Quote of the Week
Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking, and think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given, waiting only your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.
The resounding answer to the three questions asked in the quote is Yes! And it is wonderfully assuring to know that all this is mine but for the asking and the willingness to see my brother as sinless. The question now becomes how easy or difficult is it to see my brother as sinless? Certainly there are times when it is easy to see each other as sinless, as when we are feeling happy, but at other times, especially when we have judged someone’s behavior to be inappropriate or ‘bad’, it is significantly more difficult and occasionally inconceivable to see them as sinless. So how can we accomplish this?
Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking, and think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given, waiting only your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.
ACIM Chapter 20,VIII,2
The resounding answer to the three questions asked in the quote is Yes! And it is wonderfully assuring to know that all this is mine but for the asking and the willingness to see my brother as sinless. The question now becomes how easy or difficult is it to see my brother as sinless? Certainly there are times when it is easy to see each other as sinless, as when we are feeling happy, but at other times, especially when we have judged someone’s behavior to be inappropriate or ‘bad’, it is significantly more difficult and occasionally inconceivable to see them as sinless. So how can we accomplish this?
The solution is quite simple, but its simplicity does not lessen the one-hundred and eighty-degree shocking change that it brings to our perception and understanding of things. The solution is simply to realize that nothing really happened! I’ll say it again, so that your intellect can begin to recover from the shock of having the rug pulled out from under you: all the things that we believe happened, never actually happened! And again: nothing that anybody ever did was actually done, even though we did experience it as having been done, it never really happened! I did warn you that it would be shocking, ya!
Ok so now let’s put the rug back under you, with some explanation. Nothing that we think happened ever really happen simply because it is all part of our dream! Yes, and here’s another shocker, you and I and God are all one. You and I, a permanent part of the totality that is God are asleep having a dream that we are somehow separate from God, the “All-That-Is.” In this dream we’re having, we imagine ourselves to be weak, frail and in constant fear of loosing whatever meager possessions or short lived pleasures we own or enjoy to other humans, or to other forces far superior in strength to us. In this crazy dream we live for a short time, and just as all worldly joys fade, so too do we fade away and die, leaving all that we acquired for others to quarrel over and divide amongst themselves for a little while, before they too follow us into the Great Unknown. Certainly, some would argue that there are great joys, learning's, and accomplishments that make worldly life worth while, but I ask again, what good is such a prize when it is guaranteed to be ripped from the cold hands of a corpse?
Be glad instead that this world is all a dream, a nightmare from which we are beginning to awake. Rejoice in the knowledge that God’s love for us never entertains the setting of suffering as the criterion or prerequisite for joy, learning, or accomplishment. And rejoice further that God, like any benevolent and loving parent, instead protects His creations from all suffering and clears their path of any and all possible danger, so that their happiness, joys, learning, and accomplishments grow in a garden of increasingly positive and blissful experiences. Such would be the intentions of any benevolent parent, so we must conclude that these worldly experiences cannot be real even thought they seem to be, and therefore we must conclude that we are caught in a dream. By realizing that the world is a clever illusion we crated, to convince ourselves that we are not who we really are, we can begin to see and believe the truth, that our brother is as sinless as we are, for nothing really happened, and we could say: "What happens in the dream stays in the dream!" Now vision comes to us; now we know our true identity; now we have certainty; now we are free of misery and have lasting joy!
Peace, Edmond
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