My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my reality at last. All that intruded on my holy sight forgiveness takes away.
– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 298
During a songwriting retreat a few years ago, the leader challenged each person over the course of the week to do a handstand during our morning yoga session. One by one, the 20 participants or so volunteered to do the handstand, either assisted or not. Some were eager for the experience for the first time, others were handstand veterans and wanted to show off their stuff, others worked through their fear and eventually did it before the week ended.
Then there was me. I did not volunteer to do a handstand. I was cajoled by the others, offered several spotters and reassured that the experience would be fun and maybe even life-changing.
To this day, I have never done a handstand. My fear was greater than my trust in these people who were quickly becoming friends. No matter how hard I tried to want to do it, I could not find the courage to place my body in their hands.
Today’s lesson encourages us to do a metaphysical handstand of sorts – to turn our perspective on this world upside down in the hope of finally being able to see the world aright – a world of unity instead of separation.
The main line for this lesson, “I love you, Father, and I love your Son,” brings back too many of the evangelical Christian lessons on “loving God” that I had to swallow whole as a child. I had a visceral reaction to the line when I first read it and almost did not write about this lesson.
Then I remembered that missed handstand. Fear and a visceral revulsion to the idea led me to skip it. The Course is constantly asking us to lean in to those reactions because strong resistance is simply your ego trying to protect itself. (Remember, it speaks first and it speaks loudest!) It doesn’t want us to do life-changing handstands and wants us to avoid writing about topics that may make us uncomfortable.
The point of this lesson is not to blindly “love” God and Jesus, but to finally understand that the ego’s version of “love” keeps us in a fearful state – unable to see through this illusion – unable to change our perspective and receive the miracle of truth. The miracle is this: We are made in Love to be the embodiment of Love. Our fear of this all-consuming love for God and the Son keeps us locked into the ego’s perspective of fear and despair.
There is another way to live, this lesson assures us. Our gratitude is what permits this kind of ultimate, Holy and unifying Love to be accepted without fear. Every person who did a handstand at that retreat expressed gratitude. They were grateful to be asked, grateful to be encouraged, grateful to be assisted (if they needed it) and grateful for the change in perspective they received from the experience. Everyone who did the handstand literally glowed afterward, even if their handstand wasn’t perfect or lasted for only a second or two.
This is the key – to give ourselves over to experiences that will change our perspective, that will help us see this upside-down world the right-side up by offering us God’s vision of a beautiful, forgive and unified world.
Love is the only thing that is real and it’s already ours, we just have to be willing to accept the miracle of a changed perspective.
I find I’m a bit jealous now of those who did the handstand, but the Muslim mystic poet Hafiz assures me that every moment brings new opportunities to turn the world upside-down so that we may see it rightly.
Have you ever felt jealous hearing
someone laugh? And then began to
think to yourself,
“Why am I so caught in the world’s
snare? Why don’t I know right now the
freedom
in other voices when their spirit like
an arrow takes flight above the hour’s
concern?”
But the heart’s laughter is never there
to taunt another, especially if the other
is feeling low.
Real laughter is a waving, a beckoning,
a message, a calling to all that says,
Over here, come over here for a
minute… where things look so different,
and you can have more fun!
Photo by Bas Masseus from Pexels