there is reason for my madnesssee i had a vision
ok yeah sounds like more a christmas visit from 3 wise men[ok one was a woe-man...but 3 wise guys from everday normal[living]..beings
but nosee the vision..has inspired me to errect the family XCHRIST-mas tree[the fake one]
see im putting my tree up...at 12...pm..tonightand pulling it down at easter[to be never errected[raised from its death]....till this time..NEXT YEAR
its my new[latest]..family customthe jesus[christ]xmass treethat lives on till his 'death'[you know where he came back...proving there is no 'reserction day...[aas well as no judgment day..[or he too would still 'be there'
but he werntbecause he rose from the deadlike we all shall
just like the xmass tree..im putting up ..in about one hour
staying 'up'till easter
imagine...CELIBRATIONG THIS TIMEto that time..just like we just 'DID..go back to how thibngs used to beloving neighbourand the NEW year[that rightfully began...today]and ended in glory on the cross
and came back to proove it[time to open..the east gate[and move the cemitry...that alone..Prevents his return
anyhowwanna a cardsend grayham$2
[is this ok gray?]Posted by one under god, Saturday, 25 December 2010 10:08:54 PM Happy Boxing Day OUG.Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 26 December 2010 12:01:06 AM yesterday3 wise men...advised me of the birth of the saviourbehold the christ child was born...at the setting of the day
his mother [creator]..is named maryand father-life giver god
his patriarchal parent shall be josephthus..his genetic inheritance..shall be from his mothers side
now comes the concern to circumsize or notwe have 7 days to decide
anyhow..this is the notice of his birth
you shall call him emmanuel..[god within us all]he shall see no sin..yet see god with us
he shall live from nowtill easter..when he dies
he must live 33 years...in 3 monthsthis child was born old
he shall give the serman on the mountsometime in feburay[valinitines day]
he shall attend a wedding..in cannaearly in the new year
let us rejoice this gift of godbut keep in mind he is man/child..born of womanthat we see him do[over the next 3 months]we shall yet do greater..for he is but a child
we further would like to recognise..the birth of john..[the eldest]born to the high priest and his octagenerian wife
we live in amasing times
john shall wander the deserts for 33 yearsjewsus shall wander the desert..for 40 days
john shal eat loquests..and honey[only the very hungry..eat living animals..[loqusts..resist eating]
i seem to have a head ache..[from excitement..or the celibration with old wine]...but fel for today...the erection of my bound tree[last night]...and this notice of birth..full fills my promises..[for now]
we shall top offor lop of..the tip of the tree in 7 days
each day we shall add a bauble symbolical..of jesus life
its thought because john shall surely loose his headwe shall lop /chop...off the fore skin's of both
but shall leave this for the holy father to decidethis is not womans/mothers businessshe mearly deliverd the body...[house]..for his holy spirrit to reside in for a life-term
just as he shall reside in spirit..with us..in the xmass tree..till the sure day of his death..[the day of the exodus..when he left]Posted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 6:41:37 AM happy new year ludwig
...*HE SAKE HIS FIRST WORDS TODAY
he defended his mothers honour*let others record his words..which he has spaken
we were just too astounded
the thought is to un-wrap the tree imediatlyto record this event
but the 3 kings...[or is it 3 holy men..]cant present their top off..lop off..gifts for 7 days yetso their trunks remain sealedand the tree remains bound
the child has now gone silent..as well
he appears to look at us all ..in wonder[its almost like..he can see his father..*in us all]
but he was clear in his defence of his mum's honourhe really is amasing..but arnt all babies
[when is mothers day?]...mary says it was last night..when she became mother
but regardless...mary is glowingsays he suckles..like a dream
saw the nipple and hungerd for its good..ness/of god[for they are of the same image/vision]god/good/nurture...thats nature
and joseph..seems contenthe is building something..in the shedwe feel..for now we should focus on the christ childand the glowing new mother..and her mission by permission to the good of god
trouble being..im finding it hard to put,..it all into a card/form
none of the cards..seem to have the right words
but lets put 6 days..on the top-off/lop-off..cards offer
happy lent..for this child..is but borrowed,..from godhe awaits eagerly his return..to his father[and ours]..
but for now contemplates..the few months his life sentance incures him..to be with us...
[just as his father is..*with us all
[emmanuel]Posted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 7:07:43 AM some back ground...[not found..in/on..upcomming/birth..xmass-cards]
'How can I have a son,..when no man has touched me, nor am I unchaste?'
He..(the angel) said:
'So (it will be),..your Lord said: 'That is easy for Me:
And to appoint him as a sign to mankind..and a mercy from Us..(from God)',..and it is a matter..(already) decreed(by God).'
(Quran 19:16-21)
In these verses,..it is described how the pious virgin Mary is visited by angel Gabriel,..who appears before her in a form of a man.
Not knowing who he is, she fears for herself, but he asserts to her that he is an angel,..a Messenger from her Lord,..and he announces to her..news of her miraculous conception of a son.
[you shall call him emmanuel..[god..with[in]..us all]
In shock,..she questioned,..affirming her chastity. The angel answers that such a conception,..though the miraculous,..is easy for The Lord,
all He needs to say is "Be."..and it is.
