Sean, I read your piece...again. I read it followed by lesson 191, read it again, lesson 192, lesson 193...your piece. The warp and the weave of these together...heartbreaking (as i commented earlier). I say YES! Truth is truth...please continue to serve 'meat'. Thank you...Love...Carleton
Hello. I'm new to the Course and am enjoying reading your posts. Your commentary on the lessons is especially helpful. I am a teacher of literature and poetry and am especially fond of Emily Dickinson as well. This post makes me think of "One May Not Be a Chamber." with respect to interior/exterior fears and frights...and how"Ourself behind ourself concealed/Should startle most" is far more frightening than any exterior, physical threat. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this and any further connections you can make between this poem and the ideas you express in this post or ACIM as a whole.
Thank you, Cathy. For me, Dickinson mapped the interior in ways that never cease to be helpful. I read her carefully, always.
As you point out, I think in this poem she is in part responding to the Gothic literature she adored, making the point that we enjoy stories about being haunted when the real haunt - the "superior spectre" - is inside, is, in fact, our own self.
What I am less confident of - in this poem and more generally - is how Dickinson connected the interior to, say, the Civil War or slavery, both of which raged during the peak of her creativity.
More specifically, it is not clear to me what the causal connection was - for her, IF it was for her - between the external and the internal. Would she say that the gothic literature was a projection of our interior fears? A distraction from the work of facing it? Would she say that our unwillingness to face that fear was causally related to the horrors of slavery?
The Course follows the Freudian language and logic of projection to suggest that when we DON'T face those inner haunts, then they destroy us, and that the outer world is a picture of that destruction. The violence and haunts are not themselves real but rather symbols of an internal reality crying out for healing. So the invitation is to notice those symbols, hold them in right context, so that our response to them is always clear that we are not healing the external but rather the internal conflict that is reflected AS an external problem.
That's a fairly delicate dance of healing :)
It has never been clear to me that Dickinson saw it precisely that way (and to be clear, nobody HAS to see it that way).
But she was also writing in a pre-Freudian context so that specific concept and language (projection and denial as modes of thinking that called for healing) would not have been available to her that way.
On the other hand, one could easily make the argument that a poem like "We grow accustomed to the dark," which makes a similar argument to "One need not be a chamber," DOES make the casual connection clear - or more clear anyway - and ALSO suggests that the interior work eventually allows the inner and outer world to come into some helpful alignment.
I also think that her ability to notice the holy - and to KNOW it was holy - reflects an intimate application of Course principles that rightly understood a single blade of grass is "a sign of God's perfection" (T-17.II.6:3).
And of course "Forever – is composed of Nows – " nails the holy instant :)
But for me, Dickinson is most helpful when I am working with the very human temptation to accept the external as the actual problem - which sometimes means just being distracted by its gaudiness, its drama, its activity et cetera. In ACIM, the work is always to give attention to the inner world - the superior spectre, the "larger - Darknesses," the "infiniteness" in order to learn that what we are in truth is shaped by Love - by Mind - and not by material pressures and current events and so forth.
Also, A Course in Miracles is clear that our fear of death (which is really the ATTRACTION of death, an idea Dickinson would almost certainly endorse) and our fear of God are nontrivial obstacles to peace (e.g., T-19.IV.C.1:5 and T-19.IV.D.3:4). I know of few thinkers who went as deeply and intimately into those fears as Dickinson. Again, I read her - the totality of her work, including the letters - as a map of the inner life (what one finds, how one does it, what one needs, how critical a reliable friend is, its relationship to language). It is kin to Basho's "The Narrow Road to the Interior." They are tonally and structurally different, but both make clear the author's spiritual integrity in ways that can be brought into application in our own living.
Of course, Dickinson is a complex writer and thinker and I do not pretend to understand her fully. But as I said, her work is always helpful, even as it shifts and changes in my perception as I grow older (and perhaps in my own half-assed way follow her on the journey). She is a sister to those of us who intuitively grasp that God - as Love - holds everything, and that our true calling is to remember this. There is a lot of Love in her writing, especially in the letters. She certainly knew how to love others!! And I don't think that was disconnected from the spiritual and psychological work to which she was so rigorously, painstakingly devoted.
I am so so grateful to her for leaving us such haunted, beautiful, cryptic, and original notes for our shared journey of healing by remembering we are not separated from God. Most of my significant connections in life - certainly my ability to sustain them - have revolved around writing - poetic and epistolary - and Dickinson is truly the model in that regard.
Thank you Roberta for reading and sharing. I agree, it's not the material so much as the application, or resistance to the application . . . It makes a difference sharing the path with friends, though :) I love you too - thanks for being here 🙏🙏
Your compelling reflection and call-to-action reminded me of Gandhi's definition of ahimsa - "The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."
