“Begin to imagine life passing through you rather than getting stopped for examination at its intersection with you.  . . .  It will seem as if you are shirking some primal responsibility to assign meaning to everything.”

Leaving meaning behind undoes the massive generalities that bring division and opposition. The most damaging of these, in my opinion, is that “unity and distinction” cannot coexist. Opinions about that will depend on how each of us see reality.

We live in a world where generalities shape our reality because they have become accepted as real! From our perch on whatever wisdom tree we land, it’s easy to begin to view “everyone,” rather than each one, and “everyone” is not only a generality but a lie. There is no “everyone.”

Yet, after a lifetime of hearing that “Everyone” is like this, or everyone ought to be like that, it is no wonder people rebel (often, sadly, in self destructive ways) as they attempt to simply be “seen.” I can only say that, for myself, it was a huge relief to see this conformist attitude as the result of our learning, a learning that starts young and never ends. Racist men arise from boys becoming racist via what they have learned from parents or peers. Religious division occurs because “one right way” is taught. We all learn from being educated and from experiences, good or bad. From a very early age, before we are fully formed or able to be discerning, there are known authorities that we come to trust. 

Have you realized as of yet the power of the end of learning? I am continually being reminded of it.

In the past, there was this idea of everyone being on the same page, which was really kind of ridiculous. From it, there came to be standards. Lopsided standards. For instance, everyone is expected to be good at math (a bane of mine, I admit) but not everyone is expected to be a good at art or music or writing. Somewhere along the way, education became about what would be useful in a particular way.

Liberal Arts colleges are said to teach “soft skills” that no one will pay you for. Why choose a useless major? 

On the internet’s Higher Education News, I read that across America, humanities majors have plummeted. “Since 2011, history has seen a 33% drop in majors. English has seen a longer and more drastic decline, while languages, philosophy and religion have also been hit hard since the 2008 recession.”

At the same time, China is adopting the US model of the Liberal Arts Education saying that, “These changes will, in turn, build a workforce of rigorous, creative thinkers” — just what they think is needed to meet the fast-changing needs of a transforming economy.”

We still live in a world where we must support ourselves, and some rich countries like the U. S. can’t get around the wealthy long enough to level the playing field. But that’s not what moved me to write today.

I understand when artistic, religious, and spiritual states of mind take a back seat to the achievement model, and I even can understand how this translated to an achievement model dominating all areas of life. But it bothers me the most in the spiritual culture. 

Just follow in this way and you will be enlightened is still an achievement model!

Neither ACIM nor ACOL are into the enlightenment push, but has there arisen a “right way?” Or in some instances, a “one and only way?”

I might not suggest a correct meaning, but the way I succumb to this urge is by pointing out those learning models from time to time, and by arguing for no teachers, and/or achievement models. I do this because I recognize learning’s limitations. I believe that, in some sense, I always did, but that my time with Jesus and Mary has taken me the rest of the way. I am no longer available to being instructed in the old way. I mean that both philosophically and personally. I am truly unable to “learn” in the old way now. It’s been coming on slowly all this time, but now has landed. It makes some areas of life difficult, but slowly, new ways are opening.

ACOL unlocked the door to the feminine long before the way of Mary was highlighted. It is evident from the beginning of the “Course” that the invitation is to balance our thinking minds with the wisdom of the heart. But it was always bigger than that, too. The feminine way of knowing is wholistic and includes relationship and union as ways of coming to know. And when I say that, I’m saying something that I believe means a great deal more than it seems. When we join with anything there is a loop of knowing and being know, giving and receiving as one. If a person isn’t interested in knowing and being known, their strategy will be totally different. “Joining” within the old authoritative learning model will likely be their way. 

I have heard these questions many times over the last twenty years: What do you mean? No learning? No topic? No agenda? No individual achievement? Many have come around to embracing this way. Many have not. But there need not be many, many . . . more.

Attitudes have begun to change, movement to something new has started. People have found safety in a more nurturing environment. I am hugely thankful for this movement. But you might call that the “public” part of the movement. To know and be known, the urge of an inner, private, felt knowing desires to come to consciousness and be expressed.

I tell everyone who asks about starting a group to share Mirari: The Way of the Marys to do so if they like, but to take “Mirari” to bed with them first. “Read it” I say, “in your sacred privacy.” Mary and I share a good deal about that. 

From Mirari:

From here, we turn our gaze to the heart once again, the new heart—the shared heart. The shared heart that comes in times of sacred privacy and rests in union.  . . . Here is where you are apart from the unwelcome, even of your thoughts. Here is where you welcome what belongs. 

From the upcoming Memoria: The Way of the Marys

All that you can be “alone” with, everything that can join you in your sacred privacy, you know as the knowing of God. 

In our lives, all that we encounter, everything we relate to, is about us first. My view of nature is for me. My observance of nature is a blessing to the trees and squirrels I observe as much as nature is a blessing to me as the observer. It is a giving and receiving loop. In that blessing we unite and knowing is something that happens naturally. Alone “with God” in sacred privacy, the same occurs.

And . . . generalities . . . disappear.

“Again I remind you that the sameness of union is not about becoming clones or one specific type of idealized holy person. Union is being fully who you are and expressing fully who you are.”

With love, we celebrate diversity naturally. We begin to know in intimate ways that expand and return blessing for blessing. As feminine ways of knowing rise to ascendency, relationship will be central, and the reality that we share a multi-realm- consciousness, will find us positioned for creation of The New.

“You will see that there is one answer, an answer different for everyone and yet the same for everyone. That answer is acceptance of your Self. That answer is acceptance of the new you.”