Profoundly Question

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Profoundly Question

by Rev. Tony Ponticello

On Sunday July 20, 2003, Rev. Tony Ponticello addressed the congregation at the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, California. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of that lecture.

I was talking to a gentleman in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve talked to him a couple of times. This is a man who is thinking about starting an A Course In Miracles center in Phoenix. Whenever people like this call, it’s always interesting for me to have these conversations and get their feedback. He’s been involved with a Unity Church in Phoenix which he has watched go from a small church of about twenty or thirty people to a huge church now with hundreds of people each Sunday. His idea is that an A Course In Miracles church could do this as well and there should be A Course In Miracles churches that have hundreds of people in the congregation. So, we’re talking and chatting and soon he asks “How big is your congregation? You’ve been there for almost twenty years.” I said “Well, it’s not hundreds. We have twenty, thirty people that come on Sunday, they are a great group of people.”

He was really disappointed to hear this. This confused him. He didn’t get it and we then had a conversation about numbers of people and what this implies. He asked, “What’s going on? How come there’s not more people?” Now our conversation focused on, what is the Community Miracles Center doing “wrong” since there’s not more people? That’s not one of my favorite conversations to have! Then it moved on to what’s wrong with A Course In Miracles that it doesn’t draw more people? You see, the truth is I don’t know any dedicated A Course In Miracles organization, or church, that has hundreds of people in the congregation. I know a few Course churches and centers. There in: Las Vegas, Nevada -- Kiel, Wisconsin -- Portland, Oregon -- Sedona, Arizona. None of them have hundreds of people in attendence at their regular weekly meetings. There was sort of the one in New York City for years but now they have changed their focus largely because the stricter A Course In Miracles aspect didn’t attract enough people and they wanted to broaden their approach and appeal. So I found myself having this conversation about “why.” Why doesn’t A Course In Miracles appeal to hundreds? Why doesn’t that happen? We talked about that.

Whenever anybody starts asking that question it’s interesting because I have to ask myself, why does it matter? That’s the first question that I wonder. What difference does it make? Why do the numbers matter? I know that there is a tendency to want to follow a crowd and crowds do generate a considerable amount of energy. Large congregations have an appealing energy. Some people have the opposite thing going on. They want to avoid the crowds so they think, “If a lot of people are doing it, it must be something I really don’t want to do!” So, there’s follow the crowd; there’s avoid the crowd. I want to be in neither of those positions. I just want to do what is the right thing for me to do. I want to go where I feel guided to go and take in the experience that is the experience to have. The numbers of bodies present really shouldn’t make a difference.

So I had this conversation with him for a while and he understood what I was trying to say. He was able to hear that the numbers of people shouldn’t make a difference, but he still wanted to engage. Okay. Now we’ve set that numbers should be irrelevant. We agreed; that’s true. Now let’s get back to the original question. Why doesn’t A Course In Miracles appeal to more people? I think studying A Course In Miracles is a very profound, metaphysical challenge. It’s difficult. It shakes you to the very core of your being. Other faiths have their own challenges and certainly you can get really deep with them, but I think A Course In Miracles is unique in the way it asks you to ask yourself very profound questions about: your own existence, your own mind, your own relationship to the universe and to God -- on a level that, maybe, a lot of people aren’t comfortable doing.

Now, I know Unity, Religious Science and other metaphysical Christian churches have this going on as well, but from my experience with these churches, they’re more involved in giving you better navigational tools. Actually, they’re very effective in that. If you want some good practical tools about how to navigate in life -- how to have better relationships, how to have more prosperity, how to have better health -- go to a Unity church. Go to a Religious Science church. That’s more their focus. They do a really good job at that and while A Course In Miracles has a broad way of approaching those life issues, A Course In Miracles never deals directly with those practical matters. It focuses on the more profound questions about relationship -- not just our relationships with other people -- the relationship between our mind and the entire universe. It’s always asking this profound question. How does what we have in our minds directly manifest the physical universe we perceive and why? It’s not about how to get along better in the world, it’s telling us there isn’t even a world here to get along better with! The world is a hallucination we’re having. There is no world. The Course says, “There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.” (W-pI.132.6.2-3)