Gandhi also said:
"I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living.
If that is the law of life we must work it out in our daily existence.
Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love.
I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done."
Thank you for reading & sharing. Gandhi is the contemporary master in this area, I think - maybe Dorothy Day? But in terms of understanding conceptually what ahimsa was - understanding the theory underlying it - but then also knowing how to bring it into application in the body - there is nobody who is clearer.
And yes, the higher law is love - and this again is not merely an idea or theory - but can be tested and known, under many names - coherence, creativity, et cetera.
I am so grateful for his example, thank you Kirstie. I hope all is well.
It is completely beyond me, my ability, to see it differently. The only thing I can do is be willing to see it differently. "I am not a body, I am free. I am as God created me. His son can suffer nothing. And I am his son." This is a continual refrain in my head. Eventually (at least this is my understanding of what ACIM is saying), we will see the horrors differently. Rather be able to "looK' at them with more peace. Thanks again for your work-means a lot
Now we wait, together, side by side knowing we are never alone.
In Lesson 25 we are comforted knowing that we don’t know what anything is for but are “guaranteed” that is in our best interest. I often wonder how this horror show is in my best interest and that’s where true faith comes in for me.
Searching for the answers is all Ego based. My ego wants to find out, know the truth, become enlightened ect, Good, bad or indifferent, it really doesn’t matter, it just seems like does.
So, through all of your thought provoking posts, which I am always grateful for, you help bring me back to the simple truth that I really don’t know what anything is for but I trust that it is for my own good. After all, if I don’t know what it’s for I can’t judge it. Thank you my friend 🙏
Hang in there Brother and thanks for sharing. The "Dark Night of the Soul" has reared it's ugly head and you've remembered what it's for...........thanks for reminding the rest of us!!
Sean, Thank you for this beautiful understanding. If I want to embody that everything but love is illusion I must be vigilant. I can no longer allow judgement to be a squatter. Im tired of disrupting my peace with incessant separation.
Sean and his readers surely trust that when thousands of seekers embrace the love that we all are, the "outside" world will look different. We trust humanity's love through thousands of meaningful small ripples can create love in the world. To end violence on the planet we know we must first end our internal wars. So we read, practice and start over daily. Hopefully we remind ourselves there is nothing to forgive.
You're welcome, Susan. Thank you for reading and for extending it in such a clear and coherent way. Yes - vigilance, and also - as you say and as I was saying a moment ago in reply to Jennifer - companionship, sharing the way, intentionally being miracle-minded with our brothers and sisters. It is an inside job, yes, but we do not have to face it alone.
Powerful post Sean. As I was re-reading it (because it takes a few passes to absorb the truths), I was again reminded that all of these "horrors" involve the body. Absent the belief the body is real and valuable for what (the ego has determined) it offers, we would not be disturbed. The world doesn't change-it keeps recycling its nonsense, year-after-year. That is the purpose we gave it. The only task (as I perceive my role as a student) is to ask to see it differently.
Thank you, Karen. Yes - that's an important point. The body is involved always - as what suffers, as what witnesses external suffering, and as what helps cause suffering. That is the radical - in the sense of reaching the root of the problem - insight to which we are led together. Yes, absolutely. And I am with you in our shared role as students learning how to see differently - which is to choose a new Teacher for seeing :). Thanks, Karen 🙏🙏
Beautiful post Sean. Avoiding and hiding is a common pattern that prevents deeper levels of realization. I know this post will give many courage to face what needs to be faced so that it can the less supportive thought forms and emotions can be acknowledged and replaced with love.
You're welcome, Jennifer. I'm grateful for your companionship as well. We are all in this together :)
The Course is very radical in terms of its invitation to love the other as our own self, and to extend forgiveness to all the world - what we hate, what we love, what we fear, what we accept. I forget this sometimes and even when I remember it, I am sometimes too scared to truly accept it.
I think in the end that is what friendship with fellow students does - it allows us to remember we are not alone, to encourage and support one another, to not leave anybody behind, et cetera. Life is better with friends 🙏🙏
Sean, I read your piece...again. I read it followed by lesson 191, read it again, lesson 192, lesson 193...your piece. The warp and the weave of these together...heartbreaking (as i commented earlier). I say YES! Truth is truth...please continue to serve 'meat'. Thank you...Love...Carleton
Thank you Carleton for reading and being here. I'm glad it's helpful. I'll keep doing my best :)
🙏🙏
~ Sean
Hello. I'm new to the Course and am enjoying reading your posts. Your commentary on the lessons is especially helpful. I am a teacher of literature and poetry and am especially fond of Emily Dickinson as well. This post makes me think of "One May Not Be a Chamber." with respect to interior/exterior fears and frights...and how"Ourself behind ourself concealed/Should startle most" is far more frightening than any exterior, physical threat. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this and any further connections you can make between this poem and the ideas you express in this post or ACIM as a whole.
