Thursday, April 12, 2007

Lesson 103:

“God, being Love, is also happiness… “

The premise is crucial. The Course guides us to bring all illusion to the truth. This is how practicing the principles of the Course and doing the daily lessons become when seeking only the truth… One begins with the premise: God is ~ And, I am as God created me sinking deep into mind, past the body identity with all its sensations and thoughts and some- thing- nesses to the still point of light at the center of mind where truth resides. Here love is all that is ~expanding forever… Here one feels one with, already, always, this love… There is no world, right here, right now. There is no body, no ‘me’. Simply a blending with this limitless expansion of bliss…
Now, at some point one might start to notice a little itch ~ the impulse to think, to think an outside world, actually… It starts with the beginnings of a sense of ‘outer edges’ sneaking up and realizing ‘me’: thoughts, feelings, and identities… tapping… tapping… tapping… “A sight headache, a little tiredness, responsibilities waiting, commitments to keep, things to figure out, to not forget, to do… These are the illusions to be brought to truth. One can’t ignore them. Oh, believe me I’ve tried.
I had this idea of what “enlightenment” looked like and it didn’t include fears and desires and I only felt guilty for ‘not getting it right’. I actually had it wired up, that feeling ashamed that I couldn’t ‘do it any better, was the least I could do, to show God I was trying to be worthy. I was so very grateful to be experiencing the moments of what I would identify as “Love that erased all else”. It meant everything to me and I felt it was obviously grace to experience these brief instants.
These holy instances were beginning to string my fragile self together. The Course asks us to answer the ‘last un answered question’: “Do I want to see what I denied, because it is the truth?” ~ Yes! Oh yes. Here’s a moment of truth for you…truly a moment of truth for me; a moment of total release from the burden self… MIRACLE: I don’t know how the miracle happened, but I realized in the twinkling of an eye, that my gift of guilt was the shift to the premise of separation, making all other feelings, and peoples, and things, real to me; overlays of specifics on the face of Christ.
Oh my God, can I tell you about this miracle where everything I ever thought I was beholden to, flashed and burnt, in a blazing light of recognition? Well, not actually, eh? Experience can only be pointed to with words….
Now this grouping, however, this passage in the text just came to me to share; it speaks to the premise of the right-mindedness essential to accepting the Atonement. It speaks me eloquently of my experience. Here’s what it says:

“You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer, but merely to receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God’s. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus:
I who am host to God am worthy of Him.
He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.
And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away the little that is asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement to it, and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear that you will add, if you prepare yourself for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourself to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His.
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult, because you insist there must be more that you need do. You find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so little, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just it asks nothing you cannot give right now". (T-18.IV.5-7)

My guilt turned out to witness to my fear of God, which led me to deny the truth that God being Love was also happiness, and subsequently, to feel guilty, to fear God, was to be afraid of joy. It’s so obvious now.
Now, truth tells me: I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God created me. I need ‘do’ nothing but not to interfere with His plan to restore me to the full awareness of Love.
When we deny this basic, all inclusive premise, it sets up a state within the mind where it can appears “that there are gaps in love where sin can enter, bringing pain instead of joy”. So as the ego I once aligned with, sends its sentinels, ”these images, with no reality in truth, that bear witness to the fear of God, forgetting His being Love, He must be joy”, tempting me to return to that ancient past overlaid on this present light, to obscure my vision, as it inevitably will… till forgiveness is complete, it is my role to choose once again the voice I’ll hear. I choose once again the premise from which I see and give my little willingness to not interfere, then lean back and trust… “God, being Love, is also happiness. And it is happiness I seek today. I cannot fail, because I seek the truth”… this is the premise of truth, easily slipped into and solid to operate in the so-called world in… It is much easier to experience, from the natural state of complete dependence of God, the truth of love, which has no gaps in it at all, allowing one to look beyond the shadowy, outlined figures of the past and into the light which joins us all as one … we are returned to peace… returned to God/love… returned to joy and happiness… Gratitude is my eternal son to you for joining me in the premise of truth, where our fuction and happiness are one…and LOVE is all….

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