A lot of people try to sum up what A Course In Miracles is about and I think, why don’t they just go to the book itself?’ The book just told us the “central thought” is there is no world. That’s what the Course is trying to tell us. “There is no world!” There’s very profound implications around that idea, and that idea causes us to profoundly question just about every single thing that we have going on in our minds. Ultimately, the idea that there is no world isn’t actually a teaching or something we need to learn. What A Course In Miracles says is, actually, it’s just a recognition. In truth, we all know there is no world and ultimately we will recognize that fact. The Course doesn’t want us to learn this; it wants us to recognize this. In one place it says, “Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.” (W-pI.188.1.4) We’re not trying to become anything we’re not already, we’re just trying to recognize what we are already, and to recognize that there is no world. We are a mind that is vast and unlimited. We are a mind that actually encompasses everything -- and when we truly recognize this, every single thing changes. Nothing is as it was before, and recognizing that does have a tremendous cost. The Course says, “What does this recognition ‘cost’? It costs the whole world you see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see.” (M-5.II.3.3-6)

There is a tremendous, profound cost in embracing the spiritual, metaphysical truths of A Course In Miracles and I tend to think that’s probably why hundreds of people don’t gravitate towards A Course In Miracles services because people aren’t yet ready to pay that cost. It’s a huge cost, and it’s something that large numbers are not ready to embrace yet. Maybe they won’t in our lifetimes. Maybe they will. When I go to the higher truth of no world it doesn’t matter how many people gather here on Sunday morning. That’s what I kept trying to go back to with the man from Phoenix and finally I saw that it was a jump he just wasn’t ready to make. He wasn’t ready to pay the cost yet. The world still mattered to him and if a church didn’t appeal to hundreds of people, that meant something was wrong. He didn’t really get it yet. He was basically answering his own question, “Why don’t hundreds of people come?” Hundreds don’t come because they’re not willing to let go of their ideas of how it’s supposed to look. People still have their ideas. Relationships are supposed to look like “that.” My body’s health is supposed to look like “this.” My financial situation is supposed to look like “that.” My spirituality should help me get my life to look like “this.” The church I attend should look like “that.” Yet, A Course In Miracles isn’t about this. A Course In Miracles is asking much more profound questions. questions that are difficult for many to engage.

Some people say “Well, isn’t life supposed to be easier when you study something like A Course In Miracles? Doesn’t A Course In Miracles tell you that life gets easier when you study it?” Actually, it doesn’t. It says decisions get easier to make. That doesn’t mean life gets easier. You just won’t be confounded about what to do. You will know what you should do and you will do it and many difficult things will come up around these choices that you now understand are the choices that you need to make. The Course says “When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer.” (T-14.IV.6.1-2)

So it’s the decisions that get easier to make, not necessarily your life. Your life will be filled with challenges. I think the challenges get greater. You get to take on bigger issues, bigger tasks, bigger goals. A Course In Miracles is moving us to be the saviors of the world. That’s a pretty big challenge. There are going to be huge things to push through in doing that, but we’ll be able to do it because we know we’re on the right path. What stopped us before was the internal questioning that we were always doing. Is this the right thing for me to do? Should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? A Course In Miracles helps to clear that up so that we can just move ahead as best we can, one step at a time, challenging and doing what is the very next thing for us to do. A Course In Miracles is a difficult mental challenge, a mind training. It is not about making lives better on the surface. As a matter of fact, it tells us if we follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance we can be quite sure things are going to be difficult. It says “... if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there.” (T-18.IX.3.7) Life doesn’t get easier. We’re going to go through “seeming terror.”

