Quote of the Week

Your Grace Is Given Me.  I Claim It Now.   It is a new and holy day today, for we receive what has been given us.  Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance.  We acknowledge our mistakes, but He to Whom all error is unknown is yet the One Who answers our mistakes by giving us the means to lay them down, and rise to Him in gratitude and love.

ACIM Lesson 168,5

God being who He is has given us everything; everything!  While this seems to be an outrageous statement, it is absolutely True and logically consistent.  Being unlimited, infinite and eternal, His gifts must share these characteristics, just as a millionere or a “poor” man gives gifts that reflect the character of their finincial status.  If we feel any lack, it must be because we have not fully received all that He has given us, for His gifts and His giving is complete, so the onus lies only on us and our ability to receive what has already and eternally been given. 

 When we understand this, the only question that remains is:  “How can we better receive the gift of God’s grace?”  The answer is to place our faith “in the Giver, not our own acceptance.”  Our only mistake is that we believe ourselves to be separate from God, and this leads in turn to a sense of lack which opens the possibility that we may be unable to fulfill all our desires.  This fear of failure leads us to place (or more accurately to misplace) our faith in hording and defenses instead of trusting in God.  Misplaced trust cause us to lean more on judgments as the means to fulfill our desires, to be safe, and to succeed in our endeavors.  But the use of judgment comes with a price, that being the fear that we too will be judged, which in turn leads to condemnation, and a sense of superiority among those who seem to have better judgment or a better position from which to judge.  

The single solution to all this is simply to know God.  Knowing God allows us to trust God and trust in His love for us.  Trusting God allows us to love God.  Loving God allows us to embrace God.  Embracing God allows us to use the gift of God’s grace.  And by using God’s grace, we are helping ourselves to more of God, and this is how we can most effectively thank God.  Thankfulness puts us into a state of grattitude in which we are appreciating all that we have been given, and therefore all that we are.  This is the state of being that we want to be in at all times, for it is from the state of being that we can experience all that we truly are.  

These steps* also work in reverse:  Being thankful engenders helpfulness, which in turn engenders the use of God’s gifts to us.  Using God’s gifts means that we are using God to help us help ourselves.  If we are using God’s gifts, we are embracing God.  If we are embracing God then we are certainly loving God, and if we are loving God, then we are knowing God for sure.  This is how we claim and therefore receive God’s gifts.

* For more information about these steps, see:  Friendship with God by Neal Donald Walsh.

Quote of the Week: November 13th, 2011

Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought—you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself.  Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you.  Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged.  Creation is eternal and unalterable.  Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.  You are and will forever be exactly as you were created.  Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there.

ACIM Lesson 93,7

 Let us examine the implications of the thought—"you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself."  Firstly, we must realize that God is the foundation of this thought; if we understand God’s nature to be perfection, then this thought will yield implications based on perfection.  If we take God’s nature to be something other than perfect, then it will yield implications based on imperfection.  Clearly the concept of perfection is absolute in nature; you cannot be a little bit perfect, or even mostly perfect; you are either completely perfect or imperfect.  Furthermore perfection is a permanent state of being, for once having been achieved it cannot be lost, changed or altered in any way whatsoever, for if it could be changed then it was not perfect to begin with, for changeability implies that there is room for either improvement or loss, while unchangeability implies eternity for it is unaffected by time, space and form.  Water (H2O) for example, has three common forms: liquid, solid, and vapor, but even though these forms change in accordance with the temperature, the essential nature of the elements Hydrogen and Oxygen remain constant, and therefore unchangeable relative to temperature.  Similarly, God’s nature which is our essential nature is unchangeable with respect to all changes in time, space or causation.

If we take God’s nature to be imperfect, the implications are huge:  our salvation becomes questionable, for there would be some chance for error, miscalculation, luck, or favor.  If God is imperfect, it means that His love and His word holds no guarantee, and cannot be fully depended on—it may work out or it may not but we cannot be certain.  If God be imperfect it means that God can fail to have things be as He wills it be; it means that ‘sin’ exists and sinners have an opportunity of entering Heaven, and the king of sin has a chance of “winning” against the “All-mighty” will of God, in which case we must then describe God’s will as “almost-mighty.”  

Ask yourself honestly, can this be the true nature of God?  Can this possibly be what we truly believe in our hearts about God?  In our minds and senses when we feel alone, lost, or confused, perhaps, but not in our hearts, where God willed that we forget Him not.  His is the only source of power that exists and if we have any power at all, it comes to us through Him and Him alone; this is the little light within our hearts, the small but insuperable voice through which He communicates to us; the one part of our dream that is real and perfect, and which cannot be covered over by the veil of ignorance and denial that blinds our mind and senses to His presence within us.  Let the key to awakening to this truth be these words continually uttered from our lips so that we may always remember who we really are:
 

“Let me remember I am one with God.”  

Yes, this is Truth eternal, and therefore the perfect Truth.  God being Almighty, has the power to do His will and therefore cannot fail in what He wills.  His will is not open to question, far less to chance, and is farther still from being an option.   Being All-mighty means that there is no will that can oppose His, no seeming or potential error that cannot be anticipated and thereby corrected before it occurs, and nothing that is not in accord with His divine will can occur.  

Yes, God is perfection, and as such He is unchangeable, and therefore eternal.  All that He creates also must be perfect, otherwise He Himself would not be perfect.  So to guarantee the perfection of His creations, He made them exactly like Himself and joined with them in eternal oneness.  Just as every single piece of a holographic image contains the whole image, just so are we the little individual pieces that contain the hologram of God, and so the logic goes:  If God be perfect and we, His creation, is an inseparable part of Him, then we too must be perfect, unalterable, and eternal.  Just as we are able to dress up in various costumes and play certain character roles, just so, all that we may think and do does not change the essential nature of who we are--one with God.  The implications of this truth is that ‘sin’ is unreal, like a nightmare or an illusion perceived by our senses, but has no reality and therefore no effect of its own.  God is perfect, therefore sin cannot exist.  God is perfect, therefore His will, His world, and His love are forever true, and therefore guaranteed!  Accepting this truth is all we need for our salvation.

Quote of the Week:  September 4th, 2011

 

My Happiness and My Function are One:  The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is.  So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is.  It is not a two-way battle.  The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond.  He knows what your function is.  He knows that it is your happiness.

Acim Lesson 66,2

Knowing one’s true Self or identity is the basis for knowing one’s true function.  Since God is the soul source of our identity, and our function is based on our identity, it follows that God is also the sole source of our function, and furthermore, both our identity and function must be in accordance with what God is.  So what is God’s nature, essence, or character?  We have conceptualized the nature of God as being that of perfect Love, Joy, Peace, Freedom, etc.  We can think of an infinite number of essential attributes, but for brevity, we can condense all other attributes of God into some variant of these.  Now since the source, course, and goal of all these attributes is happiness, and by extension we can conclude the same for any other attribute, I posit that happiness is what God must be in His essential nature.

