This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on June 2, 2017.
“Long time no see with,” my inner professor said, as I slunk into his office and slid into my seat facing his desk.
I really shouldn’t have taught him that line. But he was right, as always. It had been a long time; months in fact. It’s not that I hadn’t wanted to visit; just that I knew from hard-won experience the direction conversations in these ivy-cloaked environs eventually led. And I had other destinations, deep within the dream to conquer or, you know—not.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come to me,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Ah,” he said, nodding.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t get my texts,” I said, studying my thumbs.
He shrugged.
I snuck glances at him but honestly, could hardly look him straight in the eyes this morning given where I found myself once again. Lost deep within this nightmare of well-earned exile from all we are and ever were that feels so heavy sometimes I can barely breathe, let alone remind myself I’m dreaming.
I sighed the sigh for which I remain justly famous in certain circles. “I know you prefer to meet in person for these sorts of chats—I mean; they don’t call them “come to Jesus” for nothing—but honestly, we both know I’d much rather have you come to me,” I said. “A little ‘come to Susan,’ now and then; is that too much to ask?”
“I’m pretty sure we’ve talked about this,” he said.
“Yup. And we both know that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, seeing as there’s no here, here, or there, there, or me here or there, if you know what I’m saying, which I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
His brows shot up the way they do.
“Besides,” I said, “I’ve been crazy busy. Just this morning I had another vocabulary lesson from the new administration to attend to, the precarious nature of addressing climate change to helplessly consider, a personality quiz on what kind of rose drinker I really am to take, a lesson on the hidden cardiovascular dangers of peanut butter, and a chance to uncover the gifts of my enneagram personality type, all before I made it through my morning email and first cup of Joe.”
“Almost sounds like you’re in school,” he said.
He had a point. He always does. “Just with the wrong teacher, you mean,” I said.
He shrugged again, still smiling.
“What I mean to say is—Jesus!—I am neither here nor there, just so freaking tired of this habitual striving to preserve this special self,” I said. “This suffering succotash of Susan I’ve been hoisting around for more years than I care to reveal. Shoulders buckling under the weight of the crucifix I carved and craftily claim instead as my rightful inheritance.”
His eyes widened.
“Even though you’ve told me like a million times in a million different ways to put the damn thing down and get over myself. Since there was no sin of separation in the first place, there really is no need to keep punishing myself like this in a crazed attempt to prevent a God who doesn’t even know about my unconscious fantasy from doing so.”
“I don’t think I used the word ‘damn,’” he said.
“Did I mention I got a rejection email today from a magazine I submitted a short story to? The first piece of fiction I’ve written in like eight years, ever since I swore off the stuff. And found myself right back where I was before I ever started this damn Course. My fragile identity dashed by the phrase ‘your work does not meet our needs at this time.’”
“Do you want me to pretend I’m your therapist again?” he asked.
Behind him, through the beveled windows, the green leafing ash trees swayed in the late spring breeze ahead of a thunderstorm bearing down from the west with a vengeance while an acrobatic squirrel shot from one branch to another as if going for the gold.
“The responses used to come by snail mail,” I said. “Returning to me in plain, self-addressed business envelopes like homing pigeon road kill in flat, white paper coffins.”
“Do you think you’re being a tad dramatic?” he asked.
“As if,” I said. “Did I ever tell you how, even as a little girl, my daughter came to associate the arrival of those envelopes with a particular kind of sadness enveloping her mother?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t want to take her to the playground or library after opening one. She wouldn’t even try to talk me into coloring or dress up or baking cookies. She would turn on the TV to Barney or Thomas the F-ing Tank and sit with me beside her as I wallowed in the just deserts of my supreme unworthiness. Skating her fingers down my face or forearm and humming a lullaby the way I did when she had a bad day or trouble falling asleep.
“You once told me my self-worth comes from God,” I said, after a while.
He nodded.
“Not from the number of tasks I’ve crossed off my to-do list. Not from the progress I’m making (OK, that’s a stretch) with my self-improvement and behavior-modification schemes. Not from the approval I’m receiving or not for my writing, the wildly fluctuating state of my bank account, health, marriage, or government, not even from the presence or absence of my beloved daughter. I cried when you said that, tears of relief I didn’t understand, immediately followed by tears of grief.
Because, here’s the thing—Jesus–yet another reason why it took me such a long time to finally muster the courage to show my sorry face in your office again this morning. If it’s true that my self-worth comes from God–and I’m not saying it is–then I’m kind of in a tough spot here, there; wherever, once again.”
“How do you figure?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want to go anywhere near God–OK? You might as well tell me my self-worth comes from a pit of writhing vipers somewhere over the freaking rainbow as far as I’m concerned. Even if I knew where that hell hole was, I would never in a gazillion lifetimes go there. God is not my friend. God is not a good guy. God is the one who takes innocent lives for his own mysterious reasons, decides this is the perfect day for a terrorist attack, mass shooting, worldwide hacking, environmental debacle, major earthquake or tsunami. God decides what he wants to publish and it does not include work by the likes of me.”
I sat biting my lip, deeply regretting having raised my voice, fingering a chunk of amethyst I’d pocketed this morning that’s supposed to calm and balance your chakras because–why the hell not?
“I thought you didn’t believe in him,” he said, after a while.
He had a point, he always does. I had never believed, consciously anyway, in the God I’d been taught as a child, the God who excluded and judged and meted out punishments far worse than the harshest of earthly legal systems. But I was not done yet. “On top of everything else; you have to admit I was the worst parent in the whole freaking world!” I said. “I mean, who cares about the God-damn rejections! I could have taught my daughter that nothing real can be threatened, that our strength lies in what we are, not in what we do or achieve. That happiness comes from us sitting here together loving each other just as we are, however flawed, without needing to change or fix anything. Instead, she taught me that.”
He smiled. “And where do you think she learned it?” he asked.
He had a point, he always does. Turned out everyone, everything was really (still) OK, right here, right now—who knew?!)
“You know,” I said, after I’d wiped my eyes and blown my nose and everything. “I really should think about coming here more often.”
” ‘Teach only love, for that is what you are.’ ⁵This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. ⁶Only by teaching it can you learn it. ⁷“As you teach so will you learn.” ⁸If that is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. ⁹And what you project or extend you believe.
3. The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. ²Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. ³The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. ⁴The perfectly safe are wholly benign. ⁵They bless because they know that they are blessed. ⁶Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. ⁷Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. ⁸No compromise is possible in this. ⁹Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. ¹⁰Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it.”
(ACIM, T-6.III.2:4–3:10 Text Chapter 6 III., paragraph 2, line 4-9; paragraph 3)
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.