No Sense of Direction

The poem (below) by Vernon Scannell does not tell you where it is going until you get there – for uncertainty is what it is about. It loses you on the battleground and again in peace time, only to suddenly arrive somewhere entirely unexpected. It turns out to have, after all, an unerring sense of direction. And so do we all, the course tells us, if only we will step back and let it lead the way.

From the point of view of our own secret doubts and fears, it does appear, as the poem suggests, that some people unswervingly go through life succeeding at this or dealing effectively with that, finding their way into jobs and relationships and enriching experiences that we have somehow missed or mismanaged.

Yet in truth there is almost no one here who is really sure which direction to take. Some may fancy they ‘need no guide’, but everyone is guided by some idea, has some purpose in mind. The question is, what is the purpose underlying what you think is your purpose? Are you being misdirected by your own fantasies and isolated sense of self; or allowing yourself to be led by an impulse from beyond your own limited viewpoint, to reach across the obstacles between us and inside us, so as to reconnect? In the language of the course, are you guided by the ego, or by the Holy Spirit?

There are two teachers only, who point in different ways. And you will go along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two directions you can take, while time remains and choice is meaningful. For never will another road be made except the way to Heaven. You but choose whether to go toward Heaven, or away to nowhere. There is nothing else to choose (T26 V 1).

The road that you think will take you to where you want to be is an illusion, for you are mistaken about who you are and what will bring you joy. If you start from the standpoint of a separate individual whose chief purpose is to take care of your body’s comforts and interests, you may forge confidently ahead and seem to know where you are going and what you are doing, and sometimes achieve comparative success and short-lived gratifications. Or you may be humiliated by failure, the failure to grasp what was only ever a chimera. Either way, the course tells us, this is how you make yourself blind and deaf to the only part of your mind which can lead you to real peace and lasting happiness, because when you identify with your body and not with your mind you are losing touch with your own reality.

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness (W133).            

To be guided by your individual needs, as you perceive them, is not independence, but slavery to illusions. To base your purposes on the world’s values is to have ‘eyes chained by the night’: you may not seem lost, but you will only find your way back to the too familiar territory of disappointment and the same old mistakes. Uncertainty is hardly a reliable guide in itself, but at least it can make room for humility and patience; for the willingness to give up striving to arrange life to suit yourself, and to give way to the power of love that is in you but not of you.

Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God (T14 IV 5).

What does this mean in practice? How do you know it is not still your self-deceiving self posing as the whisper of God? Practising a shrewd self-awareness will help to distinguish between your lucid mind and further fantasy, but the best reassurance that you have turned away from illusions and invited love to be your guide is simply that you feel relief and peace again:

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer (T14 IV 6).

These are poetical images, because there are no words that can speak of oneness or adequately express the experience of becoming whole. The course describes itself as a journey, a way home for the lost and the lonely; but also reminds us that this is just a way of speaking. In truth, you are not lost, you are never alone; there is nowhere to go, nothing to prove; there is no journey, but only an awakening (T13 I 7). 
The battles we seem to fight, the seeming choice of paths before us, the seeming differences between us are not real but a delusion that we share. You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was (T21 VI 3). There are not many directions to choose between, but only one. There is only one ‘lucky path’, and we must all stumble upon it - realise we are already on it - once we give up our own obstinate sense of direction.

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself… And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it…Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace (T18 VI 1-14)

No Sense of Direction

I have always admired
Those who are sure
Which turning to take,
Who need no guide
Even in war
When thunders shake
The torn terrain,
When battalions of shrill
Stars all desert
And the derelict moon
Goes over the hill:
Eyes chained by the night
They find their way back
As if it were daylight.
Then, on peaceful walks
Over strange wooded ground,
They will find the right track,
Know which of the forks
Will lead to the inn
I would never have found;
For I lack their gift,
Possess almost no
Sense of direction.
And yet I owe
a debt to this lack,
A debt so vast
No reparation
Can ever be made,
For it led me away
From the road I sought
Which would carry me to –
I mistakenly thought –
My true destination:
It made me stray
To this lucky path
That ran like a fuse
And brought me to you

And love's bright, soundless
Detonation.