What God gives must be based on what God is.  We can then conclude that happiness is all that God gives, and can give, and since God created us, happiness must  therefore be our essential nature also.  It would be inconceivable for God to give anything not in accord with what He is, i.e., happiness, for it would contradict his essential nature.  God cannot, for instance, give evil, so, following our logic, we can define evil as anything that is not happiness.  Furthermore, if God could give us anything other than happiness, it follow that He would be evil.  It becomes critically important that we understand the logic here, for to believe that God could or would give us anything other than happiness directly contradicts our notions of God as happiness.  This logic is also verified in our everyday experience where we observe that animals and plants produce offspring, fruit and seed in accord with what they are, in accord with their nature; its in the DNA you might say. 
 
The nature of anything must be in accord with the nature of its source.  Since God is the single source of all that is, and God is happiness, it follows that the nature of the holy children of God, as well as all that exists in creation, must also be happiness.  This bring us to a huge revelation, so hold on to you seats:  If the holy children of God and all else that exists in creation are essentially happiness, appearances notwithstanding, it must mean that, we the children of God must be God’s only creation*; we are the creation; we are the world; we and the world are one!  Woooohooo, ponder that for awhile!  

To know that our true nature, the true nature of God, and the true nature of all that exists is one and the same, is the basis from which we can look past the apparent diversity and see the unity that we are.  We differ only in our awareness of this truth, and superficially in appearance; we seem to be many, but we are really one.  To borrow a colorful phrase, “a pig with lipstick is still a pig!”  Knowing that our true nature is happiness gives us clarity about our function, and what else could be the function of happiness but to be happy!  Our single function then, is simply to be ourselves, to be what we already are, by knowing, remembering, and being conscious of our true nature:  ‘My happiness and my function are one.’  To remember this is to remember who we really are, and remembering who we really are is the key to fulfilling our function. 
 
The converse of the truth that happiness is both our essential nature and our function is also true, which means that whenever we don’t feel happy, then we are not fulfilling our God-given function.  Happiness is our essential nature so we can never be completely without some joy**; we cannot ever cease to be who we really are.  Happiness is the scale on which we exist, and while we cannot choose to be off this scale, we can choose to be anywhere we wish along it, from very little happiness at the low end, to estatic joy and eternal bliss at the high end.  This is our freedom and our function, so choose wisely the degree of happiness you wish to experience.

* If A = B and B = C, then A = C, or if the children of God is happiness and all else in creation is happiness, then the children of God and all else in creation must be the same single creation.

** The Taittiriya Upanishad 3.6.1 declares that “Out of bliss these being are born; In bliss they are sustained, and to Bliss they go and merge again.”

Quote of the Week: August 14th, 2011

God Goes With Me Wherever I Go:   Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the world.  It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to them.

ACIM Lesson 41,3

It is still true even though it has become clichéd to say things like “the kingdom of Heaven is within you,” “God goes with me wherever I go,” or “God is the strength in which I trust,”  But think of the immense implications these statements express.  If it is true that the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present Creator is always with you, how can ignorance, sorrow, pain, fear and loss really exist?  Certainly these things are not of the Creator, and if He is with us then they cannot really exist for us either.  And that is just a consideration of the negative side of the equation.  On the positive side, the implications are even more immense, for it means that we have access to the divine characteristics of the Creator, such as infinite peace, wisdom, and power.  What problem or situation can remain when addressed from this level of knowing, and what blind illusion can hide in the light of such reality?  From this level of knowing, all things become possible for us, for this knowing not only brings all apparent problems to complete resolution and peace, but endows us with the supreme knowledge that in reality there are no problems.  This supreme knowing rests on the knowledge of our true identity as children of God, i.e., godchildren, i.e., gods, which thereby grants us the ability and confidence to perform miracles.  We can perform miracles even now for it is our birthright and inheritance, and because the power of the Creator is with us always, but presently, we lack the deep faith of this supreme knowing that would give us the confidence to actually do what we are innately capable of. 

Our apparent suffering is due to the ignorance of our true identity; to our disbelief and faithlessness in the truth that we are children of God; and to the learned belief that our projected sense illusions are real.  Generation after generation through the long corridors of time have we suffered in ignorance of our true identity, so captivated are we still by our self-created sense illusions.  We believe these illusions to be real because we made them, and because each generation learned to believe in them from the previous generation.  This is how the lie that we are bodies, without wisdom, vulnerable, and mortal is perpetuated.  But now, let us deny that lie, let us begin to embrace the glorious truth that we are as God created us, perfect, spirit, and free.  Let us embrace this, not in an egotistic way, but through the loving understanding that given our lineage, we can be nothing less.  And by acknowledging this truth, also embrace the responsibility to express it all that we think say and do.  

Let us re-discover the perfection so long covered and hidden deep within us and radiate it out into the world, for only that perfection will permanently “...cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to them.”   “Yes, yes,” you may say in protest “...but it took us generations to believe as we believe now, would it not take a similar amount of time to turn our belief around?”  
Perhaps it could, but given who we really are, and given our willingness (our ability to will what we will,) and given the fact that it matters not how long the darkness has lasted, it is immediately removed by the first ray of light and love and truth; given that, it need not be a long time.  

Let us gradually and deliberately open the door to the light of perfection within us, through our daily practice of opening our awareness to it, until the dawning of the light of knowledge grows into the full sunshine of the divine grace of eternal peace.   It begins by spending a few minutes away from the cares of the world, a few minutes opening our awareness to the deep unfathomable peace within us; be still a few minutes each day; be still and you will come to know the divine presence within you.

Quote of the Week: July 24th, 2011

There Is Nothing My Holiness Cannot Do:  If you are holy, so is everything God created.  You are holy because all things He created are holy.  And all things He created are holy because you are.

ACIM Lesson 38,3

If we really knew ourselves to be the holy children of God, then we would know that all wisdom and all power belong to us.  If our belief that we are the holy children of God, were the size of a mustard seed, we would be able to move mountains.  Since this is not the level of power we typically demonstrate, clearly our belief that we are the holy children of God is much smaller than the size of a mustard seed.  Indeed we hardly believe it at all, yet we can still move mountains, granted though, it does take great effort, time, and energy, just because of our tiny wisdom and belief.  But such is the power of God that can accomplish anything, for it is inherent in us and can never fully leave us even when our belief in it is the size of a subatomic particle.  

So how can we increase the size of our belief?  The story of the prodigal son can perhaps provide us with some insights and comfort.  It is the story of a child who having received the wealth of his father left home to try making a life and name for himself, and who after some time found himself destitute.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  Concluding that his situation would be far better if he lived as a servant in his father's house, he returned home only to find his father surprisingly neither angry nor disappointed, but instead greatly rejoicing in his return, and lavishly bestowing on him all the love, honor, and appreciation of one who had accomplished great things.  He was surprised by his father’s reaction because he thought himself a failure, guilty of doing wrong, foolish or “sinful” things, and was therefore unworthy of such generous praise.  His father’s reaction came from the joy he felt at the return of his son, similar to the joy one feels when something of great value that was lost is found again.  The son did not realize that he himself was his father’s greatest treasure, and the return of that treasure was the cause of his father’s joyful reaction.  

