2.1 What love is cannot be taught. It cannot be learned. But it can be recognized.
Sometime last month I read that the sun was at its closest point to the earth but that it doesn’t feel that way because of the angle. The sun’s proximity would be hard to believe (here in Minnesota) except for the sun’s glare. I’ve been aware of this as I start my day in a kitchen where I can’t escape the kind of glare usually reserved for freeway moments. The sun blazed through the window over the sink, and it would soon became clear every task I did would end up involving the sink or nearness to it. I’d turn my back and, with another step, I’d be in the spotlight again. But then….
I got caught by the rays created by a glass sitting on the counter. I got my camera out. Soon I abandoned the kitchen altogether, and started taking pictures of the shadows formed in the dining room. As I did this, I noticed how I could angle the camera in different ways to bring items washed out by the sun’s brilliance, into greater focus. Eventually this idea of the way 
things are seen got my attention and I began to remember all the different ways I’ve seen things throughout my life; how what I see has changed; how what captures my attention has changed. And . . . how frequently I haven’t known what it was that moved me but only that I was moved.
Often, when “seeing” is spoken of, it’s not about seeing a glass on a countertop, but more in the way Paul spoke of it in 1 Corinthians. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
I’ve asked ACOL’s new Facebook Group to explore their experience, to talk of how they feel rather than what they think, and I began to wonder. Do we know what we feel, or do we feel what we know? Jesus speaks of recognition a lot. As defined, recognition means “to know again.” And you know, I felt as if I’d hit on something.
Why, for instance, do I think spirituality, particularly ACIM, grabbed me in the first place? It was never a feeling of “Oh, this is good information.” It was never a feeling of enjoyment in the sense that I once enjoyed a good mystery novel. It wasn’t being attracted by a great writer, as I’d been so often. What was the feeling? And I’m suggesting it was a feeling I couldn’t see for what it was. All I knew was, “I want to stay here.” That’s the best way I can describe it. I did not want to leave the space I’d found myself in. With A Course of Love, I felt the same feeling only more intensely.
The feeling, I now feel quite certain, was one of recognition; of knowing again. Speaking of love, Jesus says in C:2.9, It is precisely the inability of your true Self to forget that gives you hope of learning to recognize love, and, with that recognition, of ending the insanity you now perceive.
My early experiences began, actually, a great divide that felt like a divide between sanity and insanity. Inwardly, I had everything I needed. But outwardly? The world of society began to feel intolerable and overbearing. When I was engaged with “regular life” I felt, at times, as if I could go mad. I didn’t know what to do. I felt as if when I became the person who could engage in regular life, I was not in my right mind. That “two world” feeling was torture; like living in two incompatible worlds. Oh, the desire! The desire to live in a world of pure spirit! Oh, the longing to follow in that way! But was it possible for me to walk away from my family and all the love and … let’s say … striving and drama and events and obligations that family comprised? No. So I needed to find a way to end the division not by “leaving” the world, but by being a true self within it. Whew! What would that even look like? Feel like? Was it even possible?
I slowly began to see, to recognize, that it was possible. I’ll be sixty next week, and I’ll be talking on a “Beyond 50” radio show. I am looking forward to it because of this feeling of possibility, but also because of the feeling that each of us go through this process of wanting to leave the world behind, and having to find our way to live as who we are within it. By the end of A Course of Love, it is clear that Jesus is guiding us to find our place in the world, to bring love to a world in need. And some of that, for many of us, begins to come more easily with age. It doesn’t have to wait on age, but I know that I have become more allowing, more able to let go, and more capable and committed to ending the great divide and living in unity.
You can listen to the show here, on or after this Wednesday morning, February 11.
The same is true for me. I do not meet many people who share this love. Again, I am so pleased to meet You.
What a wonder that you’ve found me and now I’ve found you. On the desk in my cabin is a photo of me standing before the gate at Gethsemani that says “God Alone.” I only visited once, and truly, it was mainly in honor of my love affair with Thomas Merton, but that is a connection I am warmed by knowing I share with you. A priest friend of mine was moving, back in 2003, and brought me some of his books, a couple that were by Merton. When I found his journals, my love affair was complete. “The Intimate Merton” has sat by my bed ever since, and I feel as if in it, he accompanies me. By knowing him in that way, with the honesty and soul searching he could do only there, I grew to know more about myself, my inner life, and being a true self in the world…not perfect…only true! I do hope you will share some of your journey through A Course of Love. I look forward to it.
I know that gate well and Merton’s journals, too. He has taught me so much, as have my dear friends at the Trappist monastery in Conyers, with whom I’ll spend the Paschal Triduum this year. I can’t overstate the feeling of grace and synchronicity I have right now. I look forward to deepening this journey, and I thank you again for your honesty and warmth.
