[pinit]
Being female in this world, I’ve always held certain unexamined assumptions about How Things Are. I believed the story that I’m weak and vulnerable. I believed my gender made me an automatic target for crime, and therefore I must be constantly on my guard against theft or bodily attack.
And so, like many women, I developed behavioral responses to my environment:
Never walk down alleyways at night.
Always check the back seat before getting in my car.
Listen for footsteps. Be aware of any cars that might be following mine.
Paranoia, in this case, seemed the smart and rational response to a dangerous world. And this hyper-vigilance gave me some illusory sense of control over my environment.
Despite ongoing enquiry into the nature (and trustworthiness) of my own beliefs, I had never seen fit to question this particularly far-ranging and pernicious set of fears.
I’d spent decades feathering my nest and arranging my life into the reassuring picture of comfort and control, you see. So my fears rarely had the chance to parade themselves in full.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Uh…no. They festered ever-present just below the surface of my consciousness, oozing low-level anxiety into every corner of my life instead.
• • •
So it’s been an interesting several months.
After 21 years as a comfortably married lady, I moved out of the house June 1st and gratefully spent the summer at my dear friend Kathy’s place. While there, my primary hobbies including staying awake nights and obsessing about lack of safety, potential loss of steady income, and fears of destitution and/or homelessness.
The theme was survival – was I capable of taking care of myself? And that age-old unconscious question at the base of all things: Did I really have any right to thrive in this world?
I discovered all my buried fears now had ample opportunity to come out and play: How would I live? Where would I go? Could I run my business without Kurt (I.T. Guy Extraordinaire in the next room), ready to bail me out of any technological jam?
There was more: Without a home base to call my own I’d be traveling around with all my worldly goods in tow, having no permanent place to stash my valuables. How would I protect myself from the constant threat of theft? I felt utterly vulnerable and unsupported in the world.
(Interestingly, I was surrounded by beautiful people on all sides who were offering huge quantities of loving support. But this frightening and pervasive lack of support was an inside job. And it welled up in me unceasingly, no matter what anyone around me said or did.)
• • •
At summer’s end, I packed up my little car and drove it across the desert to Sedona. I had no idea why Sedona, or what I might do there. But I had eventually gotten so bored with torturing myself over questions of where to go and what to do, that I surrendered the whole scary bag of worms to Spirit.
And Sedona it appeared to be, so now I was just uneasily following the prompts that seemed to point me toward red rock country.
One of these Spirit-inspired prompts was a Sedona house-share rental that I had taken sight unseen from Craigslist. It was a massive three-story log cabin in the woods, with broad balconies on all sides. It had spectacular views of Thunder Mountain.
So far so good.
This place was quite a bit more expensive than other house-shares I’d seen, but sounded a hundred times better than any private apartment I was likely to find for a similar price. So I took it.
I would have the whole second floor to myself — a huge bedroom with office area; balcony; sitting room; a closet big enough to park my Mini inside (if only I could’ve gotten it up the stairs) and a large separate bath. And there was a very spacious loft area at the other end of the second floor that was also mine – except for Wednesdays, when that space would be used for New Age chiropractic sessions of some sort.
All of that sounded fine, and the pictures looked good. But then I arrived, and saw what the photos hadn’t shown: There were no doors on my room…just a bunch of curtains across an open expanse. No window coverings in most of the house, either, including my bathroom.
And when I asked for a key, I was told they didn’t use them. None of the locks worked on the house’s several exterior doors, apparently. Which didn’t seem to trouble my roommate Maurice (or any of his friends) because he never locked the doors anyway.
Okaaaaaay….
And then three days after I arrived, Maurice left town for two weeks and I was all alone in this giant, exposed, unlockable cabin in the woods. All alone, that is, except for the fifteen or twenty strangers who converged on the place every Wednesday to have their chakras tuned up and spines realigned.
Not only did this place push every safety fear button I had, it seemed to invent a half-dozen new ones.
I was especially terrified of coming home alone after dark to an empty, unlocked house. As I entered, I would turn on every light, methodically checking every room, every closet, under the beds and behind the shower curtains – investigating every potential hiding place to assure myself no unseen attackers were lurking.
I was also afraid that some of those chiropractic patients would surely recognize this house for the easy mark it was; over and over in my mind I’d picture them casing the joint and coming back after dark to steal the aforementioned worldly goods.
Or worse.
Every night in bed my mind ran obsessively through all the horrifying scenarios of What Might Happen. And I couldn’t seem to stop it. The heart-pounding, sick-making terror of it.
Oh yes. I knew these were all just ego stories I had invented.
I knew these fears weren’t real.
I knew I was One with all these horrifying “others” who populated my feverish imagination. And I certainly knew they were innocent in Truth.
