The Age of Miracles (4 page)

and free me to my truer self.

Amen

I
REMEMBER AN EXPERIENCE AT A RESTRAURANT
my family frequented when I was a child. Its backyard garden was decorated in a magical way at night, full of bubbles and multicolored lights. I felt sure that there were otherworldly beings cavorting by the fountain, and while others around me ate dinner and talked, I sat mesmerized by the view. An entire drama unfolded outside the window, a fairyland scenario acted out on a stage of light that only I could see.

Decades later, I can still see it.

As children we loved such things, but then we grew up and were told they’re just fantasies to be left behind. We were indoctrinated into a disenchanted world, and we’ve sacrificed a lot in order to live there. The world isn’t better off for having forfeited its tenderness. The meanness and cynicism of our age, the reflexive sarcasm that passes for intelligent reflection, the suspicion and judgment of everyone and everything—such are the toxic by-products of a disenchanted worldview.

Many of us want off that wheel of suffering. We don’t want to accept that
what is
is
what has to be.
We want to pierce the veil of illusion that separates us from a world of infinite possibility. We want another kind of life—for ourselves and for the world—and the hunger to find it becomes more intense as we grow older.

At midlife we’re at a fork in the road: We either accept the modern materialist’s view of the world, in which case we just keep on truckin’ until we finally die; or we consider that our visit to a disenchanted world was simply an error—the archetypal exile from the Garden of Eden—and now we can return to at least some semblance of the garden if we choose. Perhaps the enchantment of our childhood perspective was not so much fantasy as a not-truly-lost reality that can still be reclaimed. Perhaps there is a door to miraculous realms that is simply waiting for us to open it.

We can consider that there might be another way.

Today is much like ancient times, when people carrying the “old” wisdom were overrun by the encroachments of the early church. Today it is not the church that holds us down—or any institution, really; the oppressor is simply a mistaken worldview, a monster with many heads that posits a world where the forces of the soul are peripheral. No matter what form this oppressor takes, or where it comes from, the only point that matters is that you can believe whatever you want to believe. And what you believe will be true for you.

We’ve been brainwashed and misled by the prejudices of modernity. A rationalistic, mechanistic world-view eradicated several colors on the color wheel and then pronounced itself better eyesight. Increasing our capacity in some areas of the brain, it diminished our capacity in others. While we have mapped the outer territories of the world—from outer space to the tiny atom—we’re only crudely aware of the parallel universe of the inner self. And how can you navigate a land you refuse to see?

If you want to believe that what your physical eyes can see is all that’s there, then fine, go ahead. Stay in that small fraction of perceptual reality if you choose. But at some point—even if that point is at the point of death—we all know better. I’ve seen cynics become mystics on their deathbeds. We are here as though in a material dream, from which the spiritual nature of our larger reality is calling us to awaken. The magician, the alchemist, the miracle worker, is simply someone who has woken up to the material delusions of the world and decided to live another way. In a world gone mad, we can choose to be sane.

In order to move ourselves—and our civilization—into the next phase of our evolutionary journey, it’s time to reenchant ourselves. The wizard Merlin was an old man with a long white beard. He wasn’t born a full-fledged wizard so much as he
became
a full-fledged wizard. And his becoming, like yours and mine, would have had to have taken years. Most of us have ventured away from the knowing in our hearts, and what we encountered on our detour had deep significance. In fact, the mystical kingdom of sorcerers and castles, brave knights and dragons, turns out to be a more mature rendition of our soul’s journey than anything the so-called realists ever taught us, or even saw.

Children’s fairy tales aren’t really fantasy, so much as our modern worldview is.

I
N
B
EAUTY
AND THE
B
EAST
, A
BEAUTIFUL PRINCE
turns into a horrible beast—until finally unconditional love turns him back into who he really is. Gee, that sounds like almost everyone I know.

Years ago, after my first book was published, my lawyer recounted to me a conversation he’d had with my publisher. The publisher had made a comment about my being a “spiritual teacher,” to which my lawyer had replied, “She’s not! She writes books about spirituality, but she’s not a spiritual teacher.” I remember wanting to say, “Actually, John, I think I
am
a spiritual teacher,” but I didn’t, out of fear that it would appear immodest. Who was I to call myself that? Yet as it says in
A Course in Miracles,
we create what we defend against; in an effort to dissuade people from thinking I thought of myself as any big deal, I acted in a way that ensured they would.

Oh, you think I’m so spiritual? Watch this! I can be stupid, too!
Thinking it was humble to do so, I dissociated who I was when I wasn’t working from the more enlightened persona that came naturally to me when I was. The ego defends the “separate self,” leading to thoughts that lead to behavior that often reflect our “opposite.” That is what many of us are doing in this life: living the opposite of our truth, just as the beast was the opposite of the beautiful prince in the fairy tale.

We prance around on a stage of illusion, acting out whatever pathetic bit part the fear-based ego allows us in this tragic play, repeating our lines without realizing this isn’t the script with which we came into this life. Our script, in fact, got switched at birth—we’re playing a part that is not our part and repeating lines that are not our lines.

The ego not only defends against our expressing our true selves, but also against our consciously seeing that this is what we’re doing. Our opposite becomes the personality that we, and everyone else, thinks we actually are. Then, since the ego is guiding how we’re presenting ourselves, the world comes to agree that of course that
is
who we actually are. We’re no longer princes, but beasts. And thus we are double bound: first by appearing as not who we really are, and then by the dark contagion of a world that is judging us for it.

Only when I realized that it wasn’t arrogant, but humble, to accept with grace and honor the part I play in the world, was I able to drop the personality self that consistently felt the need to deflect it.

