Mari’s Blog
The making of “us”
As air carries sound, as a stream carries water, as a pregnant woman carries her child, this is how you are meant to carry what you have been given. What you have been given is meant to accompany you, propel you, and be supported by you. You are not separate from what you have been given, and you do carry what you have received within you. D:Day23.2
Outside the cabin window, Welcome (my three-footed squirrel friend) was in view and, for the first time, I had my camera. I took a dozen pictures before I realized it was not him. He “was” there for a moment, but must have ran off when this other fellow came along. When Welcome came “back” into view, I got a picture, just one, and it’s not very good.
The quality of light is changing again, changing to that crystal clarity that reaches its peak in October, the clarity I remember noticing fully for the first time when I had a visit from Richard Scruggs back in 2002. He was a former Navy Seal who discovered A Course of Love and drove from Florida to meet me, listening to Bob Dylan and noticing Canadian geese as he drove. He arrived on a crisp fall day and stayed in a hotel overlooking the Mississippi River. I met him there and we visited in the hotel’s top-floor restaurant, viewing the Wabasha Bridge where flags waved in the brilliant sky, blending with the shimmering water below. He died in 2009, and as he was dying he had a friend reading A Course of Love to him. I wonder briefly if he and my newer friend, Douwe van der Zee, who died just months ago, will get to know each other in the afterlife? Does making friends and hanging out with old friends happen after death?
My first half hour in the cabin goes this way of memory and reflection.
I was going to write about The Dialogues Day 23: Carrying, which I was reading last night, and now can barely remember. I quoted from it in last week’s blog. It spoke to me all week. With acceptance of my lack of memory, I return to the book:
Your instruction has been given. Now the task before us is to come to understanding of the means by which you will carry what you have been given down from the mountain and onto level ground, the ground of the earth, the place where you are connected and interconnected to all that lives and breathes along with you. D:Day23.3
I didn’t know why it was speaking me and now I know. It is speaking to me as I prepare to leave for Santa Fe where I will visit with ACOL reader/receivers. It is asking me to carry its question with me: What are the means by which I, and we, carry what we’ve been given?
I notice the phrasing: “the task before us.” Us. We are in it together. Not just me and you, but us, us as connected and interconnected beings who live and breathe together. Is it any wonder these “visits” feel both like casual “visits” and like monumental events? That when Richard came and when Douwe came, their coming felt so like the making of an “us?” That the same feeling looms as I gather myself to head to Santa Fe?
In my 2009 book, The Given Self, I called this the new “we” and spoke, at its end, of our movement:
“[T]his movement, should it be recognized and taken up together, can only be us, the new we formed by you being you, and me being me.
In separation we’re all the same – unworthy, held by the same fears and judgments. We try to be “the same” in order to shed our fears and escape judgment. We try to learn what others learn so that we can, in embracing the same means, fit the same ends.
In union we are differentiated because fear and judgment has fallen away. We are who we are in all our given glory and we can rest there.
And from our rest comes all the rest….”
(The Given Self is currently out of print, but will come out again next year.)
If you are in the Santa Fe area and would like to explore this question with “us,” you can find information about the event both here, and on ACOL’s website http://acourseoflove.com/events/
Surrender and growth
There is no right or wrong within creation but there are stages of growth and change. Humankind is now passing through a tremendous stage of growth and change. Are you ready? T3:12.11
I awoke this morning with the words “surrender” and “growth” ringing within me. There was a little more to it than that. The “more” left me as I came fully awake but I felt as if I’d had an image of pockets, as if visualizing surrender in one pocket and growth in another and it being sort of like when I carry change in one pocket and lip balm in another: separate things with separate functions. Then as I mosey in from the cabin and see the Sunday newspaper on the kitchen table, I catch a glimpse of the title of the column written by our friendly neighborhood columnist: “It takes a lot of work to go on vacation.” I kind of chuckled at that, knowing full well the truth of it, and how such simple words given to a common but not often spoken of truth, will grab you as those did me, as if they separated themselves from the clutter of the surrounding headlines to catch my eye.
