This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on Sep. 8, 2016.
I have stored in my bodily memory an image from early childhood of a perfect autumn Sunday afternoon. Burnished maple leaves still wanton on their branches waving in a spicy breeze, the scent of engorged apples nearly ready to relinquish their final grip. I am six or seven years old. We are visiting parents of my parents’ friends. I careen about the still lush grounds of a modest farmhouse anchoring acres of green, perched on the edge of the mighty, mythic Hudson River forging forth thousands of feet below toward Manhattan.
About to execute another somersault, I catch a glimpse, through the open kitchen door, of a vision so exquisite, I pause, and gasp. A beam of sunlight illuminates the white caps of boiled frosting on a just-baked Devil’s Food cake, perched on a pedestal-stand in the center of a kitchen table. I freeze, immobilized by desire to taste it, yet suddenly and painfully aware that it can’t possibly deliver on its promise. The anticipation of it, the desire, the meaning I have given it, cannot possibly be realized. Not in a single bite. Not in a million.
And so I stand perfectly still, savoring a longing I somehow can’t help but realize can never be filled, has never been filled, will never be filled. Not by the cake on the counter. Not by the church where each Sunday I drag a self, already dense with accumulating sins, for absolution that never comes. Not by my parents sitting inside in the adjoining dining room, drinking yet another cup of coffee; acting like everything is OK. Not by the life I’ve imagined for myself, the trip to the moon I plan to make, the stories I will write, the end to the Cold War I plan to negotiate; the frog I will transform into royalty and protect from all possible harm with a single, sweet kiss.
And still I stand, transfixed, struggling to prolong a lingering hope that I am wrong. Waiting and waiting for some kind of sign I somehow know will never come. I bite down hard on my fist to keep from weeping, only babies do that–my younger brothers, my many little cousins—but I am strong. I seize control of myself, and stuff the unwelcome thought back down into the Pandora’s Box from which it sprang, uninvited, clown-like, before the old woman calls us in to sample her latest confection.
Lately, I have been once more aware of what I have always known, but struggled to deny: that nothing in this world–however promising and tantalizing–will ever satisfy the longing for love I came in with and continue to crave. For decades I did a pretty good job burying that awareness whenever it once more crept, uninvited, into my peripheral vision. But it never worked for long. My life has been a half-hearted effort to give all the world’s offerings one more shot. You know, in case I missed that one remaining treasure that might yet perfectly slip like a missing puzzle piece into the hollow space in my heart.
A Course in Miracles does a really good job explaining why the world we made ultimately fails us, why we need to see that, and why we must ultimately quit trying to drag an all-inclusive, loving God (who doesn’t know about pretend kingdoms) into the mess we think we made. According to the Course’s creation myth, in the beginning, we experienced ourselves seamlessly fused with our creator in a manner that defies our current, seemingly differentiated understanding. Into that state of perfect unity and boundless joy—for reasons that also defy our current comprehension—there crept a “tiny, mad, idea,” that we should somehow separate from our source to experience ourselves individually.
Had we remembered to laugh at the impossibility of fragmenting infinite, indivisible wholeness we would never have experienced ourselves as fugitives from the one love “joined as one” we remain. Instead we took it seriously, and perceived ourselves figuratively cast out of heaven, believing we had forever forsaken our real Self. The one mind then appeared to split over the crushing guilt of that belief into the ego, the part of our mind that believed we pulled off the separation, and the right mind/Holy (Whole) Spirit that remembered to smile. In our fear and guilt and continuing desire to taste what individuality might offer, we followed the ego into an entire projected universe of fragmented forms to hide out in. And to ensure we never got back to the “scene of the crime” in the mind, we figuratively fell asleep, and now find ourselves dreaming a dream of exile that—like our apparent sleeping dreams—seems very real, but in no way affects our waking, united reality.
Yet here we seem to find ourselves, adrift in an illusory world attempting to satisfy our longings by bargaining with other selves to get our physical and emotional needs met, to fill ourselves up with promising substances that never deliver, all the while recognizing, if we are deeply honest, that it does not, has not, and will never work. Even though we study and may intellectually grasp A Course in Miracles’ challenging metaphysics, we continue to want to have our cake and our Course, too. We spin out our days attempting to entice the Holy Spirit into an illusory world to help us cook up a sweeter dream to satisfy our perpetual hunger. Rather than asking for help to heal our minds of the belief in separation that led to dreaming up all these futile substitutes, and prevents us from experiencing true nourishment.
Today, in my classroom, I am that child again, watching my temptation to reach back into the illusion to satisfy my desire for assurance that I am still loved and loving, my craving to have my cake and my Course, too. Even though I know, with growing, welcome clarity, as I again reach for the memory of my right mind; that the cake can never deliver on its promise. The anticipation of it, the desire, the meaning I have given it, cannot possibly be realized. Not in a single bite. Not in a million. And in that recognition, outside the circular bondage of time in which innocence for one and all prevails, I am once more cured of all craving, completely completed, along with you. A little less invested in the allure of the world’s confections; a little closer to opening my eyes on all I ever wanted, and never really threw away.
“Today we pass illusions by. And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams, when Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear.” (From A Course in Miracles workbook lesson 272, paragraph 2)
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 online via Zoom on Tuesday nights.