Epiphanies, great and small

 

Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds,which come with nothing
to find everything and claim it as their own.

—Jesus Christ, A Course in Miracles

When A Course in Miracles first came to me, through an undeniable act of Spirit, I remember thinking two things. The first was that the teachings DEFINITELY came from Jesus Christ -- not Helen Schucman, the clinical psychologist who scribed this "metaphysical masterpiece." In no way could an ordinary human-being have conceived the perception-reversing pedagogy this extraordinary book presents. My second thought was that the elevated mindset the Course promotes seemed nearly impossible to apply on a daily basis.

These many years later, I’m not yet enlightened, but I do feel the presence of Christ burning in my heart, I can hear the ever-present echo of God’s Saving Grace in my head, and I absolutely perceive the world and its purpose very differently than I did before starting the Course back in 1997.

My point is this: The Course delivers what it promises if we interpret the teachings correctly and do our part in the ego-undoing process. We must read and reflect on the mind-bending concepts presented in the Text; we must do the daily lessons that enable us to apply those ideas; and we must strive to see the world not as our egos would have it be, but as the Soul-liberating learning-simulator it actually is.

I can’t tell you how often I try to impress this upon my fellow Course students - and how stubbornly they resist doing the work that will free them from the pain and suffering caused by their own wrong-minded thinking. They’re miserable, poor Souls, yet they persist in choosing hell over Heaven day after day. When I grow frustrated with their Truth-blocking obstinance, the Holy Spirit gently reminds me that my earthly ministry is NOT OF ME.

I am only HIS messenger.

The same is true of this blog. I’m not writing all this to make money or attract devotees. My only desire is to be truly helpful to those, like myself, who seek Spiritual Truth through A Course in Miracles. Whether my readers are three or 3,000 in number makes no difference to me. Many or few, they are parts of my Self – the Higher, Christ-Self I am and always have been in Divine Reality.

Launching THE HOLY MEETING PLACE on the Feast of the Epiphany wasn’t accidental – nor was it strictly my idea. When guided (in meditation) to launch the blog on this date, I knew that January 6 marked the arrival of the three Wise Men in Bethlehem. I also knew the event was symbolic, rather than historical, as are most things in the Holy Bible. What does the Adoration of the Magi represent? News of the Savior's birth reaching the "gentile" or non-Jewish peoples of "the Orient," the vast region comprising India, Arabia, and the Far East.

Through subsequent research I learned that the Feast of the Epiphany is observed on a different date in regions still using the Julian calendar. Christian churches in these eastern regions celebrate Epiphany on January 19, which just happens to be my body-birthday.

Happy accident or a carefully orchestrated part of God’s Great and Perfect Plan? The answer is ALWAYS the latter, as Jesus attests in the Course.

Noteworthily, the later Feast Day commemorates the baptism of Jesus, rather than the arrival of the Three Kings in Bethlehem. Why is this noteworthy? Before I answer that, let me explain that the word "epiphany" predominately means "the revelation or incarnation of God in the world." In Christianity, the word is mainly applied to the incarnation or manifestation of God in the world as the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Western Christians, believing Jesus was God-incarnate from birth, celebrate the Epiphany when the news of that presumed incarnation spread to the "gentiles" in India, Arabia, and the Far East. Eastern Christians, conversely, believe Jesus attained, realized, or remembered his inner-divinity (i.e., embodied only the Christ-Self) through the ritual purification of baptism.

In actuality, Jesus first wholly embodied the Pure State of Grace that IS Christ Consciousness not at birth or through baptism, but at the event described in Mark 9:2-13, Matthew 17:1-13, and Luke 9:28-36. He experienced this TRANSFIGURATION from Son of Man (lower-self body-ego identification) to Son of God (Higher-Self Christ-Spirit identification) AFTER and as a desirable effect of his forty-day ordeal in the "desert" or "wilderness." As explained in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus was repeatedly harassed by Satan during an extended period of isolation and fasting. During that time, according to the Epistle of the Hebrews, the Evil One tempted Jesus "in every way that we are, except without sin."

