Talking with Jeff Seibert, Spring 2020

Jeffrey Seibert worked closely with Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles for decades. Jeff moved with the Foundation to its new location in Henderson, Nevada and has resumed teaching seminars as well as weekly classes there, also available through the Foundation’s streaming option found at https://members.facim.org/. In these classes, Jeff continues to present Ken’s mind-healing message of A Course in Miracles forgiveness through the lens of his own forgiveness classrooms.

I talked with Jeff a few weeks ago about recent forgiveness classrooms in my personal life and the collective classroom of the worsening coronavirus. The week after this interview the COVID 19 situation worsened and U.S. cities and states began announcing closures of schools, businesses, restaurants, etc.; advocating social distancing and enacting stay-at-home orders for most of us for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless our prior conversation related to the fear we’re all experiencing and the Course’s gentle practice and process of forgiveness remains relevant.

While this situation may seem so much “bigger” (in some ways) than the grievances and sense of lack and loss we experience in relation to our families and work places, A Course in Miracles recognizes no “hierarchy of illusions.” Continually questioning and raising the darkness of our mistaken projections of the secret belief in separation that appear as incoming attacks on “me” (over which I have no control) to the light of our right-minded inner teacher is the only answer to all perceived problems. He (symbolized by Jesus/Holy Spirit) holds the memory of our true, innocent, loving wholeness as one Child of God who never really left his source. Continuing to look at our fearful reactions to what appears to be happening in our dream with Jesus/Holy Spirit and choosing his healed perception remains the process and the practice that gradually dissolves mistaken guilt and returns us to the awareness that we are still (all of us!) One loving mind, ever safe and supported, healed and whole. 

My year got off to a challenging start. My daughter had been home for Christmas and her boyfriend came after Christmas and they got engaged while here, which was a nice optimistic end the year. They left on January 2^nd and on January 8^th I had MOHS skin surgery to remove a Basel cell cancer on my forehead/scalp, where I part my hair. It turned out to be a much bigger deal than expected and left a quarter-sized crater too big for stitches that required a pigskin graft, dressing and bandaging for eight weeks, and covering my hair. After a few days I calmed down and said “OK, this is my classroom right now,” tried to look at it with Jesus, and mostly was able to.

At the time my blood pressure was also high but I figured that was because of the anxiety of surgery and the unexpected outcome. But less than a week later I hit my leg below the knee on a glass coffee table and the swelling was like nothing I’d ever experienced. The swelling and internal bleeding down my leg was alarming, got worse over the next few days, and continued for weeks. I was worried about the possibility of clots because I have cardiovascular issues and my blood pressure had been really high in Urgent Care.

So, I wanted to talk about how much trouble I had becoming right-minded after that second incident. I was so preoccupied with my body and my blood pressure, the ego’s voice of doom and gloom. The incessant thought of “why is this happening to me?” seemed so overwhelming. And then, our little dog died in the wee hours one morning from multiple seizures. It was devastating. She’d been having seizures for almost two years and was on two medications but had been doing OK so it was pretty traumatic. She was 10 but she’s a little dog so and should have lived longer.

Ten years is a long time to have her as part of your family.

Yes, and she was very sick as a puppy with giardia. She was so tiny when we got her—under two pounds. That first year I was at the vet and caring for her constantly. I had a very deep bond with her and so did my husband and daughter. She was very sweet and entertaining and at eight pounds, quite portable–we took her everywhere. Because I work at home, all of my routines revolved around her.

The Course tells us we are not really bodies, but one confused mind. It’s just still so hard, even after all this practice. to believe I’m not a body. I know we’re not really expected to believe that until we’re at the top of the ladder. I feel like I can manage to entertain the possibility when dealing with one crisis but with multiple ones like this, it’s hard to find my right mind. Could you share your thoughts on how to cope when we’re feeling bombarded like this with events in the dream?

First of all, you do the best that you can. It is a lot. I do find it helpful when a lot seems to be happening to remember that the ego always wants us to look at it as punishment.

Yes, that still comes up for me; that somehow, it’s what I have coming.

Yeah. But that’s just the ego trying to pile on. Another more helpful way to think about it is that there’s always the two reasons for whatever we’re experiencing. The truth is all the pain and the anxiety seem to be coming from the situations but it really is what’s buried in our minds that we’re not in touch with. But when these things happen you can think of it as an opportunity to just uncover that stuff that’s buried. So, it certainly doesn’t have to be seen as a failure but just as an intense classroom. And so, you get caught for a while—not surprising. But at some point, you can remember the real lesson that none of it is really what it seems to be.