This story offers us two important insights:  the first is in recognizing that we are the children of God, our Creator, and as such we inherit our characteristics and value, our genes if you will, from Him.  Being perfect, God created "His only begotten son" perfect and one.  We the children of God are His only begotten, perfectly unified son-ship.  We are therefore not merely valuable to our Creator, we are His most valuable treasure because we are His only treasure, made in His image and likeness.  Just as all children share the basic characteristics of their parents, even though each child expresses them differently, we the children of God express His basic characteristics in unique and individual ways, but remain unified because of our common source.  Even when we fail to appreciate our value, it is not lost for it is inherent.  Similar to the value of a hundred dollar bill that we have misplaced, whose value is not affected when we find it again, even if we found it is crumpled, worn or dirty.  We rejoice because its inherent value is unaffected.   Our inherent value as children of God comes not from what we think or say or do, but from who we are, and therefore can never be lost, diminished, tarnished or changed in any way.  The eyes of our Father looks joyously upon us at all times and rejoices when we return to Him.  

The second, and more important insight is in recognizing the true nature of our Creator as the “ALL-That-Is", the Alpha and the Omega, the omnipresent One who pervades all existence like wetness pervades water, and like space pervades all that we perceive.  Because God is omnipresent, we are not now, nor can we ever be separate form Him, for there is nothing that exists that can be outside or apart from that One Thing which is Everything.  Being in everything, He exists in us and we in Him, as One, whole, and therefore holy.  Because we are an inherent part of Him, we too are holy.  We are and remain as God created us, holy, spirit, perfect, and free!  Our existence, our very being-ness, resides in God, at-one with Him, and therefore at-one with everything that exists.  

Regardless of what we may think we are (human, vulnerable, separate, etc.,) God knows us to be what He is, as part of His Self, forever established and residing in His Beingness.  His ubiquitous presence is His power and His power is His ubiquitous presence.  As His creation, this is who we, the holy children of God, really are, and because ‘...there is nothing the power of God cannot do,’ there is nothing we cannot do.  But to demonstrated this we must re-cognize and re-member ourselves as the holy, all-powerful children who are forever at-one with their holy, all-powerful Creator.  Religion by definition is that which returns us to our source, so anything that accomplishes this re-turn is by definition a religion.  Like the wise prodigal son, let us make our religion be to turn away from separation and suffering, and re-turn to joyful oneness with our Father, for only in God can we be truly free, truly valued, and truly appreciated.  

The beautiful simplicity of this religion or re-turn is that we can turn no where else, for God is everywhere, in everyone and as everyone, without exception.  But our re-turn is simpler even than this for we can never really turn-away from ubiquity in the first place, so our re-turn is already accomplished; wherever we turn God is already there, patiently awaiting our re-cognition of Him.  Our less-than-simple task is only to re-cognize Him in each other and in ourselves.  He is everywhere, and appears in everything as individual, apparently separate beings.  Re-cognizing the true nature of everyone and everything as a holy child of God, as God dressed in various clever disguises, we will re-cognize God in ourselves and re-member our oneness with each other and with our Creator.   There is an ancient, sacred word that can help us do this: 

Namaste!

(the God in me re-cognizes the God in you, and in this recognition, we are One.)

Say this word to everyone and everything, silently or out loud, to help dispel the illusion of separation, and help us re-member the true nature of our oneness with all that we perceive.  Say this word to re-mind you of who you really are, and of who everyone and everything is -- one with God.

 

Quote of the Week: July 17th, 2011

I Do Not Know What Anything Is For:  Purpose is meaning.  Today’s idea explains why nothing you see means anything.  You do not know what it is for.  Therefore, it is meaningless to you.  Everything is for your own best interest.  That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means.  It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified.  It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.

ACIM Lesson25,1

Purpose gives meaning to things.  Without purpose we do not really know what something means.  It is the purpose we have for something that defines its meaning, and without a purpose it is meaningless to us.  A chair, for example, is used for sitting; that is its use, but without a purpose for sitting, the use of the chair is rendered meaningless to us.  To loose purpose therefore is to loose meaning.  Our purpose is what gives to or removes meaning from all that is in our environment, and also for our very lives.   Without purpose therefore, life itself becomes meaningless to us, and only when purpose is established, does life regain its meaning.  

It is critical then that we understanding our purpose.  Meaning is based on purpose, which in turn is based on self-identification, i.e. who I am or more importantly, who I think I am.  If I identify my self as an ego, then that ego becomes the basis for understanding my purpose, which in turn gives meaning to my life and to all that is in the environment around me.  Similarly, if I see myself as a holy child of God, created in the image and likeness of my Creator, blessed and perfect, then it is this identification that becomes the basis for understanding my purpose and the meaning of life for me.  

As a holy child of God, ‘Everything is for your own best interest.  That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means.’   This is how we give meaning to everything, and it is also why things have different meaning to different people.  The meaning we assign to something speaks volumes about who we think we are.  And the more meaning or importance we give to something, the more clearly it identifies us.  Every choice and decision we make is a statement about who we think we are.  Our self-identiy is so important to us that we go out of our way to announce it to everyone and everything around us, in subtle and not so subtle ways, from our style of dress, the car we choose to drive, the house and neighbourhood we live in the people and parties we associate with, the career we persue, etc.  

The lesson here is that since our self identity is reflected in everything we think, say and do, it is worth some time and energy to identify more with who we really are, as opposed to who we think we are--our true divine Self, as opposed to our made-up ego self.  We are Spirit, created in the image and likeness of our Creator, and our spirit-ness cannot ever be changed or diminished in any way, even while we are having this physical experience of being in bodies.  So while we are here in bodies, it would be in our best interest to identify with our spirit-ness, for then we will be identifying with what is permanent, powerful, and perfect.  Our divine identification shines the light of divine wisdom on our purpose, which in turn brightens the meaning of life for us.   

Quote of the Week: June June 12, 2011

A therapist does not heal; he lets healing be.  He can point to darkness but he cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him.  Yet, being for him, it must also be for his patient.  The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist.   He makes healing clear in any situation in which He is the Guide.  You can only let him fulfill his function. He needs no help for this.  He will tell you exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help, and will speak to him through you if you do not interfere.  Remember that you choose the guide for helping, and the wrong choice will not help.  But remember also that the right one will.  Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.  As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world.  But the laws you are obeying work.  '’The good is what works' is a sound though insufficient statement.  Only the good can work.  Nothing else works at all.

