Sean Reagan / ACIM Notebook
. . . thinking out loud, bits and pieces, et cetera
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
On Knowing We are One with God
Monday, January 30, 2023
ACIM and the Cave of the Heart
Friday, April 15, 2022
Twenty Points about Oneness
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Notes on Attention
Monday, April 11, 2022
Against Rehearsal
Friday, April 8, 2022
Neither More than Less than Appearance
The sense that there is someone directing attention, or making choices with respect to its direction and function, is also an appearance within attention. The director - often consider the self - is simply another appearance, albeit a fairly persuasive one.
This isn't to say that this appearance is illusory or unreal, so much as it is an appearance. For example, we might say correctly that a shadow cast by the body is not the body, but it's still a real shadow. It's still there.
Appearances are just that - appearances. They have the sensory qualities they have, they are experienced as they are experienced. But they are not more than experiences - and it is THIS point that we tend to forget, and thus get ambushed by.
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Losing Right and Wrong
There is the possibility of perceiving neither right nor wrong and of making that perception a practice, not as a goal which one focuses or obtaining a result, but merely as an aspect of attention.
Attention is given. It is here; it functions perfectly consistently. It is responsive, though to precisely what it is impossible to say. It cannot give attention to its source, somewhat the way that "seeing" cannot "see" itself, yet it is there.
This leads to some fertile confusion for the begetting of mysticism, spirituality and so forth. Since we can't objectify attention, and can't be attentive to its source, we can call its source anything we like and mount a defense thereof.
But why bother? Rather than seek to name the mystery or obscure the impossibility and uncertainy with names and rules - essentially, belief systems - why not just let it be? If there is no there there, then why go there? Stay here. Here is full and rich and nurturing.
Given the presence and function of attention, can we simply rest in it? Notice it? Be attentive to it?
What happens when we become passive in this way - simply giving attention to what happens, to what shows up, where "what shows up" includes our resistance to it, our efforts to deny or reform it, and so forth?
It may be seen in that space that right and wrong are relative positions and that they arise concurrently. One or the other may appear more favorable at a given moment, but this appearance (of favorability) doesn't negate the other - indeed, it confirms it.
Thus, when we give attention to preference, preference dissolves. Or rather, it remains but as a practical tool to be sure we aren't eating vanilla ice cream when what we wanted was chocolate. But it is not longer seen or held as some ironclad truth, some universal standard by which all life is measured.
On Knowing We are One with God
Wants arise out of a narrative. We are listening to a story - it is premised on judgment - and we believe we are a character in it. So when...
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The rank sexism of A Course in Miracles - and the misogyny reflected in those who enforced it (I'm looking at you Ken Wapnick) still un...
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A story: A mullah wanted to build a new mosque but lacked the financial resources. As he was a firm believer in the old adage "Trust i...
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In 2015 and early 2016 I worked with M., a nondual teacher I met in Leo Hartong's online community. M. was not a formal teacher, but I r...