It sounds like in the midst of all of it, you were at least aware that there was an alternative. So, you weren’t accessing as much as a part of yourself judges you should have, but the fact is you nevertheless were.

By just being aware that seeing it differently with Jesus was there even if you can’t choose to experience it right now.

Right. Kenneth said over and over again that this whole practice of the Course is a process of going back and forth between the ego and the Holy Spirit, between the wrong and right mind, until we get to the top of the ladder and then none of it really affects us and we no longer identify with the body. But that’s when we’ve let go of all of the guilt and we don’t need the defense that the body is. But if you just do the best that you can while all of it is happening, at some point, you are able to step back and be at peace with it. And that’s a powerful lesson. Now the way the ego tries to get you is to judge you for not making the shift sooner, but that’s just silly.

Right. And also, the ego is such a fear generator.  I become so fixated on trying to control and defend my body or then, in the case of my dog, to somehow fill the loss. I guess it’s that extreme vulnerability that we experience when we’re connecting to the ego as a body. It’s hard for me to accept when those sorts of things seem to be happening and I’ve chosen the ego that I’m not vulnerable. Because I’m still afraid of death and deterioration and destruction.

Yes. And we certainly experience the pain and the anxiety in our bodies and it makes it in those moments very, very real. But there is this other part of your mind that knows something else and it’s more accessible than it used to be.

That’s true. I’ve been thinking a lot about safety. The two ways to look at safety and strength and resilience. There just really isn’t any safety in this world. You’d have to be in deep denial right now to think that there is. I was listening to Ken’s workshop The Quiet Center, where he compares the quiet center of the mind the Course talks about to the center of a wheel. If we’re willing to return to center where Jesus is, then we don’t have to worry about what the spokes are doing. It’s all those worries, the belief that I can somehow protect myself and my loved ones by taking enough precautions in the world, managing the spokes, that drives us mad.

Yeah, because the spokes are always trying to take you away from the center. They go out in all different directions trying to pull you away.

I guess you just kind of keep working with that. When I’m able to make that shift finally or it just seems to finally happen, then there’s respite, a sense of protection and peace not of this world. But the process just sucks. The problems on the periphery do seem so alluring, intoxicating in some ways. They must be because I feel better in the center but I keep going out on the spokes. I can’t trust the center will hold.

But again, whatever it is that’s happened—and it can be intense when you’re in the middle of it—you’re having the opportunity also to use it for a different purpose. As soon as you have gotten caught and it has been intense, when you do remember, there’s more healing in all of that. You don’t want to underestimate what you’re having the opportunity to learn through that process. The ego’s going to want to interpret it as failure but in each moment when you are able to step outside of it and realize where the safety really lies, you’re healing. That’s going farther. And you wouldn’t have made that additional progress without these things having come up.

The guilt is all buried and it’s coming up when you have these kinds of experiences when the ego seems to be in charge. And one way is to say that you’re failing but that’s just the ego interpreting the ego. The other is to realize it is pretty intense and at some point, you’re having an opportunity to take the lesson a little deeper. And that’s where the trust comes in that there is that other answer there within you and you are able to access it. I mean, compare this again to how things would have been a number of years ago and I’m sure you’ll see that your reactions—as intense as they may seem—are different. Ken has always said that when we’re choosing the ego, the ego is 100 percent. But I think you still had an awareness that’s deeper than it would have been even a few years ago.

Yes. There are certainly things that I would have thought I could never have peace with. And that sort of leads into the discussion of looking at the coronavirus and our illusions of safety in the world and being able to understand, manage, or vanquish risk. I kind of stayed pretty balanced in my response to what was happening—maybe I was in denial—and able to refrain from getting swept into the mounting hysteria until last week, when it became nonstop, 24/7 coronavirus dystopian disaster news. I mean, not that we should be denying it but.

It’s like an obsession.

Yes. I was trying to take a news break but that’s very hard to do when you receive constant email notifications of cancellations and alerts. My husband is also very fixated on it and likes to watch TV news, so it’s hard to distance myself from it completely.

We just heard that Nevada has its first case.

