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Lesson 94: I am as God created me.

We in the LGBTQ community are often told that we are “intrinsically evil” by religious institutions – that we were not created by God to love someone of the same gender or feel that we must change our gender identity. I lived for years with the soul-crippling idea that something intrinsic to my life as a human being was a “mistake” or that I was created somehow “less than” others around me.

Today’s lesson sure would have helped all those years ago – that I am as God created me. However, this lesson isn’t really about any sort of bodily identification such as gender or sexual orientation. Indeed, it calls us beyond our bodily labeling to discover the Divine Self that transcends the physical in every way.

Of course, it’s okay to be LGBTQ, just as it’s okay to not be. The ego loves to keep us confused and off balance about who we really are. We are not these bodies or gender identities. We are not our thoughts, we are not our past, and we are not our future. This world of time and space is an illusion, a classroom of our own creation so we can experience this life and learn to see, once again, who we truly are – innocent beings of light created by God. When we remember our true nature, we can allow it to shine through our physical manifestation to remind others of their true Selves. We are here to learn from each other and to teach one another.  

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 3, 2020 — Break your fragile ego”

Lesson 93: Light and joy and peace abide in me.

I was taught, from infancy, that I was born with something called “original sin.” Even as a tiny baby, there was stain on me, passed down from Adam and Eve in the garden after that evil temptress Eve gave poor, innocent Adam that apple (which I later learned in seminary that it wasn’t an apple at all). This is the legacy of my religion – an ingrained belief that I am intrinsically evil because of what two imaginary people did in some book a bunch of people say is “holy” and “inerrant.”

Theologian Matthew Fox writes at length about the damage done to humanity by following such a line of logic (bullshit, really) that was concocted by a guy named Augustine back in the 4^th century. Fox notes that the deeper tradition, before we patterned our lives and religious doctrines after Augustine’s sexual hang-ups, were based on something he calls “original blessing.” In that paradigm, we are all part of the creation that God called, and continues to call, “very good.”

“Goodness,” Meister Eckhart says, “is the proper name of God the Creator.” Buddhist monk Pema Chodron echoes saying: “This is our birthright – the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 2, 2020 — What’s so original about sin?”

Lesson 92: Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one

There is an entire self-help industry out there trying to get us to think positive thoughts and offering us tools to optimize our lives and live into our “authentic” self. Some of the prescriptions of these programs can be helpful and allow us to see the world in a new way, but most of them are simply the ego’s ways to make us feel better within its prison walls of competition and separation.

A Course in Miracles has been accused of being just another one of the ego’s tools to keep us isolated from one another while we work on our weaknesses and be the best people we can be – always happy and upbeat, looking on the bright side of life. However, it’s just the opposite. Yes, the aim of the Course is to help us discover how to be happy, but it isn’t some happy-slappy feel-good program that plasters over our current feelings by just thinking positive thoughts.

The Course invites us, in every word of the text and workbook, to consider where it is our thoughts come from and how we can train ourselves to rely not on the ideas of our ego, but to truly hear the Voice for God that will bring us into true joy, even if everything else in our lives appears to be in chaos and decay.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 1, 2020 — Take the long way “om””

Lesson 91: Miracles are seen in light.

Anyone who knows me, or reads my Facebook page for a minute or two, knows that I am no fan of the current resident of the White House. I think he has been a disaster for this country.

However, early on in the coronavirus crisis he said something that caught my attention. During a press conference on Feb. 28, 2020, he said of the virus: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

He was rightly admonished for such a comment, not because what he said is untrue – a miracle could indeed make the virus disappear – but because of his obviously selfish intention for the remark. What he was engaging in is what A Course in Miracles calls “magic,” because he wished for something to happen on a bodily level so that he, personally, would not be harmed by the pandemic in the form of losing an election or seeing his popularity dip.

But, on one level, he was right. This pandemic or anything that causes suffering on this earth can, like a miracle, disappear. We can’t get there with wishful thinking, though, because that just betrays the fact that our faith is still in the ego and the systems we have created by joining our egos.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 31, 2020 — The curse of wishful thinking”

Lesson 90: Review of:
Lesson 79: Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved, and
Lesson 80: Let me recognize my problems have been solved

We feel like we have many problems for two reasons:

1. We have a grievance – a complaint or a feeling that something is not going as we want it to go, and
2. We believe time is an actual thing.

During this time of pandemic and self-quarantine, we are acutely aware of time and how it seems to be passing so slowly as we eagerly await the day when we can get back to our regularly schedule lives of getting up, going to work, coming home, having dinner, going out with friends and socializing again. It’s been a few weeks, but already it feels like we’ve been cooped up in our homes and neighborhoods for an eternity. 