ACIM Text:9,V,8

This quote like so many others in the course reminds us that our only function is to provide the little willingness needed for the Holy Spirit to perform His function.  Though our part, our willingness, is little, it is critical to the fulfillment of our awakening; for without it, the Holy Spirit cannot perform His function.  But His support is there for us, even to help us complete our little function.  He provides the inspiration, insight and guidance to help motivate us to become more open to Him, more trusting and less fearful of Him.  And as we grow in the knowledge and understanding of His omnipotence, his omniscience, we naturally begin to resonate more with His knowledge and understanding.  Because He knows who He truly is, He cannot fail.   We, not knowing who we truly are, often question the value of our little part, or if we can even fulfill it.  But even while we ponder this, all that we are, all that we think, say and do is supported by Him; His support is our bedrock, and for that reason, we too cannot fail; it is inevitable that we will eventually come to Self-knowledge and recognize who we really are.  What facilitates this awakening in us is the humble acknowledgment that it is complete when we give our little willingness to Him who's function it is to awaken us, and reveal to us the light that we are.  To let the light of Self-knowledge radiate from within us, all we need do is 'let healing be', and let the Holy one complete His function to provide all the necessary means and guide us to our enlightenment.

Quote of the Week: June 5th 2011

If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God
and unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself,
salvation will be given you.

ACIM Text:15,III,11

This quote reminds us that our path is quite simple but we must first humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to get to God.  We know this acknowledgment is true simply because we don't really know ourselves (always trying to “find ourselves”) so it must follow that we really don't know God either, and therefore we cannot possibly know how to get to God.  Yet this quote opens the door to this awareness in two easy steps, first be wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God, and second, be unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself.  Just these two steps and salvation will be given you.

Though these two steps seem simple in theory, they are not at all trivial for we who are so certain that we know how to bring about our own salvation, or to find our own peace.  We are pretty certain of it, or if we're not, we know someone (a friend, relative, teacher, celebrity, etc.) who knows the way and who fortunately has a plan, and we certainly are willing to follow that plan to the best of our ability.  Furthermore, we are so habituated to striving and suffering and sacrificing in the name of reaching our goal that we spend precious little time questioning if we truly understand the magnitude of the goal, what it requires for completion, or at least some basic principles upon which the plan for accomplishing this goal is formulated, so that we can be confident that it is a viable plan.  Instead we busy ourselves, sleeves rolled up, bent over, nose to the ground, shoulder to the grinding stone executing “the plan” weather we understand it or not.

But, fortunately, we have a plan, given to us by God, that is at last infallible, for God’s creations are complete in all ways, so there is no need for contingency plans or reactive measures.  His plan for our salvation was created at the moment of our creation and remains with us.  It was designed to handle every possible wrinkle or nuance that could ever arise in our experience, so there can be no doubt about its viability, or its ultimate success.  His plan is simplicity itself, it asks us in a word to simply, BE; to relinquish all other plans and activities we have formulated in the name of finding salvation.  It asks us to give up any notion that any plan we could ever formulate is going to work, if for no other reason than the very obvious fact that we just don't know who we are; we are clueless.  So give it, give it all up.  No more efforting to get to God, no more grasping, grunting, striving, struggling, and sacrificing.  Just release all that “busy work” and humbly and willingly, just “Be still.”  For the very act of calming ourselves down, slowing down and eventually stopping the endless activity in the execution of “our” plan, leaves us without any activity, and the best description we can give for that state of being, is stillness.  And in that stillness, all that you could ever desire and more will be given you!   I don't think it gets simpler than that folks!

Quote of the Week May 1st - 22nd, 2011

It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give.  What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?  It cannot mean that you have less because of it.  There is no sacrifice in the world’s terms that does not involve the body.  Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice.  Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the “hero” to whom all these things belong?  Could they mean anything except to a body?  Yet a body cannot evaluate.  By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its Identity and losing sight of what it really is.

ACIM Manual for Teachers 13,2

This week’s quote expands the topic of sacrifice and the meaninglessness of the world we created, as opposed to the world God created, which has been the topic for the last few weeks.  Here in this week’s quote, a larger view of the concept of sacrifice emerges:  “There is no sacrifice in the world’s terms that does not involve the body... . Power, fame, money, physical pleasure...”  these are the things the world deems valuable and therefore these are the things we both strive to attain and are willing to sacrifice for.  But clearly these things have meaning and value only to the body, and therefore only hold meaning to us because we associate ourselves with the body.  But that association is the greatest sacrifice of all:  we the holy children of the all-mighty God, by choosing to identify ourselves as bodies also choose to sacrifice, give up, disbelieve, ignore, or deny our true identity.  A greater sacrifice has never occurred, for here we gave up the reality that we are everything for the illusion, the dream, the mere fantasy that we are bodies, separate from God and from each other, frail, temporary, and vulnerable.  And we hold this body association not only as valuable, but as defensible, in spite of all the apparent and continued suffering it creates for us. 

“Yet a body cannot evaluate.”  Only the mind can evaluate, discriminate between two choices, and decide which is the better, the more meaningful, or more valuable.  And so it must be that our mind chose to associate itself with the body because that was the best possible choice it could make.  The deeper question then is why did the mind decide that it was more valuable to associate with the body than with its true identity as a child of God?  What was its reason for choosing to associate with a body?  The obvious answer is that the mind saw the alternative choice of its true identity as more fearful and therefore less desirable.  The motive for a particular choice is always based on one of two observations:  either we perceive one alternative as having or leading to more joy, advantage, etc., and so we lean towards that alternative, or we perceive one choice as having or leading to more pain, loss, etc., and so we lean away from that alternative.  The quality of our choice depends of course on our ability to evaluate correctly and exercise the mental clarity to choose in our own best interest.  

These are the variables in the equation of choice.  Faced with a fearful alternative we will naturally lean away from that alternative, even if it may mean embracing a less desirable but less fearful alternative.  We call this "choosing the lesser of two evils."  ACIM states that this is the scenario that caused our minds to choose association with the body.  What is the one thing that you are missing when you have everything?  The answer is the experience of not having everything, or of having nothing.  It is a frustrating though common experience among parents to find that regardless of how much they try to give their children the “best” and help them avoid the “worst”, that the children will in some way or another endeavor to experience something that was not given to them or something that was restricted from their experience.  But wise parents know this impulse well, if not from their own childhood experiences, then surely from their experience as parents.  The story of the Buddha is a classic example of this scenario.  His parents tried to fulfill his every physical desire and avoid any experience of suffering, sickness and death, yet it is precisely these he choose to experience and conquer for his benefit and the benefit of the world.   The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is a similar scenario, where Adam is told he can eat the fruit of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and sure as the sun shines, he eventually chooses to eat of that one restricted tree.  

The cliche that curiosity killed the cat indicates a possible outcome of curiosity, even though it is the primary motivation for gaining knowledge.  In the cosmic scheme of things, God created us in his image and likeness, making us forever a part of Himself, and thereby endowing us with His power, wisdom, and presence.  This experience of complete unity, with access to complete power and knowledge is almost perfect, except that we could not know what it would be like to not be in union with God.  Being curious, we had a desire inquire about that state of disunity, separate and apart from God.  The result of this curiosity, as is the result of any desire of God and His children, is that it became fulfilled immediately and completely, for God is omnipotent and exists not in time, but in eternity.  This curiosity of ours could never be fulfilled in eternity, for there where God is, there is no change, separation, or individuation, and no concept of place and time apart from the eternal here and now.  Furthermore there is no other time or place outside of God where something other or apart from God could exist, for God is omnipresent, i.e. present in the only place and time that truly exist, the eternal here, (i.e. every-w-here) and the eternal moment of now.  The only way to fulfill our curiosity then, given the paradox it creates, is to create a dream place and a dream time; a dream time with the illusion of past and future, in a dream place nowhere in particular in the every-w-here!   This was the solution to the paradox of having to be simultaneously in time and in eternity, and in some particular place in the omnipresent everywhere.   Try fitting that on a bottle cap or t-shirt!


