Not to say what everyone else
was saying
not to believe what everyone else believed
not to do what everybody did,
not to do what everybody did,
then to refute what everyone
else was saying
then to disprove what everyone else believed
then to deprecate what everybody did,
was his way to come by understanding
how everyone else was saying the same as he was saying
believing what he believed
and did what doing.
then to disprove what everyone else believed
then to deprecate what everybody did,
was his way to come by understanding
how everyone else was saying the same as he was saying
believing what he believed
and did what doing.
by Clere Parsons
Anyone who takes a
stance as contrary as the person in the poem is likely to make this same 'everyone
else' roll their eyes and count the cost in time, patience and social harmony. Yet
who is 'everyone else'? Individuals too, every one. In his or her own way, everyone
refutes and disproves and deprecates what others say and do, fighting their own
battles against a succession of opponents.
From the moment we are born, we start to learn who we are by distinguishing ourselves from those we are not. We do not have to contradict or openly disagree with anyone: we assert that we are different with every fingerprint we leave in passing, every time we say or hear our name (Me!) or anyone else's (Not me!). It is by making differences meaningful that we establish separate identities for ourselves and for everything else out of the totality of life:
You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things (W184).
Consciousness itself depends upon a perception of difference. We could have no awareness of a world of space and time, and no sense of personal self, without comparing differences. The differences already exist, we confidently believe: they are already out there in the world of fact, whether we like them or not. It seems obvious that we do not put them there, we only observe them. We discover that 'you and I are not the same', and all the degrees of difference between one thing and another. Indeed the more exactingly someone can distinguish differences, the more we admire their grasp of reality. Much of our learning involves making ever finer distinctions: we learn to see not just a cloud or an insect but a specific kind of cloud or insect, and even that will have its own special features, different from others even within its own type or family. As in those 'spot the difference' puzzles, when you look closely and carefully past the obvious similarities, the more differences you can find.
And this is just what the Course tells us our minds are doing continuously. It is not only artists, inventors, gardeners, businessmen, scientists, anyone who develops a product or a process, who want to come up with something new, original and special. The same impulse prompts anyone who switches on the news to see how today is different from yesterday, or will travel to see unfamiliar places, or buys a novelty because it is different and a 'talking point'; as if your friends may have nothing else to talk about, or as if you would be a nobody without stirring the interest and envy of your neighbours.
For without differences, we would indeed be nobody. We would not know who we separately were. The point of celebrating birthdays and anniversaries is to emphasize what is special about a particular person or a particular occasion. We like variety. We would be bored if every day were the same. But there is a deeper fear that prompts our insistence on differences. We feel individually invalidated if any other person is too much the same. The need to be special is so powerful, the Course teaches, that it both shapes the world we see and how we react to it. We are not only observers, but inventors of our reality. Just as the dreaming mind sees its own illusions and believes them to be real, we are collectively cooking up the world we see, even as we see it. Believing is seeing, as well as the other way around. We dream up differences so as to forge a sense of separate self. We want to see them, and so we do.
When an author makes up an assortment of fictional characters, and describes them walking and talking and reacting to situations according to their various points of view, they seem to come alive in the mind of both author and reader. Similarly, the Course tells us, collectively we have made up the characters we believe we are. In one mind, all our individual lives play out simultaneously. We are, as it were, together suffering a multiple personality disorder on a cosmic scale. The sense of disconnect we all feel can only be maintained while each personality believes itself to be different from every other. Hateful and lonely as it may feel, and no matter what we think is the cause for it, the real reason that we react disappointed, bewildered, outraged or upset by something that another person says or does, is that we want to reinforce the belief 'You and I are not the same.' The Course teaches us to see that every angry word and loveless act springs from one root cause: the wish to perceive ourselves as different.