Thank you, Cathy. For me, Dickinson mapped the interior in ways that never cease to be helpful. I read her carefully, always.
As you point out, I think in this poem she is in part responding to the Gothic literature she adored, making the point that we enjoy stories about being haunted when the real haunt - the "superior spectre" - is inside, is, in fact, our own self.
What I am less confident of - in this poem and more generally - is how Dickinson connected the interior to, say, the Civil War or slavery, both of which raged during the peak of her creativity.
More specifically, it is not clear to me what the causal connection was - for her, IF it was for her - between the external and the internal. Would she say that the gothic literature was a projection of our interior fears? A distraction from the work of facing it? Would she say that our unwillingness to face that fear was causally related to the horrors of slavery?
The Course follows the Freudian language and logic of projection to suggest that when we DON'T face those inner haunts, then they destroy us, and that the outer world is a picture of that destruction. The violence and haunts are not themselves real but rather symbols of an internal reality crying out for healing. So the invitation is to notice those symbols, hold them in right context, so that our response to them is always clear that we are not healing the external but rather the internal conflict that is reflected AS an external problem.
That's a fairly delicate dance of healing :)
It has never been clear to me that Dickinson saw it precisely that way (and to be clear, nobody HAS to see it that way).
But she was also writing in a pre-Freudian context so that specific concept and language (projection and denial as modes of thinking that called for healing) would not have been available to her that way.
On the other hand, one could easily make the argument that a poem like "We grow accustomed to the dark," which makes a similar argument to "One need not be a chamber," DOES make the casual connection clear - or more clear anyway - and ALSO suggests that the interior work eventually allows the inner and outer world to come into some helpful alignment.
I also think that her ability to notice the holy - and to KNOW it was holy - reflects an intimate application of Course principles that rightly understood a single blade of grass is "a sign of God's perfection" (T-17.II.6:3).
And of course "Forever – is composed of Nows – " nails the holy instant :)
But for me, Dickinson is most helpful when I am working with the very human temptation to accept the external as the actual problem - which sometimes means just being distracted by its gaudiness, its drama, its activity et cetera. In ACIM, the work is always to give attention to the inner world - the superior spectre, the "larger - Darknesses," the "infiniteness" in order to learn that what we are in truth is shaped by Love - by Mind - and not by material pressures and current events and so forth.
Also, A Course in Miracles is clear that our fear of death (which is really the ATTRACTION of death, an idea Dickinson would almost certainly endorse) and our fear of God are nontrivial obstacles to peace (e.g., T-19.IV.C.1:5 and T-19.IV.D.3:4). I know of few thinkers who went as deeply and intimately into those fears as Dickinson. Again, I read her - the totality of her work, including the letters - as a map of the inner life (what one finds, how one does it, what one needs, how critical a reliable friend is, its relationship to language). It is kin to Basho's "The Narrow Road to the Interior." They are tonally and structurally different, but both make clear the author's spiritual integrity in ways that can be brought into application in our own living.
Of course, Dickinson is a complex writer and thinker and I do not pretend to understand her fully. But as I said, her work is always helpful, even as it shifts and changes in my perception as I grow older (and perhaps in my own half-assed way follow her on the journey). She is a sister to those of us who intuitively grasp that God - as Love - holds everything, and that our true calling is to remember this. There is a lot of Love in her writing, especially in the letters. She certainly knew how to love others!! And I don't think that was disconnected from the spiritual and psychological work to which she was so rigorously, painstakingly devoted.
I am so so grateful to her for leaving us such haunted, beautiful, cryptic, and original notes for our shared journey of healing by remembering we are not separated from God. Most of my significant connections in life - certainly my ability to sustain them - have revolved around writing - poetic and epistolary - and Dickinson is truly the model in that regard.
Thank you again, Cathy.
Love,
Sean
Beautiful...eloquent, heartbreaking cry...Thank you.
You're welcome . . . thank you for being here 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Wake up call on steroids!
That's the deepest dive into the course of all - I think? Heavy duty shit but I get it 100%
5yrs into ACIM and this journey is challenging.
Not because the path is hard in and of itself, but because of my resistance to remember who I am in truth.
Remembering that "all" minds are connected and what I do for myself I do for a brother💕
Thank you for keeping me on my tippy toes 🥲
It's needed today.
I Love you💛
Thank you Roberta for reading and sharing. I agree, it's not the material so much as the application, or resistance to the application . . . It makes a difference sharing the path with friends, though :) I love you too - thanks for being here 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Thank you kindly, Sean.