But knowing all this didn’t make it a damn bit better. Not when it felt like my very survival was at stake.
• • •
But here’s the thing: These days I’m in a period of consciously examining all my deeply buried unconscious pain, fear and general gunk, together with Spirit. Just the action of witnessing all this hidden crap – just agreeing to bring my awareness to it and be with it unconditionally – this is powerful stuff, and it causes huge leaps in healing.
So whenever dark, difficult emotions crop up, I see it as a gift, and I welcome the emotional turbulence as a prime opportunity for transformation. And back at Kathy’s place, I had prayed to be able to witness my deepest fears and surrender them to Spirit once and for all, for total healing.
Hey, prayer answered.
Or the first half of it, anyway.
So I knew it was no accident I had come to stay in this funhouse of the damned. Besides, even while it made me sick with terror, funnily enough there was something about the house itself that felt like a big, warm hug. On some level I knew this cabin was a loving, gentle laboratory for working out my fears.
A safe place to feel howlingly unsafe in.
But. The obsessive scenarios of violent crime still played out in my head every night and refused to go away. Upon deep examination, I realized my pain stemmed from being helpless to control the situation. (Had the doors been lockable, I could’ve maintained the illusion of control. But in this wide-open vulnerability, I had no choice but to rely on those terrifying “others” – hoping they’d choose not to target this house. But clearly I would never have control over that.)
The truth, of course, is that none of us has control over such things, ever. But we whistle past the graveyard, and we buy alarm systems or firearms or life insurance policies; we build up savings and retirement accounts so that we can stop being afraid. So that we can sleep at night. So that we can give ourselves the illusion of control. But outside forces are outside forces, at least here in the 3-D world of illusion. And outside forces simply aren’t controllable.
The only way to be free of fear once and for all is to meet it where it actually lives:
Within.
After awhile, I found the pain of trying to control the uncontrollable was even more unbearable than the fear itself. So it became comparatively easy to surrender the whole awful situation to Spirit. And that’s saying a lot, because when push comes to shove, we all unconsciously believe surrender to God leaves us completely unprotected and vulnerable to attack.
In that ass-backwards, upside down logic of the ego mind, hanging onto the fear seems to offer some measure of protective armor. Some scrap of control. So if I was going to hand over my last scraps of protection and control, it meant I had to get to a place where I felt willing to die. Where surrender actually seemed a better solution than hanging onto the agony of “control.”
Like: I might as well agree to possibly be murdered in my bed, because living with this kind of mental pain – the endless imaginary future enactment of that murder – is worse than that.
So I surrendered and I trusted, mainly because I saw no other viable options.
Relief was not immediate.
It took days or weeks. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but one day I turned around and realized the fear had gone away completely.
The house was still the same.
The people, God love ‘em, continued to come and go, treating the cabin like a benevolent frat house.
It’s me that’s changed. I’m totally comfortable now.
• • •
Here’s a related subject: The other day in the late afternoon, Fran and I hiked Cathedral Rock. It had been years since I’d done it. Cathedral combines elevation hiking with a substantial amount of rock climbing, so it’s not a hike that can be rushed through. It takes some time.
I wasn’t thinking. It was sunny when we started out, so I wore my prescription sunglasses.
The sun had dipped below the horizon by the time we reached the top. By halfway down it was getting quite dark, so I had to choose between two less-than-ideal options: Make the rapidly deepening dusk even darker by wearing my shades? Or take them off and be as blind as…some kind of blind thing with its eyes closed?
The dilemma made me recall my first “midnight hike” in Sedona. (If you’ve read Long Time No See, you know about that hike.) How terribly anxious I’d been. And how astonished I was to emerge from that pitch-black wilderness experience entirely unscathed.
The lesson that night had been about trusting in Spirit, which was something I was unable to do back then. Then some time later, in another nature setting surrounded by towering Sequoias, I found myself once again worrying about dangerous predators and other safety hazards. And a lesson from Spirit emerged, which referenced that previous midnight hike:
“…The truth is that the bears and the ice are One with your holy Self. In perfect gentleness they support you and keep you safe within this dream world – just as the cactus and coyotes functioned to keep you safe during your pitch-black Sedona hike. Your One Self (which includes all bears, coyotes and prickly desert plants) supports you in your lesson plan as it lovingly awaits your awakening.”
At the time, it was too much to take in. Oh sure, I understood it intellectually. But it wasn’t until the other night, as I shimmied down a mountain in near total darkness, that I got it. I was entirely calm, without a shred of fear or anxiety, filled instead with a sense of total safety and trust in Spirit.
And, just as Spirit had described it back then, I could really feel the rocks and cactus and crickets and sky as my One holy Self, lovingly supporting my progress every step of the way. I felt our mutual gratitude. And our mutual joy.
