The Memory of God Comes to the Quiet Mind (T-23.I.1)
When I was in my mid-20s, I started having panic attacks. I was in my first year of a PhD program and my research was not going well. The expression, “Publish or perish,” is not an exaggeration, and even scientists in training need research results. I felt enormous stress and pressure and it manifested as episodes of suddenly being unable to breathe and feeling like I was going to die. Panic attacks feel almost entirely physical but wearing a portable heart monitor for 24 hours showed that there was no physical cause. This was a revelation all on its own for me at the time, the idea that stress could cause such powerful physical symptoms. After I told my dear friend, Adee, about the panic attacks, she bought me a book to help. It was called The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, which is still an excellent book, having been revised and updated a number of times. Clearly the need for relaxation and stress reduction is very much alive a quarter of a century after Adee gave me my copy. The book, written by psychotherapists Martha Davis, Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman, and Matthew McKay, contained a number of breathing and meditation techniques that even in the early 90s were backed by research showing them to be helpful. One of the techniques in the book was a simple breath meditation. This was my first introduction to meditation. As it turned out, I had instant success with it, and the experience frightened me almost as much as the panic attacks!
I remember very clearly the moment when the breath meditation worked. It must have been the first or second time I tried the relaxation exercise. I sat quietly as instructed by the book and focused on my breath. Within moments, my thoughts stopped altogether. There was complete stillness in my mind that seemed to stretch on for a long time, although in reality, I think it was only for a few heartbeats. The first surprise at the experience gave way to a sense of deafening silence. It occurred to me that my thoughts might not start again, which is what scared the pants off me. Of course, this was itself a thought. Also, since I was observing the stillness, “I” evidently had not left my mental world. But what had briefly stopped was the “chatter” of my thoughts, the “to dos” and “what ifs” and “she said/he said,” etc. A few years later, I would learn during my yoga classes at YogaZone in New York that it’s often a hard-won achievement in meditation to experience some stillness. But at the time of trying out this simple breath meditation, I had no context in which to understand the experience of stillness. When I tried meditating again, I had many experiences of not achieving stillness, which is the experience the majority of people have. The practice of focusing on the breath and returning to it when something distracts the mind helps to train the mind. This by itself brings the benefit of relaxation. With experience, moments of stillness can occur and even be sustained.
In the past week, I reread the line that is the title of today’s post, “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind,” (T-23.I.1) and it reminded me of that first meditation experience all those years ago. From the standpoint of A Course in Miracles, it is always fear that interferes with the memory of God. The Course is a mind training program designed to help its students remember all and only Love, which is both what God is and what we all are as One with God. In the Introduction it says,
The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing has no opposite.
Towards the end of the first chapter (T-1.VI.5), the Course goes on to say,
Perfect love casts out fear.
If fear exists,
Then there is not perfect love.
It then states an implication of love being all-encompassing:
Only perfect love exists.
If there is fear,
It produces a state that does not exist.
Together, these words capture in a nutshell both the problem (the experience of fear) and the solution (the reality that only love exists). If we could fully accept this, we would have perfect peace. Most of us, myself included, have lingering mixed feelings about accepting reality, and so the experience of being a body in the world continues.
A Course in Miracles places an enormous emphasis on the life of the mind. It does so because the ego thought system does not want us to cozy up to our minds. The Course explains,
…the ego believes that mind is dangerous. (T-8.IX.6)
Instead, the ego wants us to focus on its home, the body, and on other bodies, which we believe house others who are separate from us. Our lives are busy, and many forces in the world contrive to keep us active and occupied. Even if we don’t particularly fear the mind, we can easily remain very distracted from our minds for an entire lifetime. This, in turn, protects the ego and perpetuates its existence. It interferes with understanding that there is another way to look at anything. Because our investment in the ego is largely unconscious and self-perpetuating, it takes effort as well as time to train the mind to a different way of working.
As valuable a mind training exercise as meditation is, it is not for everyone. Like so many things, there isn’t a “one size fits all” spiritual path or spiritual practice. For any number of people, focusing on the breath or trying to still one’s mind can be aversive. As desirable as the memory of God may be, other memories can come to the quiet mind as well, memories of bad things that happened to the person or actions that the person themselves took. The physical body can also “speak up” in the quiet and remind the person of pain and discomfort. With the support of a teacher and community, meditation can be part of working through these memories, feelings, and sensations. Alternatively, meditation may create too much distress to be a viable pathway to healing fear, emotional and physical pain, anger, guilt, and shame. As a psychotherapist, I am aware that meditation can have unwanted effects. When teaching mindfulness to my therapy clients, I start by explaining the two general types of mindfulness techniques, meditation and mindful awareness. I then explore each person’s experience and orientation towards these two broad types. People often have a preference, and for those who find meditation to be uncomfortable or even painful, I suggest focusing on mindful awareness instead.
There are literally hundreds of mindful awareness practices. My all-time favorite is noticing judgment (see the post, “Judging You, Judging Me is Not the Best We Can Do”, published July 28th, 2020). I believe that the potential for reducing suffering that arises out of letting go of judgment cannot be overstated. Another powerful mindfulness practice is simply noticing the “I” that is observing. Doing so can support becoming less identified with memories and feelings in general, together with the recognition that we are not our thoughts or even our memories. This practice helps us experience the observer in each of our minds that is separate from anything that is happening (and, by implication, that is separate from anything that has ever happened to us). Still another powerful mindful awareness practice is being in the present moment. During work or study, this is known as “flow,” the experience of full concentration and engagement, whether it is with another person, a task, or a subject of study. In day-to-day life, it is the practice of bringing all of oneself to the moment, for example when eating a meal or walking outside.
A lot has changed for me since I was in my 20s. The mental chatter that used to be normal is now infrequent. My mind rarely scares me and it’s much easier to find stillness. Through the teachings and practice of A Course in Miracles, I now know that in my mind is where I find peace and immense wisdom. My relationship to time, of all things, is greatly changing, along with my relationship to productivity. There is much less striving in my life and much more gentleness. Of an evening, especially at sunset, I often find myself simply looking out my back window for a while at my neighborhood, the hills in the distance, and the sky. This brings me enormous contentment. I expect that the complete memory of God is a much more all-encompassing experience than this, but in that quiet time at the end of the day, I can begin to imagine that I will eventually fully welcome it.
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.