Think of -
Stepping on shore, and finding it Heaven!
Of taking hold of a hand, and finding it God's hand,
Of breathing new air, and finding it celestial air,
Of feeling invigorated, and finding it immortality,
Of passing from storm to tempest to an unbroken calm,
Of waking up, And finding it HOME.
- Unknown
When we finally really want to know, it is necessary to have the
willingness to be shown the answers without out own judgement blocking
the way. This requires setting aside all our pre-conceived notions
and being open to receiving the Truth, such as is shown in "A Course In
Miracles©." Here facts will be presented, which often come as
a shock to us, and are at first hard to understand or accept. If
we listen honestly, with dedication, we will hear answers which are basic
TRUTHS. We
will come to understand and love them, as they are describing US.
2. GOD IS, needs no description because there IS nothing else! It is the BEING of pure abstract Truth, whose quality is Love.
3. The nature of Love is to extend itself. As such GOD extended "Himself" and created his One Creation, the CHRIST, being all living things. That is, All Things as One having their BEING in HIS MIND as the Thoughts of God.
4. That One thing, CHRIST, was all God ever created. As CHRIST, His Extension has its LIFE within His Mind and lives with God creating as He does. Being a Thought in the Mind of God, Christ has the same absolute and infinite Power and Desire as GOD. There is nothing the Christ thinks or does outside of the Mind of God, his Being. The Christ has the same qualities and abilities as God except one. God can create Christ; Christ cannot create God.
5. We are all part of that Christ. We have the same Power, Desire, Joy and eternal Life as we go living eternally in God and creating in His Way with Him.
6. This Happy Condition is called HEAVEN. That is Everything;
that is all there is; that is LIFE. Anything (a thought, a desire,
a form) outside of That, were it possible, which of course is impossible,
would be a dream, an illusion, a mistaken thought, and death. A diagram
of the condition of HEAVEN could be pictured as:-
And that pure abstract thought is Everything that IS. That is Reality. That is Life. That is Us. Part of God's experience of His Own Perfection and Completion was in witnessing Himself through His Extension. That is why it is so important to realize we are a part of God witnessing His Perfection to Himself. Anything else, is to deny God, which is not His Thought and therefore cannot exist in Reality.
7. ACIM© then says, into the mind of the Christ there crept "a tiny mad idea at which the Son of God (the Christ) remembered not to laugh." Not all of the Christ which is Us had this idea, but just an infinitesimal part of Us, so small it made no difference at all to the greater part of Us, which still resides in the Heaven of God's Mind, joyously going on creating with God. It was as if that tiny part of Our Christ Mind fell asleep and dreamed a dream of "what would it be like to be better than perfect and have more than everything." This of course was an insane idea, quite un-REAL, and quite impossible. Then arose our Problem. Instead of simply laughing away our silly mad idea, we took it seriously, and out of the insane idea came our insane illusion which we now seem to inhabit and consider quite real.
8. That small part of us that fell asleep decided to investigate and experience "the dream" and pictured ourself as leaving Heaven, ourselves as the Christ and God, our Father. We opened a doorway in the Line of Heaven, went through it and descended into the world of our ego, born of the thought of now being separate and in search of our specialness. Our unity with God and Christ and our original innocence had been left behind as we began to explore this cold, lonely and strange world we now invented.
9. In our dream, we now felt terrible. We were lonely for our Father, ourself as Christ and Heaven. We felt GUILTY for having left, knew we had committed the unforgivable SIN OF SEPARATION, and FEARED the punishment we thought would surely follow for having done this awful thing. Now with the unholy trinity of SIN, GUILT, and FEAR, we began our search for what was missing with our companion, our EGO.