We'll discuss the accuracy of that statement another time. For now, just know that Satan departed in defeat only after Jesus resisted EVERY offered temptation. Shortly thereafter, Jesus went into the mountains, where he experienced what Christians RIGHTLY understand to be, "the revelation of the eternal glory of the second person of the Trinity" (as per Britannica.com).

In case you don't know, the second "person" -- or, more accurately, ASPECT -- of the Holy Trinity is the Son of God, Sonship, or Christ Mind. Having been reborn as the Son of God (through Transfiguration or Christ-Realization), Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his three-year ministry in the world.

As I said, almost everything in the Bible is symbolic or allegorical, rather than literal or historical. This is, in fact, true of all scriptural texts, including the Course (despite what one prominent ACIM teacher would have us believe). When it comes to sacred texts, "literal" is code for "unilluminated." The deeper meaning of these teachings is revealed by the Holy Spirit through illumination. Without the luminosity ONLY God's Spirit can provide, we can NOT interpret the Higher Truths these texts impart with any degree of accuracy.

Unfortunately, many unilluminated teachers, preachers, and self-proclaimed "authorities" have tried to tell us what these stories mean down the ages -- and erroneously believe they've succeeded. All they've really succeeded in doing is twisting the Higher Truths these texts contain into contradictory and fear-inducing hogwash that obscures rather than clarifies their meaning.

Having been gifted with scriptural illumination, I will shed much-needed light on the teachings of Jesus Christ, as presented in the Course, the New Testament, and other scriptural texts. In this post, I will de-code the two allegories mentioned above: the Last Temptation and the Transfiguration. Let's start with the story of the Last Temptation, in which Jesus goes alone into a "desert" or "wilderness," where he passes forty trying days fasting and resisting Satan's many temptations.

Okay, so ... did Jesus really do this? Probably, but that's not the point. The point is that he was acting out a script for the rest of us to follow. That script was written by the Holy Spirit, to show us the way out of the Dream of Separation.

As in most allegories, the elements in the story of the Last Temptation have deeper symbolic meaning than a literal reading can reveal. Jesus isn't Jesus-the-man exclusively, for example; his character in the story represents the Soul or Son of God WE ALL ARE in Divine Reality. Likewise, the "desert" or "wilderness" isn't a specific physical locale; the "desert" or "wilderness" in the story symbolizes the illusion of physical existence we only THINK is real. That illusion takes place in the imaginary "world" we PERCEIVE through our lower-mind bodily senses. 

That Jesus was alone during his ordeal in this metaphorical "desert" speaks to the isolation, loneliness, alienation, and abandonment we experience in the dreamscape variously known as the Kingdom of Darkness (Christianity), Brahmanda (Hinduism), and Samsara Maya (Buddhism). That Jesus fasted to the point of starvation while in this emblematic "wilderness" denotes the terrible hunger and/or thirst our Souls feel in the barren wasteland of nothingness this Godless hallucination actually is.

Contrary to popular belief, God did NOT create the illusory Kingdom of Darkness, Cosmic Egg, or Sea of Samsara. Nor, for that matter, did our Father in Heaven make the bodies through which we experience the illusion of physical existence. All visible matter is woven from the fibers of FEAR, a dense thought-substance we produced eons ago to block our memories of God, Heaven, and our True Identities. Fear, Jesus tells us in the Course, is the UNREAL opposite of God's Perfect Love. As such, he also explains, fear "literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread."

The Soul's "daily bread" isn't made from yeast and flour; it's the "manna" that flows from Heaven into our minds in blessed streams of God's Saving Grace. Elsewhere in the synoptic gospels, Jesus describes these Soul-sustaining streams as the "living water" that alleviates our thirst for ALL worldly temptations.

In the Course, Jesus uses the dreamscape-as-desert metaphor several times. In one especially pointed reference, he says, "A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but cannot change it from what it is. It still lacks water, which is why it is a desert. The thing to do with a desert is to leave."