And that these are matters decreed by Him, for greater purposes..and to the benefit of mankind.
The Miracle.And then, miraculously,..Mary becomes pregnant.
The emotional story of her pregnancy follows: "So she conceived him,..and she withdrew with him to a far place.
And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a date-palm...near the manger
She said:
'Would that I had died before this, and had been forgotten..and out of sight!'
Then a call unto her from bellow, said:
'Grieve not! Your Lord has provided a water stream under you; And shake the trunk of the date-palm towards you,..it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon you.
So eat and drink and be glad, and if you see any human being, say:
'Verily! I have vowed..a fast unto the Most Beneficent so I shall not speak..to any human being this day.'"
(Quran 19:22-26Posted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 11:47:35 AM 19:27..Then she brought him to her own folk,..carrying him. They said:..O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing.
O sister of Aaron!
Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot. Mary, the mother of Jesus,..was the sister of Aaron. (Apparently,..Muhammad confused Mary with Miriam.)
19:29 Then she pointed to him. They said:
*How can we talk..to one who is in the cradle,..a young boy ?
19:30..THEN...*He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me..the Scripture and hath appointed me..a Prophet,
19:31 And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be,..and hath enjoined upon me prayer and giving..so long as I remain alive,
19:32..And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not made me arrogant,..not unblest.
19:33..Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die,..and the day I shall be raised alive!
19:34 Such was Jesus,..son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt.
19:35 It befitteth not..(the Majesty of) Allah..that He should take unto Himself but a single son...for the life giver sustains us all our very living
Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing,..He saith unto it only: Be!..and it is.
(19:35-37)"Woe unto the disbelievers from the meeting of an awful Day."
Jesus was not alone..the Son of God. we are all the suns of the only light
19:36 And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him...by servinmg other..That is the right path.
19:37..The sects among them differ:
19:39..Now they are in a state of carelessness, and they believe not.
19:40..Lo! We,..only We,[suns of the light of man]..inherit the earth..and all who are thereon,[born with nothing
taking only our memories...when we crossover and RETURN..unto Us..[the spirit]..they are returned...as jesus [emmanuel..hast returned]
19:41..And make mention..(O Muhammad) in the Scripture..of Abraham.
Lo!..he was a saint,..a prophetwho dared break his minds voices...and realise the good of live of godPosted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 11:59:45 AM update...mary and emmanuel are doing finethe occupation force..is refusing to regester his birth details [or even acknowledge his standing as a freeborn messiah of the lord]
lets us be clearWhen one examines the argument against Jesus this is by virtue of him[and his mother]..being a Palestinian,
one detects a remarkable amount of hostility aimed at both Palestinians and Muslims...One cannot help but wonder,..is there something threatening about identifying Jesus as a Palestinian?
Professor Jack D. Forbes writes about Jesus’ multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environment:
When the Romans came to dominate the area,..they used the name Palestine...Thus, when Yehoshu'a..[Jesus]{{emaunuel}}..was born,..he was born a Palestinian..as were all of the inhabitants of the region, Jews and non-Jews.
He was also a Nazarene..(being born in Nazareth) and a Galilean..(born in the region of Galilee)…
Events Surrounding The Birth Of Jesus
4 BC: Augustus Caesar issues a decree that a census of the Roman empire be taken in the spring of 3 BC (possibly for the ultimate purposes of taxation).
Pre 3 BC: Quirinius, Governor of Syria, implements Caesar's decree in a way which will disturb the Jews least.
He conspires with the Sanhedrin to direct the Jews to keep the Passover where their family records are held. Quirinius likely coordinated this action with Herod..(Governor of Israel).
30 Mar.3 BC:Joseph and a pregnant Mary arrive in Bethlehem..(6 miles from Jerusalem)..on Saturday just before Passover begins at sundown and seek shelter.
31 Mar.3 BC: Jesus is born on this Sabbath morning,..the first day of Passover,..at 8:20 AM.
Danjo deduces that Jesus was born in 3 BC and offers six possible dates and times..(including this one)....the israelie authorities further complicate the issue
but we know better he was born this previous day[hight]the wholly holy night...and we know for certain the day he dies
[yet dont die..rebutting judgement/reserction day..being one particular day..in time]
continue'sPosted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 10:45:08 PM 3-2 BC: The Magi visit Herod..seeking the new born messiah/of the true king
They may have deduced the nominal year of Jesus's impending birth by applying the I - Ching astrological techniques..to the prophecies of Daniel..(appointed master of astrologers by Nebuchadnezzar).
Daniel predicted the year the "anointed one"..(Messiah) would appear.
They compared the manifestation of the Buddha with these predictions,..subtracting 35 years from Daniel's predicted year and arrived at the nominal birth year of the Jesus.
Herod consults Jewish priests (the Sanhedrin) and discover that the "King of the Jews" was to be born in Bethlehem and related this information to the Magi.
The Magi apply Tzu Wei astrological techniques to isolate specific dates when "king like" male children were born in Bethlehem.
They find the record of Jesus' birth[YEAH HOW?}{now..huh?]
and depart for Nazareth.
