Finding Love in the Root Canal

Tooth Is Stranger Than Friction

The Real World that Jesus describes in ACIM is just over the obscuring hill of perception--it's there; we just don't see it. This past week I went to the priest [dentist] confessed my sins [x-rays showing root decay] and she gave absolution [yes, we'll accept you as a client] on the condition I do the required penance [go to an endodontist for 2 root canals]--let's find the Real World of joy and peace, hidden just beyond the needles, rubber mouth dam, inability to swallow for 2 hours, and the smell of roasted bone. It is there--Jesus told me so.
    "Miracles as such do not matter. ²The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation." (ACIM, T-1.I.2:1-2)
        Intensity. The pain, '10 on a 10-scale,' Saturday night that allowed for no sleep. The emergency appointment. The reality of the process--long and expensive, promising pain but not miracles. The root canal itself would be there, already is there in the mind--jaw-drugged into submission, sheet rubber square stretched over the target area, high-pitched drills, 3 inch needles, and constant vigilance for the jack-in-the-box pain spike, "Sorry about that." Intense--yet tedious, unimportant, even stupid. And it's all about the body. Is it? is this about the body, or something else? 
     NOW begins the healing miracle to escape a nightmare over which there is no control except the hand of God. Pain intensity on Saturday was a 'go signal.'  I submit to the message, "All things are lessons I must learn; all things are echoes of the Voice for God." I respond in a 'special way' by making an appointment ASAP, suspending judgement, going through motions that, from here on, are dictated by apparent others--the brothers, the saviors. They issue the call Home in a form that is made to obscure their gesture of love. Now I am lost, not journeying but wandering in a foreign land, at God's mercy or His Hand--as I see it--as I choose. I have known 'the way of pain.' The landscape of equipment, drugs and paid professionals is my usual territory. But thirty years ago I found a testament , ACIM, that tells me 'to find what is not findable,' only 'offered, as experience,' as revelation, as a formless vision.
     Looking for signs--Google Maps, street view shows the location in Manhattan (Kansas)--just behind a service called Ascension Via Christi [Ascension of Christ]. The Doctor's name is Christopher, or 'Christ bearer.' This is for me--the first miracles of light piercing the physical pall of procedural doom. They will see me on Friday, 'a good day to die.' Prepared for inevitable outcomes, I am fully prepared to be amazed and or 'crucified.'
     Nothing happens--it was meet and greet. Christopher says, "What do you want? Do you have a plan? And reviewed the costs, pointing at the 3-D tell all x-ray. "Figure, uh, this one, then this, and this at so much--do the math and, well, we are in for 15 thousand, at least--per plan, anyway. And why do anything without the full plan?" Again , for the third time he says, "What do you want to do?" I say, "As far as I know, I'm here for 2 root canals." He looks at his hygienist assistant like they are deciding between Arby's and Burger King for lunch and says, "Well, I guess we'll go with that."
     It is about free will, isn't it?
     Four days pass and I'm in a chair, lips thick and tingling--I could bite them off and would not notice. There is something else here, isn't there? Isn't that what Jesus said? Am I making this up? "

Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in all respects, in every way and every circumstance, in all temptation to perceive what is not there, and all belief God’s Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not. (ACIM, T-24.VI.4:5)

"Give me your blessing holy Son of God." It's a dental visit. There is a moment where the drill goes rogue , "Oh, Sorry about that," and I'm thrown back to Dr. St. Eve the army dentist drilling sans Novocain when I was a tender sprout--but here is the temptation. No! there is something else beyond view. What is it? "Give me your blessing holy Son of God." This is intensity, love through a filter, not pain, pain is the form. There is something inside or beyond the form. "Give me your blessing holy Son of God." 
     It ends--a dental visit. Not more or less than I thought. "Give me your blessing Holy Son of God." I will not be tempted to think I was right and Jesus was wrong. I refuse this 'making' under the power of my own dream-weaving. "I claim God's apparent insanity as my only hope of sanity--crazy as it seems." 

