Category: A Year of Miracle Writing

Lesson 109: I rest in God.

Here in America, we are a society of doers. We do so much that when we take vacations, we come back exhausted and in need of another vacation to recover from the one we just took. We don’t know how to rest. We don’t know how to take a break and do nothing.

This is why the current coronavirus pandemic is so hard for so many people. They are being forced not just to slow down, but often to stop completely. Some are stopping because they lost their jobs, some are going stir crazy because they thrive on the hustle and bustle of their offices and others are going nuts because they enjoy traveling and moving and abhor sitting still.

And here we are – in enforced stillness. It’s no wonder some are losing their minds right now.

It was Blaise Pascal who once keenly noted: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 18, 2020 — You’re under a-rest”

Lesson 108: To give and receive are one in truth

As I began reading today’s lesson I marveled at its beauty. The words were just flowing over me, making me feel warm and comforted. “True light makes true vision possible,” it says. How wonderful! I can see the world, this lesson tells me, through a unified vision – through Christ’s vision that sees nothing but love. It doesn’t take notice of anything that is not love because only love is real and nothing unreal can pull us from this state of true joy and bliss.

I was flying pretty high until I hit this bit: “to forgive one brother wholly is enough to bring salvation to all minds.”

Well, shit.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 17, 2020 — Enlightenment, or some shit like that”

Lesson 107: Truth will correct all errors in my mind

I have to admit that I am pretty bad at meditating. Honestly, I spend half of my meditation time just trying to stay awake – even during guided meditations. I once read a comment from Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn that it’s okay to fall asleep now and then during meditation, but I’m not sure how he’d feel about me napping away all of my meditation time.

In an effort, then, to achieve some sort of spiritual practice, I have turned to chanting, specifically kirtan since it blends my favorite pastime of music with spirituality. Chanting Sanskrit words that I don’t know allows me to enter a meditative state quicker than using other practices such as Taize and the varied voices of kirtan chanters such as Krishna Das and Snatam Kaur keep the practice lively and interesting for me.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 16, 2020 — There is another world”

Lesson 106: Let me be still and listen to the truth

A Course in Miracles tells us that the voice of our ego speaks first and it speaks the loudest. Tune in to cable news, or read a few Facebook entries, and you can be sure you’re hearing the loud voices of the ego, blaring its message of fear, loathing, blame, shame and greed. If any message you hear unsettles you or jars you from any sense of peace or joy – that’s the voice of the ego. It has no other purpose but to shake us from our joy.

“Be not deceived by voices of the dead,” today’s lesson says, “which tell you they have found the source of life and offer it to you for your belief. Attend them not, but listen to the truth.”

The truth is this: We are God’s channels for love, peace and joy in the world and our only choice is whether we will understand the truth of that and open ourselves wide to be used by God, or if we will deny our function in this world and follow the “dead” voice of the ego.

“Be not afraid today to circumvent the voices of the world,” this lesson continues. “Walk lightly past their meaningless persuasion. Hear them not.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 15, 2020 — That still, small voice”

Lesson 105: God’s peace and joy are mine.

A friend came by yesterday with a gift – a cloth face mask with a little pouch to add a coffee filter or some other type of filter to protect myself from the coronavirus whenever I have to be out in public. There is, of course, a debate about how effective any of these homemade masks may be, but the gesture was huge. She drove across town with her special-needs daughter to make this delivery.

We socially distanced as we chatted about our lives under lockdown. This is the same person who, after I jokingly commented on Facebook about opening up my last package of toilet paper, made that same drive to deliver a fresh pack to my door. My friend deeply understands the message of today’s lesson – we cannot truly give unless we understand it is the same as receiving. My friend lost nothing by giving me the things I need. She has plenty of masks, plenty of toilet paper and plenty of other supplies she needs because she gives them away.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 14, 2020 — The gift that keeps on giving”

Lesson 104: I seek what belongs to me in truth.

One of the spiritual exercises I have had recommended to me over the course of my spiritual seeking was this: Clean your house. This was long before Marie Kondo and her recommendation to keep only what brings you joy. This exercise was about sorting through your stuff, yes, but not with the goal of appeasing your emotions as much as clearing physical space as a sign that you were ready to let go of spiritual junk as well.