We leave the desert, he tells us in the synoptic gospels, by drinking the mind-purifying "waters" of God's Saving Grace. He does not, however, specify WHERE we find this Holy Water or HOW we drink it. That's because his instructions were removed by unenlightened men who sought to replace the Holy Spirit as God's messenger of Higher Truth in the dreamscape.

In the Course, Jesus DOES disclose the WHERE and HOW. The WHERE is within us and the HOW is listening in deep silence. Why, then, does nobody teaching the Course in the world today (insofar as I'm aware) say as much? The answer is: Because most (if not all) of them are still chasing mirages in the desert at some level. 

We'll talk more about the WHERE and HOW in future posts. For now, let's return to the Last Temptation. In the story, Satan offers Jesus some rocks and says, "Hey, if you're so powerful, turn these stones into bread to sate your hunger." By refusing to perform this little "trick," Jesus is sending us a message. What does he want us to learn? That the Soul he represents in the story can't nourish itself with anything Satan made. To understand the message, we also must understand that Satan -- NOT God -- made the dream-world of time, space, and matter. It was also Satan, and NOT God, who made our bodies and everything we seek to make them more beautiful, wealthy, powerful, healthy, popular, happy, or comfortable.

The story of the Last Temptation also conveys the Great Truth that to leave the desert of earthly existence, we must reject ALL the temptations, false idols, and/or Anti-Christs Satan uses to spin "cocoons of fear" around our Higher Minds. To break free of these amnesic "sleeping sacks," we must remember that we are and always have been God's free-flying butterflies -- not the Great Deceiver's earth-bound caterpillars.

To escape our perceptual pupas, we must empty our hands of possessions, our hearts of grievances, and our minds of every idea the Devil would have us believe and defend. As long as we still desire EVEN ONE of the Evil One's sticky threads of deception, we will remain his web-bound prey.

Let's now turn to the Transfiguration narrative, which is similarly allegorical. In parenthetical shorthand, the story's actual meaning is this: After defeating Satan (the Ego Mind) in the desert (the lower levels of consciousness), Jesus (the Soul) will go into the mountains (of Higher Consciousness), which it will climb until it is purified enough to experience "Transfiguration."

Okay, so ... why am I telling you all of this? The short answer is: Because it matters. I hinted at this earlier, but now I'm going to drive the point home: Everything Jesus did on earth symbolized the journey we all must take to return to God, Heaven, Knowledge, Omniscience, Superconsciousness, or Spiritual Sanity (choose your preferred term). More than just instructive allegories, the events recorded in the synoptic gospels are the milestones the Holy Spirit set in place, through the life of Jesus Christ, to mark the path we all must follow out of the metaphoric "desert" or "wilderness."

Those milestones are inside us, not "out there" in the physical world. Hindus, Buddhists, and other metaphysical teachers call these internal markers "chakras." In the Course, Jesus refers to them as the Lamps of Heaven or Lamps of God. Using these "lamps," he tells us, the Great Rays light our way back up the metaphorical ladder we climbed down into deeper and denser levels of the illusion of physical existence.

The rungs of that ladder represent the levels of consciousness, perception, or Self-awareness our Souls dropped down over time. To reawaken to or remember who, what, and where we really are (and always have been), we must climb back up those "rungs" in the same order we descended them.

We must, in other words, RETRACE the steps we took, downward and outward, into the "desert" or lower levels of consciousness after the Fall from Grace, Detour into Fear, Great Projection, or Exodus from Eden (again, choose your preferred term).

The ladder I've just described is the same one famously seen by Jacob, in the dream described in the Book of Genesis. Rightly interpreted, our reincarnating Souls are the angels the Biblical patriarch saw moving up and down the rungs (as pictured below).

