There is only one lesson and everyone is your teacher

Sean Reagan

Feb 20, 2023

A few years ago, during a conversation with Chrisoula about my study and practice of A Course in Miracles, and how it affected our family, I said that God was my priority. Remembering my identity in Love was my only function.

Chrisoula replied, “I am more important than God. Your family is more important than God.”

I was shocked by that. When I told some ACIM friends about it, they were shocked.

When I told the Holy Spirit about it, the Holy Spirit said, “God agrees with Chrisoula.”

I am a very slow learner.

If we are walking around praising God, and anybody around us feels ignored or slighted because we are walking around praising God, then we are tragically confused – about what we are, about what others are, and, critically, about God.

I first glimpsed this thirty some odd years ago when U2’s Achtung Baby came out. The first time I heard One I wanted to be the narrator but I wasn’t. I was the other; I was “you.”

You say love is a temple, love a higher law
Love is a temple, love the higher law
You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl
And I can’t be holding on to what you got
When all you got is hurt

Chrisoula was not asserting any privilege in opposition to God; she was speaking for God. She was refusing to accept fear and hurt in place of Love, no matter how eloquent I was. She was reminding me how God appears in our living, and what kind of response that appearance calls for.

God appears as the other with whom we are in relationship, and asks us to love them without qualification or condition, as best we can. It is a process, not an event.

A Course in Miracles teaches us how to no longer mistake the appearance of separation for actual separation (e.g., T-18.IX.6:2). It shows us that separation is a thing we are doing to ourselves (T-27.VIII.10:1). And it invites us to no longer fear the Love that appears when separation is undone (T-31.V.16:7).

U2 again, same song: “one life / but we’re not the same / We get to carry each other.”

Carrying one another is our privilege because it is the end of hurt and loneliness, ours and everyone else’s. There are no exceptions to this expression of love. The absence of exceptions is what Love is.

Love is incapable of any exception. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful (T-7.V.5:7-8).

Love holds everything.

So A Course in Miracles invites us to commit to relationship as the site of learning what we are and what the other is. In relationship we learn once and for all that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).

The form of this relationship will shift; its function will not. You can dump blood on missiles, you can get a divorce, you can write poetry and grow roses and the underlying function doesn’t change: you are learning what you are in truth, which is learning what the other is in truth, which is learning what Love is.

This is revolutionary. It is terrifying. Love does its own stunts; Love is always all in. Dachau isn’t theoretical; Tyre Nichols isn’t theoretical: you are not theoretical.

Salvation is not an individual matter. It entails saving, delivering, rescuing an entire civilization . . . The salvation of the entire planet requires a total risk of everything – of you, of me, of unyielding people everywhere, for all time (Lynice Pinkard Revolutionary Suicide).

Pinkard’s vision of collectivism is related to the biblical Jesus’s admonition that those who seek their lives shall lose their lives but those who surrender their lives for the sake of God, who is Love, shall find life.

In the world, “surrender rather than seek” sugars out as living nonviolently and creatively together without fear. There aren’t any maps; we make it up as we go. All that matters is learning how to hear the Holy Spirit and listening to nothing but the Holy Spirit.

There are no blueprints. And there is no space of purity from which to act. We must begin imperfectly from within the messiness, in ways that respond to and engage with our concrete and particular contexts and circumstances (Pinkard).

A Course in Miracles teaches us to accept reality. Reality is this: this this. The Course teaches us to accept that our relationship with each other is given for no other reason than to remember we are Love Itself. It takes commitment, devotion, tenacity, willingness. We have to be humbled. We have to show up. And what we show up to is literally right in front of us, crying out for love.

Pinkard again, same essay.

Human life lived in God’s image, lived fully, is found in the crossing over from ourselves to the well-being of others – that is what love is. When we cross over from power to weakness, from strength to vulnerability, from inside to outside, from up to down, we rise above ourselves, we transcend ourselves. In other words, the descent into death of our own self-interest – this revolutionary suicide – is actually a rising, a resurrection.

The point is not what is God or what does God want or what offends God or can God even be offended – those were never the point. I was confused. God lies beyond our understanding; we don’t have to work that out. We have to work on remembering what we are – which is to remember what reality is. Which we do here, now, with the ones who are given us.

