A Little Lost, A Little Confused
. . . making space for the strays
This is a essay about relationship. I’ve been a little lost lately, a little confused. I’ve been afraid, like the stray dog I met in Boston thirty years ago. You feel like you’re close to something but the night just keeps getting darker. That dog died a long time ago and I’m still crying the familiar cry. Help me.
You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light. And then God sent His Son to give it to you (P-3.III.8:12-13).
God doesn’t answer - God never answers - but you do. You always do.
2
My practice of A Course in Miracles comes down to learning how to be holy both in and through relationship. I am not especially skilled at relationship or holiness. But salvation is communal; happiness and peace are shared. There is no other way. We have to see past the illusion of separate interests. We have to connect and (sometimes love is sheer stubbornness) stay connected.
That dog was thin and on edge. No collar, no tags. He was coming down a Boston side street while I was searching for a T station. My daughter, two years old, was falling asleep in my arms. I knew what to do for the dog but could not - in that moment, for fine reasons - do it. He let me scratch his head a moment, then left. I’ve been watching him go ever since.
What are we that any one of us should be lost or lonely? What is the world that anyone’s cries - anyone’s cries - should go unheard and unanswered?
3
One way to think about separation is to look at human growth and development.
When kids aren’t parented well - when they are hit, ridiculed, ignored, unfed et cetera - then something unwell appears. Something difficult and even dangerous appears. Something in the interior goes dark and metasticizes. Everything becomes about individual survival. What do I have to do to survive? Who will help? Who will not? There is no other way.
A Course in Miracles calls that “something” ego. We all have it. It’s personal and collective. Me against nature, me against you, us against them. Relationships are negotiated based on how they help me survive. If you’re not going to help, then I’m gone. And you treat me the same way. We’re all disappearing down a busy street in Boston.
When we live in separation, something is always missing. We’re not thin enough or rich enough. The neighbors are too loud; taxes are too high. We become cynical and defensive - everyone’s a hypocrite, everyone’s running a con. We never really stop to ask: what’s actually missing? In this moment - this one, right here, right now - what is missing?
That’s an important question which turns out to be trickier to answer than we’d like. Ego doesn’t want to be noticed. When we’re aware of ego, we don’t like ego. We start to get curious about another way. That’s the origin story of A Course in Miracles, right? In the midst of egoic conflict, Bill says to Helen, there must be another way and she agrees to help him find it and eventually, we get the course.
There is another way, but we are conditioned to look away from it. Learning the other way means counteracting our conditioning, which is never easy.
Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness (W-pI.182.10:1-2).
The suggestion is, deep down, there is a damaged child in us who doesn’t want to be helped, doesn’t want to be healed. It’s as if he or she has learned that love is supposed to hurt. It’s as if hurt and anger - because it’s all they know and all they have - has become a treasure they won’t give up. You can go a long time - lifetimes maybe - pretending suffering is love. It’s not pretty.
But giving attention to that child can help a lot. Giving attention to that child is what reveals the innocence beyond the damage, beyond the conditioning, beyond the hot mess.
. . . there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows that He is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground (W-pI.182.4:3-5).
The suggestion is, before we can remember the peace of God - before we can rest in the companionship of Jesus and the guidance of the Holy Spirit - we have to heal that child. We have to welcome that child - we have to give that child a home.
How do we do this? Easy! In the context of every relationship, in every moment in every relationship, we teach that child - who is both in us and in everyone else - to recognize its own innocence.
4
There is another poem I wrote around that time - it’s about my daughter. My law career had crashed and burned; we were living in a tiny apartment. Wherever you were in it, you could hear and see everything. My daughter was singing a song and accompanying herself with a cat toy. I still remember that moment! She was totally absorbed in the song and her absorption was infectious. I had a lot on my mind but that song briefly ended my fear and doubt. For a moment or two, I disappeared. Truly, “what God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God” (S-1.in.2:3).