For a moment I wondered if “It takes a lot of work to surrender” might be an appropriate theme for the day, but no, that wasn’t it. I knew these waking words were suggesting a connection that didn’t come naturally to me. I’d probably never thought of surrender and growth together before. Surrender and change? Yes. Surrender and transformation? Yes. Surrender and “growth?” No. So I wondered why this was, and if growth felt slightly more “achieved” than words like change or transformation. As if change “just” happens. And transformation “happens to you,” and “growth” had a connotation that felt more . . . achieved. Whatever the reason, it set me off on an expedition through A Course of Love to see the connection between these two words. This one popped out at me right away:
Change is not negative and growth does not imply lack. (T2:4.14)
Doesn’t that sound a bit like one of those ordinary revelations, the kind that say, “Vacations are hard work?”
Well, of course I know change is not negative. We know this. Change often feels negative simply because it’s uncomfortable, or challenging, or new. I’m used to accepting those feelings without thinking change is bad. But the other one, the association of growth and lack? That took me a minute. Made me think of sayings like “You need to grow up,” or “You’ll grow into it,” and also of ideas such as “personal growth,” which speak to me more of trying to achieve something rather than of surrendering.
Growth and surrender. Hmmm.
Then I found this:
It is your belief that change and growth are indicative of all that can be accomplished rather than of what is already accomplished that needs adjustment now. As a tree exists fully accomplished within its seed and yet grows and changes, you exist fully accomplished within the seed that is the Christ in you even while you continue to grow and change. Physical form and action of all kinds are but expressions of what already exist within the seed of the already accomplished. T2:6.8
That’s a big one: Change and growth being indicative of all that already exists within. And of course, it only takes a minute to see the truth of it. Yeap. Even those parent-like things we hear or say, “You’ll come into your own,” are about this—you’ll grow into what’s already there.
In Day 23 of The Dialogues, I found growth and surrender in the same paragraph:
The clouds of illusion, even those that have gently surrounded our time together on the mountain top must now be surrendered, much as a woman surrenders her body to the growth of a child within. This is a willing but not an active surrender. It is a surrender to the forces that move inside of you. It is a knowing surrender to the unknown. It is a willingness to carry the unknown into the known and the known to the unknown. Surrendering to the forces that move inside of you is surrendering to your own will. It requires full acknowledgment that you hold within yourself a will to know and to make known. This will is divine will, your will, Christ-consciousness. It is alive within you. All that is required is that you carry it with awareness, honor, willingness. From this will the new be birthed. 23.4-5
Surrendering to “your own will.” That’s an adjustment, isn’t it? To see our will and divine will as one? To see divine will being alive within us? Asking us to give it birth into the world? There are so many birthing metaphors in ACOL! Yet this is a crucial one I had forgotten. I invite you to remember it along with me.
[T]o accept where you are is not the same as accepting who you are. Accepting where you are, as if it is a static place at which you have arrived, is not the goal that has been set. Accepting who you are includes acceptance of creation. The acceptance of creation is the acceptance of change and growth but neither of these are concepts that you understand truly. Change is not negative and growth does not imply lack. T2:4.14
At the end of this month I’ll spend a day exploring A Course of Love with reader/receivers in and around Santa Fe. If you’re interested, you can find out more about it here:
Please see the attached flyer, http://spibr.org/Mari_at_Unity_Santa_Fe_Aug_27_2016.pdf).
Physical reality
For ages man has thought that spiritual joy diminishes physical joy. While there is no physical joy that is limited to the physical—no joy felt by the physical form alone—the joy that comes of things physical can certainly still be experienced and expressed. This is no call for judgment upon the physical. How could this be true when the physical is now called upon to serve the greatest learning humankind has ever known? T3:19.2
As I sat poised to write in my journal this morning, my fingers hovered over the J’s of June and July. What month is it? My reflection thus far has had nothing to do with the recent, but has already traveled over the terrain of about twenty years of writing, “Justifiable Madness” (an incomplete memoir) particularly, for it beginning with the things you “can’t not do.” My astrological chart, my numerology, what I’ve lived so far and hear repeated by friends who have known me for decades, is all about work. My way into even my own heart is through my work: the creative work of writing and the vocational work of A Course of Love.