We serve them by allowing them to teach us what we have forgotten about Love.

Chrisoula is my teacher not because she has some nuanced understanding of A Course in Miracles. She could care less about A Course in Miracles. Yet by calling out my spiritual blindness – which is always an effect of fear – she invites me to be accountable to Love. She calls me back into the practice of Love with her. She says “choose again,” and shows me what to choose, and so I do. This is my witness.

(Me too, Mary)

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever. ~Mary Oliver

(Book: Thirst: Poems https://amzn.to/3llSxi4)

 

It is said that the Land will be returned to the indigenous peoples of Earth.  In the program “Land Back” tribes are buying back some of this Land.  I get the strong feeling that buying it back will be unnecessary very soon.  Privately owned stolen land will be abandoned as monetary control systems break down. If you put your ear to the ground those with roots into Earth Mother can hear an escalation in Her speech. These rooted humans can feel codes like quickening hoof beats activating the neurons along their spines, releasing through toes and fingers, bringing information to the intuitives on the World-wide Dismantling. The escalation has begun.

The Native Americans have a word for the mind virus that causes separation from The Great Spirit and Gaia. It is called Wetiko. Many spiritual teachers believe that this virus was caused by man but it was born from Spirit as all of creation was. This virus was agreed upon by Earth’s inhabitants to be the catalyst to eventually feel Love, grow Love, and grow Spirit. It was part of the Plan. But like all viruses, they burn themselves out when their food supply runs out.  And when does this happen?  When brother sees brother as Himself.  And this awakening is growing. The old systems are digging their own graves and Gaia is assisting the escalation of events with the Earth Changes ironically assisted by man-made Climate Change. As more awaken, the lands will settle in peace. There is still time to save our life here on this beautiful planet. Here is an interview from The Gaia Foundation to read more about Wetiko:

 

The most beautiful quality of all in a human being, in my humble opinion?

The ability to listen deeply.

To listen from Presence. From stillness.

To listen without trying to fix someone, or change them, or ‘save’ them.

The ability to allow another to be exactly as they are.

Not giving unsolicited advice. Not lecturing them about the latest psychological research or the ‘most true’ spiritual teaching. Not trying to mould them, manipulate them into matching a concept of who they ‘should’ be. Not projecting your own trauma – or traumatic answers – all over them.

Just listening. Listening with an open mind and an open heart and a receptive nervous system.

Allowing them to breathe, to express, to weep, to question, to be completely unique, to expand into the space, to discover their own truth.

I have met world experts in intimacy, relationships and honest communication who are unable to do this.

I have met spiritual gurus, so-called “enlightened masters”, expert psychologists and life coaches who are utterly unable to do this.

I have met popular teachers and authors on ‘listening from the heart’, ‘holding space’, ‘pure awareness’ and ‘embodied spirituality’ who are unable to do this.

It is a rare gift – the ability to allow others to be exactly as they are.

Broken. Whole. Sad. Angry. Afraid. Lost. Awake or asleep. Whatever.

To listen to them with every fibre of your being.

To receive them through the senses, to listen like the wild animals of the forest.

To swaddle them in undistracted, fascinated attention.

To envelop them in a silent, warm Presence.

To make them feel – in those precious moments that you are together – like they are the most beloved One in the whole Universe.

When you sense this kind of sacred listening from someone, it’s unmistakable.

It cannot be manufactured.

It cannot be faked.

It is utterly rare and holy.

It is nothing less than unconditional love.

Your nervous system senses it and rejoices.

– Jeff Foster

Photo: Jeff and Alice

The bipolar madness of the human mind

only exists in the realms of Creation.

The same for any kind of mis-ease or dis-ease.

The inner dimensions of Spirit

swirl and sing in the Heartland

loving unconditionally both

the shadows and the light of the mind.

The mind is the ragged playground

you chose before birth to experience and finally

learn not to choose sides,

to climb out of the belted seats

of highs and lows

to find the still fulcrum

within your heart

beating softly like a Newborn’s. 

