Crying out for Solutions

. . . notes on the undoing of separation

Let us begin the new year by looking again at separation. What can we say about our experience of it? Does our experience of it hint at its dissolution?

Is there something we need to learn or remember or do we already know? If we already know, then it's a question of application. What is stopping us?

What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God . . . Lay down your dreams, you holy Son of God, and rising up as God created you, dispense with idols and remember Him (S-1.in.2:3, 3:1).

At a simple level, separation is the space between me and a tree. The tree is over there and I'm here. If I want to touch it I have to cross the open space between us.

Nor is the tree like me exactly - it's not wordy like I am or ambulatory like I am. It doesn’t consume earthly resources the way I do. It relates to time differently - the seasons, its lifespan.

I'm separate from the tree. But this is generally not a crisis. Books are not written - religions not founded - to heal our separation from trees. Or ladybugs or deer or the stars.

Separation is different when we look at it internally. For example, when we are angry at someone, and our anger appears justified, we are separate from them. When we are never quite be satisfied, no matter what we have or who we’re with, we are separate from ourselves.

We all experience those forms of separation, and they are a crisis. People are killed every day because of social slights and cultural misappropriations. Wars are fought over scarce and getting scarcer resources.

And when we feel these losses, and glimpse the fear and guilt that make them - even when we don't personally devolve into violence and terror - it really hurts. It makes our life shorter and emptier. It makes it hard to help others, let alone love them.

That separation is a problem crying out for solution.

The first kind - me from the tree - is not a problem and dwelling on it (e.g., studying the physics, indulging the metaphysics, exploring the supernatural) - is often a distraction from responding to the second kind, which is actively dangerous. A Course in Miracles is given to address the second. It’s given to bring us into a new understanding of relationship.

Why is it easy for us to share the earth with a tree but not with somebody we dislike?

It’s a question of fear, isn’t it? The tree cannot really oppose us - it's not a threat - but another person can be. Another group of people can be. Even if we're friends now, we could be enemies tomorrow. It happens.

Separation arises as a way of being human that insists on the other as a competitor in a high-stakes game. The loser dies sooner than they'd like. But everybody loses at this game eventually. Separation is no joke.

The suggestion is, get clear on the fear. Go past the levels of narrative (so and so did this to me) and cultural conditioning (Islam is violent, Russians are war mongers). Go past the way you frame the problem (spiritual, psychological, political) and find the part of you that howls "do something! Anything! Do it now!"

Ego is always pushing me to act - to do something. It's never just chill. It never says, "let's hang back and see how this develops." It never says, "maybe this isn't our fight." It registers discomfort - it registers threat - and instantly turns the interior amplifier to eleven.

Ego doesn't care about outcomes. It's important to understand that. Ego is fine with winners and losers; it doesn't care what it gets or gives up. It just needs - it really really needs - conflict.

So when fear appears, ego demands action. Do something.

But there is another way.

Forgiveness . . . is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not (W-pII.1.4:1-3).

Forgiveness is the opposite of judgement, and judgment is what ego is because it's what ego does (W-pII.1.4:4). Forgiveness is healing because it is committed to learning how to "welcome truth exactly as it is” (W-pII.1.4:5).

Come back for a moment to the tree. You and I are not in conflict with the tree because we have already learned how to forgive it, in the way that A Course in Miracles defines forgiveness. It doesn’t offend us, so it’s easy to love it.

If you want to know what forgiveness feels like - what it is in action - then consider the tree. Consider any relationship in your life in which you do not feel threatened and are thus differently invested, differently related.

See the impact of value judgments on relationship and ask: where are those judgments coming from? Are they mine? Who gave them to me? The invitation is to become responsible for them.

Judgment is a response to separation. When we judge, we have already accepted the separation as real. This is not a problem of metaphysics but of conflict resolution. Don't focus on the judgment but see if you can glimpse instead the fear that underlies it.

A big shift in my life occurred when I stopped being afraid of fear. When I could accept it as part of my experience, neither more nor less important than any other part, it was easier to look at and relate to. It became possible to let ego rant without obeying it.

I learned - or re-learned really, none of this is a secret - that the appropriate response to fear is comfort, presence, open-mindedness and acceptance. Every parent - of kids or dogs or plants - knows this. Rather than deny fear or resist fear or fight fear I just let it be. I remind myself it will pass; I remind myself that no matter how bad I feel in this moment, God has not changed His mind about me.

God’s Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father’s protection and cannot fear. His Father’s Love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing (T-12.VIII.2:1-2).

I mean this pretty literally. In any conflict that appears, no matter how mild or intense, I try to see without judgment the fear that drives it. That’s all. The glimpse is all I need. The glimpse always reminds me there is nothing to fear in reality.

In this way, I learn that God's Wholeness does not allow for separation of any kind (T-29.I.1:3).

There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared (T-29.I.1:1-2).

So far as I can tell, this is not a lesson that we can force. All we can do is be willing to look at fear without judgment. We have to let the Holy Spirit teach us how to be unafraid of fear. We can come to the well, but we can't make the water flow. We have to attain a state of readiness for God; we have to live in trust and faith; we have to be in communion with each other.

. . . we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised He will take the final step Himself. And we are sure His promises are kept (W-pII.in.2:2-4).

Separation is the activity of fear. It's the activity of fear and it's the effects that activity produces, which always generate more fear. It's a human problem; we all suffer to some degree or another.

Rather than hide from fear or try to undo it, the suggestion is, just look at it. Be gentle and patient with yourself. Be compassionate. Just see the fear clearly. Ego’s cry for action obscures the truth. The clear seeing will teach you what the fear is and what you are. That knowledge will restore you to a natural, quiet and sustainable happiness.

And in that state - in that wellspring of shared creativity and communion - we remember again the Love in which there is not - not now, not ever - separation.

~ Sean