It’s Sunday morning and I’m about the “work” that doesn’t feel like work, the writing of my 30th or 40th blog of the year, a post that will join the others than number together well over 100.
I am in the cabin where I feel the wonder that this week’s internal reflection is so different than last week’s while the outer scene is so unchanged. The unchangeable and the ever-changing mixed together. Which is which? This is the reverie I crave.
Now the first of the squirrels are out. It’s amazing how hard it is to tell the difference between the four-footed squirrels and my three-footed Welcome, the one who has given my usual bread-tossing a sweeter focus. It is not a missing paw he has, but a stumpy paw with no nails, and so until I get a good look at a passing squirrel’s paw, I can’t tell if the one I’m watching is him. He got the name Welcome accidentally, from a time when he seemed to turn to face me as he ate, as if thanking me. I said “You’re welcome,” and then I heard it as “You are Welcome.” It is so poignant to see the way he protects his paw as he goes about his squirrel business, tucking it in against his white belly. And I’ve watched him now through appearing to have gotten a little beaten up, and so hope for seeing him more as time goes by, just to know that he hasn’t succumbed to “survival of the fittest.”
Some years ago I realized that the things I write as preambles to writing become the things, in retrospect, that I most appreciate. They weren’t what I “wanted” to write, but what I wrote. It’s a good metaphor, isn’t it? Out of the lack of having an objective, the objective (external) fades and the subjective, (the inner), comes to light.
This morning it has become a contemplation of “the physical.” In “A Treatise on the Personal Self” we hear:
You must not fear the changes that will occur within your physical form as it begins to be guided by the thought system of the truth rather than the thought system of illusion. You will fear these changes less if you realize that all that has come of love will be kept and that all that has come of fear will fall away. You have no need to fear that the end of the special relationship will separate you from your loved ones. You have no need to fear that the joys you have shared with others will be no more. You have no more need to fear the loss of physical joys than you have to fear the loss of mental and spiritual joys. T3:19.1
I love reading the line about the “changes that will occur.” As I speak with fellow travelers of this way, I hear of many . . . odd . . . physical changes that mirror many of those I’ve been through. Many of them are not much different than Welcome’s stubby paw. They’re not easy to see. They’re not easy to live with. They cause us to feel vulnerable, and in our human way to question: What’s really going on here?
And many of them are joyous to such an extreme that physical reality becomes a paradise.
What’s really going on here? What’s happening? What’s this difference I’m “feeling?” What is so “new” about this experience that I am having? They are all wonderful questions, the same revealing questions whether they’re about what leads to our full embrace of who we are (and at times experience as “something wrong”) or the embrace itself (the homecoming of all the parts we’ve so patiently explored). Our questions and our inner answers reveal our Selves to us and allow us to know ourselves in the reality of truth.
At the end of this month I’ll spend a day exploring the experience of A Course of Love with fellow travelers in and around Santa Fe. If you’re interested, you can find out more about it here:
Please see the attached flyer, http://spibr.org/Mari_at_Unity_Santa_Fe_Aug_27_2016.pdf).
Innocence
Such is the world that God did create: A world so lovely and so peaceful that when you see it once again you will cry with joy and forget your sadness in an instant. There will be no long remembering of regrets, no feeling badly for all the years in which you saw this not. There will merely be a glad “Aha!” as what was long forgotten is returned to you. You will but smile at the childish games you played, and have no more regrets than you would have for your childhood. Your innocence will stand out clearly here, and never again will you doubt that the world that God created belongs to you and you to it. All your vast wanderings will be seen for what they are. All that you desired will be revealed as only two desires, the desire to love and the desire to be loved. Why wait to see that these desires are all that call you to the strange behavior you display? C:9.47-48
I came out to the cabin today knowing I wanted to contemplate innocence. It was sparked somewhat by the “Miracles and More” on-line event I wrote of last week, and this is because I saw innocence on Jayem’s face when he spoke of his interactions with Jesus…and on mine too. It is a fumbling sort of innocence, there in the way we laughed. Both of us did pretty much the same thing when it came to describing talking to Jesus. No matter how obstinate we can be, (which we hint at) our faces, our gestures, our words, reveal our innocence before Him….
