How to Save Yourself

. . . notes on relating with the Holy Spirit

If someone comes up to you and says, I have a problem, your instinct will be to help them solve it. This is an important aspect of relationship. If you are a certain type of ACIM student, you may tell the other person that the only problem they have is separation (W-pI.79.1:4) and, bonus, it’s already been solved (W-pI.80.1:2).

On its own, this is rarely helpful. Most of us when we have a problem do not need to add a gauzy filter of New Age metaphysics to it. That's just another defense. It's the fantasy that this spiritual fact is the last piece of the puzzle. Get it and you've got it. But that is always a lie. Nothing can save us except knowing what we are in truth.

If you are having a problem in the world, you should to the best of your ability, with the resources in front of you, solve it. If someone asks you for help, the same. Be helpful. Be sure your help is congruent with the ask. Not everyone needs a hug, or a quote from A Course in Miracles, or regurgitations of Byron Katie. But do help. And do ask for help, if you need it.

The thing is, A Course in Miracles is correct - we don't have a lot of problems. We have a lot of symptoms pointing to one problem. But we have to come to this truth ourselves. We have to try the many methods and modalities, sample the many paths, entreat the many gurus and teachers in order to learn that they are all the same and none of them can solve our one problem.

There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another (T-31.IV.3:1-3).

Again - please see this - that does not mean we should not use those roads. Separation takes many forms including headaches, school shootings and depression. Aspirin, political action and SSRIs are (among other things) corresponding fixes. When we use them responsibly, they help create a little space and quiet in which we can realize that notwithstanding the relative peace, we are still unhappy. We are not free.

Then what?

When I have a problem in the world - with the dentist, with a co-worker, with the U.S. Government - the problem appears because I have forgotten what I am in truth. Period. My mind has wandered, lost sheep-like, and the ego - stunting as a shepherd - has gathered it in. The ego teaches me that I am a body, that my interests and your interests are separate, and that murder, not miracles, is the way to survive.

To the ego, "peace" really means surviving to fight another day.

The ego's narrative - it is a narrative, a very persuasive one - is a bright shiny object, full of sound and fury, that has trained us to look away from the vivid stillness that is the Holy Spirit's classroom and lesson. When I have a problem in the world, I have succumbed to egoic conditioning. I have forgotten what I am in truth.

As everyone knows who has ever quit cigarettes or alcohol or chocolate knows, it is hard - really hard - to counteract our programming and conditioning.

Which matters because it is only in the vivid stillness of the Holy Spirit's classroom that I learn Its one lesson and remember that I remain as God created me (T-31.VIII.5:2-3) and that Love, which created me, is what I am (W-pII-229.h).

It's an identity problem. The world tells you what you are (always something in need of fixing), and the world is wrong, because there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2). You are doing all of it - projecting a world, weaponizing that world against peace and happiness, and then forgetting you're doing it.

I use the image of a stream a lot, because I grew up around streams and rivers. They are the bodies of water I understand best. If you notice something in the water you don't like, something that's killing the trout, say, and making it impossible to swim, what do you do?

You can play with cleaning up your part of the river but sooner or later you have to go upstream to the source of the problem.

When I have a problem in the world, solving it at the the level of the world (which, again, please do) is a temporary fix. Sooner or later, whackamole style, it's going to come back.

But when I rest in the vivid and clarifying stillness of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit teaches me what I am. That's all. It just points to what I am in truth. It, It's classroom and Its lesson are all the same. And here is the thing: it is enough.

All our problems arise from forgetting what we are in truth. It makes sense, right? It is hard to be in a happy relationship if we don't know who what we are. Our confusion makes us needy and demanding; it makes us fearful and prone to error. We start trying to control things; we fixate on outcomes.

Everyone knows somebody like this. Someone who means well but can't get out of their own way. There's always some drama somewhere. They're fun but they're a lot of work. They've got plenty to offer but too often it's like pulling teeth or bargaining with a shady auctioneer to get it. Who needs it?

I'm that guy! That's me. And then A Course in Miracles comes along and says, let's go upstream. Going upstream means looking at my family of origin. It means looking at addiction. It means energy healing, chakra work, Tarot, psychotherapy, psychedelics, reading and writing poetry, deconstruction, meditation . . .

. . . until one day I hear the one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, regardless of the form: I am innocent, not guilty. I do not have to punish myself anymore.

Again, the secret to salvation is realizing that we are doing all of this to our own self (T-27.VIII.10:1). The miracle is stopping.

When we stop insisting that we have to suffer, and actually open up to the radical peace and happiness promised by A Course in Miracles, then we realize that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).

That realization is the remembrance of what we are in truth.

Or that is a way it can happen, because that is a way it does happen. We remember the Peace of God, because the Peace of God is what we are, and the Holy Spirit can only teach us what we are. And what we are, by the way, is the same. That is why healing is shared. When you remember what you are, you remember what I am at the same time.

This is the end of conflict, and the beginning of healing, for which - as for you - I am never not grateful.

~ Sean