what's real? Archives • School for A Course In Miracles

Musings: Is It Healing or Fixing?

October 15, 2014

“You can’t fix what isn’t real. What’s real doesn’t need fixing.”

When you see a problem in someone else—sickness, mood, disposition—it is your mind that is in need of healing, not the one in whom the problem appears to reside.

There is only one problem…..ever. It is the idea of separation in the mind. If the indivisibility of a single whole mind is to be recognized, healing of the mind must occur.

A Course in Miracles is maddeningly relentless and impeccable in its teaching of non-duality. It leaves no un-swept corners in the mind where the ego’s belief in separation can remain hidden. One of those corners is our own good intentions to help others with their problems without first healing ourselves.

When we attempt to fix problems in someone else we are missing the point. It is an opportunity for our own healing, not someone else’s. Only a healed healer can heal. He heals by knowing we are all already healed. The certainty in his mind extends through his mind to other minds without him doing anything for which he could take either credit or blame.

This is not to say that one could not also do something in whatever form might be most helpful. However his certainty is that regardless of what he does in form, healing is already accomplished.

How different this is from fixing which can only occur where there is an idea of inequality and of “other”.

Yesterday someone tried to fix a problem that I thought I had. He first had to make the problem real by agreeing with it. He then took out his tools that he had learned in a training and began to try to fix my problem. The feeling that arose within me as this was going on was one of inequality. He, with his solution, was superior to me with my problem. Now we both had the same sickness, separation. There was no way out.

When we try to heal at the level of form we are attempting to keep the real problem which is in the mind. That way the ego, our false sense of self, is preserved.

This whole situation illustrated the important distinction between healing and fixing. If there is anything but perfect equality in any relationship the idea of competition has entered the mind. How can there be healing where there is one who is superior? Separation is reinforced rather than healed.

Unhealed healers believe the problem is where it is not, in the body and not the mind. The fact is that we are all already healed…..no exception. Minds are already joined and there is only one.

Nothing that is real that could possibly need fixing. Nothing unreal exists. We do not believe that however, or we wouldn’t be seeing the world of suffering that we see. It is the seer that needs to change the way in which he sees. He needs to learn to see with different eyes and hear with different ears. For that shift he needs a Teacher from beyond the world of form, one that doesn’t believe in differences of any kind.

A Course in Miracles teaches us how to make ourselves accessible to a Teacher who can show us how to look with a single eye from beyond the body and see a different world. This translocation of self from identification with the body to a singular consciousness is the awakened state we all pretend to seek and at the same time fear. It is the shift from the personal and the private, to the oneness of heaven and non-specificity. This is the land of “no-thing” and it is this that you and I fear. That’s what God is. And that’s what Love is. And thats what the Peace of God is. And that’s Heaven. And that’s what you are afraid of.

Would you like to live without fear? Would you like to experience Love? Would you like to be free of torment?

Musings: Only the Mind is Real

May 4, 2014

means meadow in the fall — **Means Meadow**

“Only the mind is real because only the mind can be shared.” (T-6. V.A. 3:2-3).

The body is neutral. Think of it as a mindless puppet and you are the one who pulls the strings. The puppet only responds to the decisions of the mind. The body has no thoughts, feelings or experiences of its own. It does what its master tells it to do. It is a symbol of what the mind dreams we are—a separated individual with a will of our own.

“The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist.” (T-6.V.A.2:2-3).

If you want to try to prove that you are a body—that you are right and God is wrong, that separation is reality and perfect oneness is a lie—then you (the one pulling the strings) will want to make it seem that the body has power of its own and it can tell you who you are and how you feel. What better way to do that than for the mind to direct the body to feel pleasure and pain? This is all part of the ego’s plan to keep you mindless. Now it seems like life is in the body and not in the mind of the one pulling the strings.

“The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.” (T.6.V.A.1:4).

