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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

A Course In Miracles

return to "The Course" main-page:

(1) the following quotations from the "Course" relate to a choice to align one's mind with God:

... your misperceptions stand in your way [to the Atonement]. Sane perception induces sane choosing... "Many are called but few are chosen" should be, "All are called but few choose to listen." Therefore, they do not choose right. The "chosen ones" are merely those who choose right sooner.

When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know that this need not be... Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought... Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone ... and then change your mind to think with God's. When you are sad, know this need not be. Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something... Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise. When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego ... When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but you have not. Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego... you are not sufficiently vigilant ... actively refuse to let your mind slip away [that is, "stay present" to the inner life]

Editor's note: Notice the many injunctions to proactively guard and to align one's mind with God. We're reminded of Eugene Peterson's translation of Mark 11, "Embrace this god-life, really embrace it." These admonitions are something we must do for ourselves, not even God can do them for us, for to live and act otherwise would rob us of the dignity and the responsibility of being human. It's part of our glory of having been "made in the image."

(2) the following quotations from the "Course" relate to learning to choose not to choose:

Do you really believe that you can make a voice that can drown out God’s? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate your from Him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can?

You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He cares for you. You are His care because He loves you. His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of His care.

You cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His will, but you can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created by it… You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because … the remedy could not be of your making

Editor’s note: There is much embedded within Jesus’ words here from the “Course”; in fact, an entire hidden way of life is circumscribed, one that will do us well on this planet and also in Summerland. Again, the above referenced phrase, “Embrace this god-life, really embrace it,” says so much.

Let us proceed slowly here to unpack the meaning.

Little children, as psychologists inform us, begin their lives with a sense of self closely intertwined with that of a maternal caregiver. It’s as it should be. As the child matures, however, a loosening of the bonds of being comes into play, with the child becoming less and less dependent upon parental influence as he or she begins to forge personal identity.

During teen years, the need to make one’s own decisions, to become one’s own person, rises precipitously, and if a parent unwisely attempts to retain too much control, the teen will “rebel.” This is wholly unfortunate. Parents hold custody, but not title deed, to their scions. Children, if they are developing normally, need and require to "declare their independence." It's in the nature of things, because, ultimately, all children are to grow up and belong to God. And so there should be evolution not revolution, a gradual and steady loosening of the leash; but many an unskilled parent, threatened by feelings of not being needed and becoming "less," learns this too late; if at all.

As we enter adulthood, a requirement to make decisions for one’s life begins to overwhelm and accosts at every turn, presses hard upon us. We are forced to make life-defining choices, with far reaching effect, determining the flow of our lives for decades to come – and this devouring mandate for choice is put upon us whether we’re equipped for it or not. Good luck to us.

Later in life, with more experience – which usually means "more suffering" – many of us, what’s left of us, finally begin to make better choices; of sorts. We’re reminded of what Churchill, during the War, said about his cousins across the pond: “The Americans can always be counted on to do what’s right – after they’ve tried everything else.” We sigh deeply to acknowledge the perspicacity of The Old Lion.

In my own life, I would need to approach age 70 to finally learn the following lesson. I’d momentarily glimpsed a point of wisdom in earlier years but a certain resident foolishness would not allow me to accept it as a way of living; again, this usually meant, I hadn’t yet suffered enough to give up the old entrenched ways.

All of this is difficult to make sense of because we’ve come to believe that a successful person learns to “get out there” and “make things happen”; to “take a risk,” “not be afraid to make a mistake” and to "make your own way." And all of these aphorisms have their place and are good within a certain context, and this is why finding the better path is so difficult. It’s so easy to emphasize one’s own efforts too much. The virtues of fortitude, resourcefulness, grit, determination, and plain hard work are worth gold to us, and we cannot be successful in life without these basic strengths of character. And yet – something is missing here.

In many different ways, Jesus in the “Course” attempts to instruct us that, while human effort is required for our success, human effort alone will not take us to where our true selves want and need to go.

Maybe this example will help to clarify. In the “Prayer” article, I offer discussion on how common notions of prayer take us wide of the mark of spiritual person's dealings with God. The “Course” tell us that “communion,” not prayer or asking, is the natural state of those who know God.

