A Course in Miracles Monk

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Mei

In the beginning I was blind
but I knew the dance of death
I had perfected it
as my art.

Prisoner to my ego
beguiled by its rare beauty
a flower that turns into
a poisoned spear.

Daggers in my dreams
whisper through the hollow reed
stalking me in the scented fields
of sweet deception.

Split between two loves
my heart is torn, and yet
beneath the whisper of war
I still hear the Wind.

I hear it calling me
piercing through the blinding
white emptiness of life
and into my soul.

And now I return to where I belong
to the arms of the Wind
to what was Before the beginning
to a love that death cannot touch.

I’ve received about ten emails from readers who are confused about Twitter, so I want to help everyone understand what it is and isn’t.

It is additional content for this blog. It’s not an additional blog elsewhere, nor something I will be using to communicate with a select tech-savvy group elsewhere, and you don’t have to join Twitter because all the content/posts will be hosted on this site. I know that was a common concern for a lot of you.

My intent was to have my Twitter posts show up here at the monastery, and tonight we were able to accomplish that. Check out the “footer” (the dark blue rectangle at the very bottom of the page with the whispers / pictures / twitter posts). The quickest way to the footer is to click on the down arrow in the header.

My thinking behind adding this feature: To provide additional content for monastery readers when I haven’t posted a new (normal) blog for awhile. monastery Twitter posts will be short/quick, light-hearted, and “fictional”. (Remember: a fictional monk/ACIM student and his everyday-random-experiences. An ACIM sitcom-ish version of Seinfeld, but not as funny.) They should hopefully provide a fun contrast to go along with the longer more metaphysical posts.

Right now the ever-changing content of the blog for visiting monks would be:

1. Blog posts — main page

2. Twitter posts — footer

3. Whispers by readers — footer

4. “Latest” posting in Monk sidebar box — sidebar

Hope this helps!

After several months of negotiations, intense haggling, full disclosure, and moments of bitter acrimony, I’m pleased to announce the IRS accepted our offer for the tax year ending in 2006. Oh, and I’d like to introduce everyone to jane-admin, the new Monastery Assistant.

She will be in charge of such important tasks as letting the cats out, letting the cats back in, feeding the cats, and above all, bathing the cats. Good luck with that one. (Snickers to self.) Oh, and I guess training (re-training?) them to be a better security force. Obviously, this is the most important job around the place, so we wish her the best of luck.

In her spare time (which the cats promise won’t be much) she will help me — so she saaaaays — with the ever-growing list of invisible behind-the-scenes jobs that keep a monastery running. She will also join Emm-admin in the Whispers section by answering questions, or directing people to the proper part of the monastery.

If I might say this without getting in trouble, Jane is English, and I’m trying hard not to nickname her “The Governess”. Trying. But failing. Her accent lends a real regalty to the monastery, one that has been missing ever since the monastery bus driver swore on the way to Temecula. We hear Jane never swears. Never.

I have opened a Twitter account at twitter.com/acimmonk. Visit it  by clicking on the small blue “t” in the Monk sidebar box that looks like the blue “t” to the left. It will open in a new page.

Twitter is “micro-blogging”, which means your post cannot be more than 140 characters (or about three lines).

My Twitter posts will feature a fictional monk/ACIM student, and will follow his daily exploits, hijinx, forgiveness lessons, forgiveness failures, inner process and life around his monastery.

Little known fact: In March 2008 I opened a Twitter account and planned to micro-blog in addition to the main blog. Some technical issues prevented me from incorporating it into the website, so I just made a very plain page, called it “the monastery blog”, and planned on using it to briefly update readers on the latest blog announcements. Very soon the blogs started getting longer and longer (oops), and not about announcements at all, but about my process. That is, exactly like the main blog. When I had a professional web developer implement my design requests, I merged the two blogs into one. So this foray into Twitter-land actually began a long time ago when Twitter was still a hatchling, but the outcome of that initial experiment produced some nice results (some 300 posts that otherwise wouldn’t have been written).

From the Conductor and the Orchestra: The Music of Forgiveness workshop, Ken says:

Choosing forgiveness isn’t anything positive. Don’t work at it. Don’t try. Don’t work at forgiving, work at looking at the ego and allowing yourself to be anxious about <whatever>. Forgiveness means undoing the ego. Forgiveness, miracle, correction, salvation, atonement all undo. The miracle does not do, it undoes. True learning in this world is unlearning. The reflection of Heaven’s positive in this world is undoing the negative. How? You sit quietly and do nothing. You look and wait and you don’t judge. That’s how you undo the negative. You don’t work, you don’t try, you don’t fight. You allow yourself to be sickened by your choices, sickened by how you treat others, sickened by how you treat yourself, sickened by how angry you get all the time, by how much you judge. If you’re not sickened by it, you won’t choose against it. If you’re not sickened by it, part of you still embraces it, so you say, “That’s the truth. I don’t want to let go of my ego. I talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it, I don’t want to let it go.” That’s honest. You get an A+, that’s wonderful.

A Course in Miracles is like an epic love poem or love song written personally for you. Like any great piece of inspired art, everyone experiences it differently. Individually. The love poem that is A Course in Miracles is deeply woven with metaphor. Just when we understand and experience one metaphor, another rises, and another level of meaning is uncovered. Soon the inter-connectedness of all the metaphors eventually give way to a single message: You are my beloved Son.