Understanding the steps, their correct order, and what they actually signify is, therefore, crucial to anyone sincerely seeking to master A Course in Miracles. Ditto for anyone striving to attain enlightenment through another form of the Holy Spirit's at-one-ment curriculum. While there are SEVEN steps in total, the New Testament only describes the higher three: Baptism, Transfiguration, and Ascension. Translated into broader metaphysical terms, the higher three stages of awakening are these:

Fifth Step: Baptism = Self-Realization
Sixth Step: Transfiguration = Christ-Realization
Seventh Step: Ascension = God-Realization

When Jesus says, "Follow me," this is what he means. To return to God, Heaven, Knowledge, Omniscience, Superconsciousness, or Spiritual Sanity, we need to follow the trail he blazed 2,300 years ago. To follow that gentle path, we must strive every hour to empty our hands, hearts, and heads of the Evil One's temptations, unholy opposites, misguided teachings, wrong-minded values, and false beliefs. At the same time, we must strive to open our hearts and minds to the Higher Truths God would have us learn, cherish, and teach. We can't undertake this perception-reversing journey on our own, Jesus tells us. To return to Christ Consciousness, we must step back and allow the Holy Spirit -- our inner guru -- to show us the way to go.

That being the case, we must be clear about 1) what the Holy Spirit is, 2) how God's Spirit speaks to us, 3) what to listen for, 4) what to do (or not do) to hear His Voice, and 5) how His Voice peels away Satan's sticky threads of deception -- not only from our own minds, but also from all the minds connected to ours in the Golden Circle of Creation. Once again, none of the books or blogs I've read about the Course explains any of this accurately (if at all). At best, the authors of these books and blogs offer very limited or elementary explanations of the teachings. At worst, they profess to understand what they do NOT, thereby misleading their readers and followers.

Or, to quote what Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas: "If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a hole." 

I don't mean to be critical or sanctimonious. I'm simply calling it as I see it. To escape the "desert" of pain and suffering, we have to stop chasing mirages and drink ONLY the Living Water of God's Saving Grace. We drink that metaphorical "living water" by going inward in meditation and listening for the ever-present echo of God's Saving Grace. We DO NOT do it by "enjoying" the world's offerings, asking our followers for money or positive reviews, moving to Hawaii or the Himalayas, or by preaching political activism.

The image on the Ace of Cups in the Rider-Waite Tarot beautifully depicts the purifying streams of God's Grace flowing from the Higher Mind "waters" of Christ Consciousness into the polluted lower-mind waters of Ego Consciousness. The symbolism employed in this particular deck is highly illuminating. I will, therefore, discuss the useful symbols on various cards from time to time as we move forward. Like everything else in the Valley of Death this world really is, Tarot cards can be used for the Ego Mind's purposes or for the Holy Spirit's. Also like everything else in the arid wasteland of existence, only the Holy Spirit's interpretations are truly helpful to those seeking enlightenment.

Okay, phew. Let's stop here for today, because I've thrown a lot of information at you and I'm still just clearing my throat. If your head is swimming, don't worry, because I'll explain all of these ideas -- and may more besides -- in greater detail as we move forward.

Up next, I'm going to answer the BIG question "What is God?" in a multi-part series. So, keep reading or, better yet, subscribe or follow THE HOLY MEETING PLACE you don't miss any new illuminations.

My Path to A Course in Miracles

Let's begin our journey together with a little background on your guide. Like many people, I followed a long and winding path to A Course in Miracles, which I began in earnest in March or April of 1997. Along the way, the Holy Spirit helped me remove several "obstacles" that stood between me and what turned out to be my True Path.

I began this life as a Catholic, but only attended weekly Mass and Catechism until age eleven -- the year before I would have received the Holy Sacrament of Confirmation. In high school, I became what was then called a "Jesus Freak," but gave up my Christian clique when they forbade me to hang out with my "worldly" friends. Thereafter, I explored many alternate paths before eventually returning to Catholicism in my mid-twenties. At that point, I actually learned the theology on which the religion is founded. Unable to accept some of these beliefs, I walked away from the Church of my upbringing (and many past lives)

For the next several years, I had no spiritual foundation. Consequently, I grew increasingly depressed and began contemplating suicide. Rather than act on this impulse, I called a psychologist, who saw me immediately. At our first session, he asked if I had a philosophy of life.

