Life in a human body is pretty terrifying much of the time, isn’t it?! I woke at four a.m. this morning in a state of terror, as I often do. I am talking physiological adrenaline rushing hot nauseous get to the toilet my life is being threatened terror. Not panic – this is not your run of the mill anxiety attack. Xanax won’t help this.

Is my life being threatened? Only by stress. I will spare you the tedious list of accumulated problems, but in fact, I am not in any immediate danger. I do not have any life threatening disease. I am not going hungry. The wolves at the door are virtual…my brain and body, however, are taking the information fed them daily from the onslaught of difficulties, and creating an emotional swamp of harmful interpretations…

Pardon me, but fuck this shit.

At this rate the miss-interpretations themselves might kill me. At four in the morning there isn’t anyone to call…and so, I do the only thing I can do: I turn on the light, sometimes several – and chase the demons by reading from The Course in Miracles. I know some people can get solace from reading the Bible. It doesn’t work for me. This does. Something in these pages seeps in through the heart pounding terror and the tears blurring the pages and slows the effects…even though, most of the time, I don’t understand a thing it is talking about.

The itchy hotness becomes a comforting warmth…my heart rate steadies…I begin to notice clues in my immediate environment that would indicate danger is abated – like my dogs are snoring. And slowly my body begins to relax, and then finally I am in the world…but not of it. Love wins.

This is freedom. The goal, of course, is to live in this state, whether danger is real or imagined…whether pain is physical or psychological, whether the words make sense or nothing does. It takes practice…and it’s the only game in town. This is the science of magic! Sometimes, I even get my sense of humor back…daylight come and we wanna go home…