphor of contracted and expanded awareness, and holiness is expanded awareness.
Golas expresses it this way.
Contraction is felt as fear, pain, unconsciousness, ignorance, hatred, evil, and a whole host of strange feelings. At an extreme he has the feeling of being completely insane, of resisting everyone and everything, of being unable to choose the content of his consciousness. Of course, these are just the feelings appropriate to mass vibration levels, and he can get out of them at any time by expanding, by letting go of all resistance to what he thinks, sees, or feels. When we are completely expanded, we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with all life. At that level we have no resistance to any vibrations or interactions of other beings. It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.
Expanded awareness is speeded up vibration. When we are at this vibration level, everything around us in time and space moves slowly, and now we are truly in the world, but not of the world. That was my experience in the spinning sled.
Golas expresses the contrast of slow vibrations.
Note carefully that when your vibrations are slow, or contracted, events seem to happen fast, and you will feel that events are happening too fast for you to control them. And you may therefore feel impelled to try that much harder to exercise control. The slower your vibrations, the more unpleasant your life: you will contend with more conflict, mass, and pain. Events will happen too fast for control, yet time will seem interminable because you can see no way out. But the faster you are vibrating and the more messages you get back from your environment, the slower events will appear to be happening, and the more you will feel you are in control. The more you love, the faster you vibrate, then the less need you feel to control anything, and you are not fearful of change and variety. You experience everything deeper and slower and more lovingly.
The higher the ratio of expansion to contraction in yourself, the more expanded and loving you are, the faster you vibrate. And when you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better. Love is the strongest magic of all.
There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it.
It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.
The purpose of today's exercises is to begin to instill in you a sense that you have dominion over all things because of what you are.
Thank you, Father.
I dropped him off and decided to return right away because his Toyota Tundra had handled very nicely in the snow and ice. As he pointed out to me, because of the four-wheel drive and the tires, he could actually accelerate in the snowy passing lane, maintaining steady traction.
When I arrived on the outskirts of Madison, I was moving along rather well. Suddenly, I slammed on the brakes, and the Tundra became a huge sled, out of control on an icy, three-lane highway. I slammed on the breaks because I suddenly realized that I was about to back end a semi-truck. What happened is that ground suddenly became figure. What I saw as a car’s tail lights at a safe distance ahead suddenly became a semi’s tail lights a few feet in front of me. It was a perceptual distortion that often happens to me at night driving along the highway, staring at tail lights. Ordinarily, the sudden shift from ground to figure is trippy, but this time. . .well, I was completely present during the spin, my head staying completely calm and clear and alert. I said to myself, you just turned the steering wheel hard to the right, now you’re going to have to turn it hard to the left. I noted that there weren’t any cars coming up on me, and all I had to do is ride out the smooth slide, gliding down a three-lane highway. Finally, I came to a stop, facing three-quarters to the rear; I just turned around and proceeded on my way. My heart rate did not accelerate, and my head remained peaceful and clear, during and after the event. I just said, “Thank you, Jesus.”
This morning I was astonished to read the first paragraph of Lesson 38, There is nothing my holiness cannot do, from Jesus' Course in Miracles.
Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator.
Two days before this event, I was completely inspired by reading a classic book given me by a friend, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas (1924-1997), first published in 1972. I read it from cover to cover in a three-hour sitting, taking copious notes. I was so excited reading it because it is the Course with different metaphors. Golos uses the metaphor of contracted and expanded awareness, and holiness is expanded awareness.
Golas expresses it this way.
Contraction is felt as fear, pain, unconsciousness, ignorance, hatred, evil, and a whole host of strange feelings. At an extreme he has the feeling of being completely insane, of resisting everyone and everything, of being unable to choose the content of his consciousness. Of course, these are just the feelings appropriate to mass vibration levels, and he can get out of them at any time by expanding, by letting go of all resistance to what he thinks, sees, or feels. When we are completely expanded, we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with all life. At that level we have no resistance to any vibrations or interactions of other beings. It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.
Expanded awareness is speeded up vibration. When we are at this vibration level, everything around us in time and space moves slowly, and now we are truly in the world, but not of the world. That was my experience in the spinning sled.
Golas expresses the contrast of slow vibrations.
Note carefully that when your vibrations are slow, or contracted, events seem to happen fast, and you will feel that events are happening too fast for you to control them. And you may therefore feel impelled to try that much harder to exercise control. The slower your vibrations, the more unpleasant your life: you will contend with more conflict, mass, and pain. Events will happen too fast for control, yet time will seem interminable because you can see no way out. But the faster you are vibrating and the more messages you get back from your environment, the slower events will appear to be happening, and the more you will feel you are in control. The more you love, the faster you vibrate, then the less need you feel to control anything, and you are not fearful of change and variety. You experience everything deeper and slower and more lovingly.
The higher the ratio of expansion to contraction in yourself, the more expanded and loving you are, the faster you vibrate. And when you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better. Love is the strongest magic of all.
There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it.
It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.
The purpose of today's exercises is to begin to instill in you a sense that you have dominion over all things because of what you are.
Thank you, Father.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Happy New Year! Rest in God
I started the new year with an extraordinary experience. My wife, Christine, and I were staying with our friends, Carol and Dan, in Lansing, Michigan, at their C D Inn. As I was slowly waking up on New Year’s Day, I just lay there with my eyes closed for awhile. We would be driving back home soon, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could not visualize the house in Wisconsin Dells where we have been living for the past ten years; I simply could not bring it to mind.
I rather enjoyed this not knowing and wanted to prolong it as long as possible. This lovely state of formlessness was very peaceful. When I told a friend, Tanja, about this experience, she smiled and said, “It sounds like enlightened amnesia,” capturing exactly my response to this state of mind at that moment. This still state of mind served as a reference point for sentences from A Course in Miracles, for example:
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me. W-p1.rVI.In.3:3
This state of mind where the reference point is not form but formlessness is the stillness of my creation as God’s Son. Being unable to formulate for a moment, this enlightened amnesia, is a refreshing, peaceful experience that runs counter to the normal, habitual, regular formulation of thought-images that we manifest in space and time. This experience serves as an example of stepping out of time and space. This is our true state of consciousness before coming into the world of form, while being in form, and after leaving.
