My Aunt passed over in early June of 2025 at the advanced age of 91. She had attended Wellesley College as she had been accepted because of an exceptionally high I.Q. She was enthralled with Math and the Sciences. She was also raised in a staunchly Presbyterian household in Arkansas during the 1930’s from which the South was still firmly entrenched in racial turmoil. Add to that a beloved father who was also a physician who died early from a massive heart attack when she was ten years old and as he was convulsing in his bed she laid in hers frantically and fervently praying to God that his life might be spared and when it wasn’t…
the doubt crept in regarding her faith and stayed.
And yet most of her life she attended her Presbyterian Church and tried to mend the tear in her psyche between Science and Spirit. Her Church began to let her down as her acutely attuned mind asked question after question. As a math teacher and also a woman in the highly misogynistic South her questions as sharp and precise as mathematic equations would break through the swamp of the South’s religious rhetoric. She started to stretch…stretch like gum on a hot, humid pavement on a scorching summer’s day. An avid reader, she started to read more than just the Bible. Fifteen years ago she visited me in Colorado which she called God’s Country. She stared in awe at the Spanish Peaks (also known as Wahatoya, Huahatolla.) She introduced me to Richard Rohr, the Christian Mystic and began exploring other religions. A year before she passed over into Spirit, she started to read about the Baha’i Faith, a relatively new religion emphasizing the unity of humanity and all religions. Her quest to unite Spirit and Science evolved into uniting all of us into the Oneness of All That Is.
The Baha’i Faith states that “God” is the “unknowable essence”.
So, I will now take over where she left off in her video to her family made a year before she passed over where her eyes widened into huge saucers as she spoke the words, God is the “unknowable essence”.
God is knowable.
The mind of God is limited. Mind is 3rd/4th dimensional. It expands into a higher mind that clarifies the sciences but is still limited. The Heart unifies Science and Spirit. The Heart of God is unlimited. This Heart is accessed through feeling, an often times denigrated spiritual sense on this Earth Plane. It is the sense the Soul develops and values above all others while incarnated in the physical universe and it is this sense that grows God through experience. Feeling is the sense that grows the Heart of God of which we all are a part.
“If God is the Heart, then WE are the Heartbeat.” ~Yendys, my Oversoul~
This Heart is felt knowledge and is knowable. Feeling is the moving, dancing part of the Heart. This is God. This is Us. And WE are truly knowable.
Through FEELING. Feeling through things. Sinking into the fabric and threads of physical reality, riding the electron as it streaks back to join the nucleus of Creation. And as you join with Creation you are with the Creator.
Love is not a thought. It is a pulse. And a pulse can only be felt.
Through feeling we can know. Feeling is a spiritual instrument so refined that all it really ever needs to be nourished is for you to question everything.
Your intuitive feeling can lead you to a compassionate form of telepathy where words will always fall far short. With this form I call Heartipathy we can connect to The Heart which is the Source of Everything.
In the last five or so years of her life, my dear Aunt Liz found a progressive Presbyterian Church which embraced the Heart of Love, supportive and affirming of all peoples and life in the city of San Leandro, CA. She still had questions. And the tendrils of her Soul reached out to question and examine even as she took her last breath.
As a child I looked up at God shining through her face and asked, “What is God?” And she smiled oh so softly which I felt so keenly as it felt like rose petals dropping down on the clean slate of my face, she said:
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?
For any number of reasons, this may be a triggering post for some folks. Forgive me. Also, this essay may be a helpful companion.
Addiction owns two main qualities in my life.
First, I want everything to be more intense – brighter, faster, louder, deeper. I want the interior amplifiers set at eleven all the time. I want the stakes to be life or death all the time.
I cannot bear – I cannot bear – the ordinary, the pedestrian, the routine and the rules.
Second, a little less obviously, I do not want to be responsible. I don’t want to have to do anything that I don’t want to do. Everything should be given to me when I want it the way I want it. Only then will I be truly happy and free.
This is obviously not sustainable.
Recovery communities helped. Therapy helped a lot. Entering into a new, service-based relationship with God and God’s Creation helped, too.
But I did not really begin to face addiction nor undo its root causes until I began to study and practice A Course in Miracles.
More specifically, until I accepted and began to attempt to enact and embody the truth of ACIM’s happy dream.
Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, “Thy Will be done,” and not, “I want it otherwise” (T-18.V.4:1-3).
I realized that my whole life had been dedicated to “I want it otherwise.”
When we live by the law of “I want it otherwise,” we are saying several things at once, each one of which cannot help but bring us – and others too unfortunately – to grief.
“I want.” The eogic concept of self is codified in this statement. Whatever happens is about me. My wants, my perceptions, my plans and my way. In any situation, all that matters is how I feel and what I want to do with those feelings. Stuff them? Broadcast them? Double down on them?
It’s my call. You and everyone else – up to and including Jesus and his unreliable Dad – are along for the ride.
“Otherwise.” Whatever life offered – whatever appeared – I judged against it. There were too many rules, too many requirements, the folks calling the shots were dumb and inept, the routine was stifling, schedules murder creativity, et cetera. Something was always wrong and, in keeping with the principle that I’m in charge, I refused to accept or be in relationship with any of it.
In the end, addiction is a way of refusing – of actively attacking – the healing potential of the present.
A Course in Miracles invited an accounting in this regard that made Steps Four and Nine look and feel like child’s play.