In fact I felt like the richest, luckiest, giftiest person alive. And pretty much every minute since then has felt like Christmas morning.
• • •
The most extraordinary thing of all: So much more seems to have been healed than just the particular set of fears I thought I was handing over. These days I find myself striding through life in wholly unaccustomed ease and safety for the first time ever.
I have no concern for my personal security or the safety of my stuff. Yes, I remain mindful. I don’t leave my things unattended, or take foolish risks. But fear is gone. I am truly comfortable wherever I find myself.
And even more miraculous than that: For the first time in my life, I now know I have a right to be here. I mean, really know it.
I am safe in My own embrace. And I am Loved. Very, very Loved.
And it’s all an inside job.
I leave this crazy log cabin in a week or two, headed for my next adventure. I will be forever grateful for the things I left behind here. And for the new riches I carry with me, wherever I go.
That ol’ black magic
Ever since I was small, I was terrified of the supernatural. Back then, I lumped together ghosts and other entities with everything unexplained, including spiritual phenomena. If it didn’t solidly belong to this 3-D world, I didn’t want to know about it.
But then spirituality began calling me rather insistently. And so I revisited the whole question of supernatural phenomena in recent years, and in doing so found that my fear of it had largely been healed.
Mostly. Well, sort of.
Ok, not.
• • •
Recently I spent some quality time in England, where all the buildings tend to come complete with several centuries worth of ghosts.
I can usually tell when ghosts are present, because it feels like they’re sitting on my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs. But I don’t see them, or anything like that. I’m sensitive, but I’m not that sensitive. (Or if I am, then I do a good job of blocking out those awarenesses.)
But this time I was travelling with two people who see it all. So we’d walk into an ancient church crypt or someplace, and I’d feel my familiar stab of unreasoning fear, followed by what seemed like a medium-sized brick sitting on my chest.
And then one of my companions would catch my facial expression and say, “yes, you’re right. There are ghosts here and one of them was attracted by our light and wanted to come back outside with us. So I said a prayer for his wellbeing, and now let’s get out of here!”
You’d think that would have been the most remarkable thing that happened all day, running into a herd of ghosts and having one of them try to come home with us.
But no. There was so much challenging stuff going on during this European trip, that this ghost encounter made barely a dent. It was just one more thing to deal with.
• • •
Now, I know ghosts and whatnot are not a part of ultimate truth. In ultimate truth, Heaven has no opposite, so anything that’s not of pure light and love can’t really exist. All this dark stuff is just ego fantasy.
And yet.
This unreasoning fear of mine runs so deep, it goes way beneath any conscious understanding I might have about the nature of eternal truth.
It feels like death.
Feels like worse than death.
This deep unconscious terror of all things supernatural needs to be released, before I can really know that ghosts are meaningless in their unreality.
Because to me, right now they’re still damn real. And they scare the crap out of me. And I don’t even really know why.
• • •
So there we were a few days later, at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. (And yes, that place was a ghost-and-past-life-a-palooza. I’ve definitely been there before.) And something extraordinary happened, as I sat alone on a bench in the ever-present drizzling rain.
A sudden clear inspiration was placed in my mind, showing me a huge part of myself that is very ancient and deep. And that ancient part of me is deeply connected to that which I label as ‘supernatural.’ And seeing this caused me to respond with a spontaneous vow:
It’s time to stop hiding from myself. It’s time to know who I am and embrace all parts of myself fully, including my own gifts, whatever they may be. I will allow in everything that I’ve always blocked out. I’ll stop resisting and fearing the supernatural.
But that’s an awfully big vow. One I’m not yet able to keep. It’ll take getting in touch with that deep unconscious fear, and then letting it all go and be healed. The vow sets the process in motion, I guess, but the work remains to be done.
And after I’m no longer afraid of ghosts; after I remember all parts of myself and my previous supernatural-prone existences…then we can talk about the meaningless unreality of it all. At that point I will gratefully release the dark stories my past lives seem to tell, and embrace the light of ultimate truth instead.
I look forward to it.
I pledge allegiance to Love
Funny, how you can hear something said a hundred times, and you think you get it. You think you know exactly what it means.
And then, one day you hear the same statement, and POW! It ignites a flame, a knowing, in your heart. And you realize you had no friggin’ idea, those other hundred times.
It’s an occupational hazard, especially in the spiritual arena. We hear about spiritual truth all the time: We’re all One. This 3-D world is not real. Only Love is real.
Blah, blah, blah. We get ‘truth fatigue.’ We hear it, and it sounds just like the truth we heard last week and the week before that. And so we tune it out. We’re not really hearing it at all.
