Acim Village

I received a call this morning only to find out that a close family member of mine has been diagnosed with cancer. Patricia and I went off to a quiet café to be with our thoughts, and we discussed how it somehow felt easier to contemplate one’s own death than that of a close loved one, and this surprised us both a little. In thinking more deeply about it and in asking for help to see this differently, the following thoughts came to me. Although it might seem a little direct, maybe even harsh or upsetting, they brought me a great deal of comfort and clarity. I felt I was being asked to take things to another level, and the source of the thoughts felt very kind and understanding. I always express these types of thoughts in the first person though that is not really how they appear in my mind. Basically our question was why, if Love is there for us, does it seem harder to part with some people than with others.

Oneness is that state that calls us unceasingly to remember that we are all the same, all one, and this place of oneness is not physical but entirely spiritual. While we feel attracted to this vast horizon of perfect sameness and tranquillity, a part of us is deeply unhappy with the idea of losing the perception of differences. Why? Because in my world of differences, I feel alive.

The way I keep this world alive in my senses is by disturbing the sublime oneness-horizon with variations and changes. I add to this inner flat countryside with an event that shakes me up, leaving me frightened or ecstatic. And a hillock suddenly appears. A range of low hills manifests when a bodily condition takes over and leaves me on medication for a long time. Then an entire forest, deep and mysterious, emerges when I begin studying a special new field of thought or science. An ocean comes into view, waves rising and crashing on the shore when the stock market becomes the central focus of my life, and the world economy carries me into a vast whirlpool of fear and excitement.

But the most extraordinary and extravagant of all the topographical features in the landscape of my life are the vast and magnificent mountains that soar above all the surrounding flatness, causing all other events and circumstances to pale into relative insignificance. These mountains are my relationships. The people I cherish and hold in my heart and mind create the sense of life that I seek, that I live for. They give it meaning and substance. Without them, life would be flat, dull and hardly worth living. So speaks my individualized self.

When I feel the pain the disappearance a loved one might cause, what I am confronted with is my deep desire, even need, for this person to be vitally important to me. I weave their smile, their laughter, their support, their tears, their kindnesses, their heartaches – everything about them I integrate into my sense of ‘life’. And their passing away would seem to remove a firmament in life as I experience it.

In reality, this other person is not the source of my happiness, or of my inner stability. But this is the way it feels. Can I learn to see that I have a choice?

It is a challenging moment when we face that clear choice – what do I want to be true now? A life that can be altered, shifted and unbalanced under my feet, as the vagaries of health determine who lives and who dies? Or a Life that remains constantly embraced within an eternal Love that knows no change or blemish, no diminishment or lack? This is the choice between a pure and perfect, stable and all-encompassing horizon, and a chaotic and erratic landscape subject to violent earthquakes and destructive volcanoes.

My friends and loved ones are part of the landscape of my life, this is true. I love them, and I will miss them when they are gone. But perhaps I can learn to smooth out the bumps, knowing there is beneath these mountains and hills, these forests and seas, a perfectly calm and serene Ocean. I can rejoin with this Ocean whenever I wish, following the bright star of Jesus back to that place which remains for all of us our true Home, stable and perfect, eternal and kind. That is where we are all indeed joined as One, and not in this ephemeral world that leaves us sad and lacking.

Due to recent (perpetual?) interest in this subject, I managed to unearth this little gem of a paragraph from the December 2006 issue of The Lighthouse (official review of the Foundation for A Course In Miracles, written by Kenneth Wapnick).

“…we want to feel banished from Heaven, with the door forever closed to our return. And this desire – the source of all suffering – is the problem, not the perceived banishment. Many years ago I was seeing a young man in therapy. When his girlfriend of several years, with whom he was madly in love, broke up with him, he was devastated. Week after week he would bemoan his painful fate, until one day while replaying the hurt of the relationship’s end, he described his pain as ‘exquisite’. That broke the log jam of self-indulged victimization, and he was able finally to let the girl go and resume his life. Indeed, he was quite right. His pain was exquisite in its pristine attraction. As long as he was able to attribute his suffering to his girlfriend’s decision, his ego was safe, hiding the mind’s insane decision for a life of suffering behind the hurt and anger of a lost external love. All the while, the mind’s guilt over its decision to separate from love lay unknown and therefore uncorrected.

One of our villagers submitted this comment recently and I thought it spoke so clearly of the process we all go through, and so beautifully of the choice that we all face, that it was obvious to me it should be shared with everyone here.

“I’m in the middle of a hurricane right now, there is some holy shifting going on and the Truth is I know part of my responses are coming from a place of shock and I am recognizing that its an important stage of the process and mustn’t be rushed. The beauty is I feel no pain as long as I stand still and observe. From this vantage point I am being given a chance to say my goodbyes to a way of thinking and believing that can no longer serve me or my family…it has served me as best as it could and now I am being asked to operate with a level of power that has no room for mindlessness. I have to grow up…I thought I could automatically get there by watching the clock run down…I’ll be 50 next year but those numbers mean nothing to Spirit who waits patiently…

Without going into any details all I can say is that’s one’s own traumas teach on one level but to guide and support a child or in my case both my children in crisis at both the same time…I have no choice but to surrender and allow all of my learning up to this point to guide us to safe passage. I feel that certainty is the requirment here not wishful thinking. I haven’t the luxury of doubt… the time for making a choice of which Master I will serve has come for me. I am ready to accept my assignment and service with great humility and unwavering Faith. My challenge is your challenge and our purpose is One.

