“Nothing Real Can Be Threatened; Nothing Unreal Exists”
“Foreword”:
Welcome.
The idea, inspiration, call, to begin writing this came to me a few weeks ago, as I was reading A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson for something like the tenth time. I told my friend I was reading it for the tenth time, from a tenth perspective, and she aptly pointed out that I was then actually reading it for the first time. Hm. Let’s call that a miracle.
A Return to Love, for those who are unfamiliar, is a reflection on the teachings of A Course in Miracles, a (let’s call it) divinvely inspired text on the meaning and purpose of love, and thereby, all that is real. (Key point right there.) I have no intention to rewrite either of these books, but will refer to them frequently.
The Course begins:
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This Course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.”
Had I listened to that when I first read it, age 12, in 2007 give or take, I surely would have saved myself and those around me the pain and turmoil of my own descent. Of course, as we’ve just read, only the time you take the course is voluntary. The messages therein are not. Without the descent, there would be no ressurrection.
The intention of this blog then is to share my own experience with the Course, particularly as it relates to my lifelong conditions of mental illness: Bipolar I, and Borderline Personality Disorder. I at no point claimed to nor will claim to hold a degree in psychiatry or in theology. As those who know me affirm, I majored in dessert. What I do know is that the best psychiatric medication, the best doctors, the best support system, and all the Dialectical Behavior Therapy in the world can only bring you to the point of (what the Course calls) spiritual surrender. These things cannot carry you over, lift you over, teleport you over, or drag you over by the hair, kicking and screaming all the way to enlightenment. Ultimately, the doctors, family, friends, and meds can hide the file in the cake, but we’re the ones who must then get to work on our chains. It’s once we’ve stepped out of our Hell that we see we’ve been wearing the Ruby Slippers the whole time.
From a Course perspective, a miracle isn’t God coming down and changing water to wine. It’s not, as Jules from Pulp Fiction put it, “stopping the bullets, changing Coke to Pepsi, or finding my car keys,” but a recognition of ourselves. It is an Atonement. A willingness to see ourselves as we really are-facets of love (God, if that word helps you). It is a conscious awakening- the decision to think and act on love, rather than fear. That’s why she called the book A Return to Love anyway. (More on terms later- the Course uses very traditional Christian terms in a very untraditional way, so as I bring them up, I will expound upon them.)
I invite you into my story; I hope I can stay on topic enough that you may gain a thing or two. I’ve always had a pinball machine brain and biting sarcasm that sits on top of genuine patience and compassion (yes really!). Of course patience and compassion are the foundation. They’re expressions of love. Marianne writes, “Love is what we were born with; fear is what we learned here.”
But before the part in the story where I acknowledge the inherent nature of myself, humanity, the universe, though, we have to walk through hell first. This is a chronology, after all.
In we go.