“Not really,” I answered. “As far as I can tell, life is meaningless and random.” I proceeded to share my cynical theory that human beings were the accidental offspring of horny aliens and apes. While I didn’t really believe this, I had no better explanation to offer.

He listened patiently before asking with a concerned smile, “Do you find that philosophy useful?”

When I answered that I didn’t, he advised me to work on developing a more heartening spiritual belief system.    

Thereafter, I explored several paths, none of which felt right. Fast forward to my mid-thirties. While taking an astrology class at a New Age bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., I noticed—and was drawn to—A Course in Miracles. Thumbing through its pages, I saw the Christian language within and, turned off by it, put the book back on the shelf.

A few months later, I was awakened one Sunday by a powerful inner prompt directing me to get out of bed and go to Mass at the local Catholic Church. I did as instructed and strongly felt the Holy Spirit’s presence at the service. I continued going to weekly Mass and, a few months later, I signed up for an adult confirmation class. At the start of the first session, the facilitator led the class through a guided meditation.

“Imagine yourself walking on a beach,” she began. “Now imagine that Jesus appears and walks with you. What do you say to him? What does he say to you?”

Normally, I don’t have much luck with visual meditations. But this time, I DID see Jesus walking with me on the beach. I spoke to him from my heart about my doubts. In response, he explained that faith was a choice. Then, he asked, “What do you gain by NOT believing in me?”

The next moment, I saw myself at a crossroads. The road to the left was a continuation of the one I’d been on, which had only made me increasingly unhappy. The road to the right disappeared over the distant horizon. I couldn’t see where it went, but I KNEW it would take me to a better place. As I chose the RIGHT road, I also chose to believe in Jesus.

Having removed this obstacle from my mind, the Holy Spirit used my then-boss to steer me toward A Course in Miracles a few days later. At the time, I had a stressful job in the public affairs office of an elite private college. I was divorced, unhappy, and Ego-bound. One day, my supervisor, who was not to my knowledge a “spiritual” person, came into my office and set a book on my desk.

“I was in a bookstore last night,” he said, “and got the strangest feeling I needed to buy this for you.” The book was Deepak Chopra’s The Path to Love. That night, I read the whole book, which resonated with me deeply.

The next day, my boss came into my office again. This time, he handed me a copy of a transcript from an NPR interview with Marianne Williamson, who, as it happened, was an alumna of the college I worked for. In the interview, not surprisingly, she talked about A Course in Miracles. Her descriptions spoke to me, so at lunch, I went out and bought the book. That night, as I read the Text and started the Workbook, I knew I’d found my True Path.

This happened in April 1997. I know because, for some reason, I dated some of the Workbook Lessons. On the evening of April 17, an inner-voice I knew to be the Holy Spirit’s spoke to me. A month or so before, I’d started an intense relationship with someone with severe emotional problems. When he ended the relationship as abruptly as he’d initiated it, I was heartbroken. While lying in bed agonizing over what to do, the Holy Spirit’s still, small voice said (inside my mind), “You’re asking the wrong questions. The right question is: What have I lost if I choose love?”

The question sparked an epiphany. In that moment, I understood, for the first time in my life, that we experience love not by GETTING it from someone else, but by GIVING it without reservation. If I continued to love this man, whatever form the relationship might take, I had lost ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

When I look back on these experiences, I can see (and hope you will too) how carefully and actively the Holy Spirit guided me to the Course. I also recognize how He helped me surmount two major obstacles to “choosing right.” Not my horny alien theory, but my rejection of organized Christianity and, with it, Jesus as my “savior.” Like many “recovering” Catholics, I had thrown out the baby with the bathwater. To reclaim the baby (Jesus), I also had to forgive the bathwater (Catholicism) for being contaminated by wrong-minded thinking.

All right, so ... that's my story -- or at least some of it. I'll share more of my spiritual history and experiences as we move forward. In the meantime, why don't you tell me a little about yourself in the comments. Are you doing the Course? If so, how long have you been at it? If not, what path are you following and why?