Living and Learning a Happier Dream

Within and without A Course in Miracles

(the first of my Advent posts is up here)

Recently I behaved uncharitably towards someone. I sent an email it would have been better not to send, in a tone it would have been better not to take. Shit happens but it's nicer when I'm not making it worse.

This occurred in the context of a complex and necessary relationship in my life right now. Nor was it surprising. Often my actions in this relationship arise from guilt and fear. There's a lot of tension and mistrust. It's not always clear to what to say or do. And there's no denying my complicity.

I tend not to notice the unhelpful behavior as it's happening. I don't review it advance and decide, this is a good idea, let's go for it. Only later - trying to figure out why I'm feeling uncomfortable or irritable - do I remember. Oh right, I acted hastily and unkindly. I wish I hadn't done that.

In that moment what I want is for the other person, my sister, to forgive me.

I want her to say she understands why I behaved the way I did, that it's no big deal, and that we can keep on working together.

However, at a level below the social, I am begging her to love me. I am afraid I am unlovable, that unloveableness is a sin, a crime against God and nature, and I am going to pay for it with my life.

In that light, my desire to be forgiven is understandable but still unhelpful. Lashing out the way I did perpetuates a particularly vicious form of separation: I believe - and act as if - we have separate interests and you are responsible for bridging the gap. I want my sister to be the healer, not me.

Believing in separation is not a moral failure. It's a common human deviation from Love. But we are called to heal it, and healing it cannot take the form of, "you fix it."

Separation is a malfunction, not a moral crisis. It's a flat tire, not a live action trolley problem. When my tire is flat, I fix it. On my own if possible and with the help of others if not.

It's the same with undoing separation-based thinking.

The behavioral aspect is the passive-aggressive email. That's the symptom, or symbol, of the underlying guilt and fear.

Asking my sister to forgive the behavior is at best a temporary respite on the guilt and fear. But the guilt and fear are also symptoms, or symbols. So forgiving them will also offer only temporary respite from suffering.

I have to drop down another level, to the source of the guilt and fear. I have to reach the ego, for whom guilt and fear are merely predictable effects of its existence, and its dependence on conflict.

Ego is the mistaken belief that we are separate. It's a deep-rooted, structural intuition that we are alone in the cosmos, and have to wrangle our own survival over and against everyone else.

Seeing ego in this way and at this level is hard. It’s even hard to talk about. Ego is not meant to be noticed. It resists being identified and questioned. We have to find our way to the interior swamp it calls home, find the carcinogenic throne from which it rules, and . . .

. . . do nothing.

Or rather, not judge. Ego wants an argument, a negotiation, an investigation. It wants our investment. It wants our attention, all of it, the hell with anything else. To ego, there is nothing else. Solipsism is the ego's understanding of nonduality.

Our job in this space is to simply let ego be. Let it rage and cajole and bluster and lie. Just don't judge. Don't buy in.

In my experiene, this is the hardest part of the work we do as students of A Course in Miracles. Seeing ego feels really really bad - and really really scary - and really really hopeless. In its presence, the desire to do something - anything - is hard to resist.

But if we can just sit there, if we do nothing, then we will learn something critical about ego and about what we are in truth.

Ego produces guilt and fear, guilt and fear produce the urge to project, and projection makes possible all kinds of shitty behavior. But when I see this - when I see it is a thing I am doing, start to finish - then I understand at last the meaning of "the secret to salvation is I am doing this to myself" (T-28.VIII.10:1).

Then the work clarifies. I do not need the forgiveness of my sister at all. I need to forgive myself.

I don't have to forgive myself for the stupid email (though later, at the social level, I will apologize to my sister - of course I will). Nor do I have to forgive myself for being fearful and guilt-ridden.

Those two levels are easy.

Rather, I need to forgive myself for falling for the egoic lie - the elaborate fiction - of separation, especially separate interests. That's the source of the problem.

Forgiving myself for buying into the ego’s separation con means penetrating the fantasy of specialness in order to discover my potential for holiness. For me, this can only happen in relationship, especially one that has been devoted to precisely this kind of undoing.

And so my sister - the one on the receiving end of that email - shifts in my thinking. I don't see her as an antagonist; I see her patiently bearing the effects of my ignorance until I can cry out, Bill Thetford-like, "there must be another way."

And then together - Bill-and-Helen like - we can create that other way together by living it together.

Holy Relationship teaches us we are not separate and do not have separate interests. It is a relationship in which it is clear that our happiness depends on our vision of the other, which depends on our acceptance of our responsibility for that vision.

Seeing Christ in you means remembering Christ in me and then becoming Christ, together in a word, Christing.

Being willing to do this work is about not hiding my so-called mistakes but rather embracing them as symptoms of a much deeper problem - the egoic lie of separation.

But more than that, it is about not going to war with the ego. It is about being nonviolent with ego. Just look at it - just see it. Find out what it actually is. Let it wail and gnash its teeth; let it taunt you with stones for bread; let it offer you the world. Eventually we all see through its dramatic performance to its fundamental powerlessness. It does nothing without our consent.

When we are no longer afraid of the ego, we find ourselves in transformed relationships - relationships that are premised on undoing our shared fear in order to reach the shared love that is what we are in truth.

That is how I see and practice A Course in Miracles right now. I wanted to share.

~ Sean