The End of Me

. . . and the beginning of holiness

My whole practice of A Course in Miracles comes down to learning how to be in relationship. I am not now and never have been very good at being in relationship. But salvation is communal; happiness and peace are shared. There is no other way.

Why is this so hard to learn? Why is it so hard to live by?

For most of my life I judged relationship in terms of what it offered me. Comfort, fun, education, pleasure, et cetera. What was I getting? A Course in Miracles (and reading Tara Singh) taught me to think instead about what I could offer you.

It was a healthy - a holy - shift in focus. I became happier and so did the people around me.

But I noticed that the desire to get something remained. It was faint, sure. Less dominant, absolutely. But it was still there. I brought it to the Holy Spirit: this want that sometimes masquerades as a need and seems to touch all my relationships . . . what is it? What is it for?

It turned out that answering this meant looking within at what A Course in Miracles calls a sense of lack (T-1.I.46:1). This lack, this sense of emptiness, is the space between us in which fear blossoms, causing all suffering. It is the separation (e.g., W-pI.184.12:4). This gap arises because we refuse to acknowledge our inherent shared innocence which, because it is innocent, asks nothing of the other.

The gap that separates me from you also appears to separate me from God.

Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created, to know what they have shared (T-7.XI.7:6-8).

Oddly, trying to see what is missing inside isn't easy. For me it's not. It's as if the sense of lack doesn't want to be looked at. It doesn't want to be noticed.

It is as if at some level - despite how much we profess our desire to be healed - we don't actually want to be healed. You could give me everything I want and it wouldn't be what I want because what I want is the lack.

Of course, all this is ego (e.g., T-4.V.3:2). It is the reduction of all systems and situations to survival - me against nature, me against the world, me against you. Relationships are negotiated based on how they help me survive.

Me, me, me.

When I looked within - when I went to the well - I saw how my longing for holiness was mostly talk. It was a front that called itself Christ while the real me scavenged the world for crumbs of love, grifting and stealing, looking the other way, even murdering and maiming.

Everybody suffers. Everybody sacrifices. Everybody dies. Of course I am focused on my survival.

How grateful I am for A Course in Miracles which teaches me there is another way.

When I give attention to this other way, I learn not to be so angry at the scavenger. I learn not to be disappointed in the con artist. I do not judge against the one who calls himself Christ while channeling Gog and Magog. In a sense, those identities - and the beliefs and actions to which they point, the relationships they bring forth - are just different characters in the same old unhappy story.

What I do want to do - the work, so far as I understand it - is find the Teller of the Story. I want to find the Author and see if it is possible to tell a new story. A happier story. A peace-filled story. A story about cooperation and collaboration and the end of conflict.

I need to find the one way in the back - far upstream - who is doing all of this and somehow see if that one will agree to do something else.

The one is my own self.

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true . . . The fear was held in place because you did not see that you were the author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream (T-28.II.7:1, 4).

It is possible to reach ourself - to remember the self created by God. The self in Creation is beyond the stories we tell, the conditioning we obey, the images we invent and the world in which these stories and tales, these characters and fantasies, appear to live.

But - and this escaped me for lifetimes apparently - you cannot reach this self alone. That is what my ACIM practice teaches me: what I truly want and need from you is companionship as we find our way back to the Wholeness that cannot actually be left.

I need you to be a friend, so that our friendship might mirror, fractal-like, our forgotten connection to God.

A one-to-one relationship is not One Relationship. Yet it is the means of return; the way God chose for the return of His Son. In that strange dream a strange correction must enter, for only that is the call to awake (P-3.II.4:6-8).

And as I offer this call to awaken, I receive it in turn. There is no other way to receive it.

Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other (P-3.II.4:10-11).

It's not about the other as an object - in the Hollywood sense of "you complete me." It's not about you as the guru or teacher, channeling wisdom and insight that is missing in me. It's about "us." It's about what happens when together we commit to learning what we are in truth, which can only be known in relationship.

I am confused when I reduce you to an object - beautiful, smart, deep, generous, whatever. When I think the hole in me can be filled by you I am confused. But when I see you as a fellow traveler, a companion for the road, then I am clear and the way is clear. What you give me is the only thing you can give me, which is friendship.

Don't be confused by the form the relationship takes! Friendship transcends time and space. A relationship is not holy because of its form but because of what the form does - what it makes possible - for those who are in the relationship.

The savior’s vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look on only what the present holds (T-31.VII.13:1-3).

What the holy relationship makes possible is the friendship - the unity, the connection, the divine play - of the child when the child is wholly innocent, wholly trusting and does need to separate itself in order to survive.

We barely remember this state but it was once and will be again - because it is now - real. It's a thing we know but have forgotten. But we can remember it together, by seeking nothing else but this in one another.

When we do remember it, it's a light that reveals a path taking us ever deeper into the meeting place of holiness and relationship. The separated self joins with another, and the two become one. The path is clear and we walk it as one, happy and at peace.

Thank you, always, for sharing that way with me.

~ Sean