Not One Spot of Darkness

“Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone.” (acim Text Chapter 31, paragraph 12, line 5)

I knelt on the carpet in our upstairs hallway in the semi darkness, holding the little infrared flashlight I’d scored on Amazon along with the expensive enzymatic spray carpet cleaner guaranteed to remove all remnants of odor from pet urine stains. My little dog Morgan had been expressing his disapproval of the routine-and-boundary bashing events of the last few months via his bladder. His acting out had become a habit that all the dog behavior websites I consulted advised could only be broken by first eliminating the telltale scent that kept him obsessively coming back for more.

Although I had cleaned up after him again and again, the infrared light revealed the eerie, lily pad-like, otherwise invisible evidence left by his passive-aggressive pleasures scattered throughout the hallway. One by one, I began hunting them down with the flashlight, saturating them with the spray, blotting with paper towels, and rubbing until the color vanished, a sense of deep satisfaction over the illusion of taking control of something in my life washing over me.

Until, eight hours later, after settling Morgan into his crate in my bedroom, before turning in for the night myself, I returned to the crime scene, trusty flashlight in hand, to survey the results of my purification efforts. Only to discover that the ghoulish spots had returned in full glory as the carpet dried.

Really bad words emanated from the mouth of the woman I think I am. “Nothing ever changes in this hell hole,” I thought, face contorted into a reasonable facsimile of the figure in Munch’s iconic painting “The Scream.” Suddenly somehow convinced my very survival depended on eliminating this guilty residue of his, clearly proof as it must be of my failures as a dog parent.

“There has to be a better way!” I shouted, silently, and found myself instantly transported to my imaginary inner professor’s office in that academy far beyond time and space, still gripping the spray bottle, seated once more at his expansive, oak desk.

Behind him the light on the leafy trees outside the open beveled windows danced. Unlike in Denver, there was no wildfire smoke here above the seeming battleground of this troubling world, just glinting glimpses of a bright, blue sky, a motivating whiff of fall and healing, back-to-school dreams drifting in on the breeze.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked, looking straight into my eyes and smiling that gently amused smile of his.

I drew a deep breath, slowly exhaled with a profound sense of relief, all at once aware that I had not allowed myself to breathe like this all summer. Although I had consciously tried to connect with the power of the unwavering peace and innocence he symbolized again and again as I fielded the tumultuous events that seemed to continually threaten me at warp speed, I had been so busy attending to all that demanded my attention that I could barely process the many right-minded moments my forgiveness practice yielded.

I tried to explain the canine situation that preceded my arrival but it began to sound increasingly, well—insane! I started to tear up as my thoughts wandered to the issues that had caused the dog to go ballistic in the first place and still seemed so unresolved, flooding my head again with dizzying results.

I brought him up to speed on my husband’s cancer diagnosis June 1^st that appeared to have propelled us into ever deepening chaos, followed by my elderly father’s sudden death after recovering from breaking first one and eventually his other hip (an event I had no time to grieve). The CT scans and many MRIs to determine the prognosis for my husband’s illness, his long and complicated initial surgery and the complications that followed. The shifting diagnoses and treatment recommendations recently followed by a second, less difficult surgery. The stress of trying to weigh the options of aggressive chemo and radiation treatments to stave off the possibility of recurrence versus monitoring his status through frequent testing, and the implications of his health for our financial future.

Wedged two-thirds of the way through the continuing ordeal came our daughter’s long-awaited, heart-warming wedding, the culmination of the engagement that occurred just prior to New Year’s 2019. Before, well, you know, world-wide pandemic, the beginnings of racial reckoning, social unrest, insurrection, the continuing destruction wrought by climate change. And so on.

The wedding ceremony in early August had taken place at a fairy-tale-like Vrbo built decades earlier to resemble a Tuscan Villa in the mountains near Aspen, Colorado, cloaked in the smoke of out-of-state wildfires. It was followed a week later by a party at our home for out-of-town guests under scorching, hazy skies and a reception we hosted in downtown Denver the following evening.

It had been so wonderful to see friends I had known for decades and hadn’t seen in years as well as local friends, some of whom I hadn’t connected with in person since before the pandemic. Even as I fretted over my inability to spend quality time with each of them, distracted by attending to all the details necessary to pulling off the events, while crossing my fingers that none of the members of the COVID-vaccinated crowd would experience breakthrough infections. Our daughter and now son-in-law’s sweet dog Breckenridge had stayed with us throughout the festivities, the last straw for poor Morgan as witnessed by the damage to our carpet I seemed hell-bent on eliminating.

My loving inner professor reached across the desk and handed me a box of tissues.

I explained how, during my husband’s two-week hospital stay following the initial surgery, the neediness of my personal self receded. I was present with him without concern about how his condition affected or might affect me. I would get him up to walk every day even though he hated it without any sense of conflict, confident that whatever he was ultimately choosing to learn in his script was OK. I could see that he was struggling to make life in a body work just as I did, and felt no investment in the outcome of his recovery in form. Most of the time, I was able to refrain from taking his reactions personally, and felt a palpable sense of mercy and support from within. The way I did right now, actually.

I found myself tearing up again, this time with recalled gratitude for the way the Course’s healed Answer of true forgiveness had been there for me, an unexpected gift of years of daily practice.

But then, toward the end of my husband’s hospital stay, I felt that all too familiar sense of unfair treatment creeping in as many of his tumultuous emotions seemed unjustly leveled at me. I’d felt torn between a renewed, righteous sense of identification with my personal self and the healing power of my right mind ever since, often completely forgetting I had a choice about how to perceive everything in my forgiveness classroom, often completely forgetting my commitment to using my curriculum to heal my mind, rather than rooting me more deeply in the dream of separation.

My investment in purifying the carpet was merely the latest example of a life-long habit of putting Susan’s needs front and center rather than choosing to return to the awareness of our shared need to heal our split mind and find our way home.  And yet I knew that none of Susan’s frightened antics could convince my inner teacher to stop loving me.

“How can I help you today?” the healing mirage of my inner teacher asked again.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

His brows shot up the way they do.

“What does any of this have to do with my choosing peace again, right now?”

“Go on,” he said.

“I mean, despite the fact that the enzyme cleaner didn’t really work (I mean-surprise, surprise!). Despite the fact that I’m still struggling with feeling unfairly treated by special relationships, external events, and situations in my so-called life that seem completely beyond my control. The only truth still is that I could choose peace instead of this right here, right now, with you and …”

“And?” he repeated, as I paused, nestling back into that all-encompassing stillness, safety, and innocence not of this world.

“And on some level, I already must have, chosen peace I mean. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

He nodded, smiled. “Good to have you back in school.”

“Not that I ever really left,” I said.

We sat together a while as I continued to inhale the freedom of sharing his healed awareness. Until I remembered the email I received that morning, a photo of me from the wedding reception, that horrible picture that had been added without my permission to the virtual wedding album.

He started to laugh, apparently reading my mind again.

“Watch it Mister, I said,” grabbing the enzymatic cleaner and aiming it at him. “Remember I’m armed and dangerous.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

And despite Susan’s outraged protests, I had to laugh, too.

“Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. 2 In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, “My brother, choose again.” 3 He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. 4 He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. 5 He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. 6 His Holiness is yours because He is the only power that is real in you. 7 His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His only Son.

The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be. 2 Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ’s strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. 3 For what appears to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. 4 The saviors of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him. 5 They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the Will of God. 6 And what they will is only what He wills.” (acim Text 31 VIII., paragraphs 3 and 4)

 

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