I’m saying this because Jayem and Marianne Williamson closed out the Miracles and More week and, being able to watch Jayem, to see his face “head on” while he was speaking of Jesus to another human being (not filming a video, or teaching a class)—I could see it. I saw the innocence like a revelation.
It’s 7 a.m. (okay, two minutes to) and I’m so glad this came to me. Watching Marianne was an experience too. She looked so tired and almost ill. Then when she got talking, she was like a juggernaut. She rattled out so many words in the space of 45 minutes! She was good, wise, and warm, and for a brief minute it deflated me. That, and the host not being able to bring herself to say the name of A Course of Love at the end of the program. Ah well. Forgiven. Lost in the fascination of seeing that innocence. That looking back in wonder.
Asked questions directly about the encounter with Jesus, this dumbfoundedness, this “how do I say it” feeling, this pause. And there in the pause the look: innocence.
We are innocent in the face of God—so strangely and precisely like children. We—stamp our feet. We “get into it” so that we’ll complain to Jesus like a friend and then are humbled by his response…over and over again. But we’re exalted too, as if the humbling and exalting go together. Dang if it isn’t like the way it is with children, and how when you’re a kid—okay, at any age—when you hear what you need to hear, you love the giver of the words and yourself in one burst of the knowing of love, a sort of “washing over you” knowing that gives you comfort and lifts your troubles without taking them from you.
We laugh at ourselves. We titter.
This morning by a trick of the eye the insides of the cabin are cast onto the outside of the cabin so that there in the window is the tree—and the colorful shawl pinned over the window behind the desk. (I wish I could merge these two photos into one, for that is how it appeared.) There, in the reflection, the shawl is draped, intertwined in the tree’s branches. There—the white of the antique lamp, the paper weight. The shelf beyond the desk is also there, but hardly any of its structure, so that it looks as if the book facing out, Love of The Grace Trilogy, and beyond that a partial silhouette of Virginia Wolfe’s face, are floating. And closer in A Course of Love, sitting weightily atop an open and flattened copy of The Give Self. The works of my life represented “out there” save for Creation of the New, which is here but sitting beneath the table lamp out of view.
I keep wondering if I had a camera if I could capture the reflection like I have many times captured the shadows of the outer world as they fall into the cabin – the whole limb of a tree waving against the wall or the desk or both. But those are shadows. This is a re-creation.
Honestly, I can hardly get over the clearness of this representation that has appeared before my eyes in such great detail. Now the desk if fading away at its edges so that there is only a corner of the desk, and the tree limbs have infiltrated. They no longer fall across it but take the whole middle out of it. There is a desk with a young tree growing out of its insides and a little farther over, the curved arms of the desk chair.
I am completely out of view, hiding at the edge of the table where the sun stays out of my eyes. I keep glancing around the corner, watching the changing scene. Now in prominence is a wood cylinder with round wooden coasters never used. Now the framed photo of me at Gethsemane under the gate saying “God Alone.” Now they hover, the desk completely gone from view.
The seeing of yourself and another is like this too. And it arises as an innocence of seeing that reveals a blending of the inner and the outer, the human and the divine.
The “more” in A Course in Miracles and more . . .
You will never fully understand what unity means, but you will come to feel what unity means, and this I promise you. This is what we work toward in this Course, for once you have experienced the feeling of unity, you will need no understanding of it. C:13.1 (emphasis mine)
I started my morning wondering why “experience” and “feeling” are often separated into distinct categories, and if these categories have any validity. Can we experience without feeling or feel without experiencing? Has “experience” been so separated into the realm of “external” life that “inner” experience is discounted as nothing “more” than feeling and thought, and so consequently, feeling and thought are not seen as experience?