This state is what is Real.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God. W-p1.In.2:2-4
This reality in my mind is the reference point for a variety of metaphors simply expressed in Lesson titles:
I am the light of the world. (Lesson 61)
The light has come. (Lesson 75)
Light and joy and peace abide in me. (Lesson 93)
I am as God created me. (Lesson 94)
I am one Self, united with my Creator. (Lesson 95)
I am spirit. (Lesson 97)
I rest in God. (Lesson 109)
Let me remember I am one with God. (Lesson 124)
The world I see holds nothing I want. (Lesson 129)
These metaphors provide a great way to enter a new year because on January 1st. I begin, again, the Lessons of A Course in Miracles. Ensconced in the state of mind of the peace and light of God, I am eager to read Lesson 1, Nothing I see means anything. From this reference point of the awareness of the peace of God, the falsity of what I see is readily apparent. It is a reminder that what I am as created by God has nothing to do with the physical form. I am God's Son regardless of the world I made up with separating thoughts.
It is from this perspective, meaning “to look through,” that I can look at the titles of Lessons 2-7 as reminders.
I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me. (Lesson 2)
I do not understand anything I see in this room. (Lesson 3)
These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room. (Lesson 4)
I am never upset for the reason I think. (Lesson 5)
I am upset because I see something that is not there. (Lesson 6)
I see only the past. (Lesson 7)
Jesus is simply telling us what we already know but forgot that we know. Because of our preoccupation with seeing in form, we stay unaware of our Real state of mind. That is why Jesus uses “see” in these titles, demonstrating the falsity of what we take for granted, the falsity of the premise that seeing is believing.
It is a done deal. What we are in Reality has nothing to do with what we see around us.
And now I am going to practice the awareness of our Reality by reading and commenting on the first five paragraphs of Lesson 109, I rest in God.
We ask for rest today, and quietness
unshaken by the world's appearances.
We ask for peace and stillness, in the midst
of all the turmoil born of clashing dreams.
We ask for safety and for happiness,
although we seem to look on danger and
on sorrow. And we have the thought that will
answer our asking with what we request.
Bringing my house into existence by remembering it is just an example of entering into the world's appearances with my thought-images. Recognizing the falsity of these thoughts enables me to shift into the awareness of the peace of God.
"I rest in God." This thought will bring to you
the rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and
the safety and the happiness you seek.
"I rest in God." This thought has power to wake
the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees
beyond appearances to that same truth
in everyone and everything there is.
Here is the end of suffering for all
the world, and everyone who ever came
and yet will come to linger for a while.
Here is the thought in which the Son of God
is born again, to recognize himself.
When I have this thought, this recognition, I am, again, in my awareness, God’s Son, shifting away from thought-images, experiencing the truth.
"I rest in God." Completely undismayed,
this thought will carry you through storms and strife,
past misery and pain, past loss and death,
and onward to the certainty of God.
There is no suffering it cannot heal.
There is no problem that it cannot solve.
And no appearance but will turn to truth
before the eyes of you who rest in God.
Resting in God, I look out at a world through the eyes of Christ, seeing with vision, not seeing only with the physical mechanism of my eyes wired to my brain.
This is the day of peace. You rest in God,
and while the world is torn by winds of hate
your rest remains completely undisturbed.
Yours is the rest of truth. Appearances
cannot intrude on you. You call to all
to join you in your rest, and they will hear
and come to you because you rest in God.
They will not hear another voice than yours
because you gave your voice to God, and now
you rest in Him and let Him speak through you.
The winds of hate remind me of a metaphor of an anchor. On a sailboat, you can lower the sail and drop anchor. Now no matter how fierce the winds, or powerful the waves, you can ride out the storm safely anchored. I can ask for help to be safely anchored in the peace of God, forgiving the feverish thought-images that seem to be wreaking havoc in time and space.
In Him you have no cares and no concerns,
no burdens, no anxiety, no pain,
no fear of future and no past regrets.
In timelessness you rest, while time goes by
without its touch upon you, for your rest
can never change in any way at all.
You rest today. And as you close your eyes,
sink into stillness. Let these periods
of rest and respite reassure your mind
that all its frantic fantasies were but
the dreams of fever that has passed away.
Let it be still and thankfully accept
its healing. No more fearful dreams will come,
now that you rest in God. Take time today
to slip away from dreams and into peace.
I sink into the peace of God. This is what it means to be in the world but not of the world, walking through the world, all the time anchored in the peace of God.
I rather enjoyed this not knowing and wanted to prolong it as long as possible. This lovely state of formlessness was very peaceful. When I told a friend, Tanja, about this experience, she smiled and said, “It sounds like enlightened amnesia,” capturing exactly my response to this state of mind at that moment. This still state of mind served as a reference point for sentences from A Course in Miracles, for example:
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me. W-p1.rVI.In.3:3
This state of mind where the reference point is not form but formlessness is the stillness of my creation as God’s Son. Being unable to formulate for a moment, this enlightened amnesia, is a refreshing, peaceful experience that runs counter to the normal, habitual, regular formulation of thought-images that we manifest in space and time. This experience serves as an example of stepping out of time and space. This is our true state of consciousness before coming into the world of form, while being in form, and after leaving.
This state is what is Real.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God. W-p1.In.2:2-4
This reality in my mind is the reference point for a variety of metaphors simply expressed in Lesson titles:
I am the light of the world. (Lesson 61)
The light has come. (Lesson 75)
Light and joy and peace abide in me. (Lesson 93)
I am as God created me. (Lesson 94)
I am one Self, united with my Creator. (Lesson 95)
I am spirit. (Lesson 97)
I rest in God. (Lesson 109)
Let me remember I am one with God. (Lesson 124)
The world I see holds nothing I want. (Lesson 129)
These metaphors provide a great way to enter a new year because on January 1st. I begin, again, the Lessons of A Course in Miracles. Ensconced in the state of mind of the peace and light of God, I am eager to read Lesson 1, Nothing I see means anything. From this reference point of the awareness of the peace of God, the falsity of what I see is readily apparent. It is a reminder that what I am as created by God has nothing to do with the physical form. I am God's Son regardless of the world I made up with separating thoughts.
It is from this perspective, meaning “to look through,” that I can look at the titles of Lessons 2-7 as reminders.
