This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on March 29, 2014.
Still here, are we?” I asked.
He peered out at me over the reading glasses I’d bought him in an effort to correct the stupendous far-sightedness that prevented him from homing in on my dog-eat-dog world. Although they did nothing to correct his 360-degree Vision, they did lend a jaunty, Johnny Depp-esque panache to his otherwise humble attire.
“Love waits on welcome,” he said, smiling that win-win smile of his that can really tick you off, if you let it.
“I know,” I said. “And it’s not like I didn’t invite you. It’s just that, wait, what were we talking about again?”
“My sentiments, exactly,” my imaginary Jesus said, still smiling.
But really, it was hard to hear myself think, what with him hanging around like this 24/7. Ever since I’d returned from attending the March academy class at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles in Temecula, California, and issued an open invitation, I’d sensed his presence (almost) always with me, right there in my peripheral vision, even when I couldn’t actually see him in my mind’s eye, as I did now. As if the walls of the imaginary office I visit to talk with my inner imaginary teacher about all the imaginary stuff that keeps derailing my plans for a smooth, steady ascension had dissolved. Leaving him “so close, we cannot fail.” His words, not mine, I mean, Jesus! It seriously creeped me out, at times; the feeling of him watching my every, faulty move, eavesdropping on my every ambivalent thought. Smothering, really, when you know came right down to it.
“Can I be frank?” I asked.
He nodded.
“When I said I wanted to invite you in to help me look at all my reactions and remember I’m wrong about everything, I mean.”
“You were kidding?”
“Well, let’s just say it was more along the lines of a metaphor.”
“Ah.”
“And, to be perfectly honest, that all and everything part might have been a tad exaggerated. So, I mean, if you have something else you need to take care of. Some other Course student—and God only knows, there are a hell of lot of us out there who could use another way to see things—feel free.”
His brows shot up and down the way they do.
“I wouldn’t want to hog you all to myself, if you know what I’m saying.”
His lips twitched.
“This is no joking matter.”
“Something you’d prefer to settle by yourself?” he asked.
He had my number. He always does. “Well, there’s that.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
But where to begin to describe the parade of wild imaginings arising this week to distract me from my renewed commitment to making healing my mind through forgiveness my only real goal, so many incoming questions requiring answers, problems demanding solutions. A couple of requests, in particular, seemingly intent on coaxing me way out of my fictional comfort zone into that all-too-familiar frenzied, anxious wasteland in which I came face-to-face with my inability to control anything where it doesn’t exist. Here in this nightmare of exile from the invulnerable everything of our true nature.
As my fear of stepping into the proverbial light arose once more in yet another earthly guise, I knew all too well that it sprang not from external triggers, but still found myself mired in its poison, even as I heard his voice posing the infuriatingly sane question: “What if you subtracted the fear from the equation of how to respond to these requests?”
“What if pigs could fly?” I countered.
“What if you just admitted you were wrong, as usual, without judgment, and just completely trusted in my confidence that it would all work out OK, since it was all just for learning nothing’s really happening anyway?”
“No investment in how it would go, you mean? No self-doubt, insecurity, paralyzing panic attacks?”
He smiled.
“I have learned not to answer hypothetical questions,” I said. Even as he went on to remind me that when I’m willing to get out of my own way, take him along, and give this body the ego-free purpose of healing our one mind, I can’t even remember the problem.
“Wait, what were we talking about again?” I asked.
“My sentiments, exactly.”
“Oh, yeah, so what you’re really saying is that even if I crash and burn in form, it’s really no big deal. Just another opportunity to remember my self-worth doesn’t come from anything I do or don’t do in this wild, wacky world; it comes from my union in God.”
“Crash and burn?” he said.
“It’s a metaphor, for God’s sake. Promise me you won’t forget that.”
He nodded.
“Pinkie swear?” I said holding up the said digit.
He curled his in mine, shaking his head. (Really, that man will do anything I ask, except agree with me.)
“So back to what you were saving to settle by yourself,” he said.
I sighed. There was, in fact, a little incident involving ants I must have secretly tried to do just that with. It had not ended well. The unwelcome guests had begun to invade our kitchen. I had searched on Amazon for pet-safe traps and found these bait stations you were to cut open and leave in areas where ants swarmed. I followed the directions and set out the strange contraptions, assuring the ants it was nothing personal, but still feeling vaguely guilty.
When I went to check the bait stations, I discovered a couple leaking on the floor. They were supposed be pet-safe, for Christ sake! What if my dog had gotten into it? I found Kayleigh curled up in her bed in front of the fireplace, peering benignly up at me. I disposed of the faulty devices, cleaned up the puddles, relocated the remaining bait stations against the wall behind a wine rack that Kayleigh couldn’t access, and headed out to my Hatha yoga class. But despite the normally soothing, closed-eyed, contemplative practice, my mind was preoccupied with the past possibility that Kayleigh had ingested the detergent which was already wreaking havoc with her fragile constitution. I rushed home, near tears, scooped up my little dog–still fine, thank God!–and held her close. All too aware that my very existence appeared to hinge on her welfare, even as I continued to allow the ants to guzzle away at the nectar of their demise.
“Where were you then?” I asked.
“We’ve talked about this.”
Ad nauseam, really. Even though I had pushed him away again in my secret fear, despite my best intentions, my efforts to prove myself a guilty, needy, punishing and punished body still had no real effects. So I wasn’t ready to give up my special relationships, I’d get there. I wasn’t being asked to let the ants take over my kitchen, either. Just to look at the real (and only) cause of the spilled guilt it stirred up with him. And remember anew I didn’t really want it anymore, because it hurt.
“I guess I just need to consciously spend more quality time with you, even when it creeps me out, just like you told me in that dream a few months ago. Maybe it’s time to just suck it up and start doing what you say all the time.”
“Imagine that.”
We sat for a while in actual silence, I swear to God, and lived to tell about it!
“Reminds me of that old nursery school song,” I said, after a while.
He cocked his head, adjusted his glasses.
“The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah,” I sang. I could still belt out a tune, when I put my mind to it.
He was tapping his foot by the time I finished the first verse.
“It goes on,” I said. “And on. Marching ants, multiplying. Going. Down. But you get the drift.”
He nodded.
“Story of my freaking life,” I said, pouring us both heaping cups of Tension Tamer tea.
We threw back our heads, and laughed.
“I suppose a person could get used to you, after all.” I raised my cup in a little toast.
“I highly doubt that.”
Have I mentioned he really is a lot funnier than anyone gives him credit for?
“Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition. He lives with you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.” (A Course in Miracles, Chapter 13, VII. paragraph 5, lines 7-9)
Susan Dugan’s books – Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness – are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches Tuesday nights at RMMC.