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Lesson 134: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is

One of my favorite techniques to use when I get caught up in feeling offended, hurt or otherwise slighted by the people around me is a phrase Brene Brown talks about using when she has a conflict with her husband: “The story I’m telling myself is …”

We all get caught up in our “somebody done me wrong” stories. Our ego eagerly fabricates all kinds of reasons why someone would treat you badly and tells you how right you are to be offended, to hate them, to scold them for being such awful humans and why they should come groveling back to you begging for your forgiveness.

Ah, forgiveness. The ego uses it as a powerful weapon. We deign to forgive others to show how spiritually superior we are to them and we beg others to forgive us because we feel they are spiritually superior to us. Such forms of “forgiveness,” this lesson tells us, are a distortion “that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 13, 2020 — Weaponizing forgiveness”

Lesson 133: I will not value what is valueless

As I write today’s reflection, my 7- year-old German Shepherd dog, The Lord, (because, “The Lord is my shepherd), is undergoing surgery to remove a dead tooth. I have been an anxious fur-baby mama all day, on pins and needles until I heard from the vet. The extraction is underway, but I will still be a bit of a wreck until I have her back safe and sound at home.

I turn to write today’s lesson and my ego gets in a bit of a pique. “Are you calling my dog valueless, you snooty excuse for a spiritual teacher?” it snorts. “My dog is valuable to me. Priceless, even.”

Of course she is, but not because of her form. Instead, her value turns on the Love I carry for her – the love that is eternal, the Love that gives birth to compassion and joy within me – two more eternal qualities that are priceless. My Love for her, and for all my other precious pets, gives me a window into the eternal nature of Love. I still Love all the pets that have preceded her. What I feel for them has not died or even wavered for one minute in its strength. They are not here in form, but they remain with me because my Love for them was real and continues to be real.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 12, 2020 — Only empty hands can be filled”

Lesson 132: I loose the world from all I thought it was

Here’s the part where I throw this book across the room.

I have struggled for the past two days to write something about this lesson that doesn’t make me sound like a woo-woo, new age freak. I may, indeed, fail at that task, but hear me out. I think if I could actually internalize this lesson, I would instantly become enlightened. Sadly, I am still too wrapped up in my belief in this world to do that, in this moment.

The Course, of course, understands. It even says so in this lesson. Some of us are not ready to accept that this world is an illusion … that we truly are in a dream world of our own making. We weren’t plopped down into this world as it was going on. We created it from the moment we believed it was real. That’s what this lesson says, anyway.

I’m not sure I’m on board – but that’s why I’m still here, dreaming the dream, playing my role in the world I’ve created. You’d think I would have chosen a better role, but here we are, dreaming together a crazy, mixed-up, mean, cruel and often beautiful and generous world.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 11, 2020 — Ok, you lost me …”

Lesson 131: No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth

By every measure of this ego’s world, I am a failure. I am not famous. I am not rich. I am not powerful. I have not accomplished all that much in the grand scheme of things. There are people half my age who accomplished fame, fortune and achieved powerful offices in government, entertainment and other institutions.

I am not one of those.

I used to worry about this. I used to berate myself for being lazy. “Yeah, you got ONE book published, but what about those writers who turn out a book every year, ore even every six months? What a loser.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 10, 2020 — Break your jar of God”

Lesson 130: It is impossible to see two worlds.

If it’s true that this world is not our home, why does it feel so damn real? Today’s lesson has an answer: fear. When the tiny, mad idea that we are separate from God entered our thoughts, fear tagged along behind and overtook our mind.

We are so convinced this world of our physical senses is real that any suggestion that it is an illusion is dismissed as utter insanity. Of course, this world is real. I can touch it, I can smell it, I can taste it and hear it and see it. The thought that there is something beyond this physical reality is so alien to us, we tend to lock people away who constantly seek to look beyond this physical field of existence and call them crazy.

It’s not crazy, it’s reality. Buddhism and other Eastern religions have recognized the illusory impermanence of the world we live in. Even Jesus said it was crazy to store up worldly possessions when our bodies all meet the same fate in the end. We see what that kind of preaching got him.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 9, 2020 — Becoming the noise”

Lesson 129: Beyond this world is the world I want.

The ego’s gravitational pull on us is strong. This is why A Course in Miracles is so long … and so repetitive. It says the same thing over and over again, using different words and examples. It has to, because we are so tethered and dedicated to this ego world that it seems strange – crazy, even – to consider wanting something else, especially something as seemingly nebulous as God’s realm.