The real question you should ask yourself is what rules the mind? Who is it that is pulling the strings of the puppet? Is it the ego that wants separation, individuality, and specialness to be reality? If it is then the body/puppet must be made to appear to be alive because it seems to prove that separation is real. Under the ego’s direction the puppet will attack (judge) other puppets, and feel pleasure and pain. It will be different from others of its kind. This is the ego’s world, based in the tiny mad idea of separation, ruled by separate interests, all coming from the mind.

There is another way but you first must get back to the mind and recover your power as a decision making mind. You are the chooser of what rules your mind and therefore what directs the body. If you like being a person in a dream in a world of separate interests then you are probably not going to want to do this.

The shift from the body to the mind is what transformation is all about. It requires willingness to abandon the ego as your teacher in order to learn from a teacher who is outside the dream. In A Course in Miracles that teacher is Jesus, because he is a symbol of perfect, ego-less, love. You could use any other symbol that works for you.

It is impossible for you to make this transformation from fear to love, body to mind without help. All the talents, skills, abilities that you have developed over the years have been useful only for navigating the ego’s dream of separation. These same skills cannot be used to shift your identity from the body back to the mind. Again, the ego’s purpose is to keep you from ever knowing you are a decision making mind. After all, if you knew you would choose against it.

Be forewarned. When the ego gets wind of this it will become one of its two predominant moods: suspicious or vicious. It will threaten you with sacrifice and loss as it sees its days of specialness are numbered. Awakened mind, Suzanne Segal, author of Collision with the Infinite, A Life Beyond the Personal Self, expressed the fear this way:

Life in a state of freedom from the ego “bears no resemblance to the stark emptiness that fear might paint it to be. People who tell me they don’t want to give up the personal because they believe they would be giving up love or joy or deep feeling don’t understand that the personal never existed. Nothing is given up. Love that appears to be personal is based on an ego-constructed sense of being separate.”

At no one instant does the body exist at all. It is always past or future. In this very instant it can’t be found. Life is now and is in the mind. Hurry home.

A question to ponder: Why would it matter how long the body lives?

Musings: What’s Valuable?

April 15, 2014

“Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth.”

Regardless of what state I am in right now there is a river of peace underneath all of it.

It goes with me wherever I go, in spite of everything going on in my ordinary life. It is not subject to any of it. It cannot be harmed or hurt. It cannot die; it was never born. It is eternal. It is what is looking through these eyes right now. It is what hears the sound of the night and it is the sounds themselves. It is what writes these words.

It is so very close to me that I am not apart from it. It is what I am.

It is arrogance, not humility, that won’t accept what I am. It is arrogance that asserts I am something else—worried, anxious, fearful—when it has tasted what can only be recognized as real. It is arrogance that thinks it can make itself some way other than the way it is.

It is what I am apart from anything I might call myself: sick, a failure, powerless. It is not affected by any of the disappointments I have endured or any of the awful things I have ever done.

It is what (not who) I am prior to any role that I have played: mother, teacher, wife, lover, liberal, woman, artist, friend, writer.

Why haven’t I noticed it as more than just a passing state before? Why haven’t I noticed that it is always there? Why haven’t we all?

Might it be that I have not paid it the slightest bit of attention and so it went unnoticed. Yet this alone is worthy of my full attention.

“Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth.” T. 137

This that I am goes on while shopping, doing the dishes, writing, sleeping, going for walks, being with friends. Sometimes I get caught up in a dream and I lose contact for a while. I start to feel out of sorts before long as a reminder that my attention has wandered from what is truly valuable because it brings me peace.

I can’t outrun it, hide from it, overcome it, rise above it, get around it, or go below it. It is with me wherever I go, whatever I do. Even when I forget it is there waiting for me to return.

This that I am has no weight and no dimension. It has no past and no future. It doesn’t have problems and it isn’t afraid. It doesn’t have moods. It doesn’t suffer. It has no need to plan. It does what needs to be done when the time comes to do it. It thinks when necessary and then it is still. It enjoys everything and resists nothing.