God Is.

Thank you in advance for your support…”

“I am I said, to no one there…”

The words of this classic Neil Diamond song belted into the air at the last job I was doing. Marcus loves this oldies stuff and loads it into his MP3 player, along with a lot of other eclectic music. But I particularly picked up on this. I’ve always loved this song, too, and now wondered where its power came from. It was so obvious, it was staring me in the face.

Mr. Diamond might just be a closet ACIM student, and a good one at that. The ego’s declaration to the world: “I am, I said”; and later, “I am, I cried.” Now that pretty much sums up the ego’s separation-based thinking for me. And then the Holy Spirit’s response of a question mark, asking, “To whom do you cry?” Mr. Diamond: “To no one there… No one heard at all, not even the chair.” The ego may cry and scream all it likes, but there is nothing and no one to hear its plaintive appeals for importance, for reality.

Now, Neil could have looked next to him at the wise Companion whispering in his ear, but it seems he forgot and instead found himself abandoned in his search for self-recognition. In his words, “Leaving me lonely still…” He goes on to say a number of other things about his desperate situation, the most poignant perhaps being, “And I am lost, and I can’t even say why…” Which is perhaps why a number of us seem so glad to have found A Course In Miracles! We now know why we feel lost! That’s really useful information. We can do something if we know what the problem is: we’re still turning away from the only Voice that will help us turn back toward Reality and away from the search for some illusory recognition of the individual self.

We could make a truly daring attempt to give Mr. Diamond’s song a right-minded spin…
“We are, we said, as One in Heaven,
And no one need hear our words,
For only Love is real.”
But that would really be pushing things too far…

We do not need the chair or the furniture (or the toaster or the traffic) to hear our cries; we do not need the world to hear our voice. Nothing about us can be lost. All is perfectly intact. The Voice of our right-mind is always heard. Even if we don’t understand all that this means, it’s nice to know…

Reading through some of the great stories on the forgiveness page makes me think of that particular instant in our day when that lightening-like thought crosses our mind: “I could actually see this differently and feel better about it.” Let’s call it a moment of “Whoa!” Or perhaps even better, the moment of “Haa…” because it leaves us feeling so much more peaceful. Just Haa…with a comfortable breath behind it.

It’s that instant in which the attention suddenly shifts from the outside to the inside and the thoughts are just there… “It’s not really this person/event/circumstance that’s making me feel this way. I came here not really feeling totally peaceful inside. What he said/what just happened simply triggered something inside me and brought that lack of peace to the surface. Hey, look at that. I guess peace can be my choice after all.”

Hmm.

If the Holy Spirit were to talk to us in a language that we really understood, he might use road signs. We hop in the car, our eyes shoot outwards from our inner world, and we see something going on out there. We pass a first road sign, it flashes by us: “!!!!”.

Without warning we hear ourselves saying… “Shit! Look at that! Honey, did you see what that car just did? He cut that guy right off, he could’ve caused a serious accident. I can’t believe it.” Then as the car bumps along, “The town council said they were going to have the road fixed by spring – they call this fixed?!” And finally a few minutes later at the supermarket, “That guy just took my space, did you see him. I mean, he could see I was heading there. Do you think he gave a damn?”

Our breath is short, we’ve totally lost our peace of mind. And then we remember to check out what’s going on inside. ”Ohhh, yeah… I don’t feel good anymore. Hmm. Maybe it’s not the outside that’s the problem. Ok, so what’s really going on here?”

As we cruise around looking for another park space, we pass another road sign, this one put there by Jesus: “??”

And the whole problem could be summarized like this…
The ego’s post: “!!!!!!”.

The Holy Spirit’s response post to us: “??”

So !!!!!! becomes simply ??

To the ego, something happened. Something dramatic, even catastrophic, has occurred. Every day I go about and see a string of things that make me feel like something important is going on, something critical is happening. Something to judge, something that is affecting me and causing me to lose my inner peace. I must pay attention to it. My inner world is shouting: “!!!!” and holding its breath, or cutting it short.

And then I see I don’t feel peaceful anymore. This morning I found myself saying, faced with (just one more) unpeaceful thought, “Right, what do I want? I know this feels exciting. I could really take a position on this issue (the environment, national politics, my mother-in-law, the crumbs around the toaster). I can say something is right in this, and wrong in that. This was good, that’s pretty bad. Good and bad, right and wrong. Comfortable, unhappy. And on and on. And on… and on.”

I looked over my shoulder and there was this, well, presence there, this peaceful perspective that looked back at me and offered one singular point of view on all this: “What problem? It’s all okay, everything true and real is still intact. Reality is well and whole. Oneness is still true. Love is still just a breath away, if you want It.” What we think is so dramatic and requires judgment inevitably is not so. It is something else.

