Let's Play a Better Game

. . . everybody's losing this one

The truth is, we are Christ but we don't trust that we are Christ.

Others are Christ. Or we're Christ some days but other days, no. We're scared. We don't want the responsibility.

If we trusted we were Christ, we would not be scared, and the responsibility would not be perceived as a burden but as a joy.

But we don't have the trust. It's okay we don't have the trust. The question is, are we ready to learn how to?

Lack of trust is a reflection of fear. Most of would rather project fear than face it where it is. When we project our fear of Christ outward, we perceive a world full of suffering, a world that cries out - often literally - for Christ.

We feel the emptiness inside and we see it outside - children crying, bombs flying, houses burning.

It doesn't have to be this way. There is - because as Bill Thetford perfectly intuited, there is always - another way.

Imagine you are playing chess with your best friend. You don't want to lose because your father taught you that God hates losers. But you also don't want to win because you love your friend and want them to be happy.

The zero-sum nature of the game - someone has to win, someone has to lose - destroys peace. It disallows the possibility of true relationship. It is the enemy of Love and happiness.

And here is the thing: you cannot solve this problem in the context of that game. All you can do is walk away from the game. All you can do is stop playing and do something else.

Like maybe play a different kind of game, one with different rules.

Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach that the game of fear is gone. His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured (W-pI.153.12:1-4).

When Jesus said that his Kingdom was not of the world, he wasn't referring to a castle in the sky. He was pointing to a way of living in the world that was founded not on competition but cooperation.

He was pointing to the nonviolent radical love that A Course in Miracles symbolizes as waking up from "the sleep of forgetfulness" (T-16.VII.12:4).

Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell (W-pI.122.8:1-2).

You and I do not have to do anything to be Christ; Christ is what we are.

But in order to remember this, we have to stop trying to be anything else.

I don't know what this looks like for you. It cashes out differently according to context. That's why the Course is about changing our mind, not our behavior.

For me - when my mind changes in this way - it looks like giving myself space to pray. It means sitting quietly for long periods of time giving attention to the world in all its fulsomeness - by the apple trees at dusk, in the hayloft at dawn. It means looking within at thoughts and feelings and their intersection, and being in dialogue with folks who are doing it too.

It is a practice scaffolded on A Course in Miracles, both spiritual and psychological.

As ego defines love, love is a high-stakes game that turns every relationship into a battlefield. Second place is the first loser. There are no participation trophies.

But as the Holy Spirit defines love, love is what holds everything. It holds the rivers and the mountains, roses and black bears, and you and me and everything else. It transcends understanding but not awareness. It can’t be contained by the mind but the heart is its ally and friend.

It calls us into relationships whose holiness is a light making clear to the lost and forsaken they are not alone and there is a way back home.

Are we ready to play that game?

A Course in Miracles teaches me to discern between the ego's definition of love and the Holy Spirit's, and how to align my living with the one that is easy, natural and joyful and not with the one that is painful and difficult.

No darkness abides anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This alignment with light is unlimited, because it is alignment with the light of world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one (T-6.II.13:3-5).

We remember that we are Christ by realizing that we need do nothing other than notice when we are not Christ. That's it.

This is my witness: the more you can notice non-Christ-like thoughts and behaviors, the more you will discover that the alternative - that which remains when what is not-Christ is let go - is beautifully, wholly and dynamically Christ.

And you are that, and so am I, and so is everyone else.

Love,
Sean