Hope is the thing with feathers

Before I hope that you have a happy new year full of hope and happiness, let me hover over the meaning of 'hope'. The Course emphasizes that we interpret every word, thought and event either to reinforce illusions or to dispel them. We make this choice so swiftly and subliminally that we do not seem to be choosing at all. But you can usually tell when your thinking has lapsed back into self-delusion, because something does not feel right: I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace (T5 VII 6.6)

So there are two ways of understanding what it is to hope. What we mostly mean by hope is only wishful thinking. It is the limp kind of hope that wishes everything would magically arrange itself to suit yourself. You can hope you do well in the exams or the interview, as if optimism will compensate for not doing your homework. You can leave your umbrella at home and hope it will not rain; but if it does, there is no reason to blame the weather for spoiling your day. Superstitious hoping is especially directed at what you do not want to happen - 'fingers crossed',  'touch wood' - in an attempt to wave a magic wand at imaginary forces of destiny: 'I hope I won't get sick', 'I hope I won't mess up,' 'I hope someone else won't mess up', 'I'm praying I won't miss the last train.' This kind of hoping sets yourself up for disappointment, gears your mind to expect exactly what you feared, and proclaims it is not your fault how things turn out. 'I never asked to be born!' 'Just my luck!' 'Isn't it always the way?!'

To hope that something thrilling will happen, or that something awful will not happen, is to lay the responsibility for your peace of mind on other people and on external events. 'Hoping' in this sense is to reduce yourself or someone else to being a hapless victim of circumstances. 'Hoping' is how we dodge being present and decisive as each situation unfolds. This kind of hope is an expression of uncertainty, and only adds to the anxiety it is meant to dispel.

If you imagine what might happen, very often the outcome is startlingly close to what you imagined. So you might as well imagine what you would like to happen. This is at least empowering, if you have believed yourself a victim of circumstances. It is a way of reminding yourself that There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level (T2 VI 9.13). But a tranquil mind is not attached to any particular outcome, and knows it does not know what is best for anyone. If you really 'hope' for peace and joy, do not look for them in the future, but let them come to mind here and now. Then 'hoping' becomes irrelevant.

There is another way of understanding hope that is not uncertain. It is grounded in conviction, because it is a remembering of what for you is most true and lovely. This kind of hope does not depend on anything changing outwardly. It is the answer to any form of fear or horror, because the mind is free to affirm love and beauty at any moment, even in the apparent absence of both.

Hope 'springs eternal' because it is the mind's memory of its own reality. Reality can be denied, ignored and resisted, but it remains unaltered. It will find a way to reach you, sudden and surprising as a blackbird singing in the night; in that instant when for a moment the heart lifts and fear falls away. Hope asks nothing, does nothing. It only restores the soul to itself. We do not need to 'hope' that hope will join us for another year. It is already here, perched in the mind. It never stops - at all -

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Emily Dickinson

The Useless Journey, or the Journey Home?

Workshop 8: Saturday 2nd May

Remember the old riddle about the two doors guarded by two guardians? One door is the way to happiness, the other to hell, only you don't know which is which. One guardian always speaks the truth, the other always lies, but you don't know which is which. They will answer just one question. How can you find out which door to go through?

For centuries Christianity has told us that we must choose between the road to heaven and the road to hell. The Course uses the same metaphor to say the same thing, but with a crucial difference. Religion presents heaven and hell as equally real. Heaven is a promise of future rewards for good behaviour, while hell threatens a terrible retribution for our sins. The Course, however, tells us that good behaviour is nothing to do with true happiness, and that sin and hell do not exist except in our frightened and childish imagination. The only real choice we have is between freedom from illusions or a self-inflicted suffering. That is, you can use your mind lucidly and focus on what is only true, life-giving and loving; or you can use it fearfully to disconnect, to perceive yourself as attacked or justified in attacking. The first is creative and enduring, a 'journey home' to completion. The second is a painful and ultimately self-defeating process of disintegration. It is a 'useless journey' because it is a mistake, a mirage, a dead end.

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 trouble is that from where we stand, there seem to be a million directions. Our self-appointed 'teacher' is the slippery ego with its one agenda: to keep us disconnected, deluded and in denial.

Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep (T12 IV 1)

Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous.

The 'useless journey' is the life spent seeking for happiness where it cannot be found. We each think our life story is unique, but the blueprint is the same for all. To live in the ego's world is to repeatedly act out the ego's drama of alienation, guilt, regret and finally death.

The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it.

The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying are the theme of every dream the world has ever had (T27 VIII).     

