Life is so unlikely to turn out as we intended, that we may wonder what we did intend exactly as we think: ‘How did I end up like this?’ and ‘What went wrong?’ It is more astonishing really how effective we are, with everyone pulling in different directions in a surge of ever-changing conditions. But even when we think we know what we are doing and where we are going, we find inner forces are at work rearranging our lives in ways we did not mean and often bitterly regret. It is as though someone else were pulling our strings, tripping our switches, moving our goalposts: some god, or leprechaun, or our own genius for self destruction. As St Paul put it, ‘The good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’ (Romans 7:18-19).
We work as frantically as ants trying to get things to happen or stop happening in the form of external conditions that we think will suit us. What we pay little attention to is our own psychology. We suppose on the one hand that how we think and feel and act is more or less hardwired into our brains, and on the other that any change in our state of mind must be enabled from outside. The insights of Freud and Jung and other early twentieth-century psychologists opened an unnerving view into the complexity and deviousness of our psyche, but that labyrinth is vast and deep, and does not seem to lead to the cheese. It seems simple enough: give me the right conditions and I will be a happier/better/different person. Only the right conditions are difficult to pin down. And this still makes me a product rather than a creator.
There is indeed a brisk movement these days towards making things happen, rather than waiting for someone else - or a miracle - to put your life back on track towards what you might at least settle for. But this is not what I call creative. The bias towards achieving social status and material goals emphasizes rather than relieves our sense of loss and need. The 'right conditions' begin and end with your state of mind.
A Course in Miracles describes itself as a course in mind-training. It is a spiritual teaching, in that it is concerned with abstract realities and values. It is also unnervingly practical, in that it is about how and why we go about everything we do. It is not about being a ‘better person’ or fighting for moral values and goodness or making the world a better place, as taught by traditional religious institutions. It is not about the world at all, except as the world reflects back to us our own thinking.
A new series of 10 one-day workshops on A Course in Miracles begins on September 10th – see full details under WORKSHOPS
