The End of the Story

There’s a story that A Course in Miracles offers to give context to spiritual awakening in the perception that you are in a world: As you awaken, you model awakening for others, and everyone awakening is the Great Awakening. I used to live in this story, and you can find it in many of my articles, and in my biography on my website. But a couple of years ago things began to change for me: The “story” started to leave me disoriented, and, when I tried to clarify it, it would seem to disintegrate before my eyes. It really began to be seriously undone in me when I translated the Text into plain language. If you’ve read the translation, then you will notice that the story isn’t in there. I couldn’t maintain it and be faithful to the message that I was reading in the Text through my experiences of the Holy Instant. Everything that I perceive is in my mind, so I couldn’t turn around and write that there are “others” who I am supposed to lead. Modeling, then, became meaningless for me, but changing my mind about “others” had not. I was beginning the transition from perceiving myself as in a world, to perceiving the world as in me.

In my experiences of the Holy Instant, there is no story; there is no world. And when I return to an awareness of the world, no story holds up to my awareness that only God is Real. Having a narrative for myself in the world only makes the world real to me. I become disoriented because I am trying to straddle two realities, one inward, and one outward. I have to choose one, and of course the real Reality, Which is within me, is the one that draws me to It. I’m finding that I cannot have a “why” for anything that the body does, or I get lost again. I can maintain my Peace only by maintaining my center in God, and by not judging what the body does. I have to let go of the story altogether by attending to only what is presenting itself to me right now. And I cannot perceive a “me” and a world outside of me. I must recognize that if I perceive it, it is in my mind, and if it’s not God, I only have to forgive it (let it go). This is what I am learning now.

The “story” that the Course provides was very necessary to me before. In my identification with a personal self, I needed that context to be motivated to apply the Course. And applying the Course is what has ultimately resulted in the Course’s story falling away from me naturally. This is an example of how the Course says that the Holy Spirit works: It uses the world to teach you to forgive the world, and then the world falls away. In anticipation of questions asking why I am writing this article, still mentoring, etc., I can say that I no longer have a personal motivation for any of it. If I try to, I get disoriented again. I do know that it is by letting the Holy Spirit work through me that I learn that I am the Holy Spirit, and that, for me, this learning takes the form of mentoring and writing. But the uniqueness of the form in which I learn is irrelevant, because the content is always the same: Forgiveness. And, since you who ask me questions will ask who you are to me: Your story represents to me thoughts in my mind. Mostly, I let these thoughts go by, but those thoughts that push my buttons indicate to me false beliefs that I must find, look at, and release. And that’s the end of the story for me.

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Read The Message of A Course in Miracles: A translation of the Text in plain language at www.themessageofacim.com.