Stillness is the End of Fear

. . . yet another lesson on letting go of judgment

It is hard for us to experience fear without doing something about it. Flee or fight. Get angry or defensive. Go into denial or self-improvement. Complain, compartmentalize, analyze, theorize.

Fear demands a response. Fear demands we act.

A Course in Miracles counsels, be still.

Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you that He has judged you as the Son He loves (W-pII.347.2:1-2).

The other day I stepped onto the back porch and saw in the distance a man standing at the pasture's edge, looking at our horses. Hands on hips, arms akimbo, head tilted. Who was he? Why was he so attentive? What is going on here?

These questions reflect fear.

One of our horses is blind - he has to be approached and engaged with in very specific ways in order not to spook and potentially hurt himself. The horses are my daughters' best friends, and I will not abide trespassers in that relationship. This is the homestead I built and work on with Chrisoula - there are veggie gardens, bee gardens, canning gardens, sacred spaces, chicken runs everywhere. People can't just traipse around.

This is how it happens. This is how the man - this stranger, this other - becomes a threat.

Please understand: I am not a bad man. I don't own weapons. I don't go toe-to-toe with strangers even if they're aggressive. I've worked hard over the years to develop conflict-resolution strategies that are nonviolent, dialogic, creative.

I'm one of the good guys. I am.

And yet.

A Course in Miracles suggests that I'm lost because I believe in good guys and bad guys. And it emphatically urges me to not indulge fantasies of self-managed conflict resolution because they arise from a mind that is deeply confused and misguided.

Altogether, my thinking - my instincts, intuitions and insights - are fundamentally untrustworthy.

Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim your gift today (W-pII.347.1:1-4).

How do we claim that gift? Simple. We release our claim to judgment.

. . . I give all judgment to the One You gave me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth . . . He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness (W-pII.347.1:5-6, 8).

Is it clear? Fear arises because I have judged the situation as threatening. I have let fear be my guide. But if I resign as the judge, then what happens? If I release all judgment to the Holy Spirit, what happens?

The Holy Spirit says: in this moment Sean - right here, right now - you are okay. Your family is okay. The horses are okay. The homestead is okay. The man observing the horses is also okay.

No metaphysics, no complex psychological dialogues, no spiritual lightning bolts. Just a gentle reminder that right now - in this moment - all is well.

What does this look like in practice? In a body in the world?

It looks like standing on the porch and doing nothing. Not walking down to say hi to the stranger. Not making a racket so he'll know somebody is watching.

It looks like acting as if it is all okay, even though my mind and body want to act like it’s not okay, or could become not okay in five minutes if I don’t do something right this very moment . . .

Breathe and let go. Breathe and let go.

The miracle is remembering to be still, and then choosing to be still over and over, and then (as an effect of that stillness) remembering - ever so faintly - that love, not fear, is my inheritance, and peace, not conflict, is my will, and that both these statements are true because of what I am in truth.

Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. And thus you are unknown to you (W-pI.160.1:1-3).

Do you see? The man is not the stranger. I am the stranger because I have accepted fear and all its effects as real.

There is - there is always - another way.

Draw a breath. Remember I came onto the porch to get the eggplants Chrisoula harvested earlier. Gather up the eggplants, go back inside. Wash, slice and salt the egplants. Make half a dozen parmiagianas to freeze for winter.

Hours pass working. I want to go outside and check but I don’t. It’s okay, says the Holy Spirit quietly. It’s more than okay.

This is what we do: we notice our fear and intentionally choose to listen to another voice. Here in these bodies in the world we choose another way. The choosing arises from willingness, and the willingness is a gift. The willingness is a miracle.

This is radical because it contradicts apparent human logic - of course a stranger is a potential threat. Of course you should introduce yourself, let them know you're watching. Of course you should be peaceful but firm. Of course you should hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I know those arguments very well. You do too. They live in us as a function of our biology, our culture and our conditioning.

Yet every single one of them arises from fear - my fear, your fear, our ancestors' fear. Every single one of them reduces our brothers and sisters to potential enemies rather than fellow collaborators in mercy, justice and peace. Every single one of them locks us forever in cycles of attack and defense, obliterating happiness.

A Course in Miracles is radical because it teaches us - in these bodies in this world - that all fear is conflict, and all love is communion, and all communion is healing. It teaches how to become children of the One who undoes fear and all its effects and restores to our shared mind the knowledge of Love in which the distinction of "self" and "other" disappear, which is all the healing we need.

On a recent Saturday morning in New England, summer ending, garden overflowing, healing looked like putting up eggplant. It looked like not over-reacting.

Briefly - one or two moments only - it looked like love in a loveless place (T-14.IV.4:10).

Thank you, as always, for helping me remember the way.

Love,
Sean