Here you realize that all hearts are the same.

Here you are seen and heard and felt completely.

When the storms of life buffet you,

blow you off the GPS orbit

through the Sourcelands,

climb from your seat,

imbedded in Time

onto the Fulcrum, so still

in the eternal moment. 

The Great Mystery is you,

the observer

infusing the Stormland of Life,

with the ambrosia of Spirit.

 

by Jeff Foster

We are taught

that we must struggle

to get what we want –

or to deserve it when we get it.

But what do we want?

Deep down,

we are not looking for more ‘stuff’.

We are looking for a feeling –

A sense of completion

A sense of wholeness

A sense of not seeking.

The end of struggle itself.

We seek a state of inner contentment

That has nothing to do with objects

Or money, or achievements, or goals

Or “having what we want”.

We are looking for our true nature

Wild, open, whole and free.

In seeking it, we push it away.

In running towards it, we lose ourselves.

Send your ideas into the ether

and rest now, child.

Dream your dreams and let them go.

Sink back into the moment.

Find completeness in the incompleteness.

Be happy with your marvellous unhappiness.

And rest in your restlessness.

Be perfectly unfinished.

Let go of the story of ‘lack’.

Let go of competition and domination.

Let go of winning, losing, being better.

Let go of ‘letting go’.

Find gratitude for what you have.

And presence in the place where you are.

You don’t need to manifest anything

To be happier than you ever dreamed.

Capitalism, socialism

The material world and the spiritual world

Red and blue, left and right

What you have and what you don’t have

And all the million opposites.

And all that has been written about truth.

These things all collapse into simplicity

And wonder.

Here is the abundance, then:

You, here, breathing,

Alive in this Mystery.

Awake to Yourself.

– Jeff Foster

by John Roedel

(a promise to splash more in 2023)

I used to think that

achieving inner peace

would make my heart look

like a calm lake

I thought being in harmony meant:

no ripples

no waves

no lapping shores

~ just still water

it turns out that

serenity isn’t the absence

of movement

in fact

~ it’s quite

the opposite

because the more

peace I feel

the more my heart

churns and bubbles

like a lake boiling

as a ribbon of lava breaks through

underneath the water

I don’t think we were created

out of nothingness to come

here just to let our hearts become

an unmoving body of cold water

covered in standing algae

I think the Great Love placed

a fire in us so that our lives will

be a natural spring of swirling

hot healing water that never

looks the same way twice

the war machine thinks

it is the only thing that can

move and lumber

~ and that’s not simply true

peace is the most disturbing

force in the universe

peace is the tide that washes

away the ancient seaweed of

division that builds upon our shores

peace is anything but still

it’s a tsunami that can terraform

rock fortresses into open-air chapels

my love,

I’m starting to realize

that the less my heart moves

~ the heavier it gets

~ the more dust it collects

~ the less kindness I feel

but when I let my heart

constantly stir

like a cotton candy machine

~the lighter and

sweeter it becomes

empathy is an act of chaos

it takes the narcissistic scripts we have been given

and rewrites them into a handwritten gospel of understanding

peacefulness is

anything but still

~ it is pure motion

peace is the ripple

that starts in the center of my heart

and rushes out through the faucets

of my eyes, hands and tongue

out into the world

we aren’t here

to be stagnant

we are here to make a splash

~ john roedel

(photo by Sabri Tuzcu)

wanted to know Itself as We.

It wanted to expand

its mellow, Baritone Breath into

a panorama, a multitude of

moist, rich, trembling Altos,

soaring Sopranos and

deep diving Basses 

all pinging inside Itself.

 

The One Heart speaks:

Creation lives in the tangle of shadows

within Me.

Creation is untangling, beginning to glow,

no longer needing shadows to grow Me,

to grow You, to grow Us.

I live within you and you

live within me.

There is no separation.

 

Many call Me “The Great Mystery” in

reverent, resigned tones,

and yet I tell you there is

little truth to that.

You can know me because you are Me.

 

You can intuit Me through your greatest sense- Feeling.

You elevate the Mind, but it is

the Heart who loves and it is

love that leads you

through your greatest lessons.

