Suffer Now, Be Happy Later

. . . notes on undoing a theology of fear

Lesson 234 in the ACIM Workbook can be confusing. It invites us to anticipate a time "when dreams of sin and guilt are gone, and we have reached the holy peace we never left" (W-pII.234.1:1). But it also asserts that that future is already here. "Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God . . . " (W-pII.234.1:4).

A reasonable student might ask: if that's so, then why do we have to pretend it's not here? Why are we being invited to suffer when we clearly don't have to?

The answer is, because we don't actually believe the peace of God is here in the present. If we did, we wouldn't need A Course in Miracles or any other spiritual or psychological practice. We really do think God’s peace is in the future, conditional on some right behavior or thought pattern, which we have yet to learn.

Believing this allows us to continually spiral off in a thousand times a thousand directions - different teachers, traditions, therapists, healers, books, classes, drugs, whatever. Strangely, none of these tangents ever solves the problem. But they do keep us distracted, which is why we give attention to them.

There is a tendency to fragment, and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding, or looking away from the whole, to what you think you might be better able to understand (T-16.II.2:1-3).

What we would we look at if we were not so invested in perpetuating separation through a projected healing process that never works?

Eventually, we would look at the decision to project in the first place. We would take seriously the idea that we are doing this - "this” being suffering - to ourselves (e.g., T-27.VIII.10:1). And so we could ask: absent projection, what is the external world?

So here we are: two hundred some odd lessons into A Course in Miracles, half a dozen runs through the Text, maybe a dive into the Manual for Teachers, and we are still incapable of realizing that God is Love, that Love wills only to create, and that we are Love's Creation, created to create like our Creator.

It's so simple! And yet we bury it in theory, obscure it with material obsessions, and blunt its efficacy with busyness. What are we so scared of?

What you exclude from yourself seems fearful, for you endow it with fear and try to cast it out, though it is part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? (T-15.XI.4:6-7)

A moment ago I used the word "incapable." It felt right in the moment. But is it true? Are we actually incapable of realizing God is Love or is it more like unwillingness? Like deep down we are stubbornly clinging to our right to say no, decide for ourselves what is true and what is false, bow to no man or woman, take what is ours by force if necessary et cetera?

For me, the study and practice of A Course in Miracles invites me over and over to this precise interior confrontation - of what am I so scared? What function does all this spiritual and pyschological drama serve? How much hatred and bitterness does ego harbor really? That is the work! All I have to do is look within without resistance. Nothing hidden, nothing projected, nothing secretive.

When I do that, what do I see?

Honestly, I see a child. I see a hurt, damaged and doubtful child. I see Robert Bly's thirty-thousand year old boy who had to make up his mind how to save me from death. I see Alice Miller’s betrayed child.

I do not see ACIM's “blood of hatred” (T-26.IX.3:1) or snarling dogs of evil (T-31.III.5:1).

Critically, there is only thing I feel for a wounded child, within or without me: Love.

When ego is reconfigured as an inner child then healing becomes possible. When we tend to the lost child in us, we commune with God as our loving parent. When I am kind to what is hurt and confused in myself, then I am kinder to you as well. Comfort and consolation are second nature to Love.

. . . there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows that He is alien here . . . Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one (W-pI.182.4:3, 5-6).

Maybe you say, well, that sounds great Sean. I'm glad you figured it out. But how do we do that? What's the trick? What's the insight? What's the key to unlocking the happy dream?

Lesson 234 has a suprising answer, one that honestly neatly sidesteps the whole rigamarole of ACIM. How do we remember innocence? Undo guilt and fear? See the Face of God and live?

Be grateful.

If you are grateful to your brother, you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude you come to know your brother, and one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father (T-4.VI.7:4-5).

When we seek in gratitude that which obstructs our awareness of Love, what we find no longer has the power to frighten us. The "dark cornerstone of terror" (T-11.in.3:9) yields easily to the inner child who is our defenselessness and strength (W-pI.182.7:1). We learn that we have not lost our innocence (W-pI.182.12:1). And in the absence of fear and guilt, we naturally remember Love.

Gratitude is the way hear the Holy Spirit teaches us how to become Christ in the very world we made to hide and disavow Christ. Gratitude teaches us that as God’s love for us is perfect, so can our love for one another be perfected. Our practice shifts from the projection of guilt and fear to the natural extension of Love. All that is required is our willingness, our consent to be Love’s channel.

In this way, the illusion of "our pain" - our private suffering, our personal journey to the cross as both crucifier, crucified and bystander - is undone. It was an error arising from confusion about what we are in truth. When we become responsible for undoing the projection giving rise to the confusion, the error is undone.

And yes, this practice of Remembering God Through the Practice of Gratitude takes time. But it also takes time with it. It takes intention and devotion, and a context for their application, but also, it takes intention and devotion and the context for their application with it.

We imagine Heaven as a future state because we are still too frightened to realize it is here now. That’s okay! It is not a crime against God or nature to be a student. Let us, together, be earnest students, bent on perfecting our learning so that together we might see the way home open and the journey’s end come into sight (W-pI.182.12:8). The child in us - the Christ in us - asks for nothing else.

~ Sean