Today’s lesson is another way to get at the same idea: When we clear not just our rooms of whatever is cluttering it up and muddling up our mind and our lives, but our mind and heart of unnecessary illusions, we will make space for the Truth of our lives to emerge.

“Today,” this lesson says, “we would remove all meaningless and self-made gifts which we have placed upon the holy altar where God’s gifts belong.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 13, 2020 — Spirituality is for the birds …”

Lesson 103: God, being Love, is also happiness

I gotta tell you, kids, writing these reflections on A Course in Miracles’ workbook would be so much easier if all of our lives were not being mightily inconvenienced by a global pandemic. It’s so much easier to write about happiness when you can see evidence of it around you as people gather in parks, restaurants, bars, sporting events or concerts. It’s much easier to feel happy when you can leave your house without a face mask or have to que up at the grocery store to get your vital supplies.

Happiness is so much easier when happiness is evident outside of yourself, right?

I’ve been having a hard time with today’s lesson because the fear and anxiety of our time is catching up with me. I’m blessed – my main job as a writer has not been affected. I still have full-time employment. My spiritual community has had to move online but so far, our members are still supporting us financially, and I have no reason to believe they won’t continue doing that as long as they are able. I am in far better shape than a lot of other people I know, and I’m grateful.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 12, 2020 — May the bluebird of happiness …”

Lesson 102: I share God’s will for happiness for me

There’s an old adage that goes: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” There are many who agree and those who pooh-pooh the idea out of hand, pointing out that all of life is suffering since we will never be successful at fully loving one another, no matter how much we try.

In the world of the ego, I suppose both views could be right. The ego likes to keep us in these kinds of competitive thought experiments. If we’re trying to hold on to the cognitive dissonance it creates, we’ll be debating both sides of the issue until the cows come home. This lesson doesn’t try to settle the argument. Instead, it seeks to show us the ultimate futility of the argument.

“You do not want to suffer,” this lesson says.  “You may think it buys you something, and may still believe a little that it buys you what you want. Yet this belief is surely shaken now, at least enough to let you question it, and to suspect it really makes no sense. It has not gone as yet, but lacks the roots that once secured it tightly to the dark and hidden secret places of your mind.”

Continue reading “AyoMW: April 11, 2020 — Suffering isn’t even an option”

Lesson 101: God’s will for me is perfect happiness

Hello, my name is Candace and I’m a Sinaholic.

Honestly, we need a good 12-step program to help us break our addiction to sin. If you were raised in a religious tradition such as the Southern Baptist church or Catholicism, you came by your addiction honestly. You may even have a genetic disposition to this disease as it has been passed down through the generations. Sin and guilt are the stock and trade of many religions.

I have seen a glimmer of hope, though. Several years ago, when I taught religion at a local community college, I had students in my comparative religion class create their own religion from scratch. Teaching here in the deep South I was ready to hear a chorus of objections, especially from my Christian students about the blasphemy of “inventing” a religion. Only one student, however, ever complained and he walked away in a thoughtful way when I asked him who had invented Christianity, since it didn’t drop from the heavens as a fully formed belief system.

My students created a bunch of funny and thoughtful religions which centered around everything from shopping, to money, to football. Interestingly enough, the one feature that every single one of those new religions lacked was a doctrine of eternal damnation. There literally was no hell in any of the systems the students devised.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 10, 2020 — Addicted to sin”

Lesson 100: My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation

When I read this lesson, I feel a sense of resistance arise within me, especially when I read that our part in God’s plan for salvation is to be “happy.”

All of my fraudulent religious bells go off when I read that. I was raised, of course, in a religion that viewed happiness with suspicion. Happiness, I was taught, was not our purpose here. We are born into a fallen world of sin and as “stinking bags of worms,” as Martin Luther calls humanity, we are to toil sadly through this world in hope of landing in the promised land of heaven. There, and only there, will we find happiness, this religion taught me. Until then, look dour and do your work.

My suspicion concerning happiness comes honestly then. I was taught happiness was a byproduct of living “right” and not the goal of this life. Happiness was created by things outside of yourself – money, power, relationships, jobs. Find the right things out in this world and they will bring happiness.

Certainly, we have all experienced the happiness that new things outside of ourselves can bring, but it’s always fleeting. We trade the new car, the new house, the new job the new relationship when it no longer makes us feel the euphoria of the first few months or years that we possess it.

Continue reading “AYoMW: April 9, 2020 — Resisting happiness”