Why don’t hundreds of people study A Course In Miracles together in centers and churches on a regular, weekly basis. Because if they’re doing the discipline, it pushes them right into the terror of their lives and a lot of people aren’t ready or willing to handle that yet. They still think they can make a bargain with the terror. They still think they can, somehow, step around it and avoid it. The truth is you can’t step around it. We are all going to have to confront the huge issues that are there for us to confront and A Course In Miracles gives us the skills to do that -- the skills to move up through terror and onto the next level. The Course gives us the skills to walk through the seeming terror so that we can arrive someplace grander than we ever dreamed possible.

The Course says “To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning.” (T-24.in.2.1-2) A Course In Miracles teaches us how to profoundly question everything -- all of those images we have about: relationships, health, money -- about our lives. We have to profoundly question those values. That’s what A Course In Miracles is always showing us how to do. It says, “Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.” (T-11.VIII.3.8) We learned of ourselves that we want relationships that look a particular way. In truth, we don’t actually know if we like them a particular way. What we know is that we did not like them when they were not a particular way. That’s mostly what we know. We have relationships that we don’t like certain aspects of so we think we’re going to like relationships better if that aspect is different.

However, it’s probably not true. The truth is we just learn how to reject and we keep rejecting more and more and more and more. You ever wonder why, frequently, as some people get older they don’t get into relationships any more? Some blame decreasing hormones but I think they have just rejected so much and so many that nobody is acceptable any more. When you’re younger everybody’s a possibility. Then pretty soon you rule out “them”, you rule out “them” and certainly not “them”! Who’s left? We have to question those things. Look what those ideas of rejection do to us? They make us grow old.

I remember years ago when I was involved with the EST seminars. Werner Erhardt, the founder and chief inspiration in back of EST, frequently talked about “living in the question.” Living in the question -- there was great strength in living in the question and actually there was no strength or power in answers at all. So you shouldn’t try to find the answers, you just should always be in the profoundly questioning state of mind. I don’t know what the best relationship for me is, but I’m willing to question the fact that I think I want things my way. Maybe I do; maybe I don’t. What would it be like to have relationship a particular way? What would it be like to be in a relationship that wasn’t that way? What would it be like just to be guided by the Holy Spirit and have the relationships that seem to come to me even if they don’t fit my pictures? What would it be like to be in a continual profound question?

The dictionary defines “profound” as “... penetrating or entering deeply into subjects of thought or knowledge, ‘a profound theologian.’” So profound is related to the theological realm. The most profound questions we can ask are theological, spiritual questions. How do we relate to the Divine? That’s a very profound question. Will we ever answer that question? No. Not while we’re in bodies. But the engagement in the question is going to create a tremendous amount of power in our lives, strength in our lives, and this engagement is going to raise us to levels that we couldn’t possibly rise to without it. Being a profound questioner is what A Course In Miracles is about, not coming up with the answers.

From my own study, when I was involved with Unity and Religious Science, these churches, religions, provided wonderful, meaningful, practical, spiritual answers. Their practice was not as much involved with just hanging out in the uncertainty and the uneasiness of the questions. They had the answers. They were great. They were practical. They really do work, and for part of my life, that’s what I needed. But I’ve been guided in other directions now. This doesn’t make those religions wrong, it just means my life is about something else now. It’s about engagement in a question that I actually know I’m not going to be able to answer while I appear to be in this world, but there’s something about that profound engagement that is empowering to me, moving me in directions and having me do things I never would have been able to do before. Before I was just forming my future from images from my past. I wasn’t able to have a truly open future because I was still rooted in my past. Now, I believe I am moving ahead freely. It’s very, very different. A Course In Miracles makes us profound questioners.

