MiraclesOne Blog

Written by Una McManus   

Lately, I’ve been wondering if I’ve been losing my mind. By “losing my mind,” I mean going crazy, dropping my marbles, playing with a few cards shy of a full deck, wandering into lunacy, or just the usual certifiable descending into madness. I imagined that I wasn’t the first Course student to doubt my sanity, so I called Rev. Deb.

“Rev. Deb. My mind is too quiet. It’s just too darn quiet in here.”

“Tell me a little more.”

“Well, it’s like the quiet when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. The night is silent, no traffic, no phones, no computer, no people talking. The quiet extends into the night in every direction. That’s what it feels like in my mind these days. No conflicting thoughts, no dramatic internal dialogues, no scary imaginings. I’m very aware that everything around me is projected illusion and that I’m not a body but spirit. I choose the joy of God instead of pain. All is quiet in my mind. Am I going crazy?”

“What part of your mind would question the quiet?” she asked.

“The ego.” Duh.

“Yep,” she said. “Only the ego would question a quiet mind and say there’s something wrong if you have peace. The ego wants to keep up separate from God. It’ll say: ‘Why should you feel peace? You don’t deserve peace! Think of all the suffering children in China! You must be insane!’”

“So I’m not losing my mind?”

“No. You’ve been blessed with a gift. Bless and accept it. It’s something to remember later when things get stirred up again. The Holy Spirit teaches by contrast. Once you’ve experienced a quiet mind and know what it feels like, you can choose it again more easily.”

A breathed a sigh of relief as I gratefully accepted Rev. Deb’s certification of my sanity. Our eleven-minute phone call helped me identify the ego’s sneaky, undermining role in my peculiar lack of peace over having peace.

After I hung up, I thought about all the chaotic years I’d lived fueled by crazy stress: personal and relationship dramas, the relentless rush of newspaper work, a bruising academic schedule, and all the rest of it. Never did I stop to question the sanity of my life and the world around me. If I ever stopped long enough to hear a whisper of quiet, I found it so frightening that I picked up speed and ran all the faster.

And now I question my sanity because an ocean of quiet has opened up in my mind? That’s crazy! But then, doesn’t the Course tell us that the ego is insanity itself?

I’m not losing my mind; I’m finding it.

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