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.
No comments:
Post a Comment