You might think that, on the contrary, most people try to get on with others and fit in. Rebels against the norm are surely in the minority, by definition. There is a romantic notion that most people are boring and ordinary and cannot understand or tolerate the few passionate, defiant individuals (like oneself) who aspire to adventure or originality. In Jean Richepin's poem, 'Les bourgeois sont troublés De voir passer les gueux': the wild geese breathe a more rarified air than the farmyard birds below, and ruffle the herd mentality of the conforming majority. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zVLjXBqKSU)
But we all see ourselves as the exception in some way. It is only other people who 'come out the same' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONEYGU_7EqU). Even if in other ways they are similar, it matters to me that my house is pink while everyone else's is green or yellow. We may fit right in to any social group, yet still there is a part of each of us that feels disengaged, false to ourselves, as though we are only playing at being one of the group. And if we do not fit in, that proves we dance to a different drum, come from another planet: are unique. It is as though there is always an outsider within us, a self-inflicted outcast. We think we are despised, when we are the ones who are holding aloof. There is something in us that thinks being 'true to oneself' means contradicting everyone else. So as not to clash outright with others, we may downplay our differences. We can learn to express them diplomatically. We even celebrate them: 'Vive la difference!'...until the next person comes along saying or believing or doing something more different than we are prepared to tolerate. The more obvious rebels are only more dramatic about how they choose to be different. Whatever our style of life, we all find something different to envy or to despise in someone else's.
The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to reverse this perception of otherness. It teaches us to question the illusion of self that we have devoted our lives to establishing, by comparing oneself against others, by judging for and against, by defending what we have decided are our personal interests. What the Course gives us is an understanding we cannot hurry or make happen, but can only 'come by', as the poet puts it. We must each in our own way and our own time 'come by understanding' that every other creature is not only not our enemy, but another aspect of oneself.
But in the meantime, as the Course points out, while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a Oneness joined as One is meaningless (T25 I 7). It takes much unlearning to recognize with Krishnamurti that 'the observer and the observed are one'. As the poem suggests, the process involves acknowledging our differences, and how important they are to us, before we can see past them. Then we can begin to dismantle the barriers that keep us separate, by honouring our differences - All my brothers are special (T1 V 3.6) - even while remembering always that these differences do not matter (T7 II 5), (T13 IX 8).
In the end, the Course tells us, we will all come by the understanding that transcends our differences. The journey is the same for us all, because there is only one mind making it. Love is not about negotiating or tolerating or reconciling our differences, or compensating for each other's. It is the realization that regardless of apparent differences of form, in truth 'You and I are the same.'
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
From the moment we are born, we start to learn who we are by distinguishing ourselves from those we are not. We do not have to contradict or openly disagree with anyone: we assert that we are different with every fingerprint we leave in passing, every time we say or hear our name (Me!) or anyone else's (Not me!). It is by making differences meaningful that we establish separate identities for ourselves and for everything else out of the totality of life:
You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things (W184).
Consciousness itself depends upon a perception of difference. We could have no awareness of a world of space and time, and no sense of personal self, without comparing differences. The differences already exist, we confidently believe: they are already out there in the world of fact, whether we like them or not. It seems obvious that we do not put them there, we only observe them. We discover that 'you and I are not the same', and all the degrees of difference between one thing and another. Indeed the more exactingly someone can distinguish differences, the more we admire their grasp of reality. Much of our learning involves making ever finer distinctions: we learn to see not just a cloud or an insect but a specific kind of cloud or insect, and even that will have its own special features, different from others even within its own type or family. As in those 'spot the difference' puzzles, when you look closely and carefully past the obvious similarities, the more differences you can find.
And this is just what the Course tells us our minds are doing continuously. It is not only artists, inventors, gardeners, businessmen, scientists, anyone who develops a product or a process, who want to come up with something new, original and special. The same impulse prompts anyone who switches on the news to see how today is different from yesterday, or will travel to see unfamiliar places, or buys a novelty because it is different and a 'talking point'; as if your friends may have nothing else to talk about, or as if you would be a nobody without stirring the interest and envy of your neighbours.
