Did ancient peoples have it easier than moderns when it comes to opening to the ecstatic joy and superwhelming love of the enlightenment experience? Did ancient ones simply join a little dance and maybe click their heels together in order to explode effortlessly into the experience of all-knowingness and the radiant power that heals the blind and moves mountains?
Do moderns have a penchant for rendering very complicated and difficult what is really unbelievably easy?
Let's look.
Many say they want total enlightenment, but very few seem to know what total enlightenment is and even fewer seem to know how to open to total enlightenment and facilitate such an opening in others.
Of course total enlightenment is an experience which cannot be put into words, but we can state what it is not. It is not simply living a happy dream. Just about everyone who has joined in the first 50 or so lessons of A Course in Miracles with sincere endeavor is by now living a substantially happy dream compared to life before A Course in Miracles. But total enlightenment is an experience far, far beyond any happy dream, isn't it?
Some ACIM students might say, "Oh, I get it! Knowing what is not the total enlightenment experience tells me immediately what is not the way to the experience!"
On the other hand, you might know students who would tend to tie themselves up in double "nots." Have you ever tried to help a student of A Course in Miracles see that the world's way of salvation, known as "working on oneself", is not the way of A Course in Miracles?
Put yourself in the shoes of a teacher who has been with A Course in Miracles from its early stages, who has written numerous books about A Course in Miracles, and who is considered by some to be the world's expert on A Course in Miracles. What does it feel like? It's been nearly 30 years, so by now you are totally enlightened, living in absolute heavenly bliss, awe-inspiring radiance, and unearthly inner peace, true or false?
If the answer you hear inside is "false," then maybe, just maybe, you've been teaching a way of salvation that doesn't work. After all, many others have become totally enlightened in substantially less time with no effort at all. With a course that teaches the immediacy of salvation and the simple ease of enlightenment, the only way it could possibly take almost 30 years is if you were attempting to interpret what the Holy Spirit has given instead of quieting your mind and receiving what the Holy Spirit gives.
Strangely, it is often the most intelligent people who do not see the contradictions involved in working on oneself. So let's look at the situation in the simplest possible language. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven."
There are two fundamental modes of mind (either/or): mind engaged, or mind unengaged. Your mind uses engagement to manifest whatever it is you are manifesting and your mind surrenders engagement to return you to your natural enlightened state of being. So the teaching "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven" can be variously restated: "see no ego," "see no wrong," or "do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." In the exact same moment you see something about yourself to be worked on, in that moment you are taking your awareness out of the heavenly kingdom and literally manifesting what you think you see that you think needs to be worked on.
Before A Course in Miracles was channeled by Helen Schucman, she and Bill Thetford were already into psychology, they were already into working on themselves, and the path they were already treading which they thought would bring them to salvation was instead creating unbearable pain. A Course in Miracles came as an answer to the desperate thought: "There must be a better way."
The Course's answer is: "You need do nothing." Whew! What incredibly good news!
The Course's further answer is: "You do not know what is in your own best interests." Wow! How could we even be tempted to work on ourselves?
The Course's final answer is: "Trust! It's already done for you." Thank you, thank you, thank you, Holy Spirit!
This leaves the intellectuals rather lost. If there is nothing to do, what are they going to do?
What if they merely joined in the dance?
It's not that dancing is going to help if you are the dancer, right?
But what if you merely surrendered and let the Holy Spirit dance you?
Our enlightenment sessions here in Utah are not meant to be dancing sessions. We teach quiet stillness of mind and participants break through to astonishing enlightenment by standing still. But occasionally someone is not so much still as uptight and rigid, and not so much quiet as unable to let loose and relax. In those cases, the Holy Spirit has been known to say, "Let me dance you!"
In fact, it's so much fun that you might want to try letting the Holy Spirit dance you as a playtime exercise. If you need instruction, try this:
In your mind's eye focus far, far up as if you were looking to the far reaches of the universe and beyond. Looking up like this helps you to open to light and feel power you may not have imagined possible. Then you might even whisper a little prayer, "Holy Spirit, take me and dance me!" If you so desire, you can pretend there are visitors from outer space who are sending impulses down and causing your body to move without any mental direction on your part.
This fun little exercise does not lead to total enlightenment. But it can take you a long way in the right direction, provided you do nothing to dance yourself.
The key is always non-doing, isn't it?
In case you are still imagining yourself in the shoes of an early and well published teacher of A Course in Miracles, imagine those shoes to be dancing shoes. Join in the dance, maybe let your heals be clicked together, see what happens.
Enlightenment does not come from engaging the mind, but from stilling the mind, from allowing the mind to be disengaged. If dancing will help you, the Holy Spirit will oblige. You need only surrender.
Actually surrender is the easiest thing in the world and modern people can disengage their minds and let it happen as easily as ancients. But if ancients knew the way then it is in our genetic memory as well as our future memory and our spiritual memory. We know, and have always known, what if feels like to explode into total enlightenment and to facilitate opening in others. We know what it feels like to experience so much power that we are lifted up from the ground and so much love that people are healed in our wake as we practically float through our days. And we know the joy of having the Holy Spirit spin us in spirals of spell-unbinding dance.
Happy dancing!
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