When A Course in Miracles came into my life many years ago it made some things very clear to me: that I was miserable; why I was miserable; and how I could leave misery behind.

The change didn’t happen overnight (in fact it continues to deepen). My misery had become very familiar. Who or what would I be without it? The emptiness was frightening each time I saw through some painful story I was telling myself and let it go. Would something come to fill the space that opened up when fear didn’t occupy every corner of my mind?

I waited impatiently, and then one day I waited patiently, with the certainty that something–I knew not what– would come to me. I didn’t care any longer how long I needed to wait. It was certain. And it did. It is never ending.

We suffer. But it doesn’t need to be that way. It is a choice. We can learn to make a different one that points us straight to what we are. It is there waiting for us to recognize, to bow down to in ourselves; in everyone.

It is possible that the only real desire I have left is help others come home to the Self they never left but only forgot for a while. It is the only thing that interests me when I meet someone or am with my family or friends and they have not yet turned to the constant source of joy within. I find myself silently saying turn, turn. It is so easy once you see it.

There is a point where you know “a happy outcome to all things is sure.”

Do you know it? Would you like to?

Musings: All Would Be Love

September 16, 2013

“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.”

(T. 15. V. 1: 6-7)

If we would lay aside our need to be somebody—all ideas about our self and all ideas we hold about the person before us—we would find that we are peacefully joined beyond either of those identities.

What is real is shared and what is unreal can’t be. Only the mind can be shared and it is common to all without exception. It is the personal—the body, private thoughts, the psychological self with all its needs and wants—that is unreal and therefore can’t be shared.

Awakening is from the personal. The unwillingness to enter a shared experience is the only hindrance to the realization of our Self which resides in the mind. (This is why the ego does not want us to learn that we are a mind.)

The shift from identification with the body to the awareness of the self as mind is a choice. We all will eventually make it, but usually not until we experience the pain and suffering our personal needs, wants and special interests bring upon ourselves and others. At this point we may begin to ask ourselves if there might not be a better way of relating that does not involve our specialness.

I have made it my practice to learn from Jesus that my brother and I share the same mind. It is a choice I make every morning before I begin the busy doings of the day. Remembering my goal, my part in every encounter is simply to recognize when the ego asserts its special interests and be willing to offer them to Jesus in exchange for something of greater value. I am the learner and I have a teacher.

In this process I find there is no strain to get approval, acceptance, or recognition from my brother. The listening is open and gentle when I realize the relationship is not in my hands and I do not have to make anything happen. There is no fixing, correcting, dazzling, enthralling, outsmarting, captivating, or manipulating. In allowing the presence of love beyond either body to hold the relationship I experience ease and acceptance of myself and my brother.

Jesus has never failed to show me that my brother is a much better witness to our shared reality of holiness than he is to my ego’s demands that my specialness be indulged.

The mind is truly miraculous when it is not contaminated by the ego. Spiritual practice is learning how to use the mind effectively to choose against the ego. Once we learn that we have a mind and that our only option in this world is to choose between the ego’s tyrannical rule or Jesus’ kind and gentle teaching of forgiveness we can become the happy learners of the truth of the following statement:

***“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.”* *T. 15. V. 1: 6-7***

Musings: There Is No Death

March 20, 2013

“Death is a decision not to decide.”

I was on an interview years back with friends and Course teachers Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Viera, authors of Take Me To Truth. The interviewer was Carrie Triffet author of Long Time No See.

Carrie asked Tomas about his life threatening health challenge and how he was dealing with it. (That’s Tomas in the picture on the right.)

His remarks were those of someone whose vantage point of perception had shifted from within the body to beyond the body. This shift in perception is the reward of practicing forgiveness that A Course in Miracles promises. It’s like lucid dreaming where you are awake in the dream and therefore not affected by it.