10. We may be some considerable time in the confusing world of ego before we realize we are TWO MINDS within one mind. Our first mind is our Christ mind, our Spirit mind; the original one that was created by God and still goes with us wherever we go. The second one is our ego mind which we wanted for our journey. Ego is the noisy one that speaks first. Spirit mind is quiet, speaks only the Truth, and has to be listened for very quietly and carefully. Fortunately, God realized we are sleeping, having this dream we think is real, so He took another Part of His Mind, called it Holy Spirit and placed it within our Spirit Mind to go with us wherever we go and remind us what and where we truly are always, when we are finally ready to listen and be shown. Every time we think, we have to remind ourself that what we perceive is all part of our dream, and focus back on what is REAL. Our ego made our world and our body, so all our body senses are going to tell us what our ego is and not what WE truly are.
11. And so there are two "yous". The big YOU that God created and the little you that you made. In each and every happening in our lives all day (and night) long we have the CHOICE of which "you" we will be and which of our two MINDS we will listen to, Spirit or ego. It is always a conscious choice, and we are the decision maker, the chooser.
12. The purpose in our being here, in a body in a world, may have originally been to search for and find our specialness (an impossible task because our LIFE is not here), but Holy Spirit within our Spirit mind waits in infinite patience to show us our Truth, our way Home, when we are ready to listen.
It is the purpose of A Course In Miracles© to show us the blocks we have erected that blot out the presence of Love, which is really Us and is our natural inheritance. More than that, it takes us from where we are, explains how we got the way we are, and directs us to our Way Home as we follow the guidance of our Holy Spirit to that place in mind called the Real World.
13. When we are all there together again, God Himself reaches
down and lifts us back home to Heaven and ourself as the Christ.
As we go, we must remember that the abstract thought mind of Jesus, author
of ACIM©, is the manifestation of Holy Spirit within our world, and
our body is the manifestation of our ego. Decide which author you
would listen to, for as you think, so you will be.
- You are walking along a sandy desert and see in front of you a stone pyramid. You look at this pyramid and realize that it is YOU. It is solid and permanent. It just sits there. Neither rain, nor wind, nor time nor man can affect it. It has been there forever and always will be. You enter into the pyramid. It is cool and safe and comfortable there.
Ahead of you, a stairwell appears. You slowly begin to descend the stairs cut out of the solid rock of your pyramid. You do down - down - down - a long way down. With each step downward you become more peaceful, more comfortable. You are completely peaceful, completely at rest.
Eventually you come to the bottom of the stairs and realize you are in a large room, ruggedly cut out of the center of the pyramid which is YOU. It is bright there, lit with a beautiful, etherial light which is everywhere but seems to have no source. It just is. Around you see boxes and chests fulled to overflowing with jewels and precious stones of every kind. There are bales of goods, rolls of precious cloths. As you look higher you see shelves everywhere with more beautiful and precious things. There are so many - as far as your eye can see there are more and more.
You realize there is an infinite supply of everything. You feel happy and content there. You know everything is there that you could ever want or need. As you stand drinking in all this abundance, beauty and light, you feel very complete - have and are Everything. You don't want to take anything away with you, but know it is all there for you whenever you might need it. A feeling of unlimited joy and perfect peace descends as you are there in perfect happiness with absolutely nothing needed or wanted. You are content and complete.
When you have become one with the peace, joy and contentment you slowly turn and begin to ascend your stairway. You turn once more and are assured that all your treasures are still there, shining in the etherial light of your treasure room. You can go there whenever you want.
You go up - up - away up - and emerge from your pyramid into a beautiful world of lush green grass and bright, shining trees moving peacefully in the gentle breeze. Small animals are running and playing in the woods. The air is fresh and invigorating as you breath it in. Your world has taken on a whole new look in the diamond shimmering dew. It is a brand-new morning of a brand-new day. It is the first day of the rest of your life.
As you walk forward somehow everything in your life seems to have changed.
There is a whole new serenity, a whole new joy which you realize you can
share with your brothers as you all walk HOME to GOD together. And
you know this is the way back to the HOME waiting since before time began.
"I AM ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS"