The Radicalism of A Course in Miracles

. . . how deep can you go?

I would like to talk about why I think A Course in Miracles is radical (not in the sense of being extreme, but the sense of effecting a deep and fundamental change). I am grateful to folks in our Sunday morning discussion group for patiently sharing with me over the past two weeks especially, as we have gone into this question.

Lesson 28 invites us to make a commitment to "withdraw our preconcieved ideas about a table and to open our minds to what it is and what it is for" (W-pI.28.3:1).

The lesson invites us to "ask" the table what it is for, not tell it what it is for (W-pI.28.3:1). We are invited to release it, not bind its meaning to our "tiny experience of tables," nor limit its purpose to our "little personal thoughts" (W-pI.28.3:4).

The table is a stand-in for any person, place or thing. Therefore, the lesson is inviting us to a new way of being in relationship.

I say those ideas - to not rely on past learning in order to understand and be responsive in the present - taken seriously, brought into application with intention and devotion, will transform one's life in ways they cannot imagine. They bring forth a relationship in which the separation is undone.

I say that the ones who practice that lesson together - who come to the new relationship - will know that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3), and thus will will live and teach that in our defenselessness our safety lies (W-pI.153.h). There will be no contradiction in them. There will be no conflict.

You could, in fact, gain vision from just that table, if you would withdraw all your own ideas from it, and look upon it with a completely open mind . . . Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe (W-pI.28.5:1, 3).

Lesson 28 is saying - as Jesus said centuries ago, as Meister Eckhart and Thérèse of Lisieux and countless others since have said - that we are not what our programming and conditioning insist we are. Life is not what were were taught it is.

What we were taught - by parents, school teachers, politicians, priests, business leaders, therapists, lovers et cetera - is all wrong. It's all a fear-based lie, and until we confront it as such, then there can be no healing.

Here is how Tara Singh (who knew the Course's radicalism) put it in his lecture "What is the Christ:"

I don't want to say, "I will not be pushed around by the way that I have been programmed, the way that I am conditioned. I will become a witness to it rather than getting involved in it." These are some internal steps that one has to take. Otherwise, we will never know certainty. We will just be led along by events . . .

Not to eradicate the programming and conditioning. Not to go to war with it. Not to tweak it, make it more Buddhist or Catholic or Advaitin.

Only to witness it, rather than get involved in it.

To not get involved is a big challenge! The temptation when we hear "programming and conditioning" is to say, okay, what should I do? We immediately go to counter-programming, counter-conditioning. Study the Course harder? Meditate more? Get a new job or diet or teacher? It’s the programming and conditioning all over again!

Tara Singh says we just have to come to the intensity of watchfulness - of giving attention.

Not the discipline of standing on your head, yoga or breathing. They may come later on - right food, right exercise, right breathing - but first this. We have to come to a non-knowing place, willing to be aware but not willing to conclude, not willing to want an opposite.

I was well into my Course study, well into my early fifties, before I began to understand the precisely radical invitation A Course in Miracles was making. I did not come to it gracefully. I tried as hard as I could not to follow Jesus in this way - I crucified him over and over - and yet he kept saying gently, there is another way and this is it. Will you follow?

I accepted his invitation in brokenness, confusion and unmanageability. I took one faltering step toward Christ and . . .

. . . and you know how that sentence resolves, right?

"Christ took two steps towards me."

We can repeat the words - the idea is a comfort! - but is it our truth? What is radical goes to the depths; it does not linger at the surface talking about the depths.

In that same lecture, Tara Singh said that awareness does not get caught up in the relative truth of words.

Awareness sees the words as not real. And somehow this awareness intensifies to a degree that no thought manipulates it.

Somehow . . .

Silence and stillness are curative. They are instructive. Sometimes we can point back to the cure and the learning with words, but the actual healing is not of words. It is more like when we are walking in a forest and suddenly come a clearing full of light and flowers. We didn’t invent the forest or the clearing; we are just walking.

We don't earn the healing. It is not a personal accomplishment. Healing is a natural effect of giving attention, of coming to the intensity of watchfulness so that the programming and conditioning no longer runs us. It's there, fine, but we are not being dragged along, forced by its energies to participate in chaos and destruction, bound to the suffering of separation.

Lesson 28 is not even a month into the Workbook and if we practice it truly and faithfully, it will bring the separation to an end. It will dissolve the abyss between us, that bloody seam fracturing Creation. It will restore to our awareness the love that is our inheritance as creation (T-in.1:7).

That is why I call the Course radical - because it touches the very root of our shared identity crisis, inviting us to undo the source of our spiritual sickness rather than moderating this or that symptom.

That is my understanding, and my understanding guides my practice, and my practice would not be possible if you did not stand so patiently and faithfully beside me. It is our willingness to do this work together that ensures its efficacy.

Truly does the Course promise that where we join, there God is as well (T-28.IV.10:1).

Thank you, always, for sharing this path with me.

Love,
Sean