2. Miracles as such do not matter. ²The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.
3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. ²The real miracle is the love that inspires them. ³In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
4. All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. ²His Voice will direct you very specifically. ³You will be told all you need to know.
(ACIM, T-1.I.2:1–4:3)

     Take it or leave it.

"So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you want to leave too?" 
Simon Peter replied, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

Wait a second--ACIM is just one of those books, like the Four Agreements, Urantia, The Nature of personal Reality, no reason to get out over our skis, is there? If free will is the defining characteristic of what it means to be human, what is the best use of that endowment--To freely let a fog of inattention settle over free will's injunctions or to do a fundamentalist number on it, twisting my perceptual machinery around some idea that those mechanisms obscure things rather than reveal something true?     

Quote On bad, seemingly small habits, made powerful.
    “I was bound not by an iron imposed by anyone else but by the iron of my own choice. The enemy had a grip on my will and so made a chain for me to hold me a prisoner. The consequence of a distorted will is passion. By servitude to passion, habit is formed, and habit to which there is no resistance becomes a compulsion. By these links, as it were, connected one to another (hence my term a chain), a harsh bondage held me under restraint" --St. Augustine

Quote On good seemingly small habits made powerful. "
​     Throw self overboard and work. Remember, the grass when made into a rope by being joined together  can even chain a mad elephant.'"
--Swami Vivekanada

The procedures of the second root canal were the same as the first except that I knew what was coming--and they knew that I knew what the process would be. This made for fewer explanations and more expectations. This is the very set up for the word 'sin' used in ACIM. The concept of sin is not about breaking divine laws or committing a moral transgression, but rather about a fundamental misperception of reality. In this instance it would be the temptation to know what this was going to be, by what it had been the first time. "I am one Self united with my Creator; safe, and healed, and whole; at one with my brothers and with all creation; free to forgive and free to save the world," is a comprehensive reminder that I am not an object reclining on a chair with a rubber block to keep the mouth open so that a guy can work in there. Christ has fragmented into 4 human forms, 2 female assistants 1 endodontist, and 1 patient. It is one 'thing,' one 'event,'  pulled apart so the miracle of a unified Son of God can be experienced by all. 
     Recognizing the 'tendency to sin,' that is, to lapse into an easy understanding of the situation--I noticed every wave of anxiety, and they came rapidly, one after another. There was no rest from vigilance and so I visualized myself as suckling at God's teat--mouth wide open, trying to swallow and only awkwardly successful. Dr. Christopher, dedicated to performing his name's sake--to be the Christ bearer--drilled and washed, 'love incoming,' and with each wash of anxiety, expecting a shock of pain, my inner chatter went something like this:

"This is love. This is the milk of kindness. The sensation of pure love is not frightening. Thank-you for caring for me. Let me receive love in the form You intend. Bless my brothers who are one with me that I might be blessed. I am blessed to receive love like the Infant Christ at His Mother's Breast. Let me savor this time and experience love in this form, the only form I can understand."

The inner talk went on, mostly unbroken for about an hour. It was, like the rubber dam in my mouth, designed to keep 'sin' outside and to not allow myself to be overwhelmed by the idea I was involved in a dental visit. If the dental visit overshadowed the rain of love that took form as 'human'  care, then I would miss this obvious opportunity to receive the 'reinterpretation' by the Holy Spirit. It does seem mad, doesn't it? Occupational hazards of taking the Course seriously. 
     When it was finished, there was a light feeling in the room, warm. The assistants chatted about  diets, concerts, and plans. The doctor and I talked about REM, the only concert he apparently ever went to. He asked again about what I wanted at the next visit--to do the final caps one at a time or both at once. I said both. He said it seemed like I was okay with the time, the mouth, the whole dam thing, etc... 
​     Pulling out of the parking lot I wondered about the forms miracles can take; as dramatic relief, a gentle unfolding, deliverance seen in hindsight, recognition of what was always there, or like in this case, peace and love where it seemed unlikely.