Notes on Undoing A Course in Miracles

. . . mastering the art of "wholly empty hands"

I didn’t want to publish this post but then working through this Advent post this morning I realized I’m just scared of your response. We don’t always have to do what scares us, but it’s not a crime against God or nature to do so. You can share from a fearful place and see what happens. You can say “I don’t know” and learn. Isn’t that what healing is?

One of the funny things about A Course in Miracles is how it spawned a community that always includes folks who want to rewrite the course - fix the language, simplify its meaning-making, be more faithful to its Jesus-ly origins, whatever.

Nor was the Foundation for Inner Peace and Foundation for A Course in Miracles (nor any other organizational sprout) immune to this. Ken Wapnick, the public custodian of the course for many decades, was insistent there was a correct way to read and respond to the material, which he knew and could teach.

It's a messy text and community.

Which is okay! As Lynice Pinkard - my favorite Christian thinker and activist - says, messy is not a crisis. Indifference and passivity are.

There are no blueprints. And there is no space of purity from which to act. We must begin imperfectly from within the messiness, in ways that respond to and engage with our concrete and particular contexts and circumstances (Revolutionary Suicide).

One suggestion I make with respect to spiritual study and practice (because it works for me) is to begin as simply as possible and ask: what is attracting you to this text? To this practice? To this community?

Be honest and dialogic. Most of us have a slew of motives, only some of which we're able to take ownership of. The point isn't to purify or even improve ourselves. The point is to see clearly.

Everything else - happiness, inner peace, justice, oneness - follows "seeing clearly."

In my experience, a lot of our shared interest in A Course in Miracles rests in the fact that there's no actual authority - there are just a bunch of folks claiming different kinds of authorities. It's a buffet, not a shrink-wrapped deli sandwich.

So, you know, you can rewrite the course. You can add notes that were not in Helen's work and even contradict her work. You can scribe a sequel. You can open a school.

But when you do this - what you are really doing - is claiming the authority of Jesus for your interpretation, your version, your take. I’m not saying that’s wrong to do - I’m saying it’s important to see that you’re doing it.

Because I get it. There is something deeply and powerfully liberating in being able to claim the authority of Jesus. This is especially true if your relationship with Jesus has been mediated by men (they are mostly men) in high places whose investment in your marginalization and the marginalization of people you love has often turned murderous.

When I was a kid, Arlo Guthrie came to our little church on Christmas Eve. All us kids gathered on the altar around him, and he sang a bunch of Christmas songs about Jesus. I was so happy! I felt so close to Jesus and the Lord.

If I'd had any power at all in that institution I'd be like, you know what? Let's skip mass and just sing together and maybe even dance. Somebody order pizza, somebody break out the mirror ball.

But there was no space for me to do that - to speak that way, to even admit to feeling that way - in the Catholic church. You took what was given and said thank you, even if it was boring. Even if it hurt.

And ACIM is not like that! It's like silly putty. You can do whatever you want with it. You really can. Of course I fell for it; of course I did.

And, of course, as any parent (of kids or animals or plants) knows, "you can do whatever you want" is a problematic structure. It's not inherently wrong but it is dangerously simple. Sure, maybe you and I can do whatever we want - we read Tara Singh and Marianne Sawicki, we're disciplined meditators and artists - but what about the Trump-loving neighbor who wants more prisons, more guns and fewer brown people in the world and fewer women in positions of leadership?

That guy gets a seat the table absolutely - we cannot exclude anyone for any reason - but he's got a lot to learn about love. He's got a lot to learn about how to relate helpfully to "want." We don’t want him doing whatever he wants.

So the question is: why are you here? What permission does ACIM give you in your spiritual life for which you are so hungry? How does it empower you? What does it make possible?

But also, what is the risk involved in the course? Do you know? What are you not looking at when you study and practice A Course in Miracles?

The suggestion is, really go into those questions. Reflect on them, write about them, talk about them. Find people you trust and are safe with and then get uncomfortable with these questions. Get scared. Find the parts of you that don't want to be noticed - that just want to be able to do what they want, damn any consequences. Those parts of you also like the course - why?

I'll start.

