I was hanging out with my friend Errol several weeks ago in California, and we went to visit a good friend of his who happens to be living in a tent by choice. Errol had spoken very highly of this man – Stu is his name – and how he was very awake and really “got” that he was a Son of God.

When I first saw him, he looked like any other old homeless person you might see on the street. He was very dirty, unkempt, smelly, and even had a red stain on his otherwise white mustache. Probably a tobacco stain, though I never asked.

My first reaction was very egoic – I noticed a split-second judgment followed by a fleeting experience of repulsion in my body. But then I felt myself open up and receive him like any other brother in Christ. He turned out to be one of most entertaining, interesting, and enlightened people I’d ever met!

The three of us got into some heavy philosophizing about life and spirit. He wasn’t speaking using Course terminology, and said many things that my inner ANAL-ytical, spiritually superior “Course in Miracles” ego voice wanted to react to (in a very nerdy voice, “Hmm, THAT does not sound like the Course!”) but fortunately I didn’t pay too much attention to that voice and was able to just melt into the love and exuberance behind everything he was saying.

It seemed clear that he saw the world in a radically different way than most of us – probably partly because he lives in a tent full-time and has no worldly attachments in the literal sense… but also because he just happens to have opened himself to God more than most. I had many profound realizations from talking with him, but one of the things he said that really stuck with me was this (I’m paraphrasing):

“When you learn to live without fear, everyday life becomes such a rich and marvelous experience. Just walking around town is better than Disneyland!”

As I noticed myself getting really attuned to what he was saying, I began to really have the experience that he was pointing to.  When he put it that way, I truly felt like I was on a totally different plane of consciousness, just enjoying the infinite Mystery of all I saw around me!

He was referring to what the Course calls “the real world” – which isn’t another world obviously, but simply how we will experience things when we no longer see through the eyes of the ego. To attain this experience, we must learn to question our belief that we are here in a body. A good affirmation I use to remind myself of this sometimes is the following. Maybe it will help you as well…

I am nothing but non-local Awareness, dreaming of a bunch of mere symbols that mean nothing. All I see is empty and meaningless, with no effect on my eternal oneness with God.