Addiction is a symptom of separation. It’s a symptom that can kill you faster than the disease itself. It’s a sympton that can take others down with you. If you don’t undo the underlying illness completely, then this deadly symptom will sprout again and again.
Addiction is effectively ego’s attack on God. Addiction makes war on Love. The war cannot be won but lifetimes can be lost fighting it. Lifetimes are lost that way.
I am not speaking hypothetically.
When I began to take A Course in Miracles seriously (long after I first started studying and practicing it), two things happened.
The first was that I saw how ACIM was not perfect. It was not a scripture. It wasn’t like Moses with his tablets. It was okay to write notes in the margins or spill coffee on its pages.
The course was simply the collaborative effort of two people – Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford – desperately trying to remember peace and happiness for themselves and leaving notes for those who came later with the same burning desire for a better way to resolve conflict.
In other words, I understood – I understand – A Course in Miracles as a prototype for ending separation by remembering oneness.
Prototypes are designed to be applied and changed. They’re designed to be flexible in order to adapt to new situations and challenges. They aren’t etched in stone, but sketched on paper in pencil. They’re meant to be interactive and permissive.
When I stopped worshipping the course – when I stopped insisting the course be the spiritual cornerstone of my living, over and against everything else – then my relationship with its content became less performative and public and more intimate and helpful. I saw its potential for healing and opened up to that potential in unexpected and life-altering ways.
The second thing that happened was that I realized I had been fucking around in the spiritual buffet line for way too long and that it was time – it was past time really – to make a decision. I had to make a commitment. It didn’t even matter to what. The act of committing – not the thing to which I committed – was the point.
So I did. Rather than say for the ten millionth time “I want it otherwise,” I said, “I guess I’ll try this, thy will be done.” And, not without a lot of bumps and bruises, false starts and wrong turns, whining and kvetching and griping, it worked.
What does that mean, “it worked?”
I mean that A Course in Miracles introduced a handful of extremely useful concepts to me – holiness vs. specialness, the importance of relationship, the vitality of the present moment – and urged me to not only become skillful in understanding them but also in – even primarily in – applying them. I learned that healing isn’t a thing I do, but a process I agree to be available for and, when it is offered, to accept it.
Let me say that again:
Healing is not an action that I take but rather a process for which I agree to become available. When it is offered, I accept.
I don’t set the terms, right? I don’t make conditions. I simply show up.
Healing is collaborative but my part is really basic: I just have to be willing to be healed. The course is very clear about this. I am not in charge.
Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is its function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit’s help. That is His function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred, and to be forgiven (T-18.V.2:1-5).
Let’s break that down a little.
The most important part is the last sentence: all I have to do is offer the Holy Spirit my willingness. I have to realize the need for healing and be willing to be healed. It’s more passive than I like; it’s way less spectacular and dramatic.
But it’s not unambiguous.
It is not my job to remove fear and hatred from my mind – I can’t do that. All I can do is notice they are there in my mind, realize they are deviations from Love, and then – this is really really important – not run away from the resultant guilt.
Because I do feel guilty, right? Why am I such a defective child of God? Why did I piss away so many opportunities for healing? For contentedness? Why did I tolerate hurting others? It was so simple and I made it all complex and difficult. Why?
If I am honest, I feel like a disappointment to Jesus, to the Lord of Heaven and to the Mother of the Cosmos. I deserve to suffer and die. I deserve to be disappeared.
I hate saying that but deep down it’s the truth. Sooner or later we have to look at it.
Because it is in that space – self-convicted of crimes against God and nature, condemned to be crucified – utterly without hope for salvation, forsaken even by God – that the Holy Spirit comes and says gently but clearly, “Sean, you ridiculous beautiful goofball, you are forgiven.”
You are forgiven.
I’m not saying that this work is easy. Nor am I saying anybody has to do it. There are lots of ways to peace and happiness. I am simply saying that for me it was not possible to be happy until I was forgiven by God, through the Holy Spirit, with Jesus standing by as a kind of mystical sponsor. A Course in Miracles made that possible. My gratitude is immense.
Forgiveness is no joke. It is a real healing that we experience in bodies in the world. It’s a light that shines away the darkness and purifies the many sins and errors and blemishes we’ve cherished and collected over the years.
For me, forgiveness means that I no longer fear fear. I’m not afraid to be afraid anymore because I know that the outcome is sure. Love is the outcome – not in the future but now. I trust God; I trust you.
I desire this holy instant for myself, that I may share it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me. Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now (T-18.V.7:3-5).
I could say a lot about that prayer! I was born both curious and wordy. But mostly I want to remember that you and I go together and that our togetherness is collectively the site of healing, the means of healing and the effect of healing. Is it clear?
We are teaching each other how to be holy by having nothing else in our lives but holiness. Reality cannot be opposed, only accepted. I love you. And through our love, God.
Syd’s 2 cents:
This amazing post by Sean blew me away. I do not covet “A Course of Miracles” as my Bible I never question. I take what I like and leave the rest. I was addicted to being a ZERO-A ghost moving through life unseen, unheard, gaslighted, groomed to be SPECIAL by zero parents who lived in this flamboyant, arrogant, egotistical trap of societies in separation. Sean’s post is opening me to possibly, hopefully allowing my passage into true forgiveness, so I share this with you, my dear readers for your peace and upliftment.
WE GROW GOD 