One other thing occurred.  Because we cannot hold the world of eternity and the world of time in our awareness simultaneously, the fulfillment of this curiosity created a split in our mind.  Quite literally but in simple terms, we have two minds, the left brain and the right brain, both of which function independently of each other, but with some measure of communication or information transfer between them, i.e. the left brain vaguely acknowledges the existence of the right brain, while the right brain is aware of but not too interested in the functioning of the left brain.  The left brain gives us our experience of time (past, present, and future) while the right brain gives us our experience of eternity.  In eternity we are asleep and in that deep sleep we temporarily loose awareness of our eternal identity, a kind of death experience, and are born into the dream of time and space, where we can experience disunity (To die, to sleep; to sleep perchance to dream*.)  

This is how the great sacrifice occurred:  in order to experience disunity, we had to forget the knowledge of our eternal unity with God, for to remember it would be to diminish the experience of disunity.  It is probably more correct to describe this experience by saying that curiosity put the cat to sleep!  :)  

So here we are in our dream world, separate, but still who we really are as one with God; asleep, in eternity but awake in time, anticipating our re-awakening to eternity and to God.  The knowledge and understanding of the world is the knowledge and understanding of sleep, dreams, and fantasy.  Understanding our ordinary worldly life in the context of a dream life is what allows us to forgive the world and everyone and everything in it, and by so doing we gain the vision of the world as something within us, as opposed to something outside us, different from us that victimizes us.  Instead we begin to view the world and everyone within it as what they truly are:  the individual expressions of our one, single, unified, collective consciousness.  With this vision then comes the ultimate challenge, to choose in our individual expressions to incorporate and express ourselves more and more as our single collective consciousness, as the son of God, the Christ consciousness—the individual expression of our unified collective consciousness.

*.From Shakespeare's Hamlet

Quote of the Week: April 24, 2011

Although in truth the term sacrifice is altogether meaningless, it does have meaning in the world. Like all things in the world, its meaning is temporary and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it.  Now its real meaning is a lesson.  Like all lessons it is an illusion, for in reality there is nothing to learn.  Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; another illusion that replaces the first, so both can finally disappear.  The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than that?

ACIM Manual For Teachers, 13,1

Last week we explored the idea that the perception of separation is the perception of illusions.  This dovetails nicely into this week’s quote which provides a clearer understanding of the meaninglessness or illusory nature of sacrifice.  The idea of sacrifice is one that is highly regarded by the world, and is in fact lauded as the primary means for attaining anything of value.   It is at the foundation of our learning and education systems, our work ethic, our system of rewards and punishments, our relationships, and at the heart of our concepts about God and salvation.  It is an accepted idea that in order to attain any level of success one must pay a price by sacrificing something, usually referred to as the “price of success.”  

This idea of sacrifice is mirrored in the often quoted biblical passage "For God so loved the world, that He 'gave' (read that as ‘sacrificed’) His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  John 3:16.  This passage speaks about God's love for the world and for His son, implying that God created two different things and sacrificed one (His son) for the sake of the other (the world.)  This is certainly a boon for the world and the believers of the world, but it also means that God created the world without giving it everlasting life, and later corrects the situation by offering it to us if we believe in His son.  But we are His son and the whole creation is God's son-ship.  We certainly did not create ourselves, so who else but God is our Creator, and He created us in his likeness, i.e. spirit, formless and free.  Everlasting life is a given, a gift of inheritance from the Creator to His son-ship.  This passage is true only if ‘His son’ and ‘the world’ are identical, then it would read:  “For God so loved the world that He gave it to His only begotten son ... .”  God created one son and that one son is everything in creation.  We are that one creation, that one son, that son-ship, i.e., the sum of everything in creation is the son of God.  

But just because an idea is accepted does not mean that it is true, and since we are interested in truth, let us examine this accepted idea of sacrifice*.  Sacrifice means that an item of lesser value is given up in order to acquire something of greater value, and in order to make the correct choice, a proper evaluation and subsequent judgment of each is necessary.  If either item is evaluated incorrectly or incompletely, the judgment based on that evaluation will also be incorrect or incomplete, and this would lead, perhaps to inadvertently giving up the item of greater value for the item of lesser value, which indeed would be an unfortunate sacrifice.  It is ironic that the term sacrifice is associated with “loss” when what is accomplished through it is actually “gain,” indicating that our sense of value lies more with what is lost than it does with what is gained.  For instance, the idea of loosing one's soul to gain the world would be an unfortunate sacrifice, if it were possible, but the idea of loosing the world to gain one's soul would be most fortunate, and by comparison not at all a sacrifice.

Clearly there are two worlds, the world God created and the dream-world we created and typically experience as "real."  God's world is the experience of oneness and unity, whereas our world is the experience of separateness, struggle and strife.  Last week's quote talks about why we did this.  So how can we correctly evaluate our world and the world God created?  Because sacrifice is meaningless to one who has everything and is everything, it is meaningless to God.  And since we are the children of God, then it is also meaningless to us, but only if we appreciate our true value as children of God, i.e. god-children, created by God, in the image and likeness of God, and endowed with the knowledge and power of God.  Since this is not how we typically value ourselves, it meas that our sense of value is skewed, which causes a skewed or incorrect evaluation of everything.  We value the world we created over the world God created, because we forgot our knowledge of God’s world, which led to our dependence on perception, evaluation, and judgment, rather than on knowledge.  We cannot perceive God’s world, as we learned from last week’s quote because 'what is one cannot be perceived as separate', so we therefore value God’s world little because we cannot perceive it evaluate it or judge it, even though it offers us everything.  Our world by contrast offers us no lasting peace and abundant fear, yet we value it greatly just because we can perceive it, thus proving that we value perception over knowledge.  Fortunately because something is lost does not mean we do not have it, it only means that we have forgotten what we have and therefore can potentially remember it.

It does not take much to realize that the world we created even though it has its happy moments, could not have been crated by God because it is not in accordance with the abilities we attribute to God, namely omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.  For one endowed with such abilities, is it not reasonable to expect a world that is at least free from suffering?  This question leads us to one of two conclusions:  either God did not created our world, or if He did, then He must not be compassionate, and values suffering and pain and strife.  This is one way of logically concluding that God indeed did not create our world, and because He did not create it, it cannot be real, and because it is not real, it has no value, and because it has no value, it therefore cannot be a sacrifice to give it up.  Once we understand that it is not a sacrifice to give up the things of this world, we are well on the way home to remembering who God is, and who we truly are.