I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me. (Lesson 2)
I do not understand anything I see in this room. (Lesson 3)
These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room. (Lesson 4)
I am never upset for the reason I think. (Lesson 5)
I am upset because I see something that is not there. (Lesson 6)
I see only the past. (Lesson 7)
Jesus is simply telling us what we already know but forgot that we know. Because of our preoccupation with seeing in form, we stay unaware of our Real state of mind. That is why Jesus uses “see” in these titles, demonstrating the falsity of what we take for granted, the falsity of the premise that seeing is believing.
It is a done deal. What we are in Reality has nothing to do with what we see around us.
And now I am going to practice the awareness of our Reality by reading and commenting on the first five paragraphs of Lesson 109, I rest in God.
We ask for rest today, and quietness
unshaken by the world's appearances.
We ask for peace and stillness, in the midst
of all the turmoil born of clashing dreams.
We ask for safety and for happiness,
although we seem to look on danger and
on sorrow. And we have the thought that will
answer our asking with what we request.
Bringing my house into existence by remembering it is just an example of entering into the world's appearances with my thought-images. Recognizing the falsity of these thoughts enables me to shift into the awareness of the peace of God.
"I rest in God." This thought will bring to you
the rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and
the safety and the happiness you seek.
"I rest in God." This thought has power to wake
the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees
beyond appearances to that same truth
in everyone and everything there is.
Here is the end of suffering for all
the world, and everyone who ever came
and yet will come to linger for a while.
Here is the thought in which the Son of God
is born again, to recognize himself.
When I have this thought, this recognition, I am, again, in my awareness, God’s Son, shifting away from thought-images, experiencing the truth.
"I rest in God." Completely undismayed,
this thought will carry you through storms and strife,
past misery and pain, past loss and death,
and onward to the certainty of God.
There is no suffering it cannot heal.
There is no problem that it cannot solve.
And no appearance but will turn to truth
before the eyes of you who rest in God.
Resting in God, I look out at a world through the eyes of Christ, seeing with vision, not seeing only with the physical mechanism of my eyes wired to my brain.
This is the day of peace. You rest in God,
and while the world is torn by winds of hate
your rest remains completely undisturbed.
Yours is the rest of truth. Appearances
cannot intrude on you. You call to all
to join you in your rest, and they will hear
and come to you because you rest in God.
They will not hear another voice than yours
because you gave your voice to God, and now
you rest in Him and let Him speak through you.
The winds of hate remind me of a metaphor of an anchor. On a sailboat, you can lower the sail and drop anchor. Now no matter how fierce the winds, or powerful the waves, you can ride out the storm safely anchored. I can ask for help to be safely anchored in the peace of God, forgiving the feverish thought-images that seem to be wreaking havoc in time and space.
In Him you have no cares and no concerns,
no burdens, no anxiety, no pain,
no fear of future and no past regrets.
In timelessness you rest, while time goes by
without its touch upon you, for your rest
can never change in any way at all.
You rest today. And as you close your eyes,
sink into stillness. Let these periods
of rest and respite reassure your mind
that all its frantic fantasies were but
the dreams of fever that has passed away.
Let it be still and thankfully accept
its healing. No more fearful dreams will come,
now that you rest in God. Take time today
to slip away from dreams and into peace.
I sink into the peace of God. This is what it means to be in the world but not of the world, walking through the world, all the time anchored in the peace of God.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
God's Word
This little ditty came to me this morning after reading "What Am I?" in the Workbook of Jesus' unworldly masterpiece, A Course in Miracles.
God's Word
You are My Son.
You and I are One.
On earth it's done,
as in Heaven.
And now have fun.
God's Word
You are My Son.
You and I are One.
On earth it's done,
as in Heaven.
And now have fun.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Prose and Poetry in A Course in Miracles
A Course in Miracles, Jesus’ unworldly masterpiece, provides us with the offering to train our minds, systematically, to undo, by forgiveness, the dream of the false self and come into the direct awareness of our true Self.
While reading the sentences and paragraphs of the Text and doing the lessons in the workbook, we become aware of the perfect blend of medium and message, structure and content, sound and sense. For example, just look again at the Introduction.
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
This is a precise summary of 31 Chapters, 365 Lessons, and 29 sections of A Manual for Teachers, and it is only the beginning, simply and profoundly, an introduction.
In the regularly published version of the Course, the entire book appears to be in prose, although extraordinary poetic prose. What is astonishing is that Jesus makes a dramatic and clear shift from prose to poetry in both the Text and the Workbook. It is almost impossible to see this in the prose version. A close study by my friend, Steve Russell, reveals that the shift occurs in Chapter 26 of the Text, and in Lesson 98 of the Workbook. Thereafter, Chapters 26 through 31 and Lessons 98 through 365 are in blank verse, the verse that Shakespeare used for 80% of the lines of his 37 plays. Blank verse is a form of poetic meter called iambic pentameter. An iamb consists of two syllables, the stress on the second syllable, for example, chris TINE. Pentameter means five sets of iambs, or ten syllables. It is called blank verse because it is a form of verse that does not rhyme. (The term used for Shakespeare’s 154 Sonnets, for example, is iambic pentameter because they do follow a definite rhyme scheme.)
In Chapter 26, incidentally entitled, The Transition, Jesus makes the shift. In Section VII, The Laws of Healing, appears His last prose paragraph of the Text.
This is a course in miracles. As such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible it must occur.
The next paragraph, and all subsequent paragraphs in the Text, are aligned on the pages in blank verse.
All sickness comes from separation. When
the separation is denied, it goes.
For it is gone as soon as the idea
that brought it has been healed, and been replaced
by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen
as consequence and cause, in a relationship
kept hidden from awareness that it may
be carefully preserved from reason's light.
Do you hear it?
all SICK ness COMES from SEP ar A tion. WHEN
the SEP ar A tion IS de NIED, it GOES.
Now, Dear Reader, you can rhythmically read the rest of the stanza.
In the Workbook, Jesus uses blank verse for the first time for an entire lesson in Lesson 98, I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation, and for every lesson, thereafter. (For some reason, Lesson 78, Let miracles replace all grievances, suddenly appears completely in blank verse.)