Well, that’s part of the issue, anyway. The other part is that authentic spiritual truth is entirely beyond words – so the words that describe the truth don’t actually mean much of anything. They mostly exist so our ego minds can latch onto them and assure us we already know what they mean because we’ve heard them so many times before. Which is SO not true.
• • •
Anyway, I recently finished writing my next book, and the time came to ask the lovely Nouk Sanchez to write an afterword. Which she did. And it was wonderful.
Nouk is an amazingly gifted teacher, both in person and in written form. She’s a treasure. But Nouk’s writing (in its raw state) is…how shall I say it…a bit wordy.
I typically polish my own books until they gleam. I edit the hell out of every page, making sure each word fulfills a beautiful purpose. And if it doesn’t, it’s outta there. I’m kind of obsessive about it.
Yet I’ve never edited another person’s work as stringently as I edit my own. When I collaborate with others on blogs or whatnot, I normally try to change their writing as little as possible. I just fix grammar, punctuation and that sort of thing, letting the original character come through almost entirely.
But this was my book we were talking about. My Spirit-inspired, year-long labor of love. No wandering sentences allowed.
Yes, I wanted a beautifully edited afterword that fit in seamlessly with the rest of the book, but I didn’t want my own bossy, obsessive ego to be in charge of the editing process. And I was having a bit of a quandary about that. How to do justice to Nouk’s piece, and my book at the same time?
I wanted to be able to find the ideal afterword within the pages she had written – carefully sculpting away the excess like Michelangelo chipping marble to reveal the masterpiece already present within the hunk of stone.
Hey, I’m good, but I ain’t no Michelangelo. So I did the only reasonable thing: After much prayer, I surrendered the entire thing to Spirit, and let an Editor far greater than me take over.
And the editing became a light, joyful process. And I ended up with a piece that was perfect for my book, while staying true to Nouk’s intention. And that’s not why I’m telling you about it.
This is what I really wanted to tell you: All of that prayer and surrender allowed me to open up to my higher Self and let the editing decisions flow from divine inspiration. But, surprisingly, the same phenomenon also happened in reverse: By being so open while I worked on Nouk’s piece, I was able to absorb what she was saying with my heart instead of my head.
I’d heard her say it many times before: We have to choose. There’s only One truth. That truth is composed of 100% divine Love, and nothing else; we say we believe this, but our actual 3-D experience shows us the opposite. When daily life is showing us disease, unhappiness, lack, or any form of conflict… what is that? It sure as hell isn’t divine Love. Yet we accept this dichotomy.
If reality is Love and only Love, what makes us think a second reality made out of Love’s opposite could ever co-exist side by side with the only reality there is? Two opposing realities absolutely cannot co-exist. It’s Love, or it’s the ego’s delusional version of reality.
SO WHICH IS IT? Put up or shut up – a choice has to be made.
And I heard it. For the first time, I heard that there’s a definitive choice to be made. Right now. By me. And I chose Love.
That means every time I’m faced with proof of Love’s opposite here in the 3-D world (no matter how convincing it seems), I stop and reaffirm my commitment to the only truth there is: I choose Love. Which has no opposite. And I pause to focus all of my intention on this choice until I feel its truth.
Has this choice caused me to permanently see the world through the lens of pure divine Love? Of course it hasn’t; not yet, anyway. I haven’t been able to choose Love consistently with all parts of my mind united. My ego mind is still very much in the picture.
But hey, it’s a start.
Enlightenment: infinite joygasm – or just release from ego?
I like Adyashanti. He comes across as a perfectly normal guy who just happens to be enlightened. And when he talks about the true nature of enlightenment, his explanations are clear and simple firsthand reports.
But for students of A Course in Miracles, those explanations can be troubling, because Adya’s descriptions of enlightenment are markedly different from those offered by the Course.
Adya says enlightenment is nothing at all – it’s merely what you have left after the ego mind is dissolved. There’s no more distorted perception of the world; you just have the clear, ever-present truth of Oneness. It’s a state of awareness that’s neither happy nor sad – it merely is. And there’s nothing else beyond it.
(It’s not just Adya who says this, of course. Jed McKenna, various Zen masters and many other self-realized teachers throughout history have all described their enlightenment in similar terms.)
The Course, on the other hand, speaks of a fully enlightened state, which it describes as limitless joy, infinite fulfillment and completion. Perfect love and safety and freedom and peace – along with the certainty of being home at last, exactly where we belong. And this is said to be a permanent, changeless state, radiating with brilliant holy light, forever and ever amen.
So whose description should we believe?
The answer, as far as I can tell is: Both. But they’re describing two different states.
Adya’s explanation seems to be a description of non-dualism, which the Course says is the 3rd step of 4 on the road to full enlightenment. Non-dualism is just what it sounds like: It’s the realization of Oneness, waking up to the reality that we’re not separate.
