13 Comments
User's avatar
Susan Leahy's avatar

Thank you Sean. Absolutely beautiful and life changing writing. Daily I have a ritual of feeding birds because until this morning I thought the birds brought me joy. Today and forever after I will feel the joy that I am. I will be grateful that watching birds allows me to return to my natural state of love. What a powerful new understanding you have shared today. To say thank you seems insignificant. You have truly changed my perspective forever.

Expand full comment
Sean Reagan's avatar

You're welcome, Susan. I'm glad it's helpful. Birds are absolutely symbols of joy and peace!! One of my favorite ways of remembering that the separation never occurred . . . . 🙏🙏

~ Sean

Expand full comment
Sean Mc Geary's avatar

Sean that's an eye opener this post .Susan has said for me what I couldn't say. It's changed my mind about beauty out there, A few weeks back I told myself i was in a void well iwas just caught up again in ego totally deceived. But as luck would have it my grandson helped me get substack so I had the benefit of past posts of yours and my gratitude for your insight is just great but then your post tells me there's nothing outside me,just like the beauty you described. Twenty years ago I started this course and I'm just starting it properly now because of you and a little pain. I wish I could sit at your feet and listen sean.

Expand full comment
Sean Mc Geary's avatar

Sean I've dreamed of you coming to Ireland and meeting up with you many times. But you'd better hurry because I'm going 87 this year and it's not going well at this time. But even you don't make it we have met in spirit ,I feel a love for you that's not of me. I look forward to your posts. Ps I've got a bedroom waiting for you anytime

Expand full comment
Sean Reagan's avatar

We HAVE met in spirit, and in a nontrivial sense, there is no other way to meet. You are my friend and brother. But I hear you Sean - my thoughts are with you and if a path to Ireland opens, I promise I will not refuse it 🙏

Love,

Sean

Expand full comment
Sean Mc Geary's avatar

Thank you Sean

Expand full comment
Sean Reagan's avatar

Thanks, Sean. Maybe one of these days I'll get myself back to Ireland and we can talk!

Yeah, it's a funny shift seeing the beauty (and peace and justice etc) inside of us rather than projecting it. But once we get in the swing of it, then a lot changes - especially in terms of our sense that something is missing. The course is full of easy-enough concepts that are deeply challenging in application.

I'm right there with you, Sean. Thanks for being here, too.

Love,

Sean

Expand full comment
suzy shepherd's avatar

Indeed Sean, and wonderful to know that in our real world there is only peace and love. Much Love xxx

Expand full comment
suzy shepherd's avatar

This is exactly where I am right now, I am feeling everything that you wrote on such deep level Sean.

All arises in myself, everything absolutely everything. It is so hard to really know this in every moment though, for most of the time "we don't know what we are only that we are" as Shri Atmananda tells us.

And yes Sean. . . "Imagine a grace and peace - a creativity and helpfulness - that is not personal to Sean or to you or to anyone else - but reaches all of us, heals all of us . . "

we are this grace and peace, we are all of it, everything.

After reading your post before I went to bed I woke up to this post from Marianne Williamson, Which I saw it in a completely new way than I would normally have seen it.

"Whatever I give to others, I am giving to myself

In the mortal world, what I give away is no longer mine. In the spiritual world, only what I give away is mine. If I give anger, I shall know anger. If I give love, then I shall know love.

Help me resist, dear God, my projection of blame onto others. For it is only in seeing others as innocent that I can be at peace. Help me to disagree without blame, to share without criticism, and to debate without demonizing anyone. Make me in all ways a conduit of your love.

Today I bestow peace on others, that I might be at peace. I withhold my judgment, that I not be judged. I extend my love, that love might be forever mine.

Whatever I give to others, I am giving to myself"

So thank you for the gift of new vision Sean and for the gift or reinforcing the truth within me.

Much Love Suzy x

Expand full comment
Sean Reagan's avatar

You're welcome, Suzy. Thank you for reading & sharing. I'm grateful we share this path. Those are lovely words from M.W., very close to the Saint Francis prayer. There is so much peace and love, isn't there 🙏🙏

~ Sean

Expand full comment
Tricia Hayes's avatar

I completely understand what you are saying Sean thank you

Expand full comment
Tricia Hayes's avatar

Wonderful stuff as always Sean, thank you. Isn't the idea to feel the causeless joy, imperturbable peace, unconditional love irrespective of what my projection(s) is/are showing me? Otherwise I'm interpreting and on the slippery slope to suffering 😁

Expand full comment
Sean Reagan's avatar

Thanks, Patricia.

I mean, on the one hand, yes. Of course. That's the idea!

But on the other, few of us are able do that and so we need help of some kind. Training in Buddhism, discplined psychotherapy, the study and practice of A Course in Miracles, whatever.

As I use the term, and as I understand and practice A Course in Miracles, if we are projecting then we are operating in fear - we are defending something (that is what projection is and does) and so we are NOT feeling causeless joy, imperturbable peace, unconditional love." The projection obstructs that - it is MADE to obstruct that.

We might CALL what we experience "causeless joy, imperturbable peace, unconditional love" - the ego is very good at co-opting language to serve its goal of separation - but that is still the projection talking.

What is interesting to me is less how we describe the experience after, or how to we point to it for others, and more about just getting clear on the mechanics of how perception and thought function - noticing when we project, noticing the effects, seeing if we can do anything different, and what happens if and when we do.

In my experience, giving attention to the "how" (more than the "why" or the "what") tends to yield actionable insights (hate that phrase!) that allow us to experience more and more the "happy dream" that is the result of practicing seeing with the Holy Spirit (which seeing is perception without the impediment of perception).

As I alluded in the post, one of the lovelier fruits of the practice is realizing our minds in the the fullness of their creative potential. That is quite liberating 🙏🙏

Thank you again Patricia!

Love,

Sean

Expand full comment