What I heard in Tomas’s voice was the absolute conviction of someone that no longer sees the body as his home. It is a rare person indeed that does not care if their body lives or dies. The freedom and peace that he enjoys was absolutely palpable.

The best it gets within the dream is to (fearfully) prolong the body’s life and feel as good as possible until its inevitable end comes. Why don’t more of us ask, “Is this as good as it gets?”

The best evidence that there is a God are these folks, who appear to be living in a body, who see a different world in which there is no fear. Having left the world of sickness, pain, suffering and death, they reside in the deathless zone of the Eternal. Every one of them would tell us that this transformation of mind is available to all of us without exception. Tomas is one of those examples.

Just today on Facebook I read about three very unexpected deaths. The suffering of friends and family is enough to make anyone want to see a different world. First we must believe that it is possible. I invite those who know this place of residence and the new vision that arises within it, to speak out. Let those who suffer know that it does not need to be this way.

Many many years ago, when A Course in Miracles first came into my life, I remember reading, “Death is a decision not to decide.”

I puzzled over that for a long time. It wasn’t until recent years that I fully understood. Death is a decision made in the mind that is ruled by the ego. It is the will of the separated self. It’s not God’s Will. It is a way of preserving our false sense of identity. We seem go out one door (in death), and come back in another (in birth), but we are still simply dreaming of separation.

The mind only changes when a decision is made to place it under the authority of God’s Teacher who shows us there is no death. It is an illusion of suffering that only exists in the mind under the authority of the ego. We must each make that decision to change what rules our mind. Once we do our Eternal nature is revealed and death is forgotten as a possibility.

Musings: The Decision Maker

February 18, 2010

That night Deepak Chopra was speaking to 2400 people in Calgary on non-violence. His goal was “to have at least 100 million people join him in a vow of non-violence in thought, speech and action”.

This is a worthwhile goal and I support it. But let’s be clear what that would mean for each of us if we really were to join him.

“The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure and for pride”. Text, p.105.

The relationship between attack and who uses the body is the significant part of that statement. The ego uses the body for attack. There is another possibility.

There are two possible commanders of the body. You are not the body. You are the one that chooses the commander. That “you” is in the mind and to make it a little more palpable we’ll give that “you” a name. I’ve heard many names but none has really appealed to me. For now we will refer to it as The Decision Maker. If you come up with one that works better for you, be my guest.

The Decision Maker is your self just prior to the insane choice you made for the ego and its symbol—the body. You still are the decision maker. Instead of being the one run by the needs of the body you are the one who decides if you want to continue in that way.

Just to flesh this out a little more so you understand the choice, the ego is:

a false sense of self

the you that you think you are

the one that likes being an individual, self-centered, separate

the one who sees the world in terms of what it means for you

the little self– the one who is needy and afraid of just about everyone and everything

The false self (ego) uses the body for pleasure, pride, and for attack.

If the ego were not using your body attack, pleasure and pride would not be useful or appealing.

The other option is to put the body in the hands of The Teacher. The Teacher uses your body for another purpose, but you need to become a learner first. This is a good time to point out that “Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you.” Text, p. 381.

Who/what is using your body?

Without changing the voice in command of the body, violence will continue. This is very important to understand because not seeing it is what it means to be caught in the dream of perception. You don’t think there is an alternative.

This is a decision that each of us eventually will make. All other attempts to bring peace to the world will fail.

More than likely if you are hearing this you are beginning to feel the disillusionment of being identified with the figure (body) in the dream. It’s not so hot being you anymore. You may even be a little bored with your self concept.

In letting go of our attachment to it there is nothing to defend.

When we stop defending we cannot be attacked. ( The famous relevant lesson in the Course is “If I defend myself I am attacked.”)

We only appear to be attacked because we are defending something that isn’t real. That is the meaning of:

“Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God”.

When we know God’s peace, we also know it envelops the world. The problem was only one of a false sense of self.