(The first 2 steps of 4 would be: dualism, which is where we all start out – an unquestioned belief in separate bodies and separate minds; and semi-dualism, which would be sincere-ish belief in Oneness while mostly maintaining faith in the reality of separate 3-D existence at the same time. Trying to have cake and eat it, in other words.)
Adya and the aforementioned other guys are enlightened. I’m not. (I’m assuming the same can be said of you.) So it seems ridiculous to stand up in front of a self-realized guy and say: No, excuse me, you’re wrong, because the teaching I believe in describes enlightenment differently from what you say about it.
I mean, who am I to disagree with an enlightened guy, right? He’d probably just smile and tell me all beliefs are illusion, so get over it.
Well, as it happens, I did get within spitting distance of enlightenment once. And it left a sort of residue of truth behind – a lasting ability to see the big picture.
In the Dinnertable Awakening of 2005, I was presented with an invitation to accept enlightenment. (That’s what awakenings are – you’re awakened to the truth of all existence, but whether you embrace that truth or turn away from it is up to you.)
I didn’t embrace it. At the time I found the limitless freedom of enlightenment so disturbing, so uncomfortable that I willingly threw away the opportunity. I pulled myself back into my body and my 3-D world instead, choosing to turn away from Oneness.
(Could I kick myself now for making that choice? Uh…hell yeah. But I wasn’t ready; I just couldn’t stand to stay in that infinite state of awareness.)
But when people like Adya are presented with the option of enlightenment, they choose it as their permanent operating system. So I’m not about to claim they’re mistaken or misinformed about what that enlightenment looks like. How could they be? They’re clearly just reporting on their own authentic experience.
Yet I choose to believe that there’s more, as the Course says there is. Call it a strong intuition that there’s another chapter to the story – one that those enlightened guys just haven’t experienced yet.
That would be the 4th state of 4, the full awareness of union with God. The unending joy of knowing that all of us, together, are Heaven.
And that state is called pure non-dualism, a condition that’s so far beyond plain old non-dualism that the Course says there’s no point in even trying to describe the magnificence of it.
Pure non-dualism, that’s the one I want. I’m going for the gold. Could I be wrong about its existence? Absolutely.
But it’s still where I’m headed. And if I make it in this lifetime, I will promise you one hell of a blog post.
Oneness = Identity theft?
So I had that recurring dream last night – the one where I foolishly leave my handbag unattended and moments later my wallet is gone…it happens and then I’m completely lost, set adrift. It’s not so much the money I’m worried about; it’s the driver’s license, the credit cards.
Everything I use to prove I really am who I say I am.
It’s a dream that occurs each time I place another big chunk of my trust in Spirit.
It’s a not-so-friendly shorthand reminder from my unconscious ego mind. A way of warning myself to back off, to quit pushing beyond my egoic comfort zone. To stop trying to see the world through the eyes of Spirit.
Because if I’m learning to trust in Spirit’s interpretation of the world, that means I’m withdrawing part of my belief from the ego mind’s version of the story.
The dream’s details change but the essence is always the same: It’s saying: Better be careful – you’re playing with fire. Get too close to Oneness and you’ll lose your identity for good.
And God knows, that’s a terrifying thought.
But is it true? Of course not.
To reconnect with Oneness is to remember our own truest state. Our real identity. And when we remember what we really are, we will also remember that we are completely safe. Infinitely peaceful. Totally free.
It’s our ego mind that’s in danger of losing the false identity it’s so carefully constructed to hide the truth of what we really are.
But knowing all this intellectually doesn’t really mean anything; when push comes to shove, I for one still thoroughly believe I’m a separate person with an individual mind, living in a 3-D world with lots of other folks in the same predicament.
Until I know and believe in my heart that we’re all One, these teachings of non-duality are all just blah blah blah. And as long as that’s true, then on the deepest unconscious level, the thought of attaining Oneness will continue to be terrifying.
Because who will I be if there’s no more me?
Actually, Spirit has taught me quite a lot on this subject. I freaked out about it in a fairly big way, back when I first realized what a return to Oneness would really entail (see page 190 of my book, in a story aptly titled ‘Freakout’).
That was back in 2006. Since then Spirit has taught me to look closely at the mask identity that the ego provides – the false ‘me’ belonging to each one of us. To really notice how all of us settle for daily unease as a fact of life; to realize that none of us are able to find truly lasting happiness or peace in this world.
We settle, in short, for an ill-fitting meat suit instead of the perfect identity that’s really ours.
There we are. It’s the human condition.
But for those of us who aspire to wake up from this dream of separation, our work is cut out for us: We know we can’t ‘give up’ this individual identity while we still believe in it and find it valuable. Trying is a waste of time – it just doesn’t work that way.
