Healing the Hot Mess of the World

. . . notes on cooperating with God

Like a lot of you I am worried right now. I am scared.

I am also angry. Waves of destruction flow across the landscape, often hurting - often targeting - folks least able to resist it. Hatred and injustice are like airborne toxins, infecting all of us. What should we do? What can we do?

Well, the only thing we can ever do, really: open our breaking hearts, clarify our distorted thinking and join with each other in the name of Christ. It's not the only way or even the best way, but it is our way.

God turns to you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation is it healed. And no one walks upon the earth but must depend on your decision . . . (T-30.II.5:1-2).

The hot mess of the world (and the interior wasteland that is its psychological reflection) are together a call from God to cooperate and collaborate in making manifest the natural serious happiness that is God.

. . . unless you take your part in the creation, [God's] joy is not complete because yours is incomplete . . . The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed . . . (T-4.VII.6:4, 7).

We collaborate with God - we participate in healing - by opening our hearts, clarifying our thinking and emptying our hands. Together, this is the way we remember - and re-member - Christ.

I know, I know. Cool and poetic, Sean! Very inspiring! But how do we actually do it?

Honestly? "How" is not the problem. We aren't confused how to open our hearts, clarify our thinking and empty our hands. That's easy, relatively speaking.

The problem is, at levels we understandably struggle to realize, we don't want to do those things.

We want to want to do those things, absolutely. We want the effects of doing those things. We're cool with others doing them.

But by and large we are content to drift away from Love and its desire to complete Itself in us. We drift and keep drifting.

It's the drift we need to address.

You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does (T-2.VI.4:6-7).

This is why ACIM's curriculum doesn't really bother teaching us about love or peace or justice. Those are given. Rather, it aims at "removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance" (T-in.1:7).

For me, at this juncture in my study and practice, "removing the blocks" is the application. It takes the form of asking - over and over - questions like: what am I doing in each and every relationship in my life that reflects a healed heart, open mind and empty hands? Where am I falling short? What am I missing? How am I failing to cooperate?

And then, seeing all that, fixing all that.

For example, I am not always a great dialogue partner. I love dialogue; I love argument; I love long vulnerable talks that last the night. But sometimes I miss things. I don't see that you’re too tired or upset to continue; I don't see that I'm making you repeat yourself for the third or fourth time; I don't see that I'm interrupting you or mentally rehearsing what I'm going to say to next or otherwise ignoring you.

Sometimes, this seeing happens in the moment, and it is possible to correct in the moment. Sometimes I have to apologize after. Sometimes I have to seek out folks and ask for guidance. "I have a really hard time relating with this person - can you help me figure out why?"

This is not about obsessive introspection or performative self-criticism. It’s not about spiraling self-criticism. It has to sugar out in application - that is, in relationships that heal in noticeable ways.

And I cannot be the only one noticing the healing. It has to appear and be present for both of us.

Healing in A Course in Miracles is always about the relationship, be it with family, friends, co-workers, fellow students, whatever. How can I be a better partner? How can I be better collaborator - with you and, through you, with God? How can we remember Love together? For all of us?

This is hard work! Sometimes it is even painful. Yet the deeper I go into it, and realize its fundamental value, the more it produces a gentle coherence that makes possible another step, another breath, another hug. There really is nothing else.

Last week I wrote that there is no separation anywhere. I wrote that mind/body dualism is downstream of the self and that finding the self is what matters. “Finding the self” is not a personal accomplishment, like traveling to Boston or graduating college. It’s more like clearly seeing a process and realizing that a lot of stress, anxiety and hostility are effects of confusion, not inherent qualities of an individual.

There is deep peace and contentedness in this clear seeing and realization.

But also, the work goes on! Of course it goes on. Relationship goes on. Love goes on. Jesus wasn't sending his disciples out two by two because he was the answer; he was doing it because we are the answer, and the answer must be lived, extended, offered and shared.

I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose (T-5.IV.8:10-12).

In some variants of Buddhism, a Bodhisattva prioritizes the awakening of all beings over their own. When I first learned of this, as a young man at the Vermont Zen Center, I was like, yeah, somebody else can do that.

But now I understand a little. We are here to be here with one another, and in our shared presence, to undo (bit by bit, step by step) the blocks to love that prohibit all of us - without qualification or condition - from sharing in the relationship that brings forth the state of happiness - the stillness and coherence - that are what we are together in truth.

So in this challenging moment (which is neither our first nor our last) let us be brave and cheerful together in beautiful and ordinary ways. Let us learn what makes being together so difficult. Let us lean on each other and console each other and comfort each other. Let our practice be loving each other as Christ loves and, in doing so, remember that there is no other love.

I am here; I'm glad you are too.

Love,
Sean