For without differences, we would indeed be nobody. We would not know who we separately were. The point of celebrating birthdays and anniversaries is to emphasize what is special about a particular person or a particular occasion. We like variety. We would be bored if every day were the same. But there is a deeper fear that prompts our insistence on differences. We feel individually invalidated if any other person is too much the same. The need to be special is so powerful, the Course teaches, that it both shapes the world we see and how we react to it. We are not only observers, but inventors of our reality. Just as the dreaming mind sees its own illusions and believes them to be real, we are collectively cooking up the world we see, even as we see it. Believing is seeing, as well as the other way around. We dream up differences so as to forge a sense of separate self. We want to see them, and so we do.
When an author makes up an assortment of fictional characters, and describes them walking and talking and reacting to situations according to their various points of view, they seem to come alive in the mind of both author and reader. Similarly, the Course tells us, collectively we have made up the characters we believe we are. In one mind, all our individual lives play out simultaneously. We are, as it were, together suffering a multiple personality disorder on a cosmic scale. The sense of disconnect we all feel can only be maintained while each personality believes itself to be different from every other. Hateful and lonely as it may feel, and no matter what we think is the cause for it, the real reason that we react disappointed, bewildered, outraged or upset by something that another person says or does, is that we want to reinforce the belief 'You and I are not the same.' The Course teaches us to see that every angry word and loveless act springs from one root cause: the wish to perceive ourselves as different.
You might think that, on the contrary, most people try to get on with others and fit in. Rebels against the norm are surely in the minority, by definition. There is a romantic notion that most people are boring and ordinary and cannot understand or tolerate the few passionate, defiant individuals (like oneself) who aspire to adventure or originality. In Jean Richepin's poem, 'Les bourgeois sont troublés De voir passer les gueux': the wild geese breathe a more rarified air than the farmyard birds below, and ruffle the herd mentality of the conforming majority. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zVLjXBqKSU)
But we all see ourselves as the exception in some way. It is only other people who 'come out the same' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONEYGU_7EqU). Even if in other ways they are similar, it matters to me that my house is pink while everyone else's is green or yellow. We may fit right in to any social group, yet still there is a part of each of us that feels disengaged, false to ourselves, as though we are only playing at being one of the group. And if we do not fit in, that proves we dance to a different drum, come from another planet: are unique. It is as though there is always an outsider within us, a self-inflicted outcast. We think we are despised, when we are the ones who are holding aloof. There is something in us that thinks being 'true to oneself' means contradicting everyone else. So as not to clash outright with others, we may downplay our differences. We can learn to express them diplomatically. We even celebrate them: 'Vive la difference!'...until the next person comes along saying or believing or doing something more different than we are prepared to tolerate. The more obvious rebels are only more dramatic about how they choose to be different. Whatever our style of life, we all find something different to envy or to despise in someone else's.
The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to reverse this perception of otherness. It teaches us to question the illusion of self that we have devoted our lives to establishing, by comparing oneself against others, by judging for and against, by defending what we have decided are our personal interests. What the Course gives us is an understanding we cannot hurry or make happen, but can only 'come by', as the poet puts it. We must each in our own way and our own time 'come by understanding' that every other creature is not only not our enemy, but another aspect of oneself.
But in the meantime, as the Course points out, while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a Oneness joined as One is meaningless (T25 I 7). It takes much unlearning to recognize with Krishnamurti that 'the observer and the observed are one'. As the poem suggests, the process involves acknowledging our differences, and how important they are to us, before we can see past them. Then we can begin to dismantle the barriers that keep us separate, by honouring our differences - All my brothers are special (T1 V 3.6) - even while remembering always that these differences do not matter (T7 II 5), (T13 IX 8).
In the end, the Course tells us, we will all come by the understanding that transcends our differences. The journey is the same for us all, because there is only one mind making it. Love is not about negotiating or tolerating or reconciling our differences, or compensating for each other's. It is the realization that regardless of apparent differences of form, in truth 'You and I are the same.'
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without
problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
(Pablo Neruda: Love Sonnet XVII, trans Mark Eisner)
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
(Pablo Neruda: Love Sonnet XVII, trans Mark Eisner)
