on miracle-minded response to COVID-19
Hi everyone,
I want to share a little about the current pandemic-driven environment. Specifically, I want to consider the intersection of A Course in Miracles, helpfulness unto others, and salvation. Where they meet, we may know an inner peace that cannot be disturbed by any external crisis.
Although A Course in Miracles does not distinguish between big stressors and little stressors (e.g., W-pI.5.4:3), most of us do not experience our living that way. For us, cancer is worse than a stubbed toe, tax refunds are preferential to tax liabilities, and laughter is better than worry.
Thus, to a body, COVID-19 is disruptive and scary. We should not be hard on ourselves for experiencing that stress. It simply reflects our underlying confusion that we are bodies, and as such becomes an opportunity to remember that in fact we are not bodies.
Indeed, A Course in Miracles may be viewed as an invitation to remember through relationship with our brothers and sisters that we are not bodies.
Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend. On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness may be lifted from your mind. When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved (T-29.III.4:1-3).
To forgive our brothers and sisters is to enable them to save us.
So how do we forgive our brothers and sisters? Easy: we see in them only the perfection of Christ. We don't see bodies; we see the light of Love.
But that's not so easy! Our bodies are built on distinctions and they run on judgment. Isn't it natural to see our brothers and sisters as imperfect?
If we insist on seeing them in bodies (which is to see them from a body), then yes. They are imperfect. Us, too. But there is another way of seeing our brothers and sisters, which is to overlook their bodies altogether. Paradoxically, one way to "overlook" the body is simply to help it - that is, to offer our brothers and sisters the very help the world and its bodies seem to require. Doing so can become a way of remembering that "Identity is shared, and that Its sharing is Its reality" (T-9.IV.1:6).
Thus, rather than walk around obsessed with my inner state and my external circumstances - my fears, my temperature, my cupboard, my bank account - can I also give attention to where others are in their lives? My wife and children? My mother? My neighbors? You?
Service is not dramatic. It doesn't call attention to itself. It doesn't try to heal the whole world. It doesn't secretly cherish its righteousness. It simply responds to the needs it perceives before it, and does not ask ask for anything in return. True service is always unconditional.
Yet two lessons are inevitably learned when we quietly and gently offer to help others in this way, and both are gifts to us.
The first lesson is remembering that service begets a deep and bountiful gratitude even though we are the one who is giving. Thus, this gratitude readily transcends the actions of any apparent body. It is not "Sean's" gratitude or "Cheryl's" gratitude - it is Christ's gratitude, of another level altogether.
This experience of transcendent gratitude teaches us the second lesson by implication: if gratitude transcends the body, then what our body offers to another body is not actually the activity of bodies. Rather, it is the action of Love Itself.
Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins and of his body . . . Beyond his errors is his holiness and your salvation . . . his holiness is your forgiveness (T-22.III.8:3,5,7).
To forgive another is to be saved ourselves. It is not a sequence of cause-and-effect but rather a single unified movement in love.
Thus, in service, we leave behind the chaos and pain of the body and its special relationships in favor of "a holy relationship," which is "a common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily be healed as one" (T-22.III.9:7).
We don't have to be martyrs. We don't have to heal the world. We don't even need to heal everybody on our street. We simply have to be willing - through simple, sustainable acts of kindness - to perceive our brothers and sisters as unlimited by the appearance of bodies.
This "service" is about our intention to see with Christ, and to do as Christ bids us to do. The act itself might be a phone call or email, an offer to buy groceries or share casserole, a quiet smile. It might be letting someone have some quiet space to themselves. It might even be letting them help us.
The form the service takes is not the point. The point is to recognize that our salvation lies in our brother and sister. Thus, to them we owe all our love and gratitude. On earth - in crises big and small - this can briefly take the form of being helpful, that Light and Love might reach each of us as one.
Love,
Sean