Thank you so much for your beautiful blog. As a fairly recent (one year ago today, actually) convert to Catholicism, a Lay Cistercian, and a student of ACIM for several years, I’ve been very in touch with what has seemed like a massive paradox in terms of my spirituality. So much of what you write here in this post resonates for me—-the desire “to live in a world of pure spirit,” and the sense of being caught in two worlds. Or even more than two! Your voice is immensely reassuring to me. I have not even read ACOL yet, but it is in the mail and I should have it by the end of the week. Finding a true self in the world….this is something I have both yearned for and resisted, and there has been a huge sense of cognitive dissonance at work at times. I have not felt called to a religious vocation in a cloistered way but find myself spending as much time as possible at Gethsemani in Kentucky and at the Trappist monastery a couple of hours away. So much of what my friends in that community have to say resonates of ACIM for me, and I have felt so hopeful that there would be some way of reconciling the inner paradox I’ve felt. I think now that I don’t have to resolve it; it will take care of itself. I certainly believe reading ACOL will be part of that. Thank you again.
Peace,
Laura
Jacques and Anne, I’m glad as I reply that you have both greeted the quiet place of rest. For me, I felt called to solitude more than ten years ago and that’s a big reason why my husband built me my cabin. Having a place I could go to be by myself was crucial to me. And like you, Jacques, I imagine myself retiring to a much quieter life in the next ten years. But I also feel that I have some experience now (not a lot! but some!) of living with both a rich spiritual life and a quite ordinary and often intense family and work life. So few people can actually get away from it all! And so I feel that my experience may one day
be valuable to those who, for large portions of their lives, must live, in a sense, in “both worlds.” This can also be a way of unifying. Sometimes it feels like trial by fire! but nonetheless, it is what many of us live. I can’t remember the name of the writer who said it, but in my reading on feminism I recall this woman writer saying that “children are a must.” You must do…and not on your own timetable. I often recall the movie “Parenthood” too, where Steve Martin plays a dad and husband who says to his wife, “My whole life is “have to.”” And so you hope to get to the place where you do what is required, but not from a sense of requirement or responsibility, but from love. And then…you hope to know the difference between what is “yours to do” and what you can let go … also with love…which might be a description of the time I am entering! Our spirituality, don’t you feel, needs to meet us in new ways at different times of our lives?
I can relate a to both of you Mari and Jacques. I have also felt the longing to live from “pure spirit” or in a more true and loving world… And lately I had to rest for a long period and in that way I could stay away from the world and I realized that so many things that I valued before lost their value… and a deeper longing came to find inner peace and connect with my true self and only do what it guided me.
Now I do not really know where I am going. I Have the feeling that I have a calling to just be fully me and in that process share my true gifts… And at the same time what I am longing most for is to live from my true self and find inner peace.
So I will just listen and trust that a true path will be revealed and take in the message of ACOL more and more… and in that process I get a lot of inspiration from both of you, Jacques and Mari. Thankyou.
It may not be the “way” it was planned but I feel that there is a time to interact with the world in the ways of the world, if only to experience the wold as it is set in our “time” here; almost like giving back to the world a part of our inheritance if the world. Then comes a time to be able to move more directly and more constantly into the world within.
I took a n early retirement to essentially do that. I’ve passed the 70’s now and I know that this was right for me. I’m much more at home now than ever before; when I felt we were building a home for our family.
Being much more detached, it is much easier to be just present, without things to do, things, tasks to accomplish, etc. I could express it as forgetting the world, that world, and just being here.
All is much more integrated now. All is linked. Not linked to the past. just linked; united; related. It moves but does not move out or away. All is new. New and related. There is rest along with creation in the new and of the new. This is how I feel.
Love to you Mari and to all. All-you-me-us-He.
Greetings Mari!
I particularly identified with your description of “a great divide” and “That ‘two world’ feeling”. I more recently have come to understand why. Yet, the answer seemed more like an “uh-duh” than an “ah-hah.” It was like, how could I not have seen and known that all along (that seeing through the glass darkly you speak of here). After all, as students of ACIM we were already taught that the world we see arose in opposition to Reality.
The uh-duh for me was in “recognizing” opposition’s own totality. For the world to exist in complete opposition automatically connotes that its rules of existence and activity operate totally opposite to Reality’s rules of existence and activity. How potentially maddening can that be?! It can’t get any more hair-pulling, fingernail-biting, and nerve racking than that. Is it any wonder the massive, universal suffering of guilt experienced by all created children of God attempting to navigate life here in harmony with the world’s standard operating procedures?
All such attempts only continuously compromise one’s true, inner nature. One must come to the point of recognizing that true spirituality has nothing to do with any and all attempts to improve the world, console the world, or coming to terms with what it takes to be more comfortable in the world, be it the acquisition of more or better “stuff”, more or better “love,” or more or better social standing. Rather, true spirituality is always and only about waking up from this nightmarish world to one’s only true existence that is not of this world – and happily so. Then comes the challenge you relate of learning how to be in the world while remaining not of it.
I find it most simply stated as fully allowing loving, Divine providence and guidance to care for and direct your every step. This doing, in and of itself, is the demonstration the world needs for its own awakening unto the same. Everything else is commentary. Even revelations like ACIM and ACOL simply serve as superb aids to remembering and reintegrating our true identity with, in and as Divine Love/lovingness Itself. Thank you for sharing some of your own steps as aids to our awakening. May you rest in the constant awareness and assurance of Divine Allness. Amen.