* Sacrifice connotatively also refers to the idea of “self-sacrifice” or of “doing without something.”  Again, this idea is antithetical to God, for He is everything.

Quote of the Week: April 3-17, 2011

What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of knowledge.  At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself that is His Son.  The world has no purpose as it blends into the Purpose of God.  For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been.  There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other.  Heaven is your home, and being in God it must also be in you.

ACIM Chapter 12,VI,7

‘What is one cannot be perceived as separate, ... .’  This is why we cannot “perceive” God, or Christ or the Holy Spirit. or even ourselves as we truly are, i.e. as God created us.  The whole creation is the sonship of God, and each member of the sonship is one with each other member and with the Father, but we cannot see this oneness since it is not open to perception.  What is left to perception is the illusion that we are separate from each other and from God.  To perceive separation then, is to deny that which is true and to accept that which is false or illusory.  

Because we perceive separation we perceive ourselves as having bodies, separate from each other, from our environment, and from God, and we are unable to perceive the connections that make everything one.  Perception at best can only lead us (back) to the knowledge of oneness, indeed that is its highest function, and in the presence of knowledge, perception is unnecessary.  Perception itself is only an illusion, a dream that hides reality and shows us only what we wish to see.  Perception is an illusion that we created to hide the truth about the oneness of God’s reality from ourselves.  Another way to say this is that perception is an illusion we created out of our curiosity to know what it would be like to not be in oneness with All-that-is, i.e. separate from God.  This curiosity immediately threw us into the state of deep sleep, for only in dreams can such a wish be fulfilled.  We could say that the fulfillment of this wish is our apparent banishment from the garden of Eden; our exit from the oneness of God’s reality and our birth into the dream world of separation.  The implication is that we who perceive separation must either be insane or asleep, and in either case sanity or awakening is restored by denying the illusion of separation we perceive.  This denial is our wish ticket out of the illusion and our re-awakening to God’s reality, which in truth never changed at all while we slept.  

So how does one go about denying the perceptions of the world and reestablishing the knowledge of reality and the vision of oneness?  One way is to apply the principle of oneness known as the golden rule:  “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.”  Since in truth we and all others are indeed one, what we do to another is being done onto us.  This rule is a clear denial of the perception of separation, and an absolute denial of the ways of the world.  With the universal application of this rule, all conflicts end, and love becomes established in our perception, for then we perceive all beings in ourselves and also in God.  This is a gentle and loving awakening that requires full and conscious participation on our part and on the part of God, though His part has already been fulfilled; it is our part that is holding back the completion of our vision of oneness.  Our part is simple:  be willing!   Be willing to release our incomplete concepts and distorted understanding about what the world is, and about what God is.  

This is the willingness to not be so certain that we know all there is to know about any subject, most of all God; the willingness to acknowledge that there may be something we don’t know, the knowing of which could change everything; the willingness to ask that the answer to any “problem” be given us, and the willingness to accept the answer that is given, even if it does not fit in with our perception or understanding of what the correct answer should be; the willingness to be open to different perspectives on all things, and to see all things as shades of grey, instead of either black or white; and most of all, this is the willingness to forgive everyone and everything for what we believe they did or failed to do.  

This forgiveness comes easier to us when we are determined to trust in the wisdom and power of our Creator, and in the understanding that each of us is suffering in some way and under these circumstances we are all doing the very best we can.  The truth about each and everyone of us is that we are the holy perfect creation of the holy perfect Creator, and as such we are can never be diminished or changed in any way.  Only in our dreams can we imagine ourselves to be separate and somehow less that what God created us to be.  Within us is all we need to be anything we can ever dream to be; it must be so for that is what perfection means.  

Be willing then, O’ Holy child of God, to dream a better dream by remembering that ‘Heaven is your home, and being in God it must also be in you.'  How therefore can there be any lack in you.  If anything exists, it must exist in Heaven, and if Heaven is in you, O’ holy child of God, how could you be anything less than completely whole and perfect.  This is the truth about you and I, and the denial of all but this is the reinstatement of the knowledge of our true Self.

Quote of the Week: March 27, 2011

Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as “the way of nature”, not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path,—all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this.

Manual for Teachers, 27,1

At the source of all illusions is the concept of “death.”  It is an idea so ingrained into our awareness that it forms the central theme of all our thoughts, and activity.  To us it is a given, an undeniable, unavoidable, and apparently obvious fact of life:  that all things that have a beginning have an end; that the goal of life is death.   We can all agree that we do experience life as cyclical, changing and unsure, undependable and unsteady, waxing and waning, and finally ending in the dramatic transformation we call death, but what we fail to question is whether or not this concept and its experience is true, or even makes any sense.  If we agree that our lives end in death, then God, who created us in his image and likeness must also be subject to death.  But this cannot be for it directly contradicts our basic understanding of God’s nature, namely:  all powerful, all knowing, and all present, which all testify to His eternal nature.  Furthermore to believe in death is to believe that God is cruel and vengeful, as opposed to benign, benevolent and caring.  

 

Clearly there is a glaring flaw in the idea that death is the goal of life.  But let us examine this concept from our common experiential level by asking the question:  Does anything really die?  What becomes of a tree or a human being when it “dies?”  We need not consider the “Soul” in our analysis, because it is an accepted fact that it continues on after “death”, so we have only to consider the physical material parts that remain, which slowly decomposes into their component elements.  Is it not more accurate then to say that what we perceive is not a death, but simply the deconstruction and subsequent transformation of one life form into another.  This is a process that is constantly going on in and around us, which we simply call growth, or evolution.  As time passes each of us grow from being a baby, to a child, to a teen, to a young adult, to a mature adult, to a senior, with each stage arising from the previous and giving foundation to the next.  And in each of these transformations we could say that the previous stage “died” to give birth to the next stage, but instead we simply say that one stage grew into the next.  The only difference between this and the more dramatic transformation we call “death” is that in the case of humans, we don’t easily perceive or know what the next stage of transformation is.  But for another species, the caterpillar, we are able to perceive the next stage which is the creation of the butterfly, where it is clear that there is no death, only an elegant and continuous process of growth.  

 

From still another perspective, all religions state that there is something after “death,” something happy or something unhappy, but in either case “something” exists after “death,” so where O’ where death is thy fearful sting, which we seek so desperately to postpone as long as possible?  Even science which understands everything to be energy or more correctly vibrations, declares in its first law of thermodynamics that the total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant; that no energy can be created or destroyed, and that all life is simply the transformation of energy from one form to another. Clearly this fundamental belief in death has no real foundation, for it is found wanting from every perspective.  

 

Perhaps it is not so much death that we fear, but much more the aftermath of death, what religions call final judgment.  Aha that indeed would be something to be feared, but only if we believed in a vengeful and punishing God.  For those believing in a loving and compassionate God, final judgment is a welcomed homecoming; an event for celebration; a reunion; the return of the long lost prodigal son to his father; indeed, the awakening of the holy son of God.  