In the late eighties and early nineties, when I was coming to terms with addiction and my desire to die, and realizing that this would be a lifelong process, I had a series of very powerful (non-chemically induced) interactions with God and the Cosmos through Jesus Christ.

I was in nontrivial ways born again. I was given a new life.

So I went back to the Catholic church. I felt the call to heal originating there, and I responded whole-heartedly. For almost fifteen years I struggled hard to make that church my home.

But the problem was clear from the beginning: the church saw gender and sexuality in terms that were at best awkward and uninformed. Most of the time they were actively hurtful.

I longed for woman leaders (all my best teachers are women), and I longed to share spiritual space with my LGBTQ+ friends who had no interest in celibacy or being spiritually shamed for natural healthy sexual expression. How could you call it a church when it so actively - often viciously - excluded so many people?

Eventually - a little dramatically because I am what I am - I left.

And a year or so later landed with both feet in A Course in Miracles. The course, I discovered, was a loose amalgamation of folks who were mostly indulging a superficial oneness practice (perfectly publicly imagined in Eckhart Tolle and Oprah and explicated by Marianne Williamson), and otherwise arguing among themselves about which edition to read, whether Gary Renard was a fraud, whether the historical Jesus actually wrote the course, etc etc etc.

And I was like, you know what? I can work with that.

And I did. I do.

I began writing and sharing and sometimes teaching and hosting dialogues. I experimented with my own rewritings of ACIM. I inserted myself in a way that felt good.

This is not - it is not - a crime against God or nature.

But it was very much about me, right? It was very much about my judgment of what was working and what was not. And I hate to say this but I slipped. I missed some stuff I shouldn't have missed. It’s not the end of the world but there is another way.

For example, I sensed very early that the course was not just "taking a position" viz. mind/body dualism but was actively and even dangerously wrong about mind/body dualism. I waited way too long to be responsible unto this error.

I also ignored the mysogyny of the text and its main teachers, and the grift of its lesser teachers. Ken Wapnick called women writers "authoresses" and cheerfully defended sexist language. Tara Singh's response to his child's death and the resultant family trauma still shocks me. Gary Renard was selling wierd nutritional supplements. Everybody - including, soon enough, me - had self-published course-related books.

People would write to me and say, my widowed mom is being encouraged to donate her house and savings to this ACIM teacher and we're scared, she's only been on this path a few months, what can we do, and my response was basically airy bullshit that helped nobody.

Is it clear? I was complicit in separation. I used the course to hide from my fear of confronting and undoing separation. Small comfort that I’m not alone! The course is regrettably excellent for this particular evasive tactic. You could even say it's designed for this sort of spiritual evasion.

I'm not perfect. Judging Ken and Tara Singh is slippery ground for me - they were serious thoughtful men who were trying very hard to do important work. They are my brothers. I love them both, and I will never be able to thank Tara Singh enough.

But that was the point I didn't see, right? I saw them as teachers and leaders. And when their writing and sharing made clear that they were not leaders but equals, as much in need of healing as the rest of us, I didn't square it. Why would I? I was after my own slice of the leadership pie.

I'm not saying throw ACIM away, although I understand totally when folks do. I'm saying, if it's an actual spiritual practice for you, then get real about why it's your practice. "Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God" (W-pI.189.7:5). What does that mean? Do you know? If you do, tell me. Please.

I've been writing these Advent posts - I've been wrestling with an angel through a long night for lifetimes - and some of you have watched, and some of you have shared, and some of you - I know this, please know I know this - went off to wrestle your own angel.

It has been a destructive - and also blessed and creative - season.

I walked away from church and God did not forsake me. I am not afraid to let go of A Course in Miracles. I am not afraid of what awakening might take away or ask me to say or do. I cannot be lost; I cannot be forsaken.

Do you know how I know this? Because you are here now teaching it to me. When we come "with wholly empty hands" unto our God - and that is the Advent objective - we find ourselves with a handful of brothers and sisters who will not leave us.

That is all I know. That is all I can say about love or church.

Lord, I am ready for something new - a new understanding, a new application, a new practice. I’m reaching for you Lord. In sight of my brothers and sisters - in sight of you - I am reaching. Please put a hand in my empty open own. I am ready now to take it.

~ Sean