Life is hard. Dogs go without homes; sometimes kids do, too. But also, daughters sing. Dogs don’t hold it against us when we all we have to offer them is a pat. In both those relationships, I glimpsed the way out of fear. The way is simply to give attention to the other, to recognize them and respond to them as kindly as possible. Doing so makes us happy and in our happiness we realize that we’ve been wrong about suffering. We thought separation was the way but it wasn’t. Unity is the way; showing up for relationship is the way.
While you wait in sorrow Heaven’s melody is incomplete, because your song is part of the eternal harmony of love. Without you is creation unfulfilled (S-3.IV.8:3-5).
There is no separation anywhere. All that’s missing is our acceptance of this fact.
The song of prayer is silent without you. The universe is waiting your release because it is its own. Be kind to it and to yourself . . . (S-3.IV.10:2-4).
Kindness opens the door to healing. Kindness is the undoing of ego and the end of separation. Kindness is the answer to the familiar cry: help. It is kindness that teaches us we are allowed to be “comforted and live no more in terror and in pain” (S-3.IV.10:5). It is kindness that demonstrates we have neither abandoned nor been abandoned by Love.
See the shadows fade away in gentleness; the thorns fall softly from the bleeding brow of him who is the holy Son of God. How lovely are you, child of Holiness (S-3.IV.9:1-4).
How liberating to hear this! And how precious the gift that we can give to others without in any way losing it ourselves . . .
5
Thus, what I truly want and need from you is friendship as we find our way back to our true self in Creation. And the only way to receive friendship from you is to give it to you - to share it with you. There is no other way.
. . . if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself (T-12.VIII.1:5-6).
It's not about you as an object - in the Hollywood sense of "you complete me." It's not about you as a teacher or a guru. It's about "us." It's about what happens when together we commit to learning what we are in truth, which can only be known in relationship. The relationship becomes the site of learning our own innocence which is the end of suffering.
Don't be confused by form. A relationship is holy because of its function, not its appearance. It’s holy because of the learning it make possible for those sharing in the relationship. And the learning it makes possible always enables open-hearted and open-minded lovingkindness that offers itself without regard for who the other is or what they’ve done.
When I think the hole in me can be filled by you I am confused. But when I see you as a fellow traveler, a companion for the road, then I am clear and the way is clear. What we give each other is the only thing we can give, which is friendship. That is the way we find our way back to the wholeness - the happiness, the helpfulness, the holiness - we never left.
What the holy relationship makes possible is the friendship of the child with the world when the child knows it is wholly innocent, and thus can be wholly trusting, and thus does need to separate itself in order to survive.
We barely remember this state - we think it’s naive or illusory - but it's real. It’s what reality is. We’ve forgotten but we can remember. And the way we remember it is together. When we make that our commitment - to see each other as Christ, to re-member Christ together - it is a light that reveals a path, one that we walk easily side by side, happy and at peace.
Thank you for patiently bearing with me as I learn how to walk with you, all the way home to God.
~ Sean
Thanks for your thoughts that have inspired mine. While we think we are here in physical reality, the ego is our way forward. It is the ego that learns; it is the ego that remembers; it is the ego that decides for love. Our experience here in physical reality is the way for the ego to shape itself. It is the way for the ego to find its way out. And so, in that respect, everything that happens is for our good because it is the way that the ego shapes its personality. How we decide to react to anything is yet another aspect of the personality we create.
I studied Seth for nearly 20 years before I found the Course. I find them complementary. Seth explains that every “bad“ thing that seems to happen to us is an opportunity - a planned way - for the personality to shape itself. That shaping, in the physical world, often has to do with form. But the effects of the shaping go beyond the physical form.
Of course, ACIM counsels that all of that shaping, in both the physical and non-physical realms, is illusion. But while we believe we are here, it’s helpful to realize the importance of every experience because of the opportunity it presents, or has presented, to develop the ego - as it is ultimately the ego that will lead us home by its decisions.
That Child in me recognized his Brother when he read this. Recognized himself in his Brother's heart, shared so openly and innocently here. His own heart broke a little for his Brother's pain and confusion even as he gave thanks for that Brother's open arms and the Light shining through that confusion. We are in this together. Thanks be to God.