The embrace has returned you to attunement with the heartbeat, the music of the dance. You have not known what you do or what to do only because of fear, only because you have been out of accord with the one heartbeat. The world, the universe, is your partner—and only now do you hear the music that brings grace to all your movements, all your actions, all your expressions of love. While this may seem to be metaphorical language it is not. Listen and you will hear. Hear, and you cannot help but rejoice in the dance. C:20.34

When Jesus says “you have not known” in this paragraph, it is one of many places in which he says this in one way or another, ways always accompanied by a new choice.

I’ve been realizing lately that “I don’t know what I don’t know.” It’s such a funny thing to realize. It seems to me that there are layers and next “layers” of knowing that come to awareness, and that this happens in a way and time that I do not control. I feel this is partially due to the movement of this Course itself. While we start with the ego and vigilance regarding our false beliefs and thinking, we end on a note of having become aware of unity and letting ourselves be open to revelation. We’re no longer to put effort into coming to know, or into being ideal selves. I don’t like admitting that I continue to discover an old idea lurking here or there, but in another way I do, because to deny what I am still feeling isn’t being true. And I know Jesus wants me to be true more than he wants me to pretend perfection.

There is another kind of unknowing talked of in the Way of Mary: You know you are called to something, and something important, but it does not have a form within your mind and so you see not how it can become manifest in the world. In other words, you know not what to do. D:Day19.1

It’s there again in the practice of dialogue. Day 15 of The Dialogues, explores this practice, and within it there is a comforting message about the unknown:

Practice is the merging of the known and the unknown through experience, action, expression, and exchange. It alters the known through interaction with the unknown. It allows the continuing realization that what you knew yesterday was as nothing to what you know today, while at the same time, aiding in the realization that what you come to know has always existed within you in the realm of the unknown that also exists within you. D:Day15.23

What do we think revelation is but a coming to awareness of what we didn’t know we knew before? How does Jesus say that this happens?

What comes of unity enters you and passes through you to the world. This is the relationship you have with unity while in form—a relationship of intersection and pass-through. 5.22 No longer will what enters you get stopped by layers of defenses. No longer will it meet the road-block of your thinking, your effort, your attempts to figure out how to do it and what it all means.  . . .  We are speaking here of letting your form serve union and union serve your form. This service is effortless for it is the way of creation. Again, this is why the “effort” of learning must cease. D:Day 5:21-22

Effort is an old idea that I find difficult to give up. Effort can be attached to a lot more than “learning.” The effort I’m talking of is most often the effort that I rephrase for myself into an idea of creativity. In one sense, creativity could be called “effortful” but in another, creating is joyful.  I feel very much in union when I’m creating. But still, my body may get tired, or I may push to go just a little further, and in those times lean into the zone of effort. The distinction between effort and many ways of “doing” can be quite subtle.

As I move into my creative zone to allow ideas to come to me for the various gatherings I will be involved in in coming months, I am aware of the subtleties that exist between creating and efforting. One of the ways I find my body responding to this is through rest. It’s really a wonderful and gentle response when I don’t fight it, and I’m becoming aware of this enough that I rarely fight it now. It occurred to me today as a good idea to bring forward, as we are all called to be creators. In responding to that call, we can pay attention to the signs and feelings that alert us to when our joy is fading and our effort emerging.

Even attending a gathering can have an effortful feel to it, so times when you’re contemplating attending a gathering are also good times to feel into the subtleties that exist between joy and effort. Having been a contemplative for years, gatherings still feel to me like a great extension of energy, and so I am careful about what, and how much I agree to do. This is also part, for each of us, of knowing and honoring ourselves and those subtleties.

I’ve been putting information about these gatherings into each of my blogs for a while, but these notices are not meant as pressure, only as invitation. If you would like to find information on gatherings you may want to participate in, please visit: A Course of Love Facebook Page