The Rising of Humanity is the promise of Easter. But this is not some fluffy mindfulness trick that can firmly root us in the Divine Realms.
From Jeff Foster:
There’s a comforting myth about healing, isn’t there – that it means “rising above” our vulnerable human hearts.
Spiritual awakening is often seen as some kind of “shedding” of our humanity, a realm of untouchable stillness.
But this story is a lie.
And this is what I’ve discovered, the hard way:
Peace is not the absence of deep feeling.
Strength is not the absence of trembling.
In our rush to “transcend” and “rise”, we silence our anger in the name of kindness, mask our grief with spiritual smiles. We dismiss our fear as an illusion, our wounded hearts as the ego’s noise. And we call it all… love.
We follow gurus who claim to have ended suffering. Lost their egos. Transcended their pain.
“I never get angry”, they say.
“I only have loving thoughts”.
“My ego vanished in March 1964”.
In chasing enlightenment like this, we abandon the messy truth of our own aliveness.
But what we suppress does not disappear. It lodges within us, as trauma, in the ache of our chests, the tension in our shoulders, the restless beat of our hearts. The shadows we deny grow louder and darker.
The pain we avoid festers in the deep.
The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
True healing is not an escape from this mess of earth and sweat and trembling, but the courage to step into it all.
Not a rising above, but a rooting down:
To touch the fire of grief.
To liberate the roar of anger.
To stand in the trembling truth.
From Sydney Lynn Lok:
From there we can feel the trauma. From there we can begin to understand this ancient, inherited pain. From there we can process and begin to release it and the misplaced shame that comes with it. From there we can purge it as we hug this orphan back into the wholeness of our hearts.
From there we can make amends for the mistakes we made in the throws of humanity’s amnesia.
From there we can begin the authentic process of forgiving ourselves and forgiving others.
Forgiveness was the ultimate teaching of Christ.
I personally believe that this world, this fractured world is not an illusion but if it is just a dream, it still bleeds and in so doing grows in all of us a deep, FEELING knowing that we are not alone in our suffering. And this course we decided on before we were born… to come into the world with amnesia, awaken, then climb out of the trauma of numbness, then feel our way back into Oneness with God, this is the promise of not only returning to Heaven but finding Heaven on Earth.
One way to approach the Holy Instant, which A Course in Miracles suggests is “all of time there is” (T-15.I.9:5), is to find the rhythm of the natural world, which includes your own rhythms – your heart, your lungs, your mind, your psyche. There is a harmony, a coherence, inherent in the world and, when we give attention to it, it summons us into a stillness that is, in a real way, outside of time altogether.
At what pace do the horses move? The moon through the Heavens? What about the wind in the hemlocks? The river out back beyond the pasture? What is the rhythm of sunflowers and apple trees?
How often do you blink? Draw a breath? How often do the chickadees cry their two-note spring song? The bald eagle gliding over the far hills – how long is each slow and graceful loop through the air? Does the eagle know time the way you do? The way a blade of grass does?
When I sit quietly and attend the world in this way, I realize these questions – about rhythm, pace, tempo and time – are really just a form of asking: how long does it take the heart to open up in love for the one I have forsaken? Left unforgiven? Nailed to a cross? Kept from the fire? Banned from the table?
What is the rhythm of the mind recognizing itself in the other and remembering it is the other?
The Wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the Wholeness of God’s creation . . . Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation (T-6.II.1:2-4).
To sincerely and carefully raise these questions – which is also to be open to answers we don’t already know or couldn’t have expected – is radical. By “radical” I don’t mean politically extreme (although, fair warning, Love does not tolerate the status quo – this is a dangerous spiritual practice if our goal is safety and comfort). I mean radical as in deeply rooted, having its origins in the cosmos, in a way that extends beyond the narrow range of the human frame.
These questions – and their answers – place us in opposition to constructions based on human ignorance, which is always blindly devoted to utility, efficiency, profit, et cetera. That’s the nightmare from which we are awakening. We are taught to be doers; we are taught to look at life in terms of means and ends. Don’t just sit there – do something! But if you enter, as I have, an open marriage with chickadees and violets, apple trees and crows, then you realize the instability, the lunacy, of things like weekends, overtime, vacation and credit. You realize there is another way.