To accept that God has given each of us a magnificent role to play on Earth merely because we’re human; that we were born with a perfect script etched on our hearts; that it’s not to our personal credit, but to His greater glory, that each of us is brilliant—such are the truths that free us from the ego’s lies. Mystical understanding is a ray of light, God’s kiss that transforms us back into who we truly are. Each of us can put down the burden of our false self and allow our truth to reemerge.

The world in which we live today—reflecting in so many ways the opposite of our sweetness and love—reminds us how desperately important it is to break the spell that’s been cast on the human race and retrieve our shining self. Our inner sweetness—whether we call it “the Christ,” “the soul,” or whatever word describes the spiritual essence so not at home in our worldly zones of combat—is the only place where we will ever, ever, be safe. The outer kingdom is not our real home. The inner kingdom is our everything. And until we retrieve it, our outer kingdom will be a land of suffering for everyone.

My dreamlike and mystical nature as a child could rarely find acceptance within my family system or support at school, a conundrum to which I responded—as most people do to the stress of finding themselves at home where they are not at home—by psychically splitting off from myself. I separated from my authentic spirit, my psyche splitting in two like a broken tooth. My spirit wandered high above me, as though on a shelf where it would remain accessible to me personally but hopefully invulnerable to derision by others. Which means that to the best of my young ability, I put my spirit into the hands of God for safekeeping.

I remember when I was a little girl, one of my close girlfriends lived in a house where there was a mural painted on the wallpaper in the powder room. It showed two little angels lying on clouds holding hand mirrors. And that powder room at Beth Klein’s house became like a chapel to me. I would come up with any excuse to enter that room and just stare up at the mural. I felt like that prepainted wallpaper was speaking to me of somewhere I had been and longed to go again. I wondered if others could see what I could see on that wall of my Sistine Chapel on Tartan Lane.

How young we were, so many of us, when we felt psychologically cast out of our homes. Feeling cast out, we collectively manifested a world from which, if we don’t change things, we
will
be cast out. The only way we can fundamentally heal a situation in which the human race teeters on the brink of all manner of catastrophe is to repair the original separation between who we truly are and who we have become.

In the words of poet T. S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Every life is a microcosm of the greater global drama. As each of us returns to the truth in our hearts, we will be released to our highest creativity and intelligence. This will open up avenues of repair the mortal mind can’t even imagine, leading us to co-create with God a transformed experience of life on earth. Realigned within ourselves, we will realign the world. And heaven and earth shall be as one.

I
N
2007,
HAVING BEEN READING
A Course in Miracles
for three decades and lecturing on it literally thousands of times, I came out of meditation one day and thought,
I’ve become an advanced student of the
Course
!
Not an advanced
practitioner,
mind you, but an advanced student. And that took 30 years.

What is it about spiritual knowledge that takes so long to digest? The trendy nature of much contemporary seeking would lead you to think that you spend a year or two at the ashram and
voilà!
—you’re at the mountaintop. But my experience argues otherwise. It takes a decade to understand the basic nature of spiritual principles, another decade while the ego tries to eat you alive, another decade while you try to wrestle it to the ground, and finally you begin to walk more or less in the light. Anyone who thinks a spiritual path is easy probably hasn’t been walking one.

What does all this mean: to embrace the light, walk in the light, and so on? What is all this light, light, light talk? In
A Course in Miracles,
light is defined as “understanding.” What a beautiful thought, that to see the light is to understand.

By midlife, we’re usually aware enough to understand which of our issues most need attention. We’ve learned where we’re strong, but also where we’re weak.

We know what parts of ourselves to be proud of and what parts of ourselves should change. We know what our
issues
are this lifetime. It might not be a time when we’re learning
new
things about ourselves so much as understanding more deeply what we already know. And new levels of self-awareness bring new opportunities for breakthrough.

This is not the time to stop working on ourselves; it’s the time when we’ve finally accumulated enough clues to help crack the case and solve the mystery of why and how we’ve kept ourselves bound for so long. It’s not the time to give up and say,
“This is just how I am. It’s too late to change.” Quite the opposite—it’s time to take a stand, once and for all, for your own potential. Don’t worry that it took you so long to get to this point. It takes everyone this long. We know nothing until we know all the ways that we’re not who we should be. Only then do we have a chance at becoming the people we’ve wanted to be, and God intended us to be, from the day we were born.

For that reason alone, these are sacred years.

You can’t really build a life till you’ve pulled together all the things you’ve finally come to understand about yourself. And life would be cruel if at just about the time you’ve finally figured it out, it reached some sort of predetermined disintegration. Just as adolescents must separate from their parents, you need to separate from the person you were before this point, to whatever extent that person was not the real you.

Finding out who we actually aren’t, we begin to understand at last who we actually are.

Dear God,

Please soften my heart

where it has hardened.

Please help me reach

for higher thoughts.

Please pave the way

for a better life,

for me and all the world.

Amen

T
HOSE OF US WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED THE MOST OF LIFE
—with its evil as well as its good—have greater understanding with which to tame the beast of chaos and unruliness that threatens the earth today. We’ve learned the hard way that the darkness of the world is a reflection of the darkness inside us. We’ll learn to tame the beast of the world by taming it within ourselves.

When you’re young, you’re powerful in a physical sense. The strength of youth is not earned so much as given to you as a gift from nature. It serves a role that belongs specifically to the young: to procreate and build external structures that support material life.

As our physical strength begins to wane, it can be augmented by spiritual strength. Yet unlike our youthful brawn, spiritual power isn’t simply given to us; it has to be earned. And it is often earned through suffering. This isn’t a deficiency in nature’s plan but an
economy
in nature’s plan. Our physical muscles cannot help us carry the weight of the world’s emotional pain—only spiritual musculature, built through accumulated repetitions of heartache, can do that.