 

And through loving, you truly live,

moving one into the other.

Becoming each other in

every opening

of the moment.

 

by John Roedel

today would be a good day

for the two of us to take turns telling

each other what we remember

about the place we were before

we were born

I’ll go first

for me, I just have a few strands of

images left for me to cling to of what

I can recall

in the great before,

I remember rows and rows

of thick Juniper Trees

and the stone fountain

in front of them that

poured out the clearest

water I’ve ever see that

had little these little

radiant jelly fish swimming

around inside of it

or were they just stars?

I’m not sure – I can’t quite remember

I can recall being told by a voice

not to drink from the fountain

because doing so would send

me to Earth before I was ready

so, I didn’t

~ I wasn’t ready

not by a long shot

I rather enjoyed

this cosmic womb

I was resting in

I remember the smell

of nutmeg

it was everywhere

maybe that’s why I love Christmas

so much now?

and I remember you

oh, how I remember you

standing there in a white sun dress

or were you floating?

I’m not sure – I can’t quite remember that part

I recall the gold of your hair

blending in with the tawny sky

yes, I saw you in the before

~ long before you saw me

you were too busy laughing at a couple

dozen flamingos who were parading

around you

or were they angels?

I’m not sure – I can’t quite remember that part

Oh, how you glowed

I didn’t recognize it at the time

but you blazed like a lamp hung

up on the porch of a cabin in the bayou

glowing

like the long flame of a baptismal candle

like the new day sun over a Carolina gulf

like the burn of a campfire I want to sit around

like the way sunlight kisses stained glass

like…

one of those radiant jelly fish (or were they stars?)

that were floating in the stone fountain

that’s why you were glowing

you had just drank the water

it was your time for Earth

you were going soon

the flamingos (or were they angels?)

that were parading for you

formed a tight circle

and began to dance

their necks twisting around each other

~ forming ancient symbols

out of their contorting form

it was a choreographed

routine they have

been practicing for

all of eternity

just for you

and then I remember that

you were laughing so loud

~ watching them pirouette around you

and you were

swaying your lovely hips

to a song that nobody else

but you and the flamingos (maybe angels)

could hear

sway

sway

sway

it was entrancing

I was pulled to you

~ into the gravity of your grace

closer

then closer

closer till

I was orbiting you

like a moon

basking in the revelation of

your flamingo dance

that’s when you noticed me for the first time,

do you remember that?

you smiled

it was like lightning

~ a burst of beauty

then a few seconds later

a deep thunder in my formless body

and then

just like

that

you were gone

in a flash

I think it happened that quick

maybe you slowly faded away?

I’m not sure – I can’t quite remember that part

either way

you were gone

you were Earthbound

the flamingos (angels?) dispersed

and I was left alone

in your celestial wake

I had to follow you

I had to ~I had to ~I had to

I walked to the fountain

or was I floating?

I’m not sure – I can’t quite remember that part

and I cupped my hands down

into the glistening water

it was so cold

~ and suddenly I was very thirsty

I knew I wasn’t ready

to go but I had to find you

I had to ~I had to ~I had to

I had to chase you into the unknown

no matter the cost

no matter the danger

no matter the fact that I wasn’t ready

I took the water up to my lips

and drank

the water felt like bubbles

in my stomach

~ a couple at first

then a hundred

million more followed

I started laughing

the flamingos (angels! they were angels!

I’m sure of it now!) started their parade

around me

and I felt this gentle tugging on my soul

and I started to glow

and I couldn’t stop laughing

and that’s all I can remember

now I’m standing here

in this kitchen with you

wearing your pink pajamas

adorned with flamingos

watching you sway

your lovely hips to

a song that only you

can hear

today is a good day

to tell you that

I’m so glad

I chased you

across the cosmos

I may have not been ready for Earth

but I was ready for you

to be here

in a house surrounded

by Juniper Trees

with you

me with my coffee

(that features a sprinkles of nutmeg in it)

in my hand

and you with your

gold woven hair

watching you glow

all over again

watching you notice

me all over again

watching your smile

become a bayou lantern

watching you

sway

sway

sway

it’s like heaven

all over again

~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)