6) The Power of Awe — How to get it and Why it Matters
Spirituality — are we dreaming?
Now we evaluate whether our thesis, less-ego results in more-awe, extends into forms of spirituality. “Spirituality” has come to suggest many things but it ultimately teaches we are in truth spiritual beings dreaming this world. This thesis is consistent with both Yoga’s Advaita Vedanta and A Course in Miracles (ACIM).
Here we will focus on the ACIM, a comprehensive, a sometimes breathtaking 1,200 page book that was written, or scribed by a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University. As such the book is a psychologically infused spiritual manual which teaches the polar consequences between love or fear as the guide to your life.
Given ACIM is written in english, it is not subject to the foibles of translators or edits such as in the bible or the uncertainty of orally transmitted practices such as yoga. Although ACIM “teachers” do debate metaphysical meanings, most of arguments are immaterial given there is no conclusive answer to these issues until one dies. However, the psychological program laid out by the Course has been quite helpful to millions.
The ACIM curriculum is a significant “system of awe,” composed of a 600-page text that lays out the metaphysical landscape and 365 daily meditations. The main theme is to choose love over fear which isn’t as easy as it sounds; the ego is sticky. Each of the 365 meditations are somewhat like a daily Cognitive Behavioral Therapy session — this part of the Course could actually be studied by science.
ACIM teaches our current separation from our spiritual identity could not happen in our “reality,” described as “oneness.” But, the Course says our minds are powerful, and so our wish to be separated is simulated very convincingly as a dream of us in separate bodies. We have our private thoughts and our striving for autonomy, respect, and being “right” (God-like, actually, but godlike with frequent temper tantrums). However, in our spiritual reality, all of us reside safely as wondrously connected spiritual beings: “Not a note in heaven’s song was missed,” while we dream of a limited life in limited bodies. You can find a compelling description how the Course describes the dream here.
But we dreamers feel guilt for betraying God, and, allowing fear to enter the dream — poof! — we now create the ego, a reliable enforcer of guess what — separation. We asked for it! The ego rules over more than just the projection of fear; in charge of separation, it promotes judgment, reactivity and guilt. Since the content of the dream is tinged by guilt, both our waking lives and dreams at night are pervaded with guilt and fear, which we try to deny, avoid and off-load onto others.
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly.
The ego as the captor of the “world”
Up until this point, we described the ego as a part of our brain that is perhaps a little over-protective and overbearing. But this ACIM ego has an overt agenda for its self-preservation and dominion over us; it plays the role of a brutal god — an enforcer ruling by fear. Perhaps this description rings true to the many people suffering in this world — ego won’t let go; it’s pitiless. Of the examples in the five prior posts of this article, the Course is perhaps the most direct in its position on ego and awe.
Ego does not share your best interests; awe occurs in the presence of reality, creation, or your creator.
Unless we figure this out, we will helplessly suffer in and out of nightmares, mental illness, spiked by happy days and misery. The ego’s automatic strategy is continual projection of past/future fears which pervade the dream; fear is waiting underneath most everything you feel and see.
Ego’s limits on the brain
Previously, we touched on theories that the ego places a limit on the mind; on this topic, the Course agrees but includes the entire body as a limit on unlimited awareness:
The “body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind.”
This is very similar to what we learned from other examples. Gopnik’s babies are born egoless with unbound lantern awareness. When ego forms, limits are imposed on perception. Similarly, in yoga, “Ego delimits awareness, which is potentially omnipresent.” Psychedelics temporarily un-hinder awareness through — again — ego dissolution; Near Death Experiences do the same, but instead of by ego death, by a temporary actual death.
ACIM theory speaks for all our examples when it states, to know reality we need to remove the ego’s limits that encase our minds:
To know reality is not to see the ego.
Saving time
Given the glacier pace of “waking-up’ unassisted, the Course says one of its main functions is to save time:
The basic decision…is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. ²Time can waste as well as be wasted.
Under the banner of saving time, the Course employs in its text and lessons many ego-reducing practices. One such practice involves a very persistent emphasis on the nature of the types of thoughts you allow in your mind.
Perception is a mirror, not a fact. ⁴And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
In ACIM, choosing loving interpretations, kind thoughts and present-moment awareness asserts your mastery over the dream. Your perception begins to change — you see a loving world reflecting back at you. Interestingly, this means that what we allow into our minds has a direct correlation with what we see and experience. Allowing ego-generated fear produces a fearful dream — and a fearful life. Choosing loving thoughts saves time and produces a safe and happy experience in which you play a valuable part that may extend to others.
Author and ACIM expert, Nouk Sanchez:
“We manifest exactly that which we value, and if we choose to believe the ego’s criticism, we do value it. Guilt, self-doubt and judgment are absolutely toxic.”
Choosing loving thoughts and interpretations can become natural. Practically, you learn that thinking and acting on loving thoughts is not just for the benefit of others; loving thoughts and actions place you in unshakable safety. Also loving interpretations of painful events tend to pierce through the surface of the pain and reveal a truth or insight which supports healing. Compare that to the ego’s plan of hiding our pain in darkness. The ego’s superficial, negative interpretations stop at the surface. Its plan is to gather and preserve hate and pain and project it onto others.
There are several other methods offered by the Course to save time by dissolving ego, including prayer that asks for the undoing of any pain we may have caused others. The Course is not shy about pointing out how all the world’s healing methods can be hijacked by the ego. For example, the Course scorns what passes for healing in this world. It offers many examples — here is one, on forgiveness:
The “better” person deigns to stoop to save a “baser” one from what he truly is. ²Forgiveness here rests on an attitude of gracious lordliness so far from love that arrogance could never be dislodged. ³Who can forgive and yet despise?
Curriculum. It is clear that this multi-year study course has the horsepower to replace ego-generated fear with a kind, love-based perception. As the ego is increasingly crowded out by this loving perception, it loses credibility in our mind and we may just stop giving attention to its dictates.
I believe this unshackling from the ego’s authority is inevitable if you follow the curriculum. The Course says it works whether you believe it or not. As love expands you are able to clear away the remaining obstacles to peace. The Course says, at some point it dawns on you that this world may not be our true home and the only aspect that is real here is love.
None of this means that you are unaccountable to your actions. On the contrary, it would be impossible to “wake-up” without healing/repairing relationships so much so that, in your mind, there is no hint of anger or resistance remaining — love replaces all forms of fear. The 365 lessons, fortified by the text, are designed to do exactly that.
As for health and awe benefits, given the problem that spirituality is untestable, there is yet little science on ACIM. However, results of spiritual practices, such as, meditation, can be tested by science. A recent scientific review of the available data showed that “spirituality” enhanced resilience versus stress. A smaller study of ACIM’s 365 lessons/meditations was also promising, showing “significant positive change,” regarding the subjects attitude and “emotional and social lived experience.”
Clearly the 365 lessons could be evaluated with rigorous science. But, the Course might answer with a smile: If this world is actually like a dream (as ACIM claims), scientists would be merely dream figures studying the fabric of a dream.
In any case, ACIM states that health and awe is assured:
You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment.
There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is. Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared.
Previous /Next TBD
*************************
Here is some ACIM candy. Some of the most striking and beautiful quotes.
***************************
