September 3, 2019
Very often, we try so hard in this life to make sense of who we are and the life we seem to be living. The challenges still come. We still feel fear at times. Yes, there are good moments and good times. We find happiness and then it can seem to slip away again. We ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” Perhaps we should ask ourselves a different question, “Who am I, really?” Our identity is beyond this world of form. Our identity is beyond this body we appear to inhabit. We are created by a loving, infinite and eternal Creator in that One’s image. Therefore, we must be loving, infinite and eternal. Perhaps we are seeing incorrectly.
This chapter has been teaching about the appearances we think are real. The Course teaches us the things we think we see are perceptions and thus not real. Yet, it all appears very real to us. We look for hope in what we see in this world. But, are we seeing truth or non-truths? I can say that we have seen hope. There is hopefulness in our minds even when we don’t fully understand what that hopefulness is and where it comes from. We look at each other and see first the outer trappings; the appearance of the body and the actions we take in this world. We are asked to see each other differently. The appearance we see is like a frame. If we only look at the frame and its appearance – whether beautiful or ugly – that’s all we seem to see. The frame is not what’s real. The magnificent creation is the work of art. Its beauty surpasses anything we can do to make the “frame” attractive. We are relying on our egoic thought system to show us what is real even when it is incapable of showing us reality. Can it make sense to hold the fixed belief that there is reason to uphold pursuit of what has always failed, on grounds that it will suddenly succeed and bring us the peace it has never brought before?
Its past has failed. Be glad that it is gone within your mind, to darken what is there. Take not the form for content, for the form is but a means for content. And the frame is but a means to hold the picture up, so that it can be seen. A frame that hides the picture has no purpose. It cannot be a frame if it is what you see. Without the picture is the frame without its meaning. Its purpose is to set the picture off, and not itself. T-25.II.4:1-8
What do we benefit from hanging an empty frame on a wall and stand, deep in reverence, as if a masterpiece were there to see? When we see another as a body, this is what we do. The masterpiece that our Creator has set in this frame is all there is to see. The body frames it for a while, without obscuring it in any way. Yet what our Creator has created needs no frame. What the Creator has created is supported and framed within the Creator. This masterpiece is offered us to see. Would you rather see the frame instead of this and not see the picture at all? It is our choice.
It does not matter what we have been seeing in the past or what we see now. We always have the opportunity to choose again. Choose to see the light of holiness within each other. We are all truly the light of the world. Whether or not we see that light is our choice. Make that choice again now.
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