By David Cheeseman
My world got turned right side up one day as I returned once again to lesson 1 in A Course in Miracles: Nothing I see in this room means anything.
Immediately it gripped me that this passage in the book was absolutely true. Nothing in the living room meant anything, not the chair, the table, the television, or the books. Nothing I saw from the living room window meant anything. The very concept of a living room and by extension, a person who lived in it, was all meaningless.
A sense of absolute freedom began to replace the meaningless with a fearlessness that knew no boundaries. Now, as if this wasn’t remarkable enough, I heard an audible pop from inside my skull.
With hindsight, you would ordinarily be on the phone right away ringing an ambulance for fear of an impending brain hemorrhage. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, a calm mix of detachment and fascination held forth. What followed was a fizzing sensation, then what seemed like the pouring of honey or liquid light down the inside of my spine. After that I basked in a state of bliss, I could never have imagined would be possible.
This boundless, fearless state stayed with me for some weeks with slight variations. Sleeping seemed like a show of some kind. There was an absurdity to associating myself with a body that lays down and closes its eyes. On waking I would have a message in my mind, Who sleeps? Not you. The boundless never sleep, and I knew it was true.
After this transformative experience, I went about my normal workday along with some social engagements, but my world had been shaken to its foundations. To be in the world but not of it became a direct experience. To not be limited by the boundaries of the body seemed obvious to me. Even the idea of space or “where you are” had become increasingly meaningless. The Self I came to understand is the one Self, the Christ Self, that seemed to be everywhere and everything.
At times the boundless peace started to dissipate leaving me feeling marooned.
In retaliation, I would root myself in my stuck place and inwardly cajole.
Like some petulant child, I would cry, Return to me beloved, or else I die on the spot!
Even though this amazing experience faded over time, my world was irrevocably changed. I had recognized the instability of my old-world view, and I understood the stability that comes with truth. I remain forever grateful for what happened that day when my world suddenly turned from upside down, to right side up.
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Let me not look to my own eyes to see today. Let me be willing to exchange my pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God. Christ’s vision is His gift, and He has given it to me. [CE W-59.2:3-5]
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