Thursday, May 17, 2007

Lesson 138:

Heaven is the decision I must make…

Just a few years ago, when ‘my way’ came to its irrefutable end, I sat naked and empty~ free at last to be teachable... I visited this subject (Heaven is the decision I must make) with the sober heart and open mind that a student of as she sits at her master’s feet when ready at last to be the truth. Here’s how the inquiry went, for me…

“Heaven? ~I thought I made the choice for heaven long ago, yet now I see that I’ve been wrong. Tell me what Heaven is and what my choosing it is for… What does this mean? …

Heaven is a still, eternal, peaceful state of mind. Heaven is where Reality is. Heaven is being. It is knowledge. It is love. Heaven is synonymous with the Father and the Son. Heaven is the power of all creation as one. There is nowhere Heaven is not…

“If this be so, why is it a decision I must make, when choice is not its attribute? When one is everything one has everything. So where is choice perceived?”

Heaven is the decision one must make when one has forgotten the truth of Heaven itself; which is the truth of what we are.

I prayed out the fear-purge, “How is it that I know not who I am? How is it, too, that I have mistake myself for a tiny, guilty, fearful, sometimes happy, sometimes not, mass of carbon matter? How is it too, that, even in my private chamber, I am suspicious that perhaps there is a secret mole within my psyche, selling me out to the highest bidder, crumbling my structure of happiness, as soon I begin to feel its mine. How fragile is this carbon unit, requiring constant attention to stay fit; armed with intellect and muscle and cunning and skill, just to meet the requirement necessary when the games begin. And begin they must, for such are the dictates of the tyrannical leader~ king ego~ whose influence is the life/death basis of all the compulsory competing with the billion others, just like me…

“Where is Heaven? I know only of the obsession for acquisition of the secret, Holy Grail, which would reveal it to me. This priceless unknown magic that would make all this senseless searching, meaningless battling with an elusive enemy beyond my understanding, come to an end at last. And with it all the dirge of confusion, the elegy of contradictory ideas of happiness and redemption~ come at last to rest as sense upon my tired soul, restoring life eternal… to what I have made? “

This has been the illusion I cherished in place of Heaven. Why?

Simply this…

I would not truly look within; look and the look further still, look with Holy Spirit’s sight… I was afraid. I was wrong about my fears, but nonetheless, I stopped short of His help because of my lack of trust and my belief about myself. I thought I could not bear to look upon the darkness I feared would suck me into nothingness.

I would not look at my fear of God, for fear I would loose the image of a loving, forgiving God, I had designed to medicate my ever-pervasive guilt ~keep me one step ahead of myself till all the damage had been repaired… or some such bull which I believed.

I didn’t want to feel shitty… plain as day… I wanted to escape whatever hell I had gotten myself into, up to this point… and feel better now. Why couldn’t that be it?”

Ok, here’s the thing. This sophisticated; ego trap was designed to obliterate truth from ever approaching the single mind of the Son of God. So cunning and seductive are its methods to keep its own survival, it is deadly to underestimate its investment and power. This is why the Course speaks about the ego in personified terms. So we can see outside ourselves, the thought system we have subscribed to within our mind. Here’s the thing, too, (and its no small thing), this thought system has power equal only to the choice to believe it real.

Withdraw that belief ~ withdraw its power.

This cannot be done by avoidance… one cannot escape what one has made real in ones mind until it, in all its glory, has been placed on the table before us and seen for the fraud and boogie-man it is… Like today’s lesson says: “Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized’.

Finally, it is the willingness to do this looking, fortified with the eternal safety that comes from opening to the Holy Spirit’s steady presence within mind, that allows one to make the one decision that must be made.

Heaven. ~It made all the difference…

The certainty that comes with total reliance on the Holy Spirit’s interpretation let me lean back and quit resisting… I realized the unknown as myself…

The Holy Spirit has a way of unrelentingly encouraging one ~ regardless of the seeming circumstances …

The Holy Spirit uses every defense against the truth, as a means of showing how it contradicts the very thing it purports to offer and instead perpetuates the seeming reality of the very thing defended against… And in the Now, simultaneously, the Holy Spirit begins awakening the mind to the alternative way of seeing things. Events become just events; situations, just situations; and circumstances are just circumstances… Personal identification with them begins to diminish.

A sense of generous understanding takes the place of specific persons and needs... The idea that one has been here before and it all worked out in the end… takes the place of anticipation and regret… And patience now becomes a steady pulse… of knowing that one can’t but be at the right place at the right time for everything to work together for good for all. Acceptance of a new meaning for time/space replaces the old as understanding unfolds what time is for… resistance makes no sense. Heaven is the decision I must make. I make it now, and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want…

Let’s make this indelible decision together today and let the comfort of our choice show Heaven’s meaning everywhere in everyone and encounter we have today… It is ours, after all…

No comments: