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I Want to Receive All the Love Around Me (Why I Study A Course in Miracles ®)

by Tama J. Kieves

I study A Course in Miracles® because I am greedy for life--and I have lived only half alive.

More than a decade ago, I attended Harvard Law School and recently I've begun to realize how much my judgments of myself deprived me of the color of that experience. I walked on a campus of magnanimous trees, pomp and circumstance. But I scurried across the campus like a field mouse makes its way across the kitchen floor. I did not feel like I belonged in such an atmosphere of great learning and prominence. Secretly and fervently, I waited for someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me "Hey you, inferior being, what are you doing here? There's been a mistake. You have to leave now." And even though I succeeded, graduated in crimson silk with diploma and even honors, I did not triumph. Even though life proffered me that experience, I did not receive it. My lack of love for myself blocked my nerve endings. I walked through my experiences as one walks through the rooms of someone else's house.

More recently, I have had a poignant realization of how sometimes I do not receive the love I'm given in relationship. My father died recently, and became alive for me, maybe for the first time. My relationship with my father had always been tumultuous at best, acrid at worst. In college as a prerequisite to dating me, you had to nod in deep understanding and agreement as I told you how horrible my father was, how mean he'd been to me and our family, how frightening was my childhood. My father's cruelty had become a good part of my identity, my way of describing myself and orienting myself in the world. But as I grew up some and healed over time, my own bitterness dissipated. Studying A Course in Miracles, I worked on forgiveness, and taking responsibility for my life, and seeing the golden moments with my father, the times in which his love and beauty had been visible to me. He was a very good man and he was also troubled. I'd spent so much of my life focusing on the troubled part, the part that criticized me and never praised me, that I missed the sweetness of the man that adored his little girl and bragged about her accomplishments to the men in his synagogue.

I am grateful to say that before my father died I arrived at a place of love for him and even gratitude, and I shared a good deal of this with him in Father's Day cards and hugs. But nothing prepared me for the love I would feel for him when he died. I've described it to friends like this: it's as though an incredible perfume was released from the capsule of his body and life. All of a sudden I felt his essence, and nothing else. I couldn't believe how much he loved me and how much I loved him. I couldn't believe I didn't really know this until he died. I know that's not an uncommon experience. But I kept asking myself, why? And the best answer I've come up with, was that when died, I no longer feared him. He could no longer harm me, say something snide, or say nothing when I craved a scrap of attention. I stopped defending and protecting myself. And that's when all the love rushed in like an ocean that had been barricaded and pushed back. All along I'd caught whiffs of the sea. But these days I'm swimming in it.

I cannot correct these experiences. I can forgive myself and hug myself deeply. I stroke my hair and tell myself, "It's all right," and it is. Truly. But I cannot go back and bound anew receiving what was there. I cannot take back those red maple leaves and the hush of the Langdell law library. I cannot look into my father's brown eyes, play gin rummy with him, and feel the depth of his heart even as he complained about welfare recipients or women drivers. But I study A Course in Miracles because I don't want to miss the gifts I'm being offered right now, right this minute, and at all times. I know I'm still blocked. I know because I'm not dancing in the streets or weeping with gratitude. But I also know that I'm blocked and this too is a very great gift to have in one's lifetime. Because now I'm not trying to get better fathers or more reassurance from the deans of law schools. Instead, I'm letting go of fear one breath and judgment at a time. I know I'm being loved at every second. I know that every aspen tree and raindrop and wounded family member, friend, or stranger is bathing me in love at the most fundamental level of their existence, and mine.

I'm just trying to love myself enough to live an unprotected life--and let it all in.


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