Phew! Er, no, that’d be just, “Phew…”

It’s 1984, I’m walking through Boston University, it’s not my campus, it’s Sunday, no one’s around, and I’m just exploring. It’s a vast place, the buildings are all empty, a man in a wheelchair is having a heated conversation with a security guard. The guard looks at me and I see something imploring in his regard. So I approach. He is embarrassed, the man in the wheelchair needs help, and the guard says he’s not allowed to aid him: rules apply.

The man in the wheelchair tries to explain but I can’t understand him, his speech is all garbled. His head tilted to the side, his body twisted in an unnatural position, he manages to communicate that he desperately needs to urinate and can’t do it on his own. I don’t answer, I don’t seem to be there, but someone inside me answers for me anyway, and hears that I agree to help him. I’m afraid, what’s going on?

There is serenity somewhere; it’s there, but I don’t understand.

His spastic hand pushes the little lever on his electric wheelchair, and we enter the nearest toilet block. He tells me to reach into the bag hanging behind him. I find a plastic hospital bottle. He tells me to undo his zip, and contorts his body, thrusting he pelvis upward with big heaves, straining against the braces holding his arms in place. The rest is obvious. I take his penis, place it in the bottle, and he relieves himself of all his urine. He is concentrating hard; this is quite an accomplishment for him. He tells me to tip the contents into the nearest toilet.

I’m calm. Very calm. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps the first and only really natural thing I have ever done. I am helping myself go to the bathroom, to fulfil the simplest biological function that can become a nightmare if it is not done in union with another part of ‘me’. I must seek another one of ‘me’ in order to piss, or I’ll explode, simple as that. And ‘we’ urinate. The guard wouldn’t help me, he was afraid. I am incredibly happy this man was there. But both are a part of me.

The man in the wheelchair is over the moon, he is radiant; we complete the ritual in harmony together, putting the bottle back in the bag, zipping up his pants, making sure his penis is out of the way. He looks at me with shining eyes and asks if I am a hospital aid. I don’t know how to answer. I have never helped someone like this, but the person who helped him had done this many times before and was confident and completely relaxed. I smile and say no.

Now he is chatting with me as he wheels out of the toilet block and asks if I am a student at the campus. I say no. He asks if we shall see each other again, and I say I don’t think so. He doesn’t know what to say. He is happy and sad at the same time. We have met, Oneness meeting Itself, in Love. And that was enough. He thanks me, and I wonder seriously who he is thanking, because I certainly wasn’t there. I was just watching curiously as this body did things that seemed completely foreign and yet utterly natural at the same time.

I bump into the guard on my way to the car. He was grateful I could help the handicapped man, he is chagrined and tries to explain himself. The man in the wheelchair works at the university in Administration, he shouldn’t come here on a Sunday if he knows he has a problem, he should…

I listen and wait patiently till the guard has finished relieving himself. I smile with him; all is well in our miniature universe of three, dancing a trio on a strange planet full of Life and Sound and beloved Urine. I return to the car and there is an intense peace in everything: the creaky door of my battered old Chevrolet Chevette, the empty McDonalds soda cup on the seat, the acrid smell of the ancient seats.

And I feel love. For all of it. It’s all just so… present.

Gentle ACIM Villagefolk,

During five years our Monk welcomed his monklings at his door and provided a joyous and thoughtful place for them to talk and study in an interactive community. The community continues, but the interactivity is shifting to another new home called the ACIM Village. I would just like to take a moment to thank the Monk from the bottom of my heart for being such a wonderful, generous host. Here’s a bunch of wild apple blossoms for you, brother! (Hope you don’t get hay-fever)We look forward to your continuing work in the freedom this is going to give you. We’re very happy for you, friend, in the new-found silence that we’re also enjoying. Just don’t be surprised if sometimes a horde of monklings runs up the path from the Village to tickle you and create a little mayhem!

Blessings to one and all.

I have been a participant in an excellent ACIM forum for a while, at Acimmonk.com. I strongly recommend anyone studying ACIM to make her or his way over there to meet the monk in person and learn with him for a while. His work has been, and is, an important part of my path.

It is to the Village Square that the townspeople come to exchange views and thoughts on their beloved spiritual philosophy, learning from each other in kindness and wisdom. When their minds have been filled, they retire to the tavern on the western side of the square where they share in social discussion, learning of each other’s events and challenges, happinesses and sometimes sadnesses, too. With a mug or glass in hand, they collect in front of the great Fireplace that dominates the long wall. Benches and chairs are often filled on market day with those who have come from farther away, bringing news of events and views the local people delight in hearing.

Recently the monk at acimmonk.com decided to remove the Cloister (forum for discussion) from his site. To many of us this might seem quite surprising; many of us had become regular ‘whisperers’, or at least regular ‘lurkers’. Jamie’s gift to us was a magical world that we could explore and participate in via the many different rooms, nooks, abbeys, chapels, grotto’s, scriptoriums, and so forth. It was a wonderful time for many of us, and for now this phase is over.