While pondering Jesus’ shift into blank verse, I found a sentence coming into my mind from Lesson 336:
For sights
and sounds, at best, can serve but to recall
the memory that lies beyond them all.
This is a perfect blend of sound and sense. As far as sense, the sentence reminds me that the highest level of perception simply serves to evoke the memory of God. It does not serve to make a better dream. When we learn through the mind training to undo the dreams of the false self, all we are ever doing is living in anticipation of remembering God, our natural inheritance. This phrase also comes to mind from today’s Lesson 340.
I was born into this world but to achieve this day.
I am here only to learn to see through the eyes of Christ, remembering God. The highest function that sights and sounds serve is to elicit this inherent, abiding memory of God.
As far as sound, the rhythm of Jesus’ poetry evokes His memory.
My heart is beating in the peace of God. (Lesson 267 , Title)
Just listen.
Find your pulse in your neck or on your wrist. Simultaneous with each beat of your pulse, say HEART, BEAT, IN, PEACE, GOD.
Now say the sentence aloud, filling in between the beats with my, is, ing, the, of.
Now, all together.
my HEART is BEAT ing IN the PEACE of GOD.
Try this one.
The hush of heaven holds my heart today. (Lesson 286, Title )
And finally.
and SOUNDS, at BEST, can SERVE but TO re CALL
Simply reading Jesus’ poetry that aligns with the beating of your heart can transport you beyond this world by remembering God.
As far as sights, look at this passage from What is a Miracle?
Miracles fall like drops of healing rain
from Heaven on a dry and dusty world,
where starved and thirsty creatures come to die.
Now they have water. Now the world is green.
And everywhere the signs of life spring up,
to show that what is born can never die,
for what has life has immortality.
(Paragraph 5)
I am so grateful to my friend, Steve Russell, who gives us a much more thorough explanation of the shift in the Introduction to his book, The Rhythm and Reason of Reality. He shows us precisely where Jesus makes the transitions from prose to poetry in the Text and in the Workbook.
He told me some time ago, that he found himself hearing the iambic pattern while studying the Course, and then he, systematically, began to examine the entire prose version by sitting down at a computer with a CD of the Course, reading each paragraph aloud. I realize now that with his musician’s highly-trained ear, he was able to listen for the ten beats in the prose paragraphs, and then he hit the Enter key, and resume reading the next line, and much to his joy he saw the pages fill up with sheer poetry, paragraphs of prose transforming into stanzas of blank verse.
I invite you now to take a look at Steve Russell’s wonderful book, a gift to us all.
Click Here:
While reading the sentences and paragraphs of the Text and doing the lessons in the workbook, we become aware of the perfect blend of medium and message, structure and content, sound and sense. For example, just look again at the Introduction.
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
This is a precise summary of 31 Chapters, 365 Lessons, and 29 sections of A Manual for Teachers, and it is only the beginning, simply and profoundly, an introduction.
In the regularly published version of the Course, the entire book appears to be in prose, although extraordinary poetic prose. What is astonishing is that Jesus makes a dramatic and clear shift from prose to poetry in both the Text and the Workbook. It is almost impossible to see this in the prose version. A close study by my friend, Steve Russell, reveals that the shift occurs in Chapter 26 of the Text, and in Lesson 98 of the Workbook. Thereafter, Chapters 26 through 31 and Lessons 98 through 365 are in blank verse, the verse that Shakespeare used for 80% of the lines of his 37 plays. Blank verse is a form of poetic meter called iambic pentameter. An iamb consists of two syllables, the stress on the second syllable, for example, chris TINE. Pentameter means five sets of iambs, or ten syllables. It is called blank verse because it is a form of verse that does not rhyme. (The term used for Shakespeare’s 154 Sonnets, for example, is iambic pentameter because they do follow a definite rhyme scheme.)
In Chapter 26, incidentally entitled, The Transition, Jesus makes the shift. In Section VII, The Laws of Healing, appears His last prose paragraph of the Text.
This is a course in miracles. As such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible it must occur.
The next paragraph, and all subsequent paragraphs in the Text, are aligned on the pages in blank verse.
All sickness comes from separation. When
the separation is denied, it goes.
For it is gone as soon as the idea
that brought it has been healed, and been replaced
by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen
as consequence and cause, in a relationship
kept hidden from awareness that it may
be carefully preserved from reason's light.
Do you hear it?
all SICK ness COMES from SEP ar A tion. WHEN
the SEP ar A tion IS de NIED, it GOES.
Now, Dear Reader, you can rhythmically read the rest of the stanza.
In the Workbook, Jesus uses blank verse for the first time for an entire lesson in Lesson 98, I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation, and for every lesson, thereafter. (For some reason, Lesson 78, Let miracles replace all grievances, suddenly appears completely in blank verse.)
While pondering Jesus’ shift into blank verse, I found a sentence coming into my mind from Lesson 336:
For sights
and sounds, at best, can serve but to recall
the memory that lies beyond them all.
This is a perfect blend of sound and sense. As far as sense, the sentence reminds me that the highest level of perception simply serves to evoke the memory of God. It does not serve to make a better dream. When we learn through the mind training to undo the dreams of the false self, all we are ever doing is living in anticipation of remembering God, our natural inheritance. This phrase also comes to mind from today’s Lesson 340.
I was born into this world but to achieve this day.
I am here only to learn to see through the eyes of Christ, remembering God. The highest function that sights and sounds serve is to elicit this inherent, abiding memory of God.
As far as sound, the rhythm of Jesus’ poetry evokes His memory.
My heart is beating in the peace of God. (Lesson 267 , Title)
Just listen.
Find your pulse in your neck or on your wrist. Simultaneous with each beat of your pulse, say HEART, BEAT, IN, PEACE, GOD.
Now say the sentence aloud, filling in between the beats with my, is, ing, the, of.
Now, all together.
my HEART is BEAT ing IN the PEACE of GOD.
Try this one.
The hush of heaven holds my heart today. (Lesson 286, Title )
And finally.
and SOUNDS, at BEST, can SERVE but TO re CALL
Simply reading Jesus’ poetry that aligns with the beating of your heart can transport you beyond this world by remembering God.
As far as sights, look at this passage from What is a Miracle?
Miracles fall like drops of healing rain
from Heaven on a dry and dusty world,
where starved and thirsty creatures come to die.