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This idea that the world isn’t here is a massive idea. It causes us to change our perception of everything. I think of my own family, my own upbringing and my father. My father was firmly rooted in the world. He “knew” the world was here. He “knew” that the world was ruled by “big shots” of which he was not one. He talked all the time about the “big shots” who ran everything and how one could never get ahead of the game. My father was one of the biggest victims I could possibly imagine. He was a sweet, loving man -- a gentle man, but he was always oppressed by those “big shots”, those mythical “big shots.” It was hard to define exactly who they were, but they were definitely out there. If my father was so frequently concerned about the “big shot”, that means he believed he was a “little shot.” What the hell is that? That’s where his mind was. He did believe that he was a victim, but A Course In Miracles teaches us that the world does nothing to us. There is nobody out there oppressing us, doing anything to us, because there is no world. Those are profound ideas. They have profound implications. The Course tells us that the world is just a projection of our own thoughts and that actually everything that seems to happen we’re setting up. We’re writing the script. All those relationship that we didn’t like and we now know we don’t want to be in -- we made those relationships exactly the way they were because we wanted to learn precisely what those relationships had to teach us. Again, people don’t really want to hear this either. Why aren’t there hundreds of people at the Sunday services of A Course In Miracles churches? Because that’s a tough lesson to learn. We want to blame that other schmuck for all the nasty, unloving behavior -- “And I was so loving and they just couldn’t open up to me.” We don’t ever want to think that, “Oh, you know, I really drew that person to me because I needed to learn something and that person was the one who volunteered to teach it to me.” That’s a hard place for us to go to.

The Course says in Lesson 253, “My Self is ruler of the universe. -- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept.” (W-pII.253.1.1-5) That’s a very profound, dramatic statement. It’s actually a command, “This must I accept.” I must accept that every single thing that happens to me in this world I have asked for exactly the way that it’s happening. I have to accept this if I’m going to truly be an A Course In Miracles student because that’s what A Course In Miracles is about.

In another place it says, “And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.” (T-21.II.2.1) When we take that frame of mind and we embrace that responsibility, again, we end up asking ourselves very profound questions. Why did I bring this into my life? What am I trying to learn from it? I want to learn it. If I brought this into my life to learn something, then for Christ’s sake, let me learn it so I don’t have to go through this experience again which we inevitably do if we don’t learn the lessons life presents us. Maybe we’re in a relationship because we need to learn how to say, “No.” Maybe we don’t know how to say, “No” so we bring somebody into our lives that’s going to push us until we absolutely learn how to say, “No!” Maybe we have some people in our lives because we don’t know how to say, “Goodbye” and somebody is going to push us to make us learn how to say, “Goodbye, I’m leaving.” Maybe we don’t know how to do that. Maybe we have people in our lives because we need to learn how to forgive and be unconditionally loving. Maybe we have relationships in our lives because we need to learn how to love outside the box that we’ve pushed ourselves into, so we bring somebody into our lives that is challenging us to love them and they’re not in that form we had always thought about or that we had previously embraced.

That’s why all those people are there in our lives. Does it mean that those relationships get easy, that they’re just fun and loving all the time? Well, of course not. I don’t know any relationship that’s like that. I have very unusual, profound, different relationships. My relationships don’t fit in the usual box of what people have in terms of romantic or sexual relationships.

I’m currently in a living situation where I live platonically with two men in their thirties, two Brazilian men for some synchronistic reason. They’ve lived with me now for about year and so they observe the different people who come over to regularly spend the night with me. One of the Brazilians is amazed. He asked me, “How do you do that?” And I said “Well, I don’t know. I just do it.” Then he asked “Doesn’t it cause problems?” I said “All relationships are ‘problems.’” Of course it causes problems, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. Relationships are challenges. Are you expecting to find a relationship with no challenges, no problems? I don’t know where they are. Maybe Unity or Religious Science will help you find a relationship that isn’t a challenge, but I doubt it. Relationships always have problems. I’ve always had problems in every relationship that I have had. There’s not something wrong because you have issues; the challenge is how do you deal with the issues when they come up. That’s all. You’re going to have issues. I know people who have monogamous relationships. They have issues. I know people who have open, polyamorous relationships. They have issues. I know people who have no relationships. They have issues too! (laughter) There’s always issues. Are you trying to avoid issues! Life doesn’t happen that way. There are issues. You deal with them. How do you deal with the issues you have?