But by allowing Spirit to teach us and gently heal our perception of the world, then our perception of ourselves begins to heal as well.
Until finally, one day we realize that the mask self is nothing at all. It has no value so we willingly let it go – and just like that, it’s gone.
Oh sure, the meat suit is still here, but we’re not fooled by it anymore. We know it isn’t really us. It’s just a vehicle for walking around expressing the truth that we’ve become awakened to: That the state of Oneness is True Self, and no other identity is needed.
Yeah, I greatly look forward to knowing all this with my heart instead of my head.
But in the meantime, has anybody seen my wallet?
Forgiveness vs Denial – The Rogers & Hammerstein version
[pinit]
I was recently asked this question: ‘When A Course in Miracles talks about forgiveness, it says we should overlook the terrible thing that’s going on, and tell ourselves it isn’t really happening. But isn’t that just denial?’
Nope. And I’ll tell you why.
But first, let’s back this up for a minute and take a look at what the world means when it talks about denial.
For this, we’ll take a brief detour into the land of movie musicals. Let’s say you’re a small 19th century boy, and your ship has just landed in Siam. The badass bare-chested chief of security boards the boat and prepares to escort you to the palace of the king.
Holy crap.
Terrified, you turn to your mother who offers this sage advice:
Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
And no one will suspect I’m afraid.
She concludes by saying that once she’s fooled everyone else into believing she’s unafraid, she finds she’s fooled herself as well. So now she’s no longer afraid.
Or how about this:
You’re a tiny Austrian kid and you’re scared of thunderstorms. So you fly into Fraulein Maria’s bedroom and leap onto the fluffy white coverlet, hoping for reassurance. And the good Fraulein doesn’t disappoint:
When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad.
The thunderstorm is still raging, but you’re so busy thinking about brown paper packages tied up with strings that you’ve forgotten all about it. At least until the next big thunderclap.
So, in essence, these heroines of the modern musical are both offering the same dreadful advice: Don’t look down at that nightmarish hole beneath your feet. Don’t listen to the horrifying growls of the beast as it plays on your darkest fears.
Instead, grab a rusty, half-rotted plank and throw it across the gap. Stand in the middle of the plank, close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and repeat after me at the top of your lungs:
LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH-LAH…
So yeah, that’s denial as the world employs it. Not exactly an effective coping mechanism for blotting out pain and fear. The pain and fear are only temporarily disguised, and the source of the pain and fear remains intact.
On the other hand, when A Course in Miracles talks about forgiveness and denial, it’s using denial in a completely different way.
It says: ‘Look down. See that yawning hole beneath your feet? It isn’t real, you know. You made it up. And although you’re tempted right now to be frightened or angry because you believe the monster in that hole is real, you’re completely mistaken.
There is nothing “down there” to get you. There is only one joyous, perfect Self, and you’re it. Look past the illusory image of the hole and its contents, to the loving reality of Heaven.
By choosing to see its Heavenly reality instead of the nightmare story you’ve told yourself about it, you are helping to heal your own perception of that hole. And by looking beyond the frightening image of that dark pit to the light beyond it, you help to dissolve the illusory pit itself.
Deny your dark illusions and trust in Heaven’s truth instead. This is the sure path to peace and safety.’
Ok, so it doesn’t rhyme and isn’t filmed in glorious Cinemascopic Technicolor.
But it works.
Reality checks
I woke up this morning thinking about a short story I loved when I read it back in high school:
This British WWII pilot gets shot down over Germany while on an important mission. He remembers nothing after his plane goes down, but wakes to find himself in a sunny hospital room in England, not far from where he grew up. The smiling hospital attendant informs him he’s been sent home to recover from his wounds.
The base commander will be in to debrief him as soon as he feels stronger, he’s told, but first he should just concentrate on getting well. In the meantime, they serve him just the right English food. The pretty nurses speak to him with just the right regional accent. And when he looks out the window, he sees countryside that looks just right. Just the way his corner of England is supposed to look.
But then he goes into the bathroom and turns on the water. And this water is very soft. But the water of his hometown area is hard as rocks, and everyone who lives there would know that.
So he realizes this ‘reality’ that’s been carefully constructed for him is just a trick. Despite what his senses are showing him, none of it’s real. The story ends in the debriefing session, as he answers every question with only his name, rank and serial number…
______
So in this story, the Germans are the bad guys and the English pilot the good guy. And although assigning guilt would get us nowhere, I can’t help finding some parallels to the predicament we find ourselves in when we start our search for spiritual Truth.
In Truth, of course, there are no good guys or bad guys. There’s only one of us, and we’re relying on our collective ego mind to fabricate a world for us that allows no hint of the Real world to shine through. We ask for that deception by choice, and the ego is happy to oblige us.
