November 28, 2017

What does the world you inhabit look like? How does it appear to you? Is it a world filled with light and love or is it filled with darkness and heaviness? Take a good look at what you think you see. Decide if this is where you really want to be. Perhaps the world you see appears as a dark bank of clouds, dense and forbidding, blocking out even the light of the sun from sight. The world we see appears substantial and permanent, impenetrable. Yet, its solidity and permanence has no substance – it is merely temporal, an illusion. The Course tells us this about the world we think we see:

Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is there. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children’s make-believe. Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.  T-18.IX.7:1-5

Deep beneath and beyond this world is another world free of the dark and heavy clouds appearing before us. We needn’t fret about these dark and dreary clouds before us. They have no substance except that which we give them by believing they are real. While we are engulfed in this world and all it seems to surround us with, there is another world, another reality that has never left us. It remains within us filled with love and light, waiting for us to tire of the darkness and heaviness and turn to our Guide to lead us into the awareness of its light ad love. Let your Guide teach you the dark cloud’s unsubstantial nature as your Guide leads you past them, for beyond them is a world of light whereupon they cast no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world still further from the light. Yet from them to the light their shadows cannot fall.

This world of light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the One Child of Oneness, and you are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and love.   T-18.IX.9:1-7

You are ready to leave this dark world behind and step into the world of light. We step from the world of shadows into the light with our brothers and sisters.  It is when we allow our relationships to be healed or made whole through forgiveness – the messenger of love – that we find ourselves standing in the brilliant light of Oneness.  This is the holy instant in which we are united with each other and lifts us gently far above the darkness to the light of Oneness.  As we are lifted gently beyond the shadows, only what is untrue is removed and we are left with only bright and true perception.  This is our purpose now.  And peace awaits us here in this real world. Chose this world of Oneness and light and love now.

November 21, 2017

When we visited this section in a previous reading of the Course, I wrote the following in September of 2007:

“We have all experienced life in ways that seem like there are two totally different worlds.  One is heavy and full of challenges, seeming dark and lonely much of the time.  The other is light, fun and seemingly easy and effortless.  Each world seems to come and go with no rhyme or reason.  We seem to be at the mercy of something beyond our control.  But we have more control of which world we see than we may think we do.  We choose which world we see. The world that feels light, easy, and effortless is always present.  It is the world of our natural state.  The other world, the one that seems dark and challenging, is one that is made by the way we see it.  We have gotten used to seeing the world through the filters of our past experiences.  We experience life through the filter of the idea of separation; the idea that we are separate.  And so, we see and experience the events of our human existence through all these complex layers of experience.  It is like experiencing life from the other side of layers of veils, the veils of our perception, or looking at life through a fog bank.  Sometimes we can’t see anything at all through it.  Yet it is easy to walk through the fog bank or pull the veils aside and see correctly what is there.  It doesn’t matter what events are happening around us, when we begin to see without the filters, we see more clearly.  The Holy Spirit is waiting to help us, to be our guide.  All we need do is ask and let go of our attachment to our veils or filters.  Then we can see through God’s eyes and experience the peace, love and joy that is our natural state.  Nothing else has to change for us to see clearly.  Try it and see.  What have you got to lose?”

The filters and veils are the making of our egoic thought system. They are designed to distort the real world – the world that is Heaven and is our natural world, our home. We have blocked the real world out for so long that we have gotten accustomed to this dark and challenging world and accept it as real and inevitable without question. Are we really happy with that choice? I think we really want something better for ourselves and each other. Perhaps we are afraid that if we let go of the world we currently seem to see things will get worse. The question is, “Who and what do we believe we are?” Perhaps we believe we deserve the dark and challenging world. I say, “No!” We are created whole, complete and limitless. We have everything we need within our being to be the happy divine unified Child of God we truly are. No ifs, ands or buts about it. We are the One Divine Child of our Creator. And when we turn to that Source, we find ourselves complete and whole. This is waiting for us to wake up to. This is the world we are meant to see as we dwell there.

As we look at the world in which we seem to dwell, there seems to be a wall around it, keeping the bad out and what we have chosen to see in. We think it protects us, yet we still feel unsafe in our walled off world.  The previous section called this our little garden which we keep fenced off from the rest of the world. Do we really like this world that much? Are we realty thankful for this world? Perhaps we want something better.