I guess the reason why I can have these relationships is I know how to deal with issues when issues come up. My relationships are long-lasting (I can count some in decades), loving, interesting and wonderful for me -- and passionate! They’re great! So how do I do it? I deal with inevitable problems in a spirit-guided way. When the issues come up I am able to profoundly question: my ideas, my values, my judgments, what I think I want and who I think I am. I engage my partners in the same profound questions so that we can live in the question, not come up with an answer. In this process of living in the question profound growth and wonderful relationships just happen.

How do we handle these issues? I’ve got an issue coming up this week. I have an older sister who I’ve never been particularly close to. However, in the past couple of years we’ve gotten a little closer. She’s coming out to visit me. She’s never been here before. I’ve never had my sister here. I’m not really “out” in any way to this sister. She really knows very little about my life and she’s coming to stay with me for four days, to get submerged smack in the middle of my life. She’s not religious; she’s not spiritual. She’s certainly not metaphysical. She actually believes she’s been victimized in her life. She’s going to be here in church next week. I could be a little nervous about this. I’m choosing to be excited instead. I’m transmuting my nervousness into excitement.

It’s just great! I’m going to profoundly ask the question, what is my relationship with my sister now at this time in my life -- at this time in her life? She’s ten years older. She’s 61. What is our relationship going to be? It doesn’t have to be like our relationship in the past. It can be something new.

We’re creating the world all the time. It’s all there in our minds. We have to ask ourselves the profound question of how did we manifest: George Bush, war in Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction? We manifested all that. We have put that in our world. Why? We don’t judge against it like somebody else did that. No. That’s in the dream that we’re having.

Rev. Dusa Althea and I were in Oakland Friday night, and we were driving by the Grand Lake Theater. That’s a big movie theater in Oakland, and it was interesting. On the marque, right where the movies were listed was this political statement in big, theater marque letters. I thought it was curious that the manager of the Grand Lake Theater could put a provocative political statement up on the marque. It said “What is an impeachable offense? Lying about having sex? No. Lying about going to war? Yes.” Remember, President Clinton was impeached because he lied about having sex (in case you’ve forgotten that detail), a few years ago. Now remember, impeachment just means that we had the hearing. Not that he actually got removed from office. But as we drove by the theater I just thought -- wow! I’m manifesting all kinds of things -- like that marque. I enjoyed that idea. I think it’s great that we live in a culture, a society, that could have a marque like that just pop up. The theater marque was asking Oakland a profound question. People can ask those kinds of questions in our society and those questions can be put out in a truly public way. In that moment I knew I loved the world. Life is great. The world is great. It’s a reflection of all of our thoughts, ideas and questions. The theater was asking a question. “What is an impeachable offense?” That is a profound question. We should be asking that as a society.

Individually, we should be asking ourselves, what do we want our relationships to teach us? What is it that we’re looking for in terms of our intimate interactions with people? Just because a type of relationship served us in the past doesn’t mean the same kind of relationship is going to serve us in the future and we probably can’t know what will serve us. We have to continually ask ourselves, in that profoundly questioning frame of mind, what is it I’m here to learn today? What power, joy and tremendous growth from within my mind is ready to spring forth and paint itself on the canvass of the world for me now?

That’s it for today. Thank you.
©copyright 2003, Rev. Tony Ponticello
All rights reserved.

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This article appeared in the August 2003 (Vol. 17, No. 6) issue of Miracles Monthly. Miracles Monthly is published by the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, CA. The CMC is supported solely by people just like you who give donations and purchase books and products through us.

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Last update: March 9, 2006 by Rev. Tony Ponticello. (syntax checked 3/06)