The invitation is to discover what time is (or is not) before all that conditioning floods our nervous system and drives us into postures of consumption and conflict, whose fruits are always loneliness, injustice and violence.
It is helpful to ask these questions outdoors. For me it is. I love sitting quietly by the horses and listening to the river at midnight. I love trailing my fingers over luminous ferns on the north side of the house; I love putting out teacups at night so they can fill with moonlight. My heart flows New Englandly through the seasons and my mind – as Sister Emily observed – is wider than the sky, deeper than the sea and vaster than the cosmos.
When I give attention to the natural world, my sense of time as contained by or measured by clocks and calendars – and the brutal world that containment and measurement imposes on us – loses its hold and I begin to relate differently to life. I become happier and more peaceful. Hope is not an ideal but a recognition of what will be because it always has been. Dreams merge with Creation.
Giving attention is a form of prayer. The way we notice the world – from flowers to family, from friends to inner feelings – the way we hold them in awareness, the way we extend them in awareness – reflects our openness to God, Who holds us, and extends us.
This is not an intellectual inquiry! It’s bigger than the words I use to gesture at it. It’s an inquiry that transcends the mind and the body in order to observe – to make welcome, in and through attention – the world they bring forth together, which is the world in which we learn – in which we remember – that there is no separation anywhere.
Therefore, in prayer, simply be curious and, to the maximal extent possible, don’t judge. Notice when you are judging (it’s not a crime against God or nature) and then set the judgement aside. Like the clock which is its parent, judgment gets in the way of effective prayer. True prayer is a way of being vulnerable; it always involves a degree of risk. All true communication does.
Shortly before he died, Thomas Merton spoke about prayer to the community at the Redwoods Monastery in California.
In prayer, we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have and you realize you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.
As I have been saying for the past year or so, “Christ” is not private or personal. It’s not a being, historical or otherwise. Christ is a collective. Christ is what happens when we join and commit to extending our joining to the world, welcoming others without exception. Christ is the condition of service and joy we remember and extend together, a “common state of mind where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily be healed as one” (T-22.III.9:7).
Prayer occurs mostly in solitude but it is fundamentally an act of solidarity. You are with me when I pray and – if you are willing – I am with you. Others, too. And our prayer goes with us, it goes in and out of us. It lights up the world and the light transforms us. Suddenly all we want to do is help each other. Catherine of Siena said that “whatever you do in word or deed for the good of your neighbor is a real prayer.” How much clearer could it be?
Part of what I am saying is that as our prayer begins to harmonize – first with our surroundings, then with the contents of our mind, and then with the cosmos, something in us slows down and opens up and this slowness, this openness, makes possible a mode of relationship in which the illusion of separation dissolves, leaving only awareness of Creation which is Creation.
Really really what I am saying is that when we attend these rhythms, we eventually perceive in them the healing presence of God, and then we learn that they are the healing presence of God and – on my honor – once you have sipped from that river, you will never get off your knees again.
And yes. The work of healing goes on. Life goes on. It’s okay. Problems and solutions come and go, empires and religions come and go. Even coming and going comes and goes. But over and above and beyond all that is God, Who is Love, Whose healing presence – here, now – creates us anew again and again and again. If I don’t tell you, how will you remember? And if you don’t remember, how can I?
Like a lot of you I am worried right now. I am scared. I am also angry. Waves of destruction flow across the landscape, often hurting – often targeting – folks least able to resist it. Hatred and injustice are like airborne toxins, infecting all of us. What should we do?
What can we do? Well, the only thing we can ever do, really: open our breaking hearts, clarify our distorted thinking and join with each other in the name of Christ. It’s not the only way or even the best way, but it is our way. God turns to you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation is it healed. And no one walks upon the earth but must depend on your decision . . . (T-30.II.5:1-2). The hot mess of the world (and the interior wasteland that is its psychological reflection) are together a call from God to cooperate and collaborate in making manifest the natural serious happiness that is God.. . . unless you take your part in the creation, [God’s] joy is not complete because yours is incomplete . . . The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed . . . (T-4.VII.6:4, 7).