Now they have water. Now the world is green.
And everywhere the signs of life spring up,
to show that what is born can never die,
for what has life has immortality.
(Paragraph 5)
I am so grateful to my friend, Steve Russell, who gives us a much more thorough explanation of the shift in the Introduction to his book, The Rhythm and Reason of Reality. He shows us precisely where Jesus makes the transitions from prose to poetry in the Text and in the Workbook.
He told me some time ago, that he found himself hearing the iambic pattern while studying the Course, and then he, systematically, began to examine the entire prose version by sitting down at a computer with a CD of the Course, reading each paragraph aloud. I realize now that with his musician’s highly-trained ear, he was able to listen for the ten beats in the prose paragraphs, and then he hit the Enter key, and resume reading the next line, and much to his joy he saw the pages fill up with sheer poetry, paragraphs of prose transforming into stanzas of blank verse.
I invite you now to take a look at Steve Russell’s wonderful book, a gift to us all.
Click Here:
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Colors of Christmas
I am writing this in late November, roughly 30 days before winter officially begins on December 22, the winter solstice. Last night, my wife, Christine, and I had a bonfire, probably the last one of the year before it turns too cold, inviting friends over to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. In a way, it was really quite primitive, sitting around the fire, huddled against the chilly night, surrounded by evergreen trees, listening to the wind gusting through the trees. We were confident that, although it was getting darker and colder every day, there would be a spring, and in six months it would be lighter and warmer.
It did bring to mind, though, our ancient ancestors, the Neolithic farmers, sitting around fires thousands of years ago. For them, though, it was quite different, because they huddled in fear, having observed that the sun was sinking below the horizon much earlier each night and returning much later each morning. What if the sun no longer came up? They were afraid that the sun might disappear completely, leaving only the darkness and the permanent cold. Their fears increased as they neared the winter solstice. From vast experience and keen observation they knew of the movement of the sun across the sky, knowing that it would be much darker before it became lighter, but what if it stayed completely dark this time? Motivated by magical beliefs and superstition, they performed rituals to ensure that the sun would be reborn this time. Over the centuries, their rituals seemed to work because during the longest night and shortest day of the year, the sun did, indeed, stop its southerly journey and begin heading north. That is the meaning of the word solstice, from the Latin solstitium, sol meaning sun, and sistere, meaning “to stand still.” The days gradually became longer and the nights shorter for the next six months, until the summer solstice when the sun stood still, again, and then began its journey south.
Early man’s superstition triggered his rituals, encouraging the rebirth of the sun. Superstition shares the same Latin root as solstice, sistere, meaning “to stand,” in this case the prefix super means “to stand over.” Early man thought that perhaps his magical rituals would enable him to stand beyond, or over, the events, having a positive effect, encouraging the rebirth of the sun. Through the centuries these rituals became ceremonies involving the colors red and green, symbolizing the fertility of the earth. People gathered wreaths and holly with its red berries and evergreen boughs and ivy and mistletoe and built fires, and these practices were carried on in various forms by the Greeks and early Christians and Romans and Celts and other cultures throughout the world.
And now it is necessary to account, briefly, for the connection between the winter solstice and the birth of Jesus and Christmas celebrations. December 25 was set four hundred years after the birth of Jesus. Church Fathers, having no exact reference of Jesus’ birthday, borrowed a festival the Romans celebrated, called the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, declared to fall on December 25 by Emperor Aurelian in 270 AD. Our Neolithic ancestors would see the connection, having prayed that their sun conquer the night, again.
Today, although we have long forgotten the superstitious reasons for the colors, we have green and red candles and Christmas trees lights and bulbs and decorations and Yule logs and gifts wrapped in red and green paper and ribbons and bows and Christmas wreaths and holly and mistletoe and candy canes and Christmas cards and stockings, and we wear red and green sweaters and shirts and blouses and pants and skirts and scarves and earmuffs and mittens because these are the colors of rebirth.
It did bring to mind, though, our ancient ancestors, the Neolithic farmers, sitting around fires thousands of years ago. For them, though, it was quite different, because they huddled in fear, having observed that the sun was sinking below the horizon much earlier each night and returning much later each morning. What if the sun no longer came up? They were afraid that the sun might disappear completely, leaving only the darkness and the permanent cold. Their fears increased as they neared the winter solstice. From vast experience and keen observation they knew of the movement of the sun across the sky, knowing that it would be much darker before it became lighter, but what if it stayed completely dark this time? Motivated by magical beliefs and superstition, they performed rituals to ensure that the sun would be reborn this time. Over the centuries, their rituals seemed to work because during the longest night and shortest day of the year, the sun did, indeed, stop its southerly journey and begin heading north. That is the meaning of the word solstice, from the Latin solstitium, sol meaning sun, and sistere, meaning “to stand still.” The days gradually became longer and the nights shorter for the next six months, until the summer solstice when the sun stood still, again, and then began its journey south.
Early man’s superstition triggered his rituals, encouraging the rebirth of the sun. Superstition shares the same Latin root as solstice, sistere, meaning “to stand,” in this case the prefix super means “to stand over.” Early man thought that perhaps his magical rituals would enable him to stand beyond, or over, the events, having a positive effect, encouraging the rebirth of the sun. Through the centuries these rituals became ceremonies involving the colors red and green, symbolizing the fertility of the earth. People gathered wreaths and holly with its red berries and evergreen boughs and ivy and mistletoe and built fires, and these practices were carried on in various forms by the Greeks and early Christians and Romans and Celts and other cultures throughout the world.
And now it is necessary to account, briefly, for the connection between the winter solstice and the birth of Jesus and Christmas celebrations. December 25 was set four hundred years after the birth of Jesus. Church Fathers, having no exact reference of Jesus’ birthday, borrowed a festival the Romans celebrated, called the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, declared to fall on December 25 by Emperor Aurelian in 270 AD. Our Neolithic ancestors would see the connection, having prayed that their sun conquer the night, again.