How does the ego mind keep out Reality? Through its crowning achievement: The body. We thoroughly believe our one eternal Self is split up into lots and lots of individual people, each of whom has a separate mind housed in a separate body.
We’re completely wrong about that, by the way.
But it’s not hard to see why we’re so thoroughly convinced of it. As Gary Renard says in The End of Reincarnation, “The body allows into its awareness only that which conforms to the reality of the ego’s cherished illusions. So now, everything we experience testifies to us of the reality of this illusion. That’s asking the illusion to explain the illusion.
So now, the illusion [of the mind] is telling us what to think and the [illusion of the] body is telling us what to feel. So it’s actually an illusion telling us everything about itself, and we buy it because it’s all that we experience.”
A closed feedback loop of fake sensory input.
Fiendishly brilliant, that ego mind. Which, of course, is really just us. (There are no bad guys here.)
But, if you’re paying attention, there are plenty of hard water/soft water-esque anomalies that prove the illusion has holes in it. In fact, (if you’re paying attention) it becomes ridiculously clear that it’s all smoke and mirrors.
It just takes a certain willingness to disbelieve what your eyes are seeing and what your ears are hearing and what your senses of touch and smell and taste are telling you, that’s all.
Name, rank and serial number, baby. That’s all I’m sayin.
Is it still a crisis if it doesn’t hurt?
Here’s something spiritual author types hardly ever tell you: Journeys of faith are messy. Not just yours – ours, too. We just tend to be quieter about it.
See, once you’ve embraced the goal of enlightenment, there really aren’t any reliable signposts anymore, no matter who you are. And that can be a little, um, awkward.
Ever since my book came out (the book in which I unequivocally state that A Course in Miracles is the last teaching I will ever need) I’ve been having the uncomfortable feeling that I may have misstated it a bit.
Don’t get me wrong – as far as I can tell, A Course in Miracles is a pure teaching of ultimate truth. The content is perfect. But I’ve been feeling like the form is not where it’s at for me. And not just ACIM’s form. Any teaching’s form.
It’s like I keep getting prodded in the back – lovingly, gently, but very firmly – by a Heavenly billy club, while NO LOITERING signs repeatedly appear all around me.
Keep moving, lady, nothing to see here.
So it all came to a head a few weeks ago. I got a chunk of Divine inspiration to start working on my next book. If I can pull it off, I’m pretty sure this book will be hugely helpful to a lot of people, but it’s going to require translation skills I don’t possess yet.
It’ll be the essence of A Course in Miracles brought to bear somehow on the earthly concerns of this 3-D dream world. (Tricky, I know. Maybe impossible.) A bridge of sorts, between worlds, for those who don’t yet actively aspire to enlightenment. But it means I have to strike out on my own all over again, to forge yet another new path through the wilderness and leave my cozy ACIM home behind.
Damn it.
So I freaked out a little. A teeny, cosmic WTF moment. (Hey, like I said. It happens.) And since I don’t know anything about anything, I didn’t want to make any moves at all. Not only did I surrender this whole writing/speaking/messengering gig to Spirit, I actually gave it back & walked away from it completely.
Oh, I’m still totally into it. I happily offer this earthly meat suit as a vehicle for Heavenly expression, as long as I’m hanging around here. I just didn’t want to screw around making mistakes of my own anymore.
Show me what I’m supposed to do/say, or else I’m not doing/saying anything. And if that means a few thousand copies of my current book go in the shredder, that’s ok. Or if I blow up and become some giant oddball media figure, that’s ok too. I’m just not doing anything to engineer it.
So, basically, you could say it was a crisis of faith.
Except here’s the funny thing. I spent a few hours drowning in the drama of the whole situation that day, but then late that same night a really unusual thing happened: In one of those trance-like states of nether sleeping nor waking, Spirit spent a really long time speaking to me, and I spent those same hours carefully listening.
But I have no idea what was said. It’s not that I knew at the time but now forget – it’s more like I received the information directly into my life, bypassing my conscious mind altogether.
And when I got up in the morning, I felt no pain. No existential angst, no drama. And since I didn’t know what to do, I peacefully did nothing. (Which, if you know me at all, is a brand new thing.)
So there you have it. I’m still doing nothing. All my beliefs have once again been shaken loose and I have no idea where the hell I’m going. But thanks to Spirit, it’s a very peaceful journey.
And did I mention it’s never boring?
Doing it wrong
A reader sent me a question today on a subject I know oh so well: The fear of doing it wrong.
“It” being spiritual practice, of course.
Back when I first started meditating, I could never get over the idea that I was doing it wrong—and that thought filled me with anxiety. And since I was pretty sure heightened anxiety was not what I was supposed to be feeling during meditation…well that just proved the point. I must have been doing it wrong. Right?
