Commentary on ACIM Lesson 118

©Rev. David Seacord

 

Reviewing:

 

(105) God's peace and joy are mine.

(106) Let me be still and listen to the truth.

__________________________________________

 

 

Being simple is the great joy of my heart.  

 

This morning I lived in quiet simple appreciation of 'my chores', which I happily returned to after several art show days away...

   

My 'chores' are 'my choices to care for and be responsible for' things in my personal world....  that my parent's citrus trees get watered, ditto their aloe vera beds, ditto my wheatgrass flats, ditto my compost pile.  Then there are 'personal chores': meditation, shaving face, cleansing body temple, doing laundry.... My happiest times have always been just being present in simple moments like these.  

 

Yesterday, as I listened to the banter at the hotsprings between several older men, I recognized it was (in essence) the same as any banter passing between the hip or the powerful or the young too.  But instead of being on the golf course or at the hip party, it was set in a desert hot spring between men who (had they been of a different culture and time) could have been wandering sadhu's (like in India).  But it was the quality of the conversation was the telltale thing....  that these men were all 'being strangers' to each other, and they were conversationally playing the socially accepted cards, talking about where other wild hotsprings were, and who had been there or not, etc.  What I was present to was a loneliness that was not being expressed... covered by joviality and non-stop 'talking about nothing'....

 

It's an interesting balancing act, being in the world and not being 'of it'.  I can be tempted to feel misplaced (or lost) in a world that appears unwilling to be fully open and honest, a world where we/I have been conditioned to be afraid of being our/my true Being of Love.  

 

My own work as an artist is an arena were this plays out for me personally.... because the question is always there (subtly, in the background)....  'They' 'love my work', but how much can I reveal of myself, and if I do, will they want the painting more, or less? (And how much does that matter?--- I have lost sales when I revealed 'too much'.  Or been too-out-of-the-box.)  But NOT revealing who I know I AM has become the source of pain-body signals enough that I have chosen to 'course-correct' in favor of 'living by spirit law' (as contrasted to 'living by social law') more and more.  That's the purpose of all pain signals..... to signal that a course change is being recommended.  

 

So, even though it sometimes produces a buffeting in my comfort zones, I  am exposing who I am straight up more and more.  That's why I am now (30 years after ordination) being publicly 'Rev. David Seacord', instead of just David Seacord.  It's all about being responsible for, and not hiding who I AM (especially, just to feel comfortable and accepted, which is counterfeit for 'being known').  The upside of all this is that it declares publicly what the game is.... and that it's OK to 'talk God here'. And at art shows, for instance, it declares: This is 'spiritual work', and that 'opens the conversation' at a different level. 

 

The down side of course, is that being a 'Reverend' can become a pretty slick ego racket, and when/if that is the case, it dumps me right back into the very same 'separation/superficiality' that I have been judging as 'unspiritual'--- i.e., more duality. Humbling, to understate.  This is why I love Zen--- it is so big--- when it says "Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind".

 

I absolutely love that last line. That 'trusting mind' is (for me) the whole key.  The heart knows trust naturally.  It naturally just Loves. The mind learns it (trust) from the heart.  Perhaps, this 'learning trust' could be the whole purpose of the journey of life....

 

Namaste, 

 

David

 

Lesson 118

For morning and evening review:

(105) God's peace and joy are mine.

Today I will accept God's peace and joy, in glad 
exchange for all the substitutes that I have made 
for happiness and peace.

(106) Let me be still and listen to the truth.

Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the 
mighty Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am 
God's perfect Son.

On the hour:

God's peace and joy are mine.

On the half hour:

Let me be still and listen to the truth.