Today, although we have long forgotten the superstitious reasons for the colors, we have green and red candles and Christmas trees lights and bulbs and decorations and Yule logs and gifts wrapped in red and green paper and ribbons and bows and Christmas wreaths and holly and mistletoe and candy canes and Christmas cards and stockings, and we wear red and green sweaters and shirts and blouses and pants and skirts and scarves and earmuffs and mittens because these are the colors of rebirth.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
What I Know About Forgiveness, I Learned from Jesus
Yesterday, I read in the current issue of the AARP Bulletin a column entitled, "What I really know..." This brief article described an incident that occurred in a department store at Christmas time when a long line of children was waiting to see Santa, and a boy emerged from an elevator in a wheelchair pushed by his grandfather, and the children one by one offered to let the boy go in front of them in line. Apparently, this story has something to do with forgiveness, but what caught my eye at the end of the column was this:
YOUR TURN! Tell us what you really know about forgiveness in 400 words or less and submit it by e-mail to AARP.
This is what I submitted, coming in at 400 words.
What I know about forgiveness I learned from Jesus. He implored from the cross:
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Luke 23: 34
He was referring to the people and the rulers and the soldiers, asking that they be forgiven because they were dreaming, living falsely in a world they made up, thinking they were bodies, punishing another body, not realizing that they were as God created them, children of God, their spirits created by God.
For a moment in His suffering, Jesus also forgot His heritage as God’s Son. That’s why He cried out:
My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Mark 15: 34
This cry was met with silence because God did not forsake him, knowing not of this world; Jesus forsook His true identity in His forgetting. This was simply a mistake, not a sin.
Yet, soon after, He remembered His true identity, saying:
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
Luke 23: 46
He is proclaiming that the will of God is now all He wants to follow, not His false will, not mine, but Thine.
Finally, after His resurrection, He says to His followers on the way to Emmaus that He fulfilled the prophecy by resurrecting:
Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.
Luke 24: 46
True forgiveness is the recognition that you are as God created you, not as you dream yourself to be.
Today, Jesus is alive and well, giving us His unworldly masterpiece,
A Course in Miracles, dictating it over a seven-year period (1965-1972) to Helen Schucman, a psychologist at Columbia University. Believing in the reality of the body in the dream and forgetting your Source as the Son of God is simply a mistake, albeit a mistake with grave consequences, and recognizing this mistake is called forgiveness, as expressed in this passage from Jesus’ Course:
Father, I was mistaken in myself,
because I failed to realize the Source
from which I came. I have not left that Source
to enter in a body and to die.
My holiness remains a part of me,
as I am part of You. And my mistakes
about myself are dreams. I let them go
today. And I stand ready to receive
Your Word alone for what I really am.
A Course in Miracles, Lesson 228
YOUR TURN! Tell us what you really know about forgiveness in 400 words or less and submit it by e-mail to AARP.
This is what I submitted, coming in at 400 words.
What I know about forgiveness I learned from Jesus. He implored from the cross:
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Luke 23: 34
He was referring to the people and the rulers and the soldiers, asking that they be forgiven because they were dreaming, living falsely in a world they made up, thinking they were bodies, punishing another body, not realizing that they were as God created them, children of God, their spirits created by God.
For a moment in His suffering, Jesus also forgot His heritage as God’s Son. That’s why He cried out:
My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Mark 15: 34
This cry was met with silence because God did not forsake him, knowing not of this world; Jesus forsook His true identity in His forgetting. This was simply a mistake, not a sin.
Yet, soon after, He remembered His true identity, saying:
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
Luke 23: 46
He is proclaiming that the will of God is now all He wants to follow, not His false will, not mine, but Thine.
Finally, after His resurrection, He says to His followers on the way to Emmaus that He fulfilled the prophecy by resurrecting:
Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.
Luke 24: 46
True forgiveness is the recognition that you are as God created you, not as you dream yourself to be.
Today, Jesus is alive and well, giving us His unworldly masterpiece,
A Course in Miracles, dictating it over a seven-year period (1965-1972) to Helen Schucman, a psychologist at Columbia University. Believing in the reality of the body in the dream and forgetting your Source as the Son of God is simply a mistake, albeit a mistake with grave consequences, and recognizing this mistake is called forgiveness, as expressed in this passage from Jesus’ Course:
Father, I was mistaken in myself,
because I failed to realize the Source
from which I came. I have not left that Source
to enter in a body and to die.
My holiness remains a part of me,
as I am part of You. And my mistakes
about myself are dreams. I let them go
today. And I stand ready to receive
Your Word alone for what I really am.
A Course in Miracles, Lesson 228
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
When Words Spark on the Page: Catching Reflections of My True Self
My friend, Lucy, knowing that I love to read Emerson, e-mailed me a link to his address delivered to the senior class of the Harvard Divinity School on Sunday evening, July 15, 1838. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the kindred spirit of Teachers of A Course in Miracles, wrote essays of poetic prose that come to us from across the generations, expressing the truth of who we are, the holy Sons of God.
Before reading the address on the internet, I was curious to see if I had read it as a sophomore at Kalamazoo College in the fall of 1960, when I took an American Literature class, my first class as a recently-declared English major. Over the years through all the moves, I kept a copy of one of the texts for that class, The Selected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Modern Library Edition, 1950). This precious, dog-eared book has weathered the years, the pages browning at the edges.
Sure enough, a few paragraphs into the essay, I saw the first faint pencil under-linings made by me as a nineteen-year-old kid. I was amazed that he even read the entire essay, thirty-four paragraphs spread over seventeen pages. As I leafed through the pages, I was astonished at what he had thought significant. I could not believe that the passages that he underlined, asterisked, and circled still stood out as highly significant to me today, almost fifty years later. I only remember a young, lean athlete with a crew cut, five feet nine inches tall, 165 pounds primarily concerned with playing football, running track, his physical conditioning, and delighting in the delicious cafeteria food that was dished out generously with an “all you can eat” policy. This was two years before foreign study in France, two years before his first serious romantic relationship (ending with a broken heart), and three years before graduation.
Before I take a look at the sparks that he saw in the words and phrases and sentences of Emerson’s address, I want to outline briefly what Emerson was expressing in his address. He tips his hand in the third word of the first sentence, “refulgent.”
In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life.
It means “shining brilliantly” from the Latin refulgere, “ to shine back, reflect.” Emerson is seeing a reflection of his own bright mind. He is seeing through the eyes of Christ, standing before the seniors who invited him to speak, experiencing the light of his true Self.
This is one way Jesus expresses it in His Course in Miracles.