Well no. Not really. It just took time and some very determined practice to get past the stage where my ego mind could keep blocking out all peace by shouting its messages of failure.
The aforementioned reader talks about trying a form of meditation and visualization mentioned by Gary Renard in The Disappearance of the Universe. It involves picturing a circle of light, and then allowing that light to expand freely. It’s a beautiful meditation that’s all about Oneness with Heaven.
Except she don’t see no light. And she’s therefore sure she’s doing it wrong.
Not.
See, this is the main thing to keep in mind: Every human being is 100% equipped to join with Heaven in perfect peace and Love, exactly as we are right now. No ‘extra’ abilities are needed. And it doesn’t even matter whether we want to be equipped for it or not. Perfect divine Love is what we are, and we really have no say in it.
Oh sure, it’s fun to be ‘spiritually talented.’ To see visions and hear voices and dance in waves of celestial woo-woo. But it isn’t necessary. And it’s no reliable yardstick of spiritual advancement, either. It’s just a talent, like juggling or whistling is a talent. And just like juggling or whistling, the ungifted can practice assiduously until they’re pretty skilled at it too, just like the ones who came by those gifts naturally.
So, Dearest Reader, this is my message to you:
So you don’t see lights when they tell you you’re supposed to. No biggie. Concentrate instead on the important part: Do your best to feel the Love and the gentle expansion of freedom that is the true point of that meditation. If you can get focused enough to ignore your ego mind’s critique of your meditation skills, I’m willing to bet you’ll begin to feel that endless Love.
And if you don’t? Ask for Help, and then keep trying it until you do. You’ll get there, guaranteed.
Because no spiritual master who ever walked the Earth has anything on you. You’re the complete package, the real deal. You just don’t remember it yet.
(endless) Love,
Carrie
More postcards from the cutting room floor
Here’s another piece that didn’t make the final edit. This was originally the last story in the book, until something came along that I liked better.
Interestingly, this one mentions my next book, which I just started writing yesterday…
SPEECHLESS
A spontaneous prayer in the middle of the night:
I will trust more and take the next step in faith, whatever that next step may be.
Leave words behind when you listen to my Voice.
Note: For more than a year now, I’d been hearing Spirit not as an audible Voice inside my head (“When you’re ready, you’ll write books,” were the last words actually “spoken aloud”) but instead in much richer, broader, more abstract concepts. Whole ideas were presented at once, complete with references to my own experience so I’d grasp the specific, along with the general meaning.
But as these concepts came into my mind, I automatically searched for the most accurate words I could find to express them, and compulsively put both my silent questions and Spirit’s abstract answers into common English. I did this to make sure I understood everything about the message being conveyed, but also to ensure I’d be able to recall the conversation afterward. I have a notoriously Swiss-cheesy memory* and I was afraid these precious communiqués would slip right out of my mind if I didn’t nail them down into human language while they were fresh.
*Kids, don’t do drugs.
Spirit had asked me several times recently to try to hear without shoehorning the communication into words, but I had yet to take the request seriously. I did remember how glorious it felt to communicate without language during that Dinnertable Awakening so long ago, but that time I was a passive sightseer. A tourist. It seemed awfully scary to consciously choose wordless communication now as an authentic state of being.
This is your next step in faith and trust. Put your ego mind aside and bring only your awareness into our exchanges; trust that I know your questions before you ask them. And have faith that My answers will stay within your mind until all need for questions and answers has been transcended forever.
Do this and notice the difference it makes. At first it will feel as though you’ve ‘lost’ your communication channel, but the opposite is actually the case; abstract thought is what you are in truth, so your attempt to return to this form of thinking will actually help remove another of the blocks that keep your communication channel narrow. In truth, limitless communication is what you are – there is no boundary or channel.
To the degree that you are able to allow your obsessive need for language to recede, your ability to hear and understand Me will deepen and become more profound.
Think back to those earlier days when you first began the Barbara Brennan meditations intended to connect you with your “guides”. At that time, you were able to receive only visual symbols, remember? You knew you were obsessively grabbing these images and forcing interpretations onto them, so eventually you stopped doing that of your own accord.
And at first, without those habitual egoic efforts at jumping the gun, you were unable to see any images at all and it seemed as if you’d lost all ability to communicate. But you didn’t lose it, did you?
“No. Definitely not.”
This will be the same. Trust in Me. Let yourself fall into the abstract unknown and I promise I will catch you.
“I believe you. And I’ll do my best, really I will. But what about writing books? How will I be able to relay your words if I’m not putting any of what you say into words?”
Just trust in Me. When the time comes for the next book, you’ll know what to write and how to write it. But you needn’t worry about that right now. That’s a long way off.
“Yes, of course. The next book is a long way off. But what about this book? How do I write the rest of this one?”
My love, you just finished it.