The memory of God comes to the quiet mind (T-23.I.1:1).
There are many ways that we can define this use of "quiet" in A Course in Miracles, but for the moment let's say that it is a mind that is free of "want." Can we imagine this?
There are two helpful definitions of "want." The more common reflects personal desire: I "want" this apple or I want the sun to shine. I want a new job.
The second, older, definition refers to an interior scarcity - one "wants" grace or the carriage is in "want" of repair.
What is similar across both definitions is lack. Something is missing so the subject in question (be it a self or a carriage) is not whole. It's fragmented. It's separate from that which would complete it. It "wants" completion and it "wants" what it thinks it needs to be complete.
So the suggestion is that a mind that is free of want is a mind that does not see itself as broken or partial and so does not seek anything. And that is the mind to which the memory of God appears.
Is that our experience of mind - that it is not broken or partial? This isn't about an intellectual understanding of "wholeness" as a concept. Be honest: when giving attention to mind, is there a seamless whole or a bunch of parts variously interrelated, spilling and flowing and clashing?
If we are honest in our attention, most of us will realize the mind is fractured. It darts around like a hummingbird - feeding at this image, now feeding at this idea, now flitting off to some new idea or image. It rarely does what we ask it to do. There's a lot of stuff in it we would prefer not be there.
This kind of thought is physical - it arises in a brain processing data supplied by the body's working senses. The sunset is beautiful, our stomach is growling, our spouse is asking us a question, et cetera.
Can we see that "want" is the premise of thought's busy-ness because it is an extension of the body? Wanting food, wanting to be a good parent, wanting beauty, wanting to feel energetic?
In other words, can we see that the "quiet mind" to which the Course refers is not the mind of the body and so therefore must be something else?
The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet he is in you. And thus it must be that you are not within a body. What is within you cannot be outside. And it is certain that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life. What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can you (T-25.in.1:1-7).
If we want to know the whole, then we have to stop looking only at the parts. We don't make this a problem that has to be solved. It isn't a spiritual crisis. It's just not the whole.
The self that is yoked to a body - which includes thoughts and ideas, memories and dreams, hopes and fears, spiritual practices and communities of faith, friends and families and enemies - is not Christ. The self that is yoked to a body fears nonexistence and cannot bear witness to that which it is not. It knows it's not the whole, but it doesn't know what the whole is.
That self is in a literal sense the separation. All that flows through it - and all through which it flows - is a product of separation. Sometimes pleasing, sometimes unpleasing but never whole. Sometimes content, sometimes enraged, but never the peace that surpasses understanding.
It is very hard to imagine this Christ - this whole mind "at the very center" which "cannot be housed in death." How do we respond to that which does not arise as an image we can meet? How do we engage with that which does not arise an idea we can discuss? To even ask the question - what is this Christ and how do I make contact with it - is to violate the premise of wholeness. Ask and you shall not be answered.
Wanting this "Christ" doesn't help us. You can want Christ or you can want crisis but the want is still the same. Want involves what is not whole perceiving that which it believes would make it whole. It projects an opposite, a "something else" that was subtracted from the whole and which can be added back. Then everything will be okay. Then we’ll be awakened.
But again, from the perspective of the body and the thoughts which appear to animate it, whatever we get is never enough. We are never done eating or walking or relating. Want just keeps on running. It's like an algorithm that won't stop churning so long as the hardware is there for it to run on.
If we can see that, then we can see this too: whatever wholeness is, whether we call it Christ or Source or God or Life, we are looking for it the wrong way. It's here - we've got it - but somehow we're not seeing the fact of it. There's nothing to get; nothing to give up. It's all here right now. And somehow we manage to keep overlooking or not noticing this.
We are like children who throw our ball away and then complain loudly that we don't have a ball. Somebody brings it back to us and we throw it away again. "I don't have a ball." On and on it goes.
We can hold the ball in our hands or we can throw it away: it's still our ball. We can close our eyes and pretend there's no ball, or look in another direction and pretend the ball is lost, but there's still a ball and it's still our ball.
Again: if we want to know the whole, stop looking only at the parts.
When you see a part, say "that's not the whole." Don't make it into a problem to be solved. It isn't a spiritual crisis. It's just not the whole. So we aren't going to call it that. Stop throwing the ball away, and the ball stays with you. You've got the ball.
So maybe we can rephrase the sentence from A Course in Miracles with which we started: "The memory of God comes to the quiet mind" (T-23.I.1:1).
Maybe we can say instead that the memory of God is a quiet mind because it is free of want. It wants for nothing and wants nothing because it has everything. It's whole. It's holy. It isn't "Sean's" or "Karen's." It's not subject to time and space.
Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3). How hard is it to see this? We know the peace of God or we don't. The suggestion is that if we don't know the peace of God, it's because we still think there's something to do or get or be.
There is another way.
Beneath the fever of want lies a shared stillness, the memory of which restores to our mind its natural wholeness. Hence the Course’s promise that remembrance of our shared innocence - manifest in non-resistence and nonviolence - is our home
Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother . . . You have not lost your innocence (W-pI.182.11:1-2, 12:1).
Thank you, always, for reminding me to remember this.
Love,
Sean
Thank you Sean. Beautiful, reading this induced stillness in me, a real treat. I often forget it is about experience not about figuring out, it’s about let go, let go, let go. Thank you for your offerings to remember this 🙏🙏🙏
Asking to remembering our innocent state of mind. It may be the first step out of wanting. Thanks for the reminder, Sean. Simple enough, not easy to do alone.