The world becomes a place of joy, abundance, charity and endless giving. It is now so like to Heaven that it quickly is transformed into the light that it reflects. And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came. W-p.II.249:5-7
And here is another.
In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven here. T-14.IX.5
And now let us enjoy what Emerson sees all around him in his magnificent first paragraph.
In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! In its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. (To read Emerson's essay in its entirety, click on the link at the end of this post).
But, and Emerson does begin his second paragraph with a “But,” because he recognizes that, although he is seeing a bright reflection of his Self, the members of his audience are most likely seeing only a projection of the self, a small speck of their mind that has no source in reality, a small part that serves as an instrument to interpret the world in which our senses converse. But when their minds open to the state of mind of the peace of God, when they experience themselves as created by God, then the mind opens. Thus, he begins his second paragraph in this way.
But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched.
In this opening of the mind, man can recognize this huge globe a toy, and fable of the mind, simply the result of a small part of his mind that is projecting, interpreting the world with the senses.
In the third paragraph, he goes on to amplify what he means by the mind opening, revealing the laws which traverse the universe, beginning with this sentence.
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
“Sentiment” comes from the Latin, sentire, meaning “to feel.” “Virtue” comes from the Latin virtus, meaning “worth.” When a man feels his worth as the son of God, that he is truly as God created him, his instruction begins.
Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness. That which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. He ought.
Even though man is on a journey lying in evil and weakness, he can, now, recognize that he is virtue, that his is light.
And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came.
W-pII.249:5-7
He knows the sense of that grand word, though his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. When in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he attains to say, — `I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore. Virtue, I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;' — then is the end of the creation answered, and God is well pleased.
Within this context, this point of view, Emerson goes on to warn the seniors who are about to graduate from divinity school of two defects of traditional Christianity.
The first:
In this point of view we become very sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons.
The second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
Now we can see why Emerson was objectionable to so many clergymen that the officers of the School disallowed responsibility of his address. Nearly thirty years passed before Emerson was invited again to speak at Harvard. However, Brooks Atkinson noted in his Introduction to Emerson’s Selected Writings:
Not everyone understood what he was talking about, or approved. Young people seemed to follow him more easily than their elders. A Boston attorney said Emerson’s lectures are utterly meaningless to me, but my daughters, aged 15 and 17, understand them thoroughly.”
With this context established, I can now turn to a sampling of the under-linings of my young self as he noted the particular words and phrases and sentences that caught his eye, sparking from the pages.
Here is the first.
The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.
And a couple of pages later.
So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.
This sentence deserved a circle.
Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.
This passage was circled and asterisked.
Alone in all history, Jesus estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.'
These lines drew under-linings and and circles.
The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues.
Finally, he circled God is.
It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.
As I said above, when I perused the under-linings throughout the essay, my first thought was astonishment, but my second was why be astonished? Since we are walking around in the world, but not of the world; since we are as God created us; since we are the light of the world, it is the most natural thing in the world to experience light sparking.
Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. (Psalm 82:6)
It is inevitable that our Godliness break through, that we see sparks, that we see our light reflected, that the thin veil part between our self and our Self, that we experience the holy instant.
In the holy instant nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed. Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside.
T-15.VI.6:1-4
In the holy instant, in which you see your Self as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering Him is to remember freedom.
T-15.I.10:7,8
During the time I was writing this essay Peg, my musician friend, came up to me, eager to tell me about her recent experience. She said that the other afternoon, while listening to music in her apartment, she remembered a powerful experience she had in college while playing in the school orchestra.
When I was in college, I had an undeniable experience of God while performing with our orchestra. We were playing Shostakovich's 5th symphony. During the slow (Largo) movement, I became aware of a moment of intense focus, where everyone in the hall, performers and audience alike, was completely joined in the event. I was barely breathing. It seemed as though the performance would fall apart, and yet it felt that we were playing perfectly. I could hear every part, and the music was gorgeous! There was nothing else happening at that moment -- just the music and everyone's experience of it. At that time, I called this an experience of extreme intensity. Now, I think it's more accurate to call this a holy instant, simply a personal experience of God.
The reason she was so eager to tell me of this holy instant is because, in the same moment, she had thought of me reading Emerson, knowing that I probably had similar experiences. I looked at her in utter amazement and said to her, "Yes. I am writing about it right now!"
Again, on the one hand, I am truly amazed; on the other, this communication, this communion, is the most natural thing in the world, joining with your brother who is also in the world but not of it.
That Peg and the young guy experienced these sparks demonstrates the inevitability of recognizing our birthright.
It is certain because it is impossible.
This motto is one of the first things you see when you cross the threshold into the lobby of Endeavor Academy. It is certain that you are as God created you because it (what you have made of yourself) is impossible.
It does not surprise, nor astonish me, to remember that Kalamazoo College’s official motto is Lux esto, “Let there be light.”
Here is today’s lesson.
The Son of God is my Identity.
My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts
of holiness of which I now conceive.
Its shimmering and perfect purity
is far more brilliant than is any light
that I have ever looked upon. Its love
is limitless, with an intensity
that holds all things within it, in the calm
of quiet certainty. Its strength comes not
from burning impulses which move the world,
but from the boundless Love of God Himself.
How far beyond this world my Self must be,
and yet how near to me and close to God!
Father, You know my true Identity.
Reveal It now to me who am Your Son,
that I may waken to the truth in You,
and know that Heaven is restored to me.
W-pII.252
There is a plan.
To read Emerson's address, click here.
Before reading the address on the internet, I was curious to see if I had read it as a sophomore at Kalamazoo College in the fall of 1960, when I took an American Literature class, my first class as a recently-declared English major. Over the years through all the moves, I kept a copy of one of the texts for that class, The Selected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Modern Library Edition, 1950). This precious, dog-eared book has weathered the years, the pages browning at the edges.
Sure enough, a few paragraphs into the essay, I saw the first faint pencil under-linings made by me as a nineteen-year-old kid. I was amazed that he even read the entire essay, thirty-four paragraphs spread over seventeen pages. As I leafed through the pages, I was astonished at what he had thought significant. I could not believe that the passages that he underlined, asterisked, and circled still stood out as highly significant to me today, almost fifty years later. I only remember a young, lean athlete with a crew cut, five feet nine inches tall, 165 pounds primarily concerned with playing football, running track, his physical conditioning, and delighting in the delicious cafeteria food that was dished out generously with an “all you can eat” policy. This was two years before foreign study in France, two years before his first serious romantic relationship (ending with a broken heart), and three years before graduation.