 

So be not saddened by the idea of death my siblings for it is but an illusion, a dream that engenders fear in those who see it not as an illusion.  The wise, however, recognize it for what it is and therefore grieve neither for the living nor the “dead,” knowing both to be illusions that arise and fall like waves on the ever stable and unmoving ocean of eternal bliss consciousness that is God.  God suffices because there is nothing else that exists but Him.  God is dependable unavoidable and inescapable for He is One, and never changes, even while appearing in all the infinite multiplicity of forms in creation.  You and I are part of that unchanging multiplicity, so we too are One with each other and One with Him.  In scientific terms, in the mathematics of infinity: One + One = One, and in the immortal words of the Upanishads:

Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman, the totality); 

Tat Tvam Asi (you too are that totality);

Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma (All this is Brahman, the totality).

Purnam adah purnam idam purnat purnam udachyate
purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyate
(That absolute existence is full; this relative existence is full;
from that absolute fullness, this relative fullness comes out. 
Taking fullness from fullness, what remains is fullness.)

Quote of the Week: March 13th 2011

Recognize what does not matter, and if your brothers ask you for something “outrageous,” do it because it does not matter. Refuse, and your opposition establishes that it does matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have made the request outrageous, and every request of a brother is for you. Why would you insist in denying him? For to do so is to deny yourself and impoverish both. He is asking for salvation, as you are. Poverty is of the ego, and never of God. No “outrageous” requests can be made of one who recognizes what is valuable and wants to accept nothing else. 

ACIM Chapter 12,III,4

 
The distinction between what is valuable and what is valueless is an important one.  It is easy to relinquish the invaluable when it is recognized as having no value, and easy to cherish what is valuable when it is recognized as such.  But if the distinction is not correctly made, there is a potential to treat that which has great value as though it was valueless, and to treat that which has no value as though it was valuable.   For one who knows this distinction, his path is clear and simple:  keep what is valuable and release what is valueless.  Certainly you would have no reason to deny a request of someone who asks you for that which you recognize to be valueless.  He requests it because he believes it to be of value, so if you refuse, you would be agreeing with him that his request is valuable, and so are joining him in his inability to correctly distinguish between the valuable and valueless.  Therefore:  ‘Recognize what does not matter, and if your brothers ask you for something “outrageous,” do it because it does not matter.’   

In addition, God’s law of giving and receiving which states that what is given to one is given to all, and what is received by one is received by all, is an additional reason for granting the request, outrageous though it may be for that which is valueless; for to deny it would be to deny both our brother and our self the opportunity to correctly distinguish between the valuable and the valueless.  A child that asks an adult for a toy believes it to be of value, but the adult who know it is valueless can easily begin the process of correcting the child’s value error by granting his request.  If the adult denies the request, he is then endowing the toy with even greater value in the eyes of the child who then becomes even more convinced that the toy is valuable.  The job of the adult, which is to teach the child to correctly distinguish between the valuable and the valueless, is now much more difficult because the child’s wrong conviction is greatly increased.  Furthermore, if the adult only grants the request of the child and does nothing more, he has done some little bit, but has not helped the child learn to make the distinction for himself.  With this purpose in mind, it becomes clear that both the valuable and the valueless (as requested) must be given so that the child can learn to correctly distinguish between them.   

This is how it is between us and God.  We his children, are constantly asking for that which is valueless, for we have a conviction that it is valuable.  To correct our mistake, God grants us the wisdom of His voice in the form of the Holy Spirit who knows this distinction clearly, as well as all that we desire believing it to be valuable, but which He knows is valueless.  God knows us, for He created us, and by granting our request and in addition providing the contrast of the valuable, we are now able to make a better choice.  Of God, ‘No “outrageous” requests can be made’  for He clearly knows the distinction, and so it is for us as well, when we too correctly recognize the difference.  We can just as easily substitute the words “real”  and “unreal” for valuable and valueless respectively, for both are the same.  That which is of God, like His children, are valuable, and nothing else is of value. Our value is inherent in what we are:  the Holy children of God, endowed with all the power, wisdom and glory of the Father.  When we acknowledge and accept our true identity, we too will recognize how simple it is to decide between the valuable and the valueless.

Quote of the Week: March 6th, 2011

Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you think you do not want to do. His very insistence should tell you that he believes salvation lies in it. If you insist on refusing and experience a quick response of opposition, you are believing that your salvation lies in not doing it. You, then, are making the same mistake he is, and are making his error real to both of you. Insistence means investment, and what you invest in is always related to your notion of salvation. The question is always twofold; first, what is to be saved? And second, how can it be saved? 

ACIM Chapter 12,III,2

This idea that ‘insistence means investment ’ and its corollary that ‘what you invest in is always related to your notion of salvation,’ is both startling and unfamiliar to our normal way of thinking.  It is fairly easy for us to see that insistence is a result or reflection of investment, and indeed this concept is at the basis of our laws regarding “conflicts of interest.”  We recognize that to be invested in someone or something creates a powerful bias in our perspective of anything related to that person or thing.  In other words, because we wish to protect our investment we loose our objectivity with respect to that person or thing.  The corollary that our investment is always related to our notion of salvation is less familiar to us, and it is this that the quote is bringing to our attention.  

 

Our insistence in doing or not doing a certain thing indicates where our investment lies, and our investment is a statement of our notion of salvation.  We would not invest in something unless we believe that it will bring us to a better place on some level, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, and the investment of our time, attention and resources is always in proportion to our edification.  We choose:  our friends, and acquaintances, our education and social connections; our career, political and spiritual affiliations, our neighborhood, possessions, and even our style of dress, all for our own edification.  Furthermore we are willing to fight tooth and nail, to suffer and commit insult and injury in the defense of our choices, because at a very deep level of our consciousness we believe our very salvation depends on these choices.  

 

This belief in our choices as a means to our salvation is at the root of all our conflicts.  We believe our choices are the way not simply to edify, but to deify ourselves.  We believe this because we believe we are something much less than the divine children God created us to be.  Instead, we see ourselves as: bodies, limited, weak, frail, vulnerable, sinful, and therefore desperately in need of salvation -- what a different world it would be if only we believed in our God given divinity.  In truth we need no salvation, for we are now, always was, and always will be as God created us, since we cannot change the will of God.  But we do need salvation from our belief in the ego-personality we created and the concept of “sin” which gives rise to our belief in salvation, thus giving rise to the questions of “what” is to be saved, and “how?”   It is only our minds that need salvation, for it is our mechanism of decision, and it can only be saved by the removal of conflict and the establishment of peace.  

 

The conflict is our wish to have a Truth different from the Truth God created and established within our minds.  And since Truth and illusion cannot abide in the same place, we split our minds and projected our wish, the cause of the conflict, outside our ego-personality, superimposing it on the world God created.  Our projection is an illusion that covers (without changing in anyway) the Truth God created, and this is why conflict is inherent in our experience of the world, for it is literally built on conflict, better known as duality*.  