There is another use for the body, though, and for its life in this apparent world. The mind can escape its own illusions by waking up to reality. But first it must want to. It must become aware that it is asleep and chasing dreams and being chased by them, before it can decide it has had enough futility and grief, and wake up. The Course is only another dream, but it is a dream that prepares us for waking. It represents one of 'many thousands' of such processes of inner change, like a lucid dream that introduces a dawning awareness into the dreaming mind. This process is the 'journey home'. There is nowhere to go except to stop going nowhere. There is no journey, only an awakening (T13 I 7).

The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained...Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself (T8 VI 9).

This will be the last in this present series of workshops The Two Uses of Time. For details and bookings, email anna@unlearningschool.com.

Magic, or Miracles?

Cross your fingers, touch wood, don't step on the cracks on the pavement, wear your lucky amulet...if you laugh at such superstitious nonsense, do you all the same feel uneasy, a thin chill of dread, as if you have defied the gods? Perhaps not. But do you ever talk of circumstances or people as being 'lucky' or 'unlucky'? We do not often question common idioms like 'heaven-sent' or 'Sod's Law', over-used adjectives like 'incredible!!!' and 'amazing!!!' - let alone examine our personal repertoire of strategies and defences. How much do your beliefs, your state of mind and your expectations affect your falling ill, and your recovery? Where do you draw the line between knowledge and supposition? Where does the body end and the mind begin?

The Course uses the terms 'magic' and 'miracle' quite specifically to mean the way you use your mind: mindlessly, or mindfully; to project guilt, or to extend love; to perpetuate fear, or to heal; to connect, or to separate. Magic serves the ego's secret purposes, while miracles undo the ego and all its effects. But before we can let go of 'magic thinking' and become 'miracle minded', we need to explore what the words do and do not mean in this context.

And then we can ask, how do these ideas apply to your relationships? To your health and happiness? To your understanding and peace of mind?

Workshop 7: Saturday 11th April

For inquiries and bookings, contact anna@unlearningschool.com.

Childish, or Childlike?

The next workshop in our present series about making choices is on Saturday 14th March.

With reference to Peter Pan, Pinocchio and the Selfish Giant - and other stories - we will talk about innocence and illusion, the fear of growing up, and our own child selves, past and present.

The difference between being childish and being childlike has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with truth and love. We are sentimental about childhood, and remain childishly fearful and self-preoccupied as adults. Yet we allow ourselves to lose touch with the essentially childlike qualities of vitality, trust and innocence that give our lives integrity and meaning. Spiritually speaking, we repeatedly throw out the shining baby and keep the grimy bathwater, until we learn to know the difference and to make another choice.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak? (W182)

Inquiries and bookings: anna@unlearningschool.com

No without Guilt

Next workshop coming up, on Saturday 7th February - note for this month only, the workshop is on the first Saturday in the month instead of the second as usual.

Workshop 5: No without Guilt

  In this workshop we will look at how and why we say No. We will chew over rejections and corrections, tantrums and disappointments. We will consider why we think we have to buttress a No with anger and accusation, or butter it with apologies and excuses. And we will see why No is not the opposite of Yes.

Specifically, the workshop will include:

• Why we feel guilty when we say No
• Why the world opposes us at every turn
• Authority: why coercion never works
• How (not) to correct errors in someone else
• How (not) to correct errors in yourself
• Temptation: the cure that always works
• How (not) to change the world
• What it means to 'deny the denial of truth'
• How No becomes Yes

 At least, that's the plan so far.

See you soon! Or if No - some other time.

With love,

Anna

Yes without Sacrifice

Saturday 10th January 2015: Workshop Four in The Two Uses of Time series

This next workshop is about selfishness and unselfishness, giving and receiving, and why love is the opposite of sacrifice. If you lose out, if you suffer at all, it cannot be from loving or giving too much, but too little.

To have, give all to all

We will consider the difference between the 'unhealed healer' and one who is 'truly helpful'. The unhealed healer thinks that being nice, or trying to please, or wanting to fix other people's problems, or taking their problems seriously, is being loving. But His ego will always seek to get something from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore does not know how to give...

So how can you be 'truly helpful' instead, and why should you? Because your own healing depends on it.

All healing involves replacing fear with love

We will be looking at what 'healing' means and how it happens, according to the teaching of the Course. Here are some clues:

1. Only the mind needs healing

2. Only your mind needs healing

3. Sickness and pain have a purpose. When we have no more use for them, they disappear

4. Healing is not something you do, but more about what you stop doing. When you question your assumptions, let go of a fear, or drop your opposition to something or someone, you make a space for a different perception to come about.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it

Workshop 4: Yes Without Sacrifice

Saturday 10th January 2015
10.30 am - 2.30 pm
Andover, Hampshire UK
Enquiries and bookings: email anna@unlearningschool.com