Yes. Colorado now has cases, too—you can’t run you can’t hide. My daughter and her boyfriend work in Seattle and they came out last weekend to look at wedding venues and I think they were also wanting to comfort us about the dog. Most of the time they were out looking at wedding venues but I cooked dinner for them at our house. When they went back there was news that an employee that worked in their building had come down with coronavirus. It’s a huge building and they had no direct contact with this person but it starts to feel too close. And then I started freaking out wondering if they could already have it. Are they safe? Are we safe? Should I disinfect the house and how do you even do that? And then I started obsessing that I was in a high-risk group. So, you used the word obsession and that’s the way my sanitizing efforts feel. Could you just comment on this from the Course’s perspective? You said you addressed it in one of your weekly classes.

We were looking at the passage in the text on the mastery of fear and discussing how any attempt to master fear just reinforces the belief that there really is something there that’s fearful. So, we were talking about where the fear is really coming from, the conflict that we all carry around unconsciously in our minds that we really attacked God and now He’s trying to destroy us.

So, the coronavirus becomes a wonderful symbol of that internal conflict that we’re not in touch with. You can’t deny the fear that we’re experiencing but that then becomes the classroom. The mistake would be to say, “well, I shouldn’t be fearful.” We are fearful. We feel threatened. We still are identified with the body. But it’s very helpful nevertheless to just keep reminding ourselves what the fear is really about. And that’s why the answer then in that passage is (as Jesus says) “mastery through Love.” It’s not mastery in the sense of overcoming anything it’s just a joining with that part of our mind that Jesus symbolizes as the memory of Oneness which says that no matter what’s happening here, we really are OK, there can’t be any conflict in Oneness.

And so you don’t want to use it to shout down what it is you still believe and are still experiencing but it is helpful to remember that there is this gentle, loving presence that is still there, that’s willing to help us see it all differently because we start by seeing ourselves differently. Because that’s the crux of the problem that we keep coming back to — this belief that somehow, we are guilty, we are sinful and that the attack we think we made on God we think we now deserve in return. We just have put it outside in the world as the coronavirus so that we don’t see the real problem in the mind.

So of course, there’s nothing we can do as a body once we have put it outside ourselves, we have no control. That sense of terror comes up because as a body I’m so very vulnerable. But if we’re willing to accept to some degree that that’s just the mirror of what’s going on in my mind, we can remember we really do have a choice about that.

My reaction to what’s happening outside isn’t something that I just have to accept as inevitable, I have my teacher with me within my mind saying “no you don’t. Don’t forget I’m here in the midst of all this.” We’ve agreed on some level that this pandemic is what we’re going to play on the screen that is the world now and the ego’s purpose for it obviously is to keep the cause of the fear outside ourselves so we never recognize where the real problem is in the mind. But it’s a wonderful opportunity to keep reminding ourselves about what the source of the fear really is and that’s something we really do have a choice about. We can continue to accept the ego’s perception of ourselves as sinful, guilty and deserving of punishment, or we can remember that there is another gentle, nonjudgmental Presence within that sees us very differently. But you’re right that we are being bombarded with news on the coronavirus and there’s also a lot of finger pointing, trying to blame someone for why the situation seems so out of control.

As well as the frantic trying to protect yourself based on constantly changing information and developments. All the selling out of hand sanitizers and toilet paper, all the hoarding of supplies. I notice myself ordering in all these Chinese medicines that I already take for my sinuses and other conditions but additional ones to protect us in case I can’t get them when I need them.

This is what’s so clear in that passage I mentioned that we were looking at in our class and Ken was commenting on. Everything we then do out of fear to try to manage the fear, to master the fear, is only reinforcing it. That’s not saying anything about behavior. Of course, we should do whatever is reasonable, the things that might protect the body that we’re being advised to do, but there are two ways to do it. One is out of fear and a sense of danger and threat and another is saying, “OK, this is my classroom. This is what I’ve chosen to review right now. And I can use it to reinforce the ego or I can use it to remember where the fear really is coming from and that the only way to really undo the fear is to be open to the love that’s there, to whatever degree I’m willing to let it in.”

And what is that section in the Text you’ve been referring to?

In Ken’s commentary it’s on page 67 in Journey Through the Text, Volume I. And in the Course’s text, it’s Chapter 2, Section VII., paragraph 4.

And that section and what you’ve been saying about fear is so relevant to the coronavirus. I really do see how trying to manage and control the fear in myself just makes it worse. I got that text from my daughter about an employee in the building she works in testing positive just minutes before I was about to begin teaching my Tuesday night A Course in Miracles class here in Denver. I went from feeling so grounded and inspired by the material I planned to discuss to going right back into the turmoil of the fearful ego thought system. And then subsequently trying to micromanage our response to the changing and morphing threat level as the situation all around became more pervasive. There’s this frenetic quality to my actions and that anxiety is a pretty good barometer of which teacher I’ve chosen and how deep I’ve rooted myself in the dream. At least a part of me knows that I can’t trust that. That way lies madness.

Exactly. But that’s the classroom then. The going back and forth is the process that Ken talks about. And the classroom is when I’m willing to remember that there is this different interpretation available. And so, we can learn to just accept that the going back and forth is the process. The ego will want to judge us for that but that’s a subtle trap to keep us caught in the ego. I’m not saying it’s easy but it is something we can recognize more and more. So often when we think we’re staying in our right mind it’s just because nothing challenging is coming up.

That’s so true. I haven’t had that experience of nothing coming up for a while but you’re absolutely right. It’s the things that seem to happen to us that challenge us to confront which teacher we’ve chosen. And then when we try to somehow resolve them on our own, we finally remember that isn’t going to work out this time either and are willing to say “bring on that better way of yours, Jesus.” But it does help, even when I’m still trying to solve it on my own, to remind myself that something else is going on, I’ve completely chosen my ego right now but I’ll get back on track at some point. That other choice will wait for me.

Yeah. That’s the miracle, that’s getting you back to your mind. That’s at least getting a little distance from your ego. It’s no longer 100 percent of who you think you are.

When we exchanged emails to set this up you shared with me some of your comforting experiences you had, while attending a funeral back in California a few weeks ago, of a close friend of your partner Chris who died earlier in 2018 before you relocated to Henderson. Since you had shared some of your challenges about that loss in a previous interview last year, could you talk about that recent experience, especially since we were talking about the desolation of grief earlier. My experience of losing my dog is very recent but in my experience with past grief I do remember it taking a long time and a lot of forgiveness to come to a place where memories of the loved one become happy instead of painful.

Yeah. What I’m experiencing more and more, and maybe I talked about this in our previous interview, is that Chris’s death has been giving me an opportunity to recognize that we’re minds and not bodies and the motivation for doing that has been greater because if we’re bodies, we’re separate, but if we’re minds, we’re not. You say that intellectually but I think over time that has become more of my experience, more of the time.

I think in my email I was saying that at the funeral, I really felt the presence of both Chris and our friend Kyriaki. And when I say a sense of their presence, it’s more than a memory, it’s nothing really specific, but a sense of them. The truth is that bodies die but we’re really always together as minds anyway, it’s just that our experience of each other is that the relationship is mediated through the body and that’s who we think that we are. But then we begin to realize—and that’s one of the things that death can help us to realize more—that the relationship really is in the mind, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s human or canine. They’re not really gone. As Jesus puts it, “communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication” (T-15.XI.7:2).

Often, it’s put in terms of “well I still have the memories,” but I think it goes much deeper than that, because memories seem to keep us in the past and this is an experience that is in the present. The Course is telling us that minds are joined and we’re always joined at the level of the mind. Even when we’re still “alive” and someone else is still “alive,” seeming to be in bodies, it’s really within the mind that we’re joined. “Minds are joined; bodies are not.” (T-18.VI.3:1). So, when the body is gone, we miss the form, and especially very soon after because everything feels so different, what we’re used to seeing and hearing and doing, and that’s gone. But there is something that is always there, too, that’s not at the level of the body and that’s what we have to be willing to tune into more deeply, to trust that that connection really is still there.

So, I guess what has become more present in thinking about Chris is the awareness that we are still together. And at the funeral I did also have this very strong sense of Kyriaki. She was a very strong woman and I heard stories about her at the service and I thought, “Oh, my God; I knew she could be difficult but she’s just like Chris.” (Laughter)

That difficult, huh? (Laughter)

Very difficult. I didn’t experience her that way nor did Chris, who was so much like her. They had a real bond, and I had this sense that the bond was still there between them and it was like the two of them were just very present in my experience. We were at a funeral where her body was there but she wasn’t in the body, yet she was really there in my mind. But that’s how the ego tries to trick us that we are in the body and then we’re not. But we’ve never been in the body.

Right. And yet it seems such a grim thing and almost incomprehensible when we’re with a person or animal that dies and it feels like one minute they’re there and the next, they’re not. Even if they’re very sick, they still seem “there.”

But it’s possible gradually over time to recognize their presence if you don’t insist that the body is the only way that they can be present – to be open to a different kind of experience. But I think it’s very hard when it’s just happened, when they have just died. I know it was very hard for me, even though I was aware of the possibility of a different experience that didn’t need to include loss.

I already, at times, feel Kayleigh’s presence.

I was visiting a friend who had lost her dog in the past year or so. He was very old and very disabled in his last years but she had a sense that he was still there, maybe just right around the corner and I had that same sense too when I was visiting her. Ultimately, we’re returning to the Oneness where there are no separate individual selves or minds, but recognizing the presence of loved ones who have died is like a step along the way up the ladder, reminding us that this world of bodies isn’t our reality. The mind is really much closer to the truth of who we all are as spirit. Even though there still may be the thought of individuality within the mind. So, in that sense death doesn’t really have to be seen as a loss, and there’s a realization that the love that we shared hasn’t gone anywhere. So, you can be increasingly open to the awareness of Kayleigh’s presence.

Yes. And that makes an opening for the realization that the loved one wasn’t really a substitute for love, you can still love others, love isn’t really limited to those special relationships.

Right. It can be a reminder of that love that we all share and that it’s not special.

I wanted to just ask a couple of question about forgiveness in relationships and this is just something that seems to be a chronic ego issue of mine and I think some people can relate to it maybe more than others as a way in which they project guilt and then feel guilty about it. I have this long-standing pattern about being overly vigilant about people’s feelings so that I’m still often second-guessing myself. For example, I received an email recently from a colleague asking me to review something they’d written. I reviewed it according to my understanding of what they were asking but then I worried when they didn’t respond that I might have offended them. I reread their email and saw that I had done exactly what they’d asked me to but it still kept nagging at me that I hadn’t been kind enough or something. There’s always this feeling that I haven’t given enough or been loving enough, this feeling of guilt. Do you have any comment on that kind of projecting on ourselves?

Well, you know it comes back to the same thing. The fear and the guilt seem to be about this particular interaction, this particular relationship but as you were saying, its projection. So, the answer is always the same, seeing that it’s not really that other person, it’s not really about the situation, it’s just about that feeling of inadequacy in my own mind because I am identifying with this thought system. And so, it’s the same solution whether it’s fear, feelings of inadequacy, fear of having hurt somebody’s feelings, fear of coronavirus. It’s all really coming from that internal conflict where we really do believe we’ve done something awful.

And so, the answer is always the same. You don’t want to spend too much time trying to figure out what’s happening between bodies here – that’s the ego’s diversion to keep us mindless – just recognize where the conflict and guilt is really coming from in the mind and ask for help with that. That’s what make it all so simple. The forms of the problems all look so very different and the feelings seem so very different but the underlying problem that’s behind them all is the belief that somehow I really am unworthy, sinful, and I have this other part of my mind that Jesus represents that says “look at all this with me and you’ll see that it’s not true.”

Yes. And that’s why I’m so grateful for the Course because it really is the answer to every problem. There really is no way out in the dream of the ego’s guilt and fear.

Right. Like you were saying about the frenetic activity, it’s the complicated, frenetic, twisted mind’s attempt to control.

And I kept re-reading the email and going back to it to see if I’d done something wrong and it didn’t make me feel better for long.

No, because that isn’t the problem.

Yes. And I just met with the person and they were actually thankful for what I’d said. So, it was totally ridiculous—why do I do this? But the Course tells us why.

Again, it’s the classroom. It’s like, OK, here’s another place where I’ve gone back to my wrong mind and so it’s not a failure, it’s just another opportunity to learn something rather than reinforce the guilt. But, yeah, our resistance is huge and the simplicity of it is very difficult for twisted minds.

Well, I think this is a good place to conclude. There’s always only one problem and one solution and the answer is right there within us every moment when our fear subsides enough to remember it. Thank you again so much, Jeff, for taking the time to speak with me. I know many Course students will find your insight really helpful as we continue to do our best to live, and more deeply apply and learn, the Course’s forgiveness.

 

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New video – Susan and Bruce Rawles  draw inspiration on dealing with the coronavirus situation from the Course’s perspective from Part II of the workbook forays videos

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