Think of a song you liked as a child; you probably liked the beat. It was fun and made you feel good. As a teenager you suddenly cared about the lyrics, and related it to your teenage angst. As an adult, following a marriage or divorce, or death of a loved one, you realize the lyrics had a much deeper meaning than you ever realized — you had just never heard it before, but it was always there, waiting for you to grow up.

The Course always says the same thing, even as it speaks on different levels, but since we experience ourselves differently as we grow with the Course (”A child, a man, and then a spirit” - from the poem, A Jesus Prayer, by Helen Schucman), we hear and experience this singular message of innocence in different ways, on different levels. It is only at the end that we can see Jesus has always sung the same sweet song.

As a child we hear it as a soothing lullaby, as a teenager we hear it as a song of direction and guidance for our lives and awakening minds, and as an adult we finally realize we are the song.

After reading my dirge poem The Ego’s Eden, a Sister of the Oratory (Anne TN) wrote and suggested I also share something I wrote to myself one evening last month and subsequently read a few days later in my Awake in Stillness class. It is from a less resistant part of my process than The Ego’s Eden. For the sake of contrast, I have structured it as a poem for this post, and titled it…

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Eden’s Cradlesong

Just be patient.
If you are not patient
you will scare yourself.
Don’t run ahead of Jesus.
Wait for him with his light.
Walk with him.
He knows the best pace for you.
He says, “Together we have the lamp,”
but notice the word together.
Don’t do this Course on your own.
Don’t think you know anything.
Know that you don’t know anything,
and then you will know
the one thing you need to know:
That all you need is Jesus
and his lamp.

He is your everything.
He is this Course.
His love.
His song.
Don’t try and write your own song;
you will fail.
There is a song
that has been made for you,
written by the quiet hands
of forgiveness,
and it is the same song
as everyone else’s song.
It is the Holy Spirit’s song
of Atonement.

Lay down your instrument
and let the song be played for you
and through you.
You do not have to write it.
It has been been written for you
and now your job is simply
to listen.

But you won’t hear it
as long as you prefer
the dissonant
and cacophonous
shrieks of the ego.
Bring those shrieks
to the quiet melody
and let your heart tell you
which you prefer.
It knows.

The shrieks will dissolve
and disappear
and all that will be left
is the song that was made for you
and everyone.
And then you will realize
it was a song that you wrote for yourself
a long time ago.
And you will realize
it has always played in the background.
Sometimes you heard it.
Sometimes not at all.
It is no longer the forgotten song,
but remembered gladly.
And now you hear it all around you.
And you realize it was always there.
Waiting for you.
Holding you.
Comforting you on your journey.

And as you are held by this song,
as you open yourself to it,
you will disappear into the heart of love
and become the song.
As you take your part
in the great song of forgiveness
it becomes an offering to God
and the entire Sonship
in praise of the love
that resides in us all –
a Love that had no beginning
and has no ending;
where no tiny thought
of madness
could ever interfere.
An eternal Oneness
joined as
One.

With all the work to get the monastery rebuilt and re-organized, I haven’t posted much personal material recently, but those of you who’ve been listening to my classes know I’ve been going through quite a powerful process in the past two months. At times it has been profoundly tender, touching, and serene. And at other times terrifying.

This past weekend at the Foundation — and the night after I got back — was really difficult for me, so I thought now would be a good time to post this poem I’ve been writing recently. I used the picture above as my, uh, inspiration.

The Ego’s Eden:

Red ripe temptation,
plucked from stormy sky,
and carefully cradled
in the poisoned palm of my lunacy.
Here, in this unshapely sphere,
all incessant Luster is lustily banished,
forbidden and, finally, forgotten,
by a thin, tiny rib of fear.
In this barren plot, uprooted,
a distorted dark promise of dominion
and its sinister siren blinds me,
so I behold only my self, beholden.

Hypnotic, narcotic, is this Narcissus,
a powerfully binding, Promethean image;
from the center of the earth it rises,
unshackled from the sweet soiled darkness.
Dark eve of naked madness,
I give my Self to thee, unrestrained,
willfully, wantonly, inflamed,
beneath the black veil, betrothed.

Oh, insatiable, biting torment of need!
This burning, bottomless pit bedevils!
It beckons, plagues and pesters!

Unbridled eons
of greed and grasping.
Engorged and groaning,
I yet entreat from the swiney trough,
“More! …More!!”
until so grievously glutted,
I am leaden,
ashen-eyed,
unpurged;
a corpulent corpse,
barely breathing.
And still, oh still, this rabid yearning?!
Oh bright burning madness,
be thee away!
Oh mish-mashed strokes of madness,
be thee away!
Oh cruel, cruel cauldron of madness,
be thee away!

Lucifer’s last supper,
and whetted carving knife,
hew the fetid feast
everlasting.

Alas, this wicked wind of evil
still whips and cracks,
and twists and twists
’round my head,
till all hope and reason lies
dizzily disfigured,
dismembered, disguised,
in ruinous violence torn
in tatters and briny tears,
disassembled, shorn.

Feverish! Frenzied! Affright!
I pelt through the savage field.
Bramble, thorn, my ruthless crown
of wandering dread.
Help! Help!

My marrow screams, mocking
in mouthless ‘marish scorn,
“There is no end in sight for the sightless!”
Oh terrible blear!
Disconsolate drear!
Oh dark disdain!
The black blanket whelms!
Horror! Horror!

From the kneeling knell,
rolls the gravid clang of death
‘cross the breached threshold of tolerance,
as hope gives way to hopelessness.
And from this trembling trestle
I finally offer my now empty hand anew,
and feel Your saving grasp,
instantly pluck me from this roiling stew.