Relax, don't do it ...
Yet another backseat miracle
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I had another backseat miracle – this time in my own car. Like the miracle I experienced in the backseat of my sister's car nearly a decade ago, it was seeded by an encounter with A Course in Miracles.
Let's begin at the beginning. My spouse, Beth, and I went to Atlanta this past weekend. She was going to poke around the city on Saturday while I went to a workshop with one of my favorite songwriters, Carrie Newcomer. This is a whole story in itself. We spent the morning session in an in-depth discussion of Marge Piercy's poem, "The Seven of Pentacles." The richness of the discussion was surprising given that about 50 people were in the room. The afternoon was spent writing a song with Carrie – again, an amazing feat with so many people contributing ideas.
Later that night, Carrie gave a short concert and opened the mic for anyone who wanted to offer a poem, a song, or a story. This, I suppose, was also a miracle as I got to perform a couple of my original songs in front of not only one of my favorite songwriters, but a warm and welcoming crowd. Carrie seemed impressed and was gracious enough to let me play her amazing Taylor guitar. (How often does one of your musical heroes just hand you their instrument?)
The miracle happened as we were driving back to the retreat center. Earlier that morning, Beth and I had read Lesson 50 in the Workbook of A Course. The slogan for the day was: "The love of God sustains me." The lesson promises that this "is the answer to every problem that confronts you today and tomorrow and throughout time."
That's a pretty big promise, but after my miracle, I believe it's absolutely true. This lesson, for students of A Course, is popular because it spells out how we rely on everything of this world to sustain us: "pills, money, 'protective' clothing, influence, prestige, being liked, knowing the 'right' people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical power."
All these things, A Course says, "are your replacements for God … they are songs of praise to the ego."
Beth and I did the ten-minute exercise where we repeated the slogan silently to ourselves. When we were done, we read a commentary on the lesson that made the point that our ideas of worldly love are nothing compared to God's. Take the best love you can find on earth and multiply it times a million or more and you may start to have an inkling of that sustaining love of God.
I told Beth that, as a couple, I feel that her love sustains me. But whenever there is a disturbance in the force – when we disagree or take issue with one another – I can feel the tenuousness of even the strongest love in my life. God's love, according to A Course, never wavers. It is steady, no matter what circumstance may be happening.
"I don't know what that feels like," I told her. She agreed it was an elusive feeling.
Later that night, there was a three-hour break between the workshop and the concert. We went to dinner with a friend, then, I told Beth I needed to retrieve my guitar from our Airbnb. (I didn't know, then, that Carrie would make her generous offer.) If you know Atlanta at all you know that even going a few miles can take a long time. I knew that it would take us a solid hour to drive back to the apartment and return to the venue.
As we rushed to get back into the car after retrieving my instrument, Beth suggested that I sit in the back seat and rehearse. I pulled out my guitar and played for a little while, then I began to watch the GPS like a hawk. True to form, Atlanta traffic was awful, and the GPS predicted we would be late (not by much, but by enough to make me nervous).
That's when the miracle happened. Earlier in the week, I had listened to a podcast from Michael Singer, the founder of The Temple of the Universe near Gainesville, Fla., and a bestselling author. In this teaching, he talked about relaxing whenever you felt anxious or upset. You're not trying to relax your anxiety – that will never happen. Anxiety is always anxious. What you're relaxing into is your witness consciousness – that higher self that is eternal – that spirit that is having a bodily experience.
Our only task here on earth, Singer says, is to witness what's happening around us – not to judge it or be anxious about it (unless you're being pursued by a tiger, then be anxious all you want). In my Course parlance, Singer's instructions outline the ego (the anxious part) and our true Self (the eternal spirit within), so this made sense to me.
I decided to try and relax. My inner Singer/Course teacher asked me: "What benefit would there be for you to be upset and anxious right now?" My past experiences in Atlanta traffic included using my outside voice to complain about the traffic, yelling at those around me to get a move on and sending my heart rate and blood pressure through the roof. In Singer's language, I would bother myself about the situation – because this is what the ego does, it bothers us about every little thing.