But this isn’t what we’ve heard, as the churches of the world speak otherwise. In times of trouble, they talk about becoming “prayer warriors,” about calling all your friends to create “prayer chains,” of offering round-the-clock supplications, masses, chantings, importunings, of making long lists of the needs of your loved-ones, church members, and the world, and praying about these insufficiencies “without ceasing.”

We break out in a cold sweat just contemplating all this “management of the universe.” I’m very familiar with it, and lived this way for a great many years, plus fastings regularly.

However, in all this pleading and beseeching, all this "banging of pots and pans" to get God's attention, did it ever occur to us that there’s something wrong with this picture? In the gospels, Jesus is on record to have said, to the effect, “When you pray, don’t do this like someone who doesn’t know God. All of these so-called ‘prayer warriors’ think they'll be heard for their much speaking. It doesn’t work that way.”

Editor's note: Some people believe that constant, focused asking represents great wisdom, embodied in "The Secret." This, too, is fantasy.

Yes. It doesn’t work that way. What kind of a God would God be if God could be pressured into giving us what we want? - like going to a doctor and bullying one's way to a particular diagnosis. Is prayer some kind of cosmic lobbying effort, like “let’s get a thousand people to write our congressman”? Is prayer like primitive peoples banging on drums to get the attention of an aloof and haughty deity?

Much could be said here, and I would direct you to my article on “Prayer,” but the deity who couldn’t be bothered to glance our way is only one problem with this skewed picture of prayer. There’s another aspect that’s just as checkered.

Where did we get the idea that we’re supposed to be “managers of the universe” and that nothing will go right unless we’re “beating our pots and pans” to draw attention to ourselves? Where did we get the idea that we even have a clue about what is good for ourselves, to say nothing of others?

Think of all the stories of great people in history who rose above adversity, and not just "rose above" but the apparent adversity itself was a gift from God that brought out from the depths of the inner person the hidden riches of the soul.

The “Course” virtually proclaims that what we call "prayer" is just an immature and childish activity of the fearful ego. This kind of "prayer" is merely kin to our lower nature. There’s something wrong with it because it’s laced with a poisonous sense of panicked neediness, of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.”

This brief discussion of dysfunctional prayer is offered as prelude to the larger idea that we should not be so quick to believe that we know what’s good for our own lives. See again the quotation above from Jesus: Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can?

This is the real issue here. It took me almost until age 70 to understand some of these things. At 70 I looked back on my life and, because, in the main, I’m a “can-do” kind of person, I made a lot of things work that were never meant to work. Mercifully, I didn’t succeed at all my plans, but, most times, when I “won,” I merely created more suffering in my life. And, during those early years, I was a religious person, and so I would have been praying about this-or-that project or goal in my life - wishing, pleading, asking, that I’d be given success for my plans. But the great folly and irony of this story is that I had no idea what was good for me, things I wanted so much, too often, once acquired, would turn into something unpleasant; which meant that, in my prayers, effectively, more often than not, I was asking for more suffering in my life.

Editor’s note: My pal Phil, about 40 years ago, showed me a cartoon from a newspaper, I still remember it, wish I could find it. There was this long line of cattle, all queued-up in front of a door -- a slaughterhouse door. One of the steers broke ranks and tried to butt-in line closer to the front, which made the others shout, “Hey, buddy, get back in line, or else!” They were so dead-set eager to want what they wanted, and had no idea about the nature of what they wanted, or whether it would be good for them.

The “Course” by its own admission offers instruction in mind-training. And part of that instruction is to stop asking – because we have no idea what’s good or best for us in the long-term – and begin to simply enter into “communion” with God.

What does this mean? It means stop talking and “open a channel” and attune oneself to the message of the Holy Spirit. When we do this, we stop insulting God by implying that He doesn't care, and wouldn't help us, unless we "gang up on Him" with our "beating of pots and pans"; and, more importantly, we give back control of the universe to the Rightful Manager of All Things, the One who can actually do something about what we really need; and also that, maybe, for the first time in our lives, we begin to humbly take our place as a quiet learner of God’s ways, plans, and purposes.

You cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His will, but you can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created by it… You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because … the remedy could not be of your making

Postscript: Remember when we were kids someone thought it was clever to say, "God gave you one mouth and two ears, and that should teach you something." Turns out, it was pretty good advice.