There are two levels of perception. The first is like a dream. The second reflects only Love. We can always tell which of these we are using by how we feel. For even though there may be occasions when we like a dream, we will always sense the ground of anxiety from which it rises. In contrast, when we are perceiving accurately, we feel a deep and freeing peace and a certainty about the outcome of all things.
At the start of our journey, the perception of love may appear to come and quickly go. And for some there may be long periods of comparative bleakness. Yet beneath it will be a growing sense of gentleness and innocence and a deepening conviction that a Friend walks beside us and holds our hand in love.
It eventually becomes clear that we have not been abandoned by Reality but only chose to look away awhile. Now we begin to see that everything is up to us because nothing external exists that can attack us and deprive us of our Home in the Heart of God.
What then must we do to wake to the recognition that the journey is over because Reality has never been changed? We need merely open our eyes. Instead of beginning still another useless search for small advantages, we must look honestly at the nature of what changes constantly, for it is empty and meaningless and very sad. And it can only be imagined in darkness. In its place we must choose Reality, not only because it is fair to all but because it is a simple fact, and the only one there is. To recognize Love as real is to never again want a compromise decision. We turn from the world we made, from all it seemed to hold out to us but never relinquished, and from all it appeared to do to us that we have not revenged. We withdraw from that useless, endless fight and accept instead a freedom without limit. We turn and face the Light. No more than this. And if we find we have not freed ourselves completely, we practice awhile longer only what will make a difference: Charity without Identification with pain. Gentleness that is consistent. And happiness that is not snatched and is not hidden.
Each time we practice love, we open our eyes a little further on the Place of Love. Love is our means, our end, our Home, our Family, and our Identity. That evidence alone, seen and felt, will show the emptiness of dreams. But if we treat the means of our awaking as a trinket, something merely to be worn occasionally like some clever adornment, it will have no deep meaning for us and cannot disclose its limitless worth.
Pull your decision to walk straight into God around every part of you and over every instant of your day and night. Exclude no one and no thing. Make it the thought you wake with and the goal you cherish in your sleep. See no other person without light, and light will begin to pervade each crack and corner of your surroundings, until you recognize clearly that you have never left the Place where God watches over you who are His child, His meaning, and His joy.
Control
I turn from what I cannot improve to what I can. If I cannot heal my body, I can lose interest in being sick. I alone choose what preoccupies me. There is no doubt that thought can be turned to either love or fear. I can choose not to endlessly trace the “causes” of my difficulties and project onto the future their limitations and pains. If I cannot make this person stop condemning me, I can fail to analyze his motives and rest from defending my actions, because my mind will build a case for universal innocence as easily as it will look for personal guilt. No matter what appearances I dislike, I can turn from wearying attempts to tinker them into perfection. Let me begin with what can be changed this instant. My mind can open to the light of God. And within Its soft appeal what cannot be seen with kindness?
Love
Love is natural and should be habitual and universal in its application. Discrete or focused love is not love but only the ego’s substitute. Love should be as effortless as breathing and as Indiscriminate as falling snow. Love is what naturally happens when the mind is attempting no shift or change. Love is a state of mind or a vision that handles all things equally. There is no part of love that can be privately kept, and the attempt to use love to hold our “own” merely reflects a misunderstanding of its nature. Love can only accompany what is given away, and since all of love must be given in order for all of it to remain, there can be no range to our giving. There is only one kind of love, the uncalculated kind.
Fantasizing
What has a reasonable chance of giving me simple happiness within this instant? Imagining future arms of flesh, or visualizing the present and willing arms of Love? Fantasizing future riches, or pausing to sense the deep and endless wealth of my Core? Planning little triumphs over others, or picturing what caring and joy could pass between me and some living thing? Isn’t one kind use of my mind a more practical act than a thousand vain imaginings? Why do I fill my thoughts with scenes and plans that, even if they occurred, would not make me feel complete or even gratify me for more than a little while, when I could spend this very moment attempting something peaceful and lastingly enjoyable? When will I accept the soft truth of this moment and recognize the thorough falsity of my thoughts about tomorrow?
Disguises
We often hurt ourselves as a means of teaching ourselves “lessons.” That is why we find it difficult to believe there is Something that does not use pain as a teaching aid. And that is also why we are so deeply suspicious of the motives of everyone. Yet this suspicion must at least be questioned if we are ever to allow ourselves to hear the instructions we are being given. There is indeed a Hand held out to us in love. It will never be withdrawn. We have been assured of this more than once. The universe simply does not have anything up its sleeve. And God does not spank your hands to teach you love.
