Love Makes No Comparisons

. . . on service and ACIM Lesson 195

Lesson 195 of A Course in Miracles is ostensibly about gratitude, but it yokes this concept to our tendency to compare ourselves to others and find them - or us - wanting.

Comparison, it turns out, is not a recipe for inner peace.

You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love (W-pI.195.4:1-3).

Love makes no comparisons . . .

But look. In the human frame, we do make comparisons. We live by them. We compare foods, find some nutritious and others an abomination, and eat accordingly. We have to go on a long drive and opt for Bob Dylan instead of Taylor Swift. We like chocolate ice cream, not vanilla.

Or we love someone - hold them, kiss them, guard their rest - because we've been around, we've seen the options, and this someone is the best someone. They're good to us, they make us laugh, they let the little things go. Not just anybody can be this somebody!

We cannot not make comparisons. We really have to see this! We have to see how comparing arises naturally in our bodies, our thoughts, our language. Comparison is us. It's as much us as anything else we'd like to say is us.

We have to see it that way because if we don't, then the utter ridiculousness of the lesson - upon which its radical helpfulness is predicated - won't be clear. We are being told to adopt as a practice something that we literally cannot do. It isn't fair. It's masochistic.

So what do we do?

Lesson 195 advises us to let our gratitude make room for "the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss and those who feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and pain of death" (W-pI.195.5:2).

All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us (W-pI.195.5:3-4).

Do you see what happened there? We - you and I - got thrown in with "the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss and those who feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and pain of death."

It's not a mistake; it's a fact of our shared unity. If you are honest, can't you see yourself somewhere on that list? It's not a description of others - it's a description of our own living.

Comparison only makes logical sense if there are at least two things. I can compare my right hand to my left hand, but not my right hand to my right hand. I can compare the maple tree out front to the maple tree out back, but I can't compare the maple tree out front to the maple tree out front.

What is one and thus the same cannot be compared to itself.

We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions can ever be made which would reduce our wholeness . . . We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing . . . (W-pI.195.6:1-3).

Our thankfulness makes the next suggestion possible.

Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while. We offer thanks for them. For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us (W-pI.195.7:1-3).

Please see the clarity of that last sentence. It does not say refer to the peace that we have or know or are. It says the peace we are still looking for. It refers to the peace we haven't found. It envisions a future state that is not this present state.

You see? The Course is recognizing that we aren't there yet. We don't get it yet. And it is no big deal. The sky isn't falling. God isn’t casting lightning bolts.

Therefore, we can relax and get on with the other two sentences in that passage. We give thanks (sentence two) and then help our brothers and sisters rest (sentence one). We put the metaphysics and intellectualizing aside and, you know, actually help our brothers and sisters.

Lesson 195 never says this but it should: Act in the world with your body. Act in a way that helps other people. When you do this, the love and peace from which you still feel alienated, and the oneness that remains true even though you can't really see it yet, will be revealed.

An ancient door is swinging free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory, and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to clear . . . Walk then in gratitude the way of love (W-pI.7:4, 8:1).

Don't sweat the comparisons. Let them come, let them go. Don't sweat the impossible. Don't try and mentally work out what it would mean to be beyond all that. If it's your job to understand and help others understand, then that will happen. But right now - and perhaps for a long time to come - our job is to serve one another. In a world of servants there are neither kings nor arms dealers. It's not a bad deal.

We are the lost and forsaken. We are the lost sheep. But it's okay! Don't look for home, don't complain about how unfair life is, don't lament your fate. Rather, with clear eyes, gaze about the world and see the widow, the orphan, the wounded, the prisoner, the refugee, the hungry, the frail, the abandoned, the hopeless . . .

They are here. Their pain is our pain; their suffering our suffering. Therefore, let us be of service. In simple and nondramatic ways let us be friends to the world, not for what we can get but because we have something to give. Embody gratitude. What happens next?

Love,
Sean