We misuse time, this lesson tells us, because we cling so tightly to the one grievance that causes all of our problems – our belief in separation – from one another and from God. It’s easy to see the separation right now as we watch the world from our individual living room windows. It’s easy to feel isolated, particularly because this pandemic focuses us squarely on our bodies and our fear for its health and safety.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 30, 2020 — Don’t be such an ass”

Lesson 89: Review of:
Lesson 77: I am entitled to miracles, and
Lesson 78: Let miracles replace all grievances

That word “entitled” is a trigger for the ego – it is for mine, at least. The ego likes competition, difference and specialness and words like “entitled” pricks its interest and it starts to pay attention. When I read that “I am entitled to miracles,” my ego gets a little tickled. It wants me to give God’s laws a little twist – pervert them to mean that the “I” this phrase is pointing to is the little “s” self – that egoic “I” that believes I am “entitled” to something special while others are not.

However, if we are, indeed, under no laws but God’s, we begin to understand that this “I” is actually the collective, nondualistic “I” of our higher, Divine, capital “S,” Self. That Self is not an ego, doesn’t even know about the ego and has no idea that it is more or less “special” than anyone else. This Self that we all possess is that piece of divinity that resides within each of us – and when the Course says “I am entitled to miracles,” it means everyone, equally, is entitled – because there is only one of us here.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 29, 2020 — Life is beauty full”

Lesson 88: Review of:  
Lesson 75: The light has come, and
Lesson 76: I am under no laws but God’s.

For as much as I like to think myself a rebel, I really am a rule-follower. I may violate the laws of fashion on a regular basis, but when it comes to other laws, I am careful not to run afoul of them – with the usual exception of the speed limit, which everyone seems to take as a mere suggestion anyway.

I never liked getting into trouble and have never been keen on taking too many risks. The laws we have set up in the bodily world can be harsh and the last place I ever wanted to end up was in handcuffs, having crossed some societal line between “legal” and “illegal.”  

Our ego pats us on the back for this kind of behavior, convincing us we have “integrity” and “values,” but in reality, I’m just scared of having someone put my body in a jail for some transgression. Good rules make for good behavior among those who fear some manner of bodily consequence.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 28, 2020 — No more old spice”

Lesson 87: Review of:
Lesson 73: I will there be light, and
Lesson 74: There is no will but God’s.

Whether it’s a hurricane, famine, terrorist attack or now this pandemic, scratch the surface of humanity and you’ll find a bunch of people talking about how whatever’s  going on is “God’s will,” or at least God’s “punishment” for something humans do, such as dare to love someone of their same gender. (Can you hear my eyes rolling?)

Such grievances – and yes, they are grievances – are what keep us from willing that there be light and recognizing that there is no will but God’s. A Course in Miracles tells us time and again that we are free to follow our own will – to see the world through the lens of competition and fear and believe all we want to in the ego’s false god of punishment and wrath.

We can put all our faith in the ego, or we can put all our faith in God. There is no in-between. We cannot kinda believe in miracles and have them happen. Either we surrender our will to God’s will or we don’t. You can’t be a half-assed miracle worker.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 27, 2020 — You can’t be a half-assed miracle worker”

Lesson 86: Review of:
Lesson 71: Only God’s plan for salvation will work, and
Lesson 72: Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.

It’s a paradoxical time we’re living in while we deal with this coronavirus pandemic. We have been forced apart physically, but our innate desire for unity over separation is driving us to find new ways to connect to one another. Musicians are livestreaming concerts from their living rooms, churches and other spiritual communities are seeking ways to hold virtual celebrations, teachers are reading stories online to their students and others are checking in with neighbors, making supply runs for others and generally seeking new ways to create community.

We are hard-wired to want to be together, because, I believe on some level we know that this separation we feel truly is an illusion. This is not our true state of being and now that we are limiting our physical presence with one another, we are finding out that we are more than our bodies – we are realizing what A Course in Miracles and other metaphysical teachings have been telling us for millennia – we are all joined in one mind.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 26, 2020 — The paradox of pandemic”

Lesson 85: Review of
Lesson 69: My grievances hide the light of the world in me, and
Lesson 70: My salvation comes from me.

Grievances? Again? Really?

Oh, wait, that’s a grievance, isn’t it? Being irritated with having grievances pointed out again and again … yeah, I guess so.

This is why A Course in Miracles is nothing if not redundant. We recalcitrant human beings have the attention span of a gnat. Always flying at the closest face or pile of manure, no matter how many times our Higher, Divine Self wants to swat us away from our ridiculous egoic compulsions to attack one another and compete with everyone for what we see as limited resources.

Our ego is like a demented Oprah: “You get a grievance! And you get a grievance! Grievances for everyone!”

Our grievances – everything from petty irritation to our outrage at the state of the whole world – blocks our sight. It hangs like a heavy, black curtain blocking us off from the Light of the Divine that is always shining within us. If we can remember, though, that it is only a curtain of illusion that shrouds that light – easily removed by remembering that we are that Light and nothing else – the veil is lifted and we can see the world clearly through our Holy vision.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 25, 2020 — Ya gotta laugh”