Interpreting
Because nothing I see holds a solitary, permanent meaning, I am free to give it whatever meaning I wish. How do I want to interpret what another person does? What might anyone do that could not in fairness be seen as at least a plea for understanding? If I question the overall validity of my personal tastes and judgments, my first reaction to another’s behavior is also called into question. A given tone of voice, a particular set of the face or body, the use of certain words, can now mean whatever I choose to hear and see. So I will allow a new description to form in my mind. Even if in the beginning I do not feel the truth of the words, I will begin to softly sing them deep within. The world I see is not solid and immovable, and I am not insane to deny its dark assertions. In doing so, I seek not to change the way things look but rather to make a new reading with my heart. For I am at liberty to notice God’s Hand in everything that occurs.
Vision
What I see with my body’s eyes alone is not happening. What I see with love is real. As a lampshade surrounds a light, so things appear to encircle spirit, and words imprison thought. But that appearance of limitation is only imagined. Spirit is invisible to the body’s eyes and cannot be heard with ears alone, and yet sounds and objects begin to brighten as I focus my spiritual sight. I simply say, “I love you,” to everything, and mean it, and all the gauzy lampshades on earth begin to vanish before a world of immeasurable beauty and light. Extend only kindnesses to this world, and there will be no reason to look for signs of vengeance. I cannot be afraid after a moment of harmlessness.
Desires
If I know what the end results will be, even if only intellectually, why continue to be dishonest with myself? If all external pursuits lead to distress, then I have not in truth discovered an exception. Therefore, let me quickly release my mind from the deception that any desire at all could take me to a place I would want to be. A desire for future good is merely a denial made in the present. Bodies and things, careers and sacrifices are not desirable in themselves because I am already whole. Consequently, I do not need to know the “right” people or be in the “right” places. There are none. Nor will I achieve a degree of contentment from withdrawal and isolation. I am already one Self created purely of Love, a perfect Song in heaven, a Child of God loved without limit, and an indistinguishable part of Him. Why then spend one second more pursuing what can only make me feel small and cut off, a thing in need of constant fixes and half-hearted charities, an inconvenience to itself and others? If I know this sorry self-image will never be successfully enhanced, why try? Let me not seek one thing more on behalf of my ego.
Using Time
All things appear to me to happen in time. But that does not mean they happen because of time. Time heals nothing, and to wait on time to relieve pain or to mend betrayals does not put my time to good use. Yet time is always put to some use. How valuable I believe I am determines what that use will be. If my present attitude is that I am of little meaning, I will not be inclined to assign a high value to my time. I am not worth the time I have, and so I use time to prove my insignificance and ineffectuality. This my ego calls “humility.” I rumble around within each moment and bounce haphazardly and hopelessly off every change time brings. However, if I use time well then I am worthy. I can recognize my place within reality merely by attempting to make good use of each instant. Now I see my place by being it. With every moment I refuse to withdraw from His Attitude, I raise my estimate of my part in God’s plan.
Gifts
The little breaks I take from pain, my periods of rest and quiet meditation, are gifts I give myself and everyone I have ever known. I am only doing the enjoyable, nothing more. My wish is simply to think thoughts that make me happy and to rest from those barren of love. Let me imagine a world I would truly like to be part of, because my effort is serving to bring it about. Let me remember always that it is not my duty to pray, it is my fond pleasure.
Bleakness
These thoughts will not go away, so I pause now and give them to You. I have been making a real effort to ask for peace, and yet I am clearly not at peace. You have said that all I need do is ask sincerely. Don’t my efforts alone show that I am sincere in wanting to let go of this bleakness and see instead Your Beauty in everyone? There seems to be some catch in all of this. If a little willingness is all that is needed, haven’t I already done my part many times over? I have been still, and the distress has continued. I have tried to listen and have heard nothing. I am exhausted in both doing and not doing. So I fail. I fail in You. I give up completely. I stumble and fall into You.
