Great expectations

About four years ago I came to a place in my then two-year study of A Course in Miracles where I recognized I didn’t have a clue what the Course meant by forgiveness. I had been reading the big blue book, diligently practicing the lessons in the first part of the workbook designed to begin to undo the ego thought system; but I still thought there was a me at the center of it all. That earnest, Susan of Arc self of my childhood, a justice seeking, spiritually inclined missile of a me who had decided to take the high road in my closest, most challenging relationships. A me within whom the peace of God could shine; a me that could cajole the divine into intervening in my behalf, a me entrusted with the salvation of the world.

But since my identification with all things me was what had gotten me into this mess of seeking and never finding–this hell of special, constantly competing and opposing interests in the first place–I was stuck. The Course was not working for me. My relationships had become more trying than ever. My professional life seemed fraught with constant rejection and disappointment. The world around me seemed headed for certain annihilation; just like the doomsday nut cases constantly proclaimed.

I was facing another birthday but I really had nothing to celebrate. The deep longing for something unknown and unnamed that had plagued me all my life seemed deeper and more futile than ever. And so I prayed to a God I still—cockeyed optimist that I remain–hoped to somehow find outside me somewhere peeking down through the constellations. A God I had not found in the church of my childhood or the many wacky venues I had sought him in since. A God I suppose I had hoped to find in the big, blue book but so far had not. I felt that I had come to the end of the proverbial road. I would either find what I was looking for in this book, or I would quit looking, give up, throw the book out the window, run over it with my car. Defect to the dark side.

And so I prayed to really understand what the Course meant by forgiveness. I prayed to learn how to practice it in my life. And I prayed to experience the title of my favorite workbook lesson 189: “I feel the love of God within me now,” because I at least recognized and was willing to finally admit that I did not feel the love of God within me; not even close. I did not even know what the hell the love of God was supposed to mean. I only knew I wanted to feel love, real love, love that would stay. I wanted to feel forever loved and loving, to reach beyond the rainbow of my needs, to finally find a better way of living in this world.

Over the next year, my birthday prayer was answered in unexpected ways. I suppose I had expected some kind of Hollywood transformation, a sanitized mystical experience complete with a sound track and angels from central casting. I had expected my vision to go all Disney on me, pastel clouds and song birds, heartfelt confessions from those who had wronged me. The kind of thing that would make most grown people want to puke. Instead I learned to step away from the cartoon, to really look with our inner teacher at the selfishness of the ego thought system at work in my so-called life. At the glaring differences I constantly tracked and measured between myself and others, the comparisons I made that always left one of us feeling slimed. Instead I experienced the burden of carrying this heavy pack of lies based on the original lie that we could have differentiated ourselves from our indivisible, loving source, and the incredible relief and release available when I finally chose-from moment to moment; delusion to delusion–to put the baggage down.

I learned in sharp contrast that when I was willing to resign as my own teacher I could finally feel the love I never left within me still. I experienced a self outside the hallucination of me; a self without agendas of any kind. I learned that the you the author of A Course in Miracles speaks to is not the ego self we think we are when we first pick up the book but the decision maker in our one mind; the part of our mind that first chose in selfishness to try to push its creator’s love away but can learn to choose again for selflessness. The part of our one mind that can learn to recognize that no one or thing outside the mind can destroy or enhance its everlasting peace in any way; can learn to experience the extraordinary, transformative power of no me.

I learned we are mind, in ways we totally do not understand here where we think we reside in the condition we think we’re in. Mind: a word whose closest translation on the level of form is heart. The truth of A Course in Miracles’ message of forgiveness does not reside in its gossamer pages. The power of no me does not stem from trying to wrap our heads around this Course. We need to wrap our heart around this Course. Not the heart of our ephemeral bodies but our one, enduring heart. When we do we return to the eternal present we have never left, the only place in which we can feel the love of God within us now.

“Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.”

In this season of great expectations; of final exams, graduations, weddings and anniversaries, failures and triumphs; chapters coming to a close and held up to the darkness of the ego mind for critical review. This season of glorifying personal differences, measuring current accomplishments and achievements against unspoken lists of ego goals; I have once again forgotten what I am; what I could possibly be without my relationship with someone or thing outside myself. I have found myself merely flirting with my right mind before diving back into the ego’s mosh pit of specialness for another excruciating romp. Once more blasting lyrics set to a vicious base lamenting the many ways in which others (including the ego self I think I am) have fallen short of my great expectations.

I keep trying to force the self I think I am to once more replay the ego’s tune of dueling interests. But in the moment when I have actually done what the Course asks, the whole instant of forgiveness in which I have held another harmless for my distress, heard the gentle call of our one healed mind, and known what the Course means when it tells us “Not one note in heaven’s song was missed,” I remember that this is the only music I really want to hear. When I turn away from all the illusions I have concocted to hurt me, I see the peace of God shining in everyone and feel God’s love within us all. This is the gift of forgiveness A Course in Miracles style, the answer to the only real prayer we could ever truly utter, the power and glory of no me.

And so I remind myself today that I got my birthday wish. I have felt the love I have never left within me; the all-inclusive love that returns to our mind when we forgive our illusions of specialness with help from our inner teacher. And having heard that call, I cannot bear to listen to this horrid static much longer because I know I can choose again for the song of forgiveness. And so I do.

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~ by sudugan on May 31, 2010.