This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button’s fall, nor hold a feather. Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an illusion of a foundation. Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands hold nothing.   T-18.IX.6:1-6

The dark world we seem to see has no substance. It appears to have substance only because we believe it has substance. Have we ever challenged or tested it? We don’t challenge it because we are afraid to. We are afraid that if it isn’t real there will be nothing there and we will fall into a never-ending void. The Course asks us to have even a tiny bit of willingness – perhaps the size of a mustard seed – to allow Spirit to guide us to a new, but ancient, understanding of our true Self in Oneness with each other. Together we discover the truth about who we really are and have always been and step into the light of the real world. Come and take another’s hand and walk into Oneness together and leave the little dark world to vanish into nothingness.

November 14, 20174

We are ultimately whole and complete, divine in nature and inseparable from Oneness. This cannot be changed. Nothing we think or believe can change the reality of our divine nature. Our world is Heaven, whole and complete as we are. We have chosen another thought.  We have chosen to believe that we can fence off a tiny little portion of our world and make it self-sustaining, independent of any other aspect of creation. We believe we can be completely separate from all others, not dependent and not responsible for any other aspect of creation we choose to wall out. Though we think and believe this gives us complete control in our lives, it actually limits us severely and denies much of who we really are. It, in fact, denies us of any meaningful happiness or peace as we have walled off much of our true identity from ourselves.

It is the tiny part of yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in the One’s keeping, and needs no guide.  This is the little part you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered realm in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of your true Self, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it.   T-18.IX.1:3-4, 6-10

We have completely identified ourselves with this walled off world we seek to protect from the world “out there.” This world we walled off is symbolized as our body. Just beneath this little world lies the circle of fear and guilt that appears to be the foundation of our whole world. The world appears to threaten us at every turn. This world’s shadow rises in our mind, casting all we perceive into darkness that may seem impenetrable so often. Its darkness is designed by our belief in this walled-off world to keep the light of our true Self hidden from our awareness. The body cannot see this, for the body rose from this belief for its protection, which depends on keeping our true Self hidden. The body’s eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see what it dictates.

The body will remain guilt’s messenger, and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion that seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego’s thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.   T-18.IX.5:1-4

This little world does not represent reality. Its purpose is to hide Heaven from us while we are smack dab in the middle of it. Is this not an illusion? We are dwelling in Heaven and Oneness, perfect love and perfect peace and we do not see it where it is all around us. Let’s come together and begin looking at the other world that is our real world. Look to the light within you behind the thin veil that surrounds your little world. Let’s let go of our belief in the little world we walled off and let the awareness of Heaven and Oneness that surrounds us rise in our minds. This is our home. This is our true Identity.

November 7, 2017

We are created whole, complete, limitless and divine. This is our true nature, our essence, our being. We cannot change this beautiful state of being no matter how hard we try. We may expend great effort trying to create a world of our own separate from others and even separate from the One who created us – separate from Oneness. We endeavor to achieve the impossible by making ourselves unaware of our true Self and the infinite power we are. But Reality knows who we really are. Like a loving parent, Oneness waits patiently allowing us the free will to explore our idea of independence – separation – until we realize that we can wake up from this insane dream of separation and again become conscious of the divine being in Oneness we truly are. We try to limit everything in an attempt to get more, and yet we deny ourselves the awareness of our joined beingness.

Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as you. It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the Whole be whole without it. It is not a separate realm, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. It leads no separate life, because its life is the oneness in which its being was created.   T-18.VIII.6:1-6

Do not accept this little fenced off aspect as who you are. It is not who you really are. It is, at best, a tiny little hint of who you are colored by many misperceptions that make you seem tiny – so limited. Do you really want to remain in this tiny garden? This tiny garden is not your realm. It offers you nothing you deserve. The fence you built around it only separates you from the awareness of the grandeur of Heaven all around you. You never left it, but you walled it off from your awareness.

Love knows no bodies, no fences, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning. Love is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. Should it not be in your tiny garden that you call on love to enter?  And, thus, realize the life and joy that love would bring to you from where it comes, and where it would return with you.

The Thought of the One surrounds your little realm, waiting at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was. And everyone you welcome will bring love with them from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with you. And under its beneficence your little garden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone.   T-18.VIII.9:1-8

We are not alone, nor have we ever been alone. We are One with all Creation. Oneness is our natural state. We cannot separate ourselves from Oneness. Let the fences fall around your little garden – the little world you have made separate – and rejoin in the awareness of the grandeur of Heaven in which we dwell even while we walk in this illusion of separation. Oneness – Unity – is our divine state of being. Choose to allow Oneness to rise in you and be all that you really are.