We collaborate with God – we participate in healing – by opening our hearts, clarifying our thinking and emptying our hands. Together, this is the way we remember – and re-member – Christ.
I know, I know. Cool and poetic, Sean! Very inspiring! But how do we actually do it? Honestly? “How” is not the problem. We aren’t confused how to open our hearts, clarify our thinking and empty our hands. That’s easy, relatively speaking. The problem is, at levels we understandably struggle to realize, we don’t want to do those things. We want to want to do those things, absolutely. We want the effects of doing those things. We’re cool with others doing them. But by and large we are content to drift away from Love and its desire to complete Itself in us. We drift and keep drifting. It’s the drift we need to address. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does (T-2.VI.4:6-7).
This is why ACIM’s curriculum doesn’t really bother teaching us about love or peace or justice. Those are given. Rather, it aims at “removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance” (T-in.1:7). For me, at this juncture in my study and practice, “removing the blocks” is the application. It takes the form of asking – over and over – questions like: what am I doing in each and every relationship in my life that reflects a healed heart, open mind and empty hands? Where am I falling short? What am I missing? How am I failing to cooperate? And then, seeing all that, fixing all that. For example, I am not always a great dialogue partner. I love dialogue; I love argument; I love long vulnerable talks that last the night. But sometimes I miss things. I don’t see that you’re too tired or upset to continue; I don’t see that I’m making you repeat yourself for the third or fourth time; I don’t see that I’m interrupting you or mentally rehearsing what I’m going to say to next or otherwise ignoring you. Sometimes, this seeing happens in the moment, and it is possible to correct in the moment. Sometimes I have to apologize after. Sometimes I have to seek out folks and ask for guidance. “I have a really hard time relating with this person – can you help me figure out why?” This is not about obsessive introspection or performative self-criticism. It’s not about spiraling self-criticism. It has to sugar out in application – that is, in relationships that heal in noticeable ways. And I can not be the only one noticing the healing. It has to appear and be present for both of us. Healing in A Course in Miracles is always about the relationship, be it with family, friends, co-workers, fellow students, whatever. How can I be a better partner? How can I be better collaborator – with you and, through you, with God? How can we remember Love together? For all of us? This is hard work! Sometimes it is even painful. Yet the deeper I go into it, and realize its fundamental value, the more it produces a gentle coherence that makes possible another step, another breath, another hug. There really is nothing else.Last week I wrote that there is no separation anywhere. I wrote that mind/body dualism is downstream of the self and that finding the self is what matters. “Finding the self” is not a personal accomplishment, like traveling to Boston or graduating college. It’s more like clearly seeing a process and realizing that a lot of stress, anxiety and hostility are effects of confusion, not inherent qualities of an individual.There is deep peace and contentedness in this clear seeing and realization. But also, the work goes on! Of course it goes on. Relationship goes on. Love goes on.
Jesus wasn’t sending his disciples out two by two because he was the answer; he was doing it because we are the answer, and the answer must be lived, extended, offered and shared. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose (T-5.IV.8:10-12).
In some variants of Buddhism, a Bodhisattva prioritizes the awakening of all beings over their own. When I first learned of this, as a young man at the Vermont Zen Center, I was like, yeah, somebody else can do that. But now I understand a little. We are here to be here with one another, and in our shared presence, to undo (bit by bit, step by step) the blocks to love that prohibit all of us – without qualification or condition – from sharing in the relationship that brings forth the state of happiness – the stillness and coherence – that are what we are together in truth. So in this challenging moment (which is neither our first nor our last) let us be brave and cheerful together in beautiful and ordinary ways. Let us learn what makes being together so difficult. Let us lean on each other and console each other and comfort each other. Let our practice be loving each other as Christ loves and, in doing so, remember that there is no other love. I am here; I’m glad you are too. Love, Sean
WE GROW GOD 