 

Peace comes only when illusions are recognized for what they are and relinquished in exchange for Truth--the only state of lasting peace.  In the state of peace, the mad idea of “separation” from God and from our divine inheritance is simply laughed at, for in that state, we recognize clearly our true identity with God and with each other; there we recognize the law of giving and receiving in a different light:  that what we give to each other we give to ourselves, and what we receive all others receive as well.  When we see this clearly, we also recognize what is real and what is illusion, and in recognizing illusion, we also recognize that there cannot be orders of magnitude between one illusion and another, and therefore no orders of magnitude in the solution to any of them.  Regardless of how outrageous and different they may seem, illusions are unreal, have no effects, and do not matter at all.  The solution to any illusion is always the same, bring it to Truth, like darkness to light, and watch it disappear.  

 

As we relinquish our hold on illusions we begin to withdraw our projection and awaken to the real world God created; we understand that neither our illusions nor our brother’s matter, and in this awakening we can easily do whatever outrageous thing our brother asks of us, for then we recognize that his “outrageous” request like our own is simply a request for salvation, and to deny him his request would be to deny it from ourselves.  We are one, so what is given, is given to all, and received likewise.

* The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1,4,2 states: “Dvtiyad via bhayam bhavati”  Certainly fear is born of duality.  Duality gives rise to fear and fear is the source of all conflict.

Peace, Edmond

Quote of the Week of February 27th, 2011

Seek not outside yourself.  For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls.  Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there.  Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place.  There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings.  Seek not outside yourself.  For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found.  What if it is not there?  Do you prefer that you be right or happy?  Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere.  You will fail.  But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.

ACIM Chapter 29,VII,1

‘Seek not outside yourself’  is a statement of what is true about us as holy children of God.  We cannot actually seek outside ourselves because our Self is everything, so it is impossible to seek for something outside of everything.  We are everything because God, who is everything, created us like Himself and so we share His characteristics and identity as one with everything.  This does not mean that we are equal to God, for He created us but we did not create Him.  But because He created us like Himself, we too can be Father to our creations and share our oneness with them.   

A tidal wave is one with a small ripple on the ocean because they share the common characteristics of ocean-ness and wetness, but they are certainly not equal in size or power.  To say that two thing are one is to say that they share a common basis, that theey share the same characteristics and potentials, that what is possible for one is possible for the other.  But to say that they are equal is to say that they are one and the same thing, with no distinction between them.  This is also true of our relationship with God, we are one and the same, but this divine oneness makes sense only from His perspective.  From our perspective there is still the distinction that He created us.  

‘Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there.’  Peace of mind is what we want most, and the only place we can find peace is in Heaven, and since Heaven is within us, true and lasting peace can only be found within us.  The thing that separates our inner Self from our outer self is the body, which acts as a fence or a limitation on our one true, eternally unlimited Self.  The body is the outward expression of our insane desire and vain attempts to find peace outside of God’s kingdom.  It is impossible to separate into parts that which is everything.  Just as it is illusory to see a ripple, a current, a wave, or a whirlpool as separate or distinct from the water of which it is a part, just so it is illusory to see a body, or an ego-self as separate or distinct from the one eternally divine consciousness of which it is a part, and from which it arises, is sustained for awhile, and finally resolved back into.  

All that we want now, ever wanted, and will ever want, is here inside us, for that is where God, the source and fountainhead of all that is exists, and we too exist along with Him in our true state without the illusory limitations imposed by bodies.  So why insist like petulant children on searching outside ourselves, demanding that what we want is there, rather than where it truly is.  Choose happiness instead of righteousness and find the peace you seek where it is, inside yourSelf.  This inner searching is not only simpler and more fruitful, it is the only sure path to peace.
 

Quote for the Week of February 20th, 2011

To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with perception's fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this, to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception's form, adapted to this world, of God's more basic law; that love creates itself, and nothing but itself.

ACIM Chapter 25,III,1

Perception is key to how we experience, and perception rests on our beliefs, which in turn rest on our will to have things be as we desire.  “This is in accord with perception’s fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there.”  This statement gives us a glimpse of the immensity of our mental power and will.  Because we want a certain experience, we project that experience outside ourselves, and conveniently forget we did this.  Then, we employ our senses to see our projection as we wanted to perceive it.  The senses are only verifying our original projection, but because of our forgetfulness we accept their messages as proof that what we perceive is “real” and so we experience what we wanted as something that is happening to us, as opposed to through us.  

In this complicated mental gymnastics, the culprit or enemy is our desire to have things not as they are (created by God) but as we want them to be.  As aptly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita:  “It is desire, it is anger, born of rajo-guna, all consuming and most evil.  Know this to be the enemy here on earth.”    So what is this all-consuming desire that motivates us to “want” what God created not?  It is the guilt we feel in response to taking seriously the mad idea that we can somehow be separate from God.  

That this mad idea came into our awareness is only a small part of the problem, the major part is our forgetting to laugh at such a preposterous and obviously untenable idea, for how could there be anything separate from the One that is All-That-Is.  But having entertained this idea, the next mad idea occurred, that God would be angry or at least displeased with us for attacking His creation, which is what considering this mad idea amounts to.  This second mad idea is as preposterous as the first, because the all powerful Creator certainly knows His own creation, and knowledge implies awareness of all the possible thoughts and actions of His creation, so how could He be angry at what He knows He created.  But even if God could be angry at us, who is part of His creation and therefore part of Himself, why would He every punish us, for that would mean He punishes Himself, which would make no sense at all.  

But we did not stop to consider the insanity of our first two mad steps.  Instead, fearing revenge and punishment, we sort for a hiding place—yet another mad idea, for where could we hide from One who is omnipresent?  The answer is of course nowhere, except in fantasy.   For what cannot be real in waking is easily imagined and made real in dreams.  And so the holy son of God fell asleep and dreamed the dream of a make-believe world where he can hide in safety from the imagined wrath of God, for even God Himself is barred entry to this fantasy world.  Here we, the holy unified children of God, dwell in dreams of separation from ourselves and from God, in dreams of unreality that we perceive and experience as "real."  

But while God or Truth or Eternity cannot enter illusions and time, God also cannot abandon His children even while they dream.  Knowing His children sleep, God keeps a part of our minds safe from illusions, established in His eternity, peacefully and at one with Him.  While we, His one creation, has the freedom to choose between reality and illusions, He keeps a part of our mind holy—literally filled with His Holy Spirit—unaffected by our dreaming so that when we are ready, we can choose to turn away from illusions and awaken to our true identity.  With the invaluable help of the Holy Spirit, our way out of this fantasy is guaranteed, and forgiveness is the means.  

Forgiveness for all our perceptions, for everyone and everything we perceive, not for what our perceptions did or didn’t do, but because we realize or will realize finally that NOTHING happened that needs forgiveness.  It is just a dream we made up and convinced a part of our mind that it was real, motivated by our fear and judgment.  This realization is our awakening, our way out of the dream and our glorious return to reality and to God.

*  Chapter 3.26-27:  This is Lord Krishna’s answer in response to Arjuna’s question “What is it that impels a man to commit sin, even involuntarily, as if driven by force, O Varshneya?”