Bothering myself about the traffic and the time would not be helpful to either myself, or Beth. So, I decided to relax, knowing that we would get there when we got there, and everything would work out fine. Instead, I asked Beth about her day, and she excitedly told me about everything she had seen at the High Museum of Art and The Carter Center. It was delightful to hear about her day instead of worrying about the traffic and what time we would arrive.
When we arrived (about 5 minutes late), the concert had not yet begun. That's when Carrie spotted me and asked if I would like to play her guitar. Miracles upon miracles.
Yet another miracle happened as we were driving home on Sunday. I played the Singer podcast for Beth, and as Singer spoke about relaxing and how we endlessly bother ourselves, it finally dawned on me what being sustained by the Love of God feels like. Singer says that when we can truly relax into that eternal part of ourselves, we free up all the energy we've been using to bother ourselves. This is the "shakti" energy – that energy of Love and life – that wants to flow freely through us.
It clicked into place for me – this energy is the sustaining love of God that we block whenever we bother ourselves and get stuck in ego. When I relaxed, I finally let that energy flow, and I felt that sustaining Love of God. It feels like my backseat miracle. It feels like being held safe, secure, and unbothered by circumstances. It feels like listening to your favorite voice in the whole world tell you about their day and all the things they experienced that made their heart swell with that sustaining love. It feels like arriving somewhere and another person hands you an instrument that is dear to them and gives you space to sing your song. It feels like people coming up afterward and asking where they can hear more of your music.
It doesn't feel this way because you met the "right" people. It didn't feel like being liked or hoping to have some manner of influence or prestige, or any of the ego's other fleeting feelings. It felt like a warm cocoon – a sustaining embrace. It felt like a miracle. My ego, of course, wants this moment to lead to something more. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. What happens after isn't even the point. It's what happened in that moment: There was unity. There was love. There was joy. There was peace.
In reality, that's really all there is, and we miss it so often because we're bothering ourselves about what this moment could be, or what we demand it should be. The miracle, for me, was simply the moment itself. When I relaxed, I found the sustaining Love of God waiting for me. If I can keep relaxing, allowing the moment to be what it will be without me bothering myself about it, that anxious energy will miraculously transform into that sustaining, loving energy that wants to flow through us all in every moment. I believe it's true that this is the answer to every problem that confronts us today and tomorrow and throughout time.
Put it into practice: I invite you to start a practice of relaxation whenever you find your ego bothering you about something. Singer advises starting with easy stuff: When you approach a doorway, relax. When you get into your car, or out of your car, relax. Breathe deeply and put aside the nattering voice in your head that keeps bothering you about how things should be, or how you hope they'll be, or how upset something makes you. Relaxing in a low-stakes situation prepares you to rely on this tool when circumstances are more challenging.
When you feel that release of energy (because you're not using it to bother yourself anymore), you'll know what it feels like to be sustained by the Love of God. This feeling, ironically, is exactly what changes all the things that bother us in the outside world. When we relax inside, no matter what, we are moved to act in loving, constructive, and compassionate ways that are far more effective than knee-jerk reactions fueled by fear and anxiety. This is, indeed, the answer to every problem we all confront today, tomorrow and throughout time.
Music for the Journey:
“Take More Time, Cover Less Ground” - Carrie Newcomer
I highly recommend Carrie Newcomer’s Substack “A Gathering of Spirits”
Upcoming Speaking Gigs:
April 7, 2024: Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church - Newberry, SC
June 23, 2024: The Unitarian Church in Charleston, SC
Past Guest Speaking Gigs:
This is the sermon I delivered at the Unitarian Church in Charleston, S.C., on January 28, 2024. (Stick around at the end to hear my original song, “I Believe.”)
Looking for a guest speaker at your spiritual community? Contact me!
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution, or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.