Let It Be

“And when the night is cloudy,

There is still a light that shines on me,

Shine until tomorrow, let it be.”

-Let It Be, Paul McCartney

Last week I attended an outdoor concert featuring one of those Beatles impersonator groups that have become so popular in recent years with my husband and a good friend. It was one of those perfect, rare June evenings in Denver; the purple mountain majesties still capped with snow. The heat relieved by a light breeze, the blazing sun partially obscured by towering, anvil-shaped clouds on their way to battering the plains to our east with hail rather than once again wiping out our newly transplanted tomatoes. Giddy with the sense of having dodged the torrent these concerts too often morph into, and transported by the rhythms and lyrics of our youth we sang, danced, drank, and ate, and–during intermission–even managed to converse.

My friend who is not on this path but nonetheless faithfully reads my blog and had just generously recommended it to a mutual friend also not on this path observed that she considered herself an agnostic, and didn’t think she would ever enjoy my “certainty.” By that I suppose she meant that she considers me a believer in our source: God/wholeness/eternal oneness; whatever you want to call it. I don’t think I have ever been called a believer before. Frankly, it left me a little flabbergasted. Feeling a little like an imposter, not unlike the way I began to feel growing up as a child, attending a mass whose exclusive message seemed so at odds with all I felt to be true despite colossal evidence to the contrary.

It didn’t occur to me then, but it occurs to me now, that I am not really a believer in the sense I think my friend meant, however enthusiastically I have embraced A Course in Miracles. I am not so much a believer in the divine as I am someone who has exhausted her belief in the brutality of the earthly dream I believe I have navigated for so long. A fellow doubter for whom the pain of seeking for myself in the world has simply become too much to bear. Someone who—by practicing forgiveness A Course in Miracles style day in and day out–has begun to experience moments of yearning for a better way interrupted, whole instants in which I feel absolutely completed; beyond all need and happily wrong about everything.

“And I am free because I was mistaken, and did not affect my own reality at all by my illusions. Now I give them up, and lay them down before the feet of truth, to be removed forever from my mind.” (From workbook lesson 227.)

I am not so much certain as I am finally growing into the welcome doubt that anything here will work, with help from a part of my mind I only recently discovered. By learning to look with that part of my mind on all I once thought I wanted and believed I am starving my faith that anyone or thing can fulfill me, as well as my belief in a separate self in need of fulfillment. Learning once and for always that there is absolutely nothing certain in this world, but that beyond this world of form there is a non-dualistic mind restored to wholeness I can always count on.

In a Course class I am teaching we have just begun Part II of the workbook that invites us to allow God—the symbol for perfect oneness the Course uses to ultimately undo our belief in symbols–to reveal itself. To suspend our disbelief, set aside our defenses as one of my favorite Beatle tunes—Let It Be—also entreats us to do. This shouldn’t be that difficult since my defenses have never worked very well for me. I have always been too in touch with the emotional pain in myself and others (as if there were a difference). And yet I am very resistant as I begin these revelatory lessons in the second half of the workbook to allow the “Love of God” to shine in me when I still equate the G word with the God we humans crafted, the God of most organized religions created in the ego’s image to reinforce the original myth of separation from perfect love, and our creator’s inevitable punishment.

Even though I am learning through attempting to live A Course in Miracles that the abstract, all-inclusive “God” the Course would invite us to join our minds with has nothing to do with the ego’s insane, worldly God, I am still on some level beyond my understanding too intimidated by that unconditional light; still too dependent on a false identity–however painful–for sustenance. Still too afraid of being obliterated by that light because of my belief in the selfish crime of coveting individuality over perfect oneness I can’t even remember. But despite my fear, the Course offers a gentle, practical path home that provides us with gradual glimpses of wholeness as we practice forgiveness and learn to choose love over fear. Heavily supported by the right mind that returns to our awareness when we turn away from the ego’s threats; thereby figuratively “calling on Him.” As we are reminded in Chapter 16, VI. The Bridge to the Real World:

“Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition…Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release; His perfect willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His Call. And let Him call on Heaven for you.”

This is my growing certainty: the world I think I find myself in, along with the self I think I find myself in, offers only pain, despite its ingenious, occasionally thrilling, always ephemeral disguises. The Course readily acknowledges that there are many paths home, and that we are all heading there; regardless of our chosen transportation. It claims only to be a shortcut for those of us engaged in the world. It came to two renowned psychologists (at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons) who were so not religious people–so not believers–and very engaged in the world. It uses the specifics of our lives in form–primarily our relationships with others–to undo our belief that specifics and others can in any way affect our peace of mind. It employs Christian terminology because it is so embedded in our Western culture, so entwined with our mistaken beliefs about what we are, so in need of undoing. As Course scholar Ken Wapnick often points out; we should read it like we read a great epic poem teeming with metaphor; rather than taking most of it literally.

Ultimately I suppose this is not a Course for people delighted with what they experience in the world and body. Despite its many breathtakingly passages pointing to a reality beyond this dream, this is a Course for people whose faith in the dream world’s promises has waned, for people who have absolutely had it with the world. Who have been clobbered over the head and clobbered others over the head at the ego’s bidding once too often. Who are ready to embrace the idea of trading the seemingly endless substitutions we have made for eternal, inclusive, universal love for the real thing. I am almost certain I am one of those people.

And so when the dream seems clouded by fearful guilt, I continue to choose again to be happily wrong, to forgive what cannot be; certain only that I can no longer be certain about anything I used to believe, including what I am. And in that certainty in all I am learning I am not, I begin to allow the healing light that shines on me, and you, and all– yesterday, today, and tomorrow—to return to our mind.

I am going away at the end of the week to visit colleges with my daughter and will post late next week when I return.

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~ by sudugan on June 14, 2010.