Then, as I sat, I remembered the on-line event that I will be part of this week. It is on The Return to Christ Consciousness Through A Course in Miracles & More. There’s this incredible movement taking place—a movement home to the heart, to felt experience. This event seeks to explore that. The summit provides a series of interviews. In addition to me they include Marianne Williamson, Alan Cohen, Jayem, Michael Mirdad, and James Twyman. For mine, I was just sitting at home at my dining room table, blissfully unaware of much other than being in conversation with the lovely Cindy Kubica who was interviewing me. When she called to schedule the interview we talked for an hour. We had so much in common! I don’t really recall what we spoke of in our interview. But I know that A Course of Love is a big part of the “more” that is bringing the heart back into our spiritual lives.
Having found ACIM in the midst of sharing life and death and a dawning of the spiritual dimension of life with my friends Mary Love and Julieanne Carver,* gave ACIM a particularly heartfelt relevance. It did so because ACIM suggested that its many descriptions of our way of thinking, (which described me perfectly!) were merely depictions of how we currently “think we think” … and not the way it really is or needs to be. That idea rested in me like a hope until ACOL came. Then A Course of Love began to give me more than hope.
The way ACIM told me how I was thinking and what that was doing to me—that was confirmation. Yes, this is the way I am.
ACOL told me that something real existed beyond thinking—that how I felt mattered. That was confirmation. Yes. This is the way I am.
I am a feeling being. So is Cindy. That is why we “connected” as we did and talked so easily. And somehow it seems to me that this “Is” at the heart of what’s happening now. The need for a feeling of connection, for an end to our isolation, for an end to all that divides us and a return of all that unites us. This simple form of connection we do personally, one to another, in conversation, in friendship, in kindness—these are among the ways that we experience unity in our human forms.
Unity is an experience and it is also a feeling.
Here’s something I’ve come to see. We cannot think anything into being, but experiencing knowing newly can create a new state of being—a fullness of being—and the only way we can know it is to FEEL it. And the whole deal may end up being that we’re trying too hard. We’re looking for something beyond what’s in front of us, beyond what’s right there in our “ordinary” lives, with all its opportunities to love and extend love into the world. All the opportunities to know and be known. All the opportunities to feel and experience the love that we are and the love that surrounds us.
The thinking mind can really make this all seem so complicated!
So getting back to the podcast, I am actually excited to be participating and to find out along with you (I have not previewed anything!) how this movement is being described. If you’d like to join me, here is a link from which you can register.
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Below are a few of my favorite “feeling” oriented and Christ-consciousness quotes, included for any new people (Welcome!) who may visit this page.
When feelings are shown, or made visible, the new is created. This has always been the way of creation. Each blade of grass, each flower, each stone, is a creation of feelings. All you need do is look about you to know that feelings of love still abound. Beauty still reigns. D:Day18.11
Allowing others to accept you as you are is a gift that releases them from judgment and any notion that may have remained within them that Christ-consciousness is a form of “group think.” Never will you feel more like an individual than when you are made known through the informing of spirit! Day 15:15.16
You embrace sadness, grief, anger, and all else that you feel because these feelings are part of who you are in the present moment. When you remain in the present moment you remain within Christ-consciousness where all that is exists in harmony. To embrace is the opposite of to escape. To hold all within yourself in the embrace of love is the opposite of holding onto what you have already responded to with fear and made separate. There is no escape for there is only the embrace. The embrace is Christ-consciousness. D:Day16.10
Realize that I love your smile, your teeth, the hair upon your head, the warm, smooth shape of your skull. Realize that I love your hands and that as you take another’s hand, you hold my own, and that I am with you as well as within you. Realize that I love all that you are, and that as you snarl in anger, cry in despair, hang your head in weariness, howl with laughter, I am with you and within you. D:Day39.43
*Mary, Julie and I shared our experience in The Grace Trilogy, available here: http://acourseoflove.com/other-books/