Before I take a look at the sparks that he saw in the words and phrases and sentences of Emerson’s address, I want to outline briefly what Emerson was expressing in his address. He tips his hand in the third word of the first sentence, “refulgent.”
In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life.
It means “shining brilliantly” from the Latin refulgere, “ to shine back, reflect.” Emerson is seeing a reflection of his own bright mind. He is seeing through the eyes of Christ, standing before the seniors who invited him to speak, experiencing the light of his true Self.
This is one way Jesus expresses it in His Course in Miracles.
The world becomes a place of joy, abundance, charity and endless giving. It is now so like to Heaven that it quickly is transformed into the light that it reflects. And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came. W-p.II.249:5-7
And here is another.
In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven here. T-14.IX.5
And now let us enjoy what Emerson sees all around him in his magnificent first paragraph.
In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! In its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. (To read Emerson's essay in its entirety, click on the link at the end of this post).
But, and Emerson does begin his second paragraph with a “But,” because he recognizes that, although he is seeing a bright reflection of his Self, the members of his audience are most likely seeing only a projection of the self, a small speck of their mind that has no source in reality, a small part that serves as an instrument to interpret the world in which our senses converse. But when their minds open to the state of mind of the peace of God, when they experience themselves as created by God, then the mind opens. Thus, he begins his second paragraph in this way.
But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched.
In this opening of the mind, man can recognize this huge globe a toy, and fable of the mind, simply the result of a small part of his mind that is projecting, interpreting the world with the senses.
In the third paragraph, he goes on to amplify what he means by the mind opening, revealing the laws which traverse the universe, beginning with this sentence.
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
“Sentiment” comes from the Latin, sentire, meaning “to feel.” “Virtue” comes from the Latin virtus, meaning “worth.” When a man feels his worth as the son of God, that he is truly as God created him, his instruction begins.
Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness. That which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. He ought.
Even though man is on a journey lying in evil and weakness, he can, now, recognize that he is virtue, that his is light.
And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came.
W-pII.249:5-7
He knows the sense of that grand word, though his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. When in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he attains to say, — `I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore. Virtue, I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;' — then is the end of the creation answered, and God is well pleased.
Within this context, this point of view, Emerson goes on to warn the seniors who are about to graduate from divinity school of two defects of traditional Christianity.
The first:
In this point of view we become very sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons.
The second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
Now we can see why Emerson was objectionable to so many clergymen that the officers of the School disallowed responsibility of his address. Nearly thirty years passed before Emerson was invited again to speak at Harvard. However, Brooks Atkinson noted in his Introduction to Emerson’s Selected Writings:
Not everyone understood what he was talking about, or approved. Young people seemed to follow him more easily than their elders. A Boston attorney said Emerson’s lectures are utterly meaningless to me, but my daughters, aged 15 and 17, understand them thoroughly.”
With this context established, I can now turn to a sampling of the under-linings of my young self as he noted the particular words and phrases and sentences that caught his eye, sparking from the pages.
Here is the first.
The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.
And a couple of pages later.
So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.
This sentence deserved a circle.
Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.
This passage was circled and asterisked.
Alone in all history, Jesus estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.'
These lines drew under-linings and and circles.
The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues.
Finally, he circled God is.
It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.
As I said above, when I perused the under-linings throughout the essay, my first thought was astonishment, but my second was why be astonished? Since we are walking around in the world, but not of the world; since we are as God created us; since we are the light of the world, it is the most natural thing in the world to experience light sparking.
Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. (Psalm 82:6)
It is inevitable that our Godliness break through, that we see sparks, that we see our light reflected, that the thin veil part between our self and our Self, that we experience the holy instant.
In the holy instant nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed. Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside.
T-15.VI.6:1-4
In the holy instant, in which you see your Self as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering Him is to remember freedom.
T-15.I.10:7,8
During the time I was writing this essay Peg, my musician friend, came up to me, eager to tell me about her recent experience. She said that the other afternoon, while listening to music in her apartment, she remembered a powerful experience she had in college while playing in the school orchestra.
When I was in college, I had an undeniable experience of God while performing with our orchestra. We were playing Shostakovich's 5th symphony. During the slow (Largo) movement, I became aware of a moment of intense focus, where everyone in the hall, performers and audience alike, was completely joined in the event. I was barely breathing. It seemed as though the performance would fall apart, and yet it felt that we were playing perfectly. I could hear every part, and the music was gorgeous! There was nothing else happening at that moment -- just the music and everyone's experience of it. At that time, I called this an experience of extreme intensity. Now, I think it's more accurate to call this a holy instant, simply a personal experience of God.
The reason she was so eager to tell me of this holy instant is because, in the same moment, she had thought of me reading Emerson, knowing that I probably had similar experiences. I looked at her in utter amazement and said to her, "Yes. I am writing about it right now!"
Again, on the one hand, I am truly amazed; on the other, this communication, this communion, is the most natural thing in the world, joining with your brother who is also in the world but not of it.
That Peg and the young guy experienced these sparks demonstrates the inevitability of recognizing our birthright.
It is certain because it is impossible.
This motto is one of the first things you see when you cross the threshold into the lobby of Endeavor Academy. It is certain that you are as God created you because it (what you have made of yourself) is impossible.
It does not surprise, nor astonish me, to remember that Kalamazoo College’s official motto is Lux esto, “Let there be light.”
Here is today’s lesson.
The Son of God is my Identity.
My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts
of holiness of which I now conceive.
Its shimmering and perfect purity
is far more brilliant than is any light
that I have ever looked upon. Its love
is limitless, with an intensity
that holds all things within it, in the calm
of quiet certainty. Its strength comes not
from burning impulses which move the world,
but from the boundless Love of God Himself.
How far beyond this world my Self must be,
and yet how near to me and close to God!
Father, You know my true Identity.
Reveal It now to me who am Your Son,
that I may waken to the truth in You,
and know that Heaven is restored to me.
W-pII.252
There is a plan.
To read Emerson's address, click here.
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