Your compelling reflection and call-to-action reminded me of Gandhi's definition of ahimsa - "The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."
Gandhi also said:
"I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living.
If that is the law of life we must work it out in our daily existence.
Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love.
I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done."
Namaste 🕉
Namaste, Kirstie 🙏🙏
Thank you for reading & sharing. Gandhi is the contemporary master in this area, I think - maybe Dorothy Day? But in terms of understanding conceptually what ahimsa was - understanding the theory underlying it - but then also knowing how to bring it into application in the body - there is nobody who is clearer.
And yes, the higher law is love - and this again is not merely an idea or theory - but can be tested and known, under many names - coherence, creativity, et cetera.
I am so grateful for his example, thank you Kirstie. I hope all is well.
Love,
Sean
It is completely beyond me, my ability, to see it differently. The only thing I can do is be willing to see it differently. "I am not a body, I am free. I am as God created me. His son can suffer nothing. And I am his son." This is a continual refrain in my head. Eventually (at least this is my understanding of what ACIM is saying), we will see the horrors differently. Rather be able to "looK' at them with more peace. Thanks again for your work-means a lot
Hi Sean,
Now we wait, together, side by side knowing we are never alone.
In Lesson 25 we are comforted knowing that we don’t know what anything is for but are “guaranteed” that is in our best interest. I often wonder how this horror show is in my best interest and that’s where true faith comes in for me.
Searching for the answers is all Ego based. My ego wants to find out, know the truth, become enlightened ect, Good, bad or indifferent, it really doesn’t matter, it just seems like does.
So, through all of your thought provoking posts, which I am always grateful for, you help bring me back to the simple truth that I really don’t know what anything is for but I trust that it is for my own good. After all, if I don’t know what it’s for I can’t judge it. Thank you my friend 🙏
This is clear and beautiful, Dee - thank you. I am honored to wait with you 🙏🙏
Love,
Sean
Hang in there Brother and thanks for sharing. The "Dark Night of the Soul" has reared it's ugly head and you've remembered what it's for...........thanks for reminding the rest of us!!
Thank you Larry 🙏❤️
Sean, Thank you for this beautiful understanding. If I want to embody that everything but love is illusion I must be vigilant. I can no longer allow judgement to be a squatter. Im tired of disrupting my peace with incessant separation.
Sean and his readers surely trust that when thousands of seekers embrace the love that we all are, the "outside" world will look different. We trust humanity's love through thousands of meaningful small ripples can create love in the world. To end violence on the planet we know we must first end our internal wars. So we read, practice and start over daily. Hopefully we remind ourselves there is nothing to forgive.
You're welcome, Susan. Thank you for reading and for extending it in such a clear and coherent way. Yes - vigilance, and also - as you say and as I was saying a moment ago in reply to Jennifer - companionship, sharing the way, intentionally being miracle-minded with our brothers and sisters. It is an inside job, yes, but we do not have to face it alone.
Thank you so much for being here 🙏🙏
~ Sean
I hear you and see you
Thank you Camron 🙏❤️
Powerful post Sean. As I was re-reading it (because it takes a few passes to absorb the truths), I was again reminded that all of these "horrors" involve the body. Absent the belief the body is real and valuable for what (the ego has determined) it offers, we would not be disturbed. The world doesn't change-it keeps recycling its nonsense, year-after-year. That is the purpose we gave it. The only task (as I perceive my role as a student) is to ask to see it differently.
Thank you, Karen. Yes - that's an important point. The body is involved always - as what suffers, as what witnesses external suffering, and as what helps cause suffering. That is the radical - in the sense of reaching the root of the problem - insight to which we are led together. Yes, absolutely. And I am with you in our shared role as students learning how to see differently - which is to choose a new Teacher for seeing :). Thanks, Karen 🙏🙏
Thank you so much 🙏🙏 It is very Helpful and Empowering in Healing Process.
You're welcome Aysin. Thank you for reading & being here 🙏🙏
Beautiful post Sean. Avoiding and hiding is a common pattern that prevents deeper levels of realization. I know this post will give many courage to face what needs to be faced so that it can the less supportive thought forms and emotions can be acknowledged and replaced with love.
Thank you Scott 🙏🙏
You're welcome, Jennifer. I'm grateful for your companionship as well. We are all in this together :)
The Course is very radical in terms of its invitation to love the other as our own self, and to extend forgiveness to all the world - what we hate, what we love, what we fear, what we accept. I forget this sometimes and even when I remember it, I am sometimes too scared to truly accept it.
I think in the end that is what friendship with fellow students does - it allows us to remember we are not alone, to encourage and support one another, to not leave anybody behind, et cetera. Life is better with friends 🙏🙏
Love,
Sean