The Course speaks the truth, however – there really is nothing in the world that will truly satisfy us. The ego keeps offering up alternatives – wealth, power, possessions, relationships, jobs, homes, exotic vacations. It’s all a fantasy. We truly could have everything we want in this world – everything the ego tells us we should want, at least – and we would still find it all fleeting and impermanent.

We store up our earthly goods in bank accounts and investments these days and not in barns like the old days, but they still rot away and disappear at some point.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 8, 2020 — Connect with your inner nag”

Lesson 128:  The world I see holds nothing that I want.

As a Southern Baptist child, I was raised constantly hearing the slogan: “This world is not my home.”

While A Course in Miracles would agree with that sentiment, it would not agree with the particular construction of the concept as practiced in the religion of my youth. You see, we would declare that we were strangers in this strange land, but the place we called our home was simply a more glorified version of the same world, except we all lived in mansions just off of streets of gold.

The social and class systems of my inherited religion’s heaven were the same as the egoic social and class systems here on earth. There were neighborhoods in this heavenly realm that you could aspire to if you lived a good earthly life – even as a stranger in a strange land. If you lived by all the Bible’s precepts and kept your nose clean, you could enter the gated heaven’s most elegant gated communities. If you didn’t do you best here, you might end up in heaven’s suburbs, but you were careful to avoid heaven’s slums.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 7, 2020 — Don’t let this world grab your sweet ass”

Lesson 127: There is no love but God’s.

Back when Donald Trump was running for the highest office in the US, I was watching Marianne Williamson’s then-weekly talks on A Course in Miracles. Her book, A Return to Love, had primed me years ago for the Course‘s ideas but I was really beginning to dig into the book and workbook during this time and was absorbing all I could from teachers of the Course such as her and Ken Wapnick.

Her talks were given to an unsurprisingly liberal audience that filled a church in New York City each week to hear her. She talked about the election a lot in those days and after Trump managed to enter the White House by the electoral college, she began, in earnest, to use him as a teaching tool for the Course.

Everyone, including Williamson, was dismayed at what had happened in the election and many were grappling with their feelings about the turn of events and their personal feelings about the man who had taken over the office. Some were very worried, of course, and still others could not get over their visceral hatred for Trump.

Williamson, who repeats herself a lot in these talks – but still is questioned about the same old things in the Q&A portion – said the same thing over the course of many of her talks after the election. She talked about how much God loved Trump. Perhaps she did this to get the predictable gasp from the audience, but I think her constant mentioning of this idea – that God loves someone we personally find reprehensible – as a way to reinforce today’s lesson: There is no love but God’s.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 6, 2020 — Yes, God even loves those you love to hate”

Lesson 126: All that I give is given to myself.

In the Manual for Teachers section of A Course in Miracles, we’re told: “The teacher of God is generous out of Self-interest.”

Which is a great jumping-off point for those who criticize the Course as mumbo-jumbo spiritual bypass, but they neglect the next sentence:  “This does not refer, however, to the self of which the world speaks. The teacher of God does not want anything he cannot give away, because he realizes it would be valueless to him by definition.”

Why does the teacher of God not want anything they can’t give away? Because those who understand that giver and receiver are the same – and that there’s really only one of us here – knows that whatever can be given away will ultimately return to the giver. Perhaps not in the same form – but it will return.

Think of a time when you have been genuinely loving or generous to another person. How did it make you feel? Pretty good, probably. That feeling we receive when we give is proof that giving and receiving are the same. Works in the opposite direction, too. When we’ve been mean or hateful to others, we feel badly. Our egos tell us we’re justified in our hatred and fear, but we feel so hateful and fearful afterward. Nobody, no matter what they tell you, feels good after hating on others. What they’re feeling is the ego’s love of revenge and specialness.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 5, 2020 — The sweet madness of generosity”

Lesson 125: In quiet I receive God’s Word today.

As someone who suffers from tinnitus, my world is never silent. I use a white noise machine at night to cancel out the noise in my head so I can sleep. A quiet room is torture for me because it simply increases the level of screeching that already exists inside my own head.

I went to the doctor about it several years ago and got the big medical shrug. They don’t know what caused it (probably loud concerts I attended as a teen and young adult) and they have no cure for it.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” could have been written on the prescription pad, since that was basically their conclusion.

As a result, meditation is difficult for me. I can’t sit quietly anywhere, since quiet doesn’t exist in my world. I have turned to kirtan chanting to settle my mind and disrupt my ego’s racing thought patterns. It works well most of the time, but I still try to sit silently (but not in silence), especially with the workbook exercises.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 4, 2020 — Quiet? What’s that like?”