Touchstones
What does your mind return to for safety? What is its place of rest, the “reality” it grounds itself in whenever it feels hassled or bleak? Is it the time of day? Do you look at your watch? Is it some activity you have planned for this evening? Or some broader consummation or life victory you hope for? Or perhaps you “rest” in the thought of what “you” contain, your influence or appearance, your location or your name. Or is it some thought of what you have accumulated: property or savings or a “fine” family or “good” friends? Does your mind return to some external such as these for a little reassurance that the present turmoil really does not matter? If so, you have not yet changed your reason for being here. Yet you can, now, if you wish. You already know that the little platforms on which you attempt to rest, whatever they may be, will eventually collapse. Because they always have. And if now you frantically build your health, or desperately you hold to your loved ones, or quite deliberately you secure your reputation, it is only a matter of time before you see once again how frail and meaningless were these defenses. But you need not continue in this manner. Put your weight on something that will bear it. You will recognize what you are relying on by what your mind keeps returning to for reassurance. If it is God, your increasing peace and confidence are assured. If it is a single thought of beauty, you have picked wisely, and you have indeed chosen for the future and not just for a few fleeting moments. Peace is not external. But it is internal. Like a pond ruffled by a passing wind, merely return again to peace. Make peace your home, your touchstone, your shelter, and your goal. No matter how often you stumble, make your single response to wait in stillness for your God.
Innocence
There is no fear greater than the fear of being happy. There is no reluctance more deeply seated than the unwillingness to see all faults and sins as simply mistakes. Who could honestly denounce another if it was admitted that all he had done was make a mistake? Instead, the other is seen as selfish and internally dark, a thing unworthy of life, to be attacked and weakened. To have any hope of happiness, we must first recognize those times we are afraid of the innocence of others. They are the same moments as when we ourselves resist feeling gentle and free. We mistakenly believe that our sense of self-worth comes from how we compare to others, and that to see them as innocent would reflect badly on us. So we remain hard and exacting in order not to allow any evidence of guilt to go unnoticed. But our fear of the sinlessness of what God has created also leaves no possibility of recognizing our own inherent worthiness. Let us therefore practice genuine self-interest. Let us renounce anxiety and try in its place an experiment in kindness.
Sex
The deep yearning we sometimes feel for a physical relationship has within it a yearning that is deeper still. We are not at home in a body, and we are not fully and unwaveringly wanted by any other body. Yet we do have a home, and we have an endless welcome there. It is that for which we yearn.
Even though we may mistakenly interpret a spiritual impulse as being physical, that mistake is not a sin. And it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to fight the symptoms of that mistake, whether they take the form of masturbation, promiscuity, a conflicted “sex-life” within a marriage, homosexuality, or any of a thousand other forms of behavior. The wish to “sin” and the means we use to pursue that wish are not the same. Only our goal to sin can hurt us, but God can show us a new use for every means we now employ. We have not yet been asked to not see the body, but only to see it in a way that will allow us to be happy. Your present way may call for great sacrifice and depression, and that is not necessary. The desire to have what you want will always deprive you. Desire only to have what you have, and you will come to see that you have everything there is or could ever be.
The body is the part of our mind we think is not mind but is something else. We therefore treat it as something else. It appears to have separated itself from the rest and become an end or goal in itself. The only solution to the resulting confusion and pain is to treat what is mind as mind. It is to extend what was meant to be extended and not meant to be a stopping point. The attempt to stop love is pain. To use the body only as a way of communicating love restores the body to the mind and ends pain. Nothing short of kindness feels good.
There are three guidelines that will save time in most instances. One should not, on his own, attempt to eliminate an outward form of relating that has become common to a relationship. For example, one should not insist on abstinence from sexual intercourse with his spouse under the assumption that abstinence is more loving. Conversely, one should not attempt to influence another into having sex, or into beginning a new form of sexual practice, if that person is not so inclined at the moment. How frequently two people have physical contact indicates nothing about the strength of their relationship. And how infrequently an individual expresses himself sexually does not relate to his spirituality.
The mere behavior of a body is never spiritual. And so the third guideline is as follows: Fighting against any aspect of behavior we have identified with will not of itself lessen that identification. We cannot improve the ego; we can only relinquish it.
How to free ourselves from painful pleasures and short-lived gratifications does not have to be guessed. Nor can it be solved through endless examination and analyzation. Only Light gives light. We cannot produce it by ourselves because light is the recognition that we are not by ourselves. The longing for other bodies is grounded in the deeply held belief that we are merely a solitary body and not the extension of God.
Be gentle with yourself, for gentleness is of God, your Father. And in that attitude of kindliness and true helpfulness, God will come to you and lead you past sexual problems and a thousand other hindrances you did not recognize, all at the same instant.
These excerpts from The Quiet Answer (Dolphin/Doubleday, 1982, $5.95 paper) are reprinted with the kind permission of Hugh Prather.
— Ed.
© Copyright 1982 by Hugh Prather