17 Jun.2 BC:..The Magi..(oriental scientists) from the east, anticipating a unique conjunction of Jupiter and Venus..[love and sport?]
one so close..that the two planets appear to collide..because their positions could not be resolved or separated by the unaided eye),..
the wise mates..coordinate their visit and presentation of gifts to Jesus..because they want to make a lasting impression on an "avatar".
The "stars" may have indeed led them to Jesus,..because the Magi identified Jesus by using the Tzu Wei Chinese astrology.
Polaris..(not then at the pole)..is the Tzu Wei or king star which gives this Chinese astrology its name.
9 Jan. 1 BC: Herod's soothsayers noted the total lunar eclipse on the midnight of this day and predicted that it bode ill for Herod who was besieged with problems..
(among other things.. he had recently executed one of his sons for trying to usurp..*his throne..and he was suspicious of the other).
A little later:..Herod,..not having access to the Magi's astrology, uses the only information..he has available.
He tries to kill..the new born king..and end the threat..
continuesPosted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 10:51:15 PM ...of yet another..possible usurper to the quasi authority..of his throne...
He put to death babies..in the greater Bethlehem area back to as far as..January 3 BC.
Jesus..[emmanuel]..may have remained safe in Nazareth..(66 miles north of Jerusalem)..even if his family had not fled to Egypt...buty there are the legalk complications inherant..in leaving the lands of his birth[to wit a non return policy by the CURRENT-invaders
Herod failed to order..that the records in Bethlehem be checked for the current location of all male children..born during that period.
The Jewish historian Josephus..records the death of Herod shortly after the 9 January eclipse..
i will repeat josephs statement
ther is no significant differns bettwen the three major religinons from the Midle East.
The danger is when politics and comon greed is mixst in to this, they give the rissing of racism..and oppresion of half of mankind,..our children/wards..as well as our womenn.
The three great religions..faild allready in the beggining, they are to day, missinterpeded in stuningly selfish ways.
In achiving greatnes,..and to rise up as a human(menn and women)..they are essensualy same.
Love your self,..and love your nabour.
Everything included. The truth is that in the end, its all up to you,..and nobody else.
The path is laid, so its up to you to walk that walk.[he will be good for emmanuel]
now let eve[the proude great/power]have last say
peace
"I,..with a deeper instinct,nurturechoose a man..who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me,to be the better me[than he]
who does not doubt..my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve..or innocent, who has..the courage..to treat me
like a woman."not a mother..
[but grandma is fine...too]Posted by one under god, Sunday, 26 December 2010 11:04:27 PM oh dear the runours have started
its not bad enough...many think the messanger to be godhttp://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11380&page=0
there also is a rumour that jesus went to egypt via some tunnel
please people...let the child be a childlet him have some privacy
yes its true..he did visit egyptvia tukk-tooc...that has proved easier to keep up than the don-key
there is also a rumour...about jesus..joshua/yesuel..[you can call him emmanuel]
told off the stone-throwershe simply reminded them of the law..thou shalt not kill
it was the youths who decided not to risk it
people...the messiah...isnt the kinghe dosnt think like we do
he sees even those despised bankers as having good..[god wwithin]he even talks to tax colecters and revenuers
we must stop making gods from menthere is one good...[god]recall the LAW...no god BUT god?
anyhow there are fires starting all over the placewe are keeping one step ahead of herrods party machine
we have recieved hundreds of offers of marrage...and many taking the cloth claiming to be the bride of christ
folks emmanuel..is married to his jobhe said he cant go procreating a familybecause his realm is not these realms..
he is just here serving the only king..doing his life sentanance..like we all are...
he cant wait to go build..you all a room in the fathers house...
he isnt intersted in forming yet another crude creedonly asking peopple to get over the messangers message..and feel the good within..know your special..but no more/no less than anyone else
he says we can sek to know good..one to onelet your conscience be your guide
we know that which is not goodhas bad fruit..thus he says stick with doing the good..of god
anyhow need to keep ahead of the rumourshttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11380&page=0Posted by one under god, Monday, 27 December 2010 6:35:44 AM there is certainly a bit of a putche onhere is santa bringing his sack/..plunder..to palisteinianshttp://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/look-what-santa-brought-to-palestine/
the photo..of the youth..with 12 rubber coated bullit markson his chest..all within a 9 inch spread..indicate the snipers are on target..as usual
jesus says..its much like germ-any..[the nastie natzies/zionista]http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/GazaHolo/index.htmlbut jesus says...HEY IT WERNT US THAT DID..THAT HOLLOW_CAUST...but it is you doing this one
[just dont be throwing any rocks][and be warned..the pictures are GRAPHIC]
joshua..advises..let them build their own walled prisonhttp://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/apartheid-caught-on-camera/
its not what the father wantsbut he does require freewill
we are in the year of transitionhttp://lesvisible.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-christmas-day-2010.html
so recall its ALLWAYS darkest BEFORE the dawnwe will get it right...[once we see there is no us/them...only us-all]
jesus says this picture isnt of himhttp://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/12/gaza-two-years-after-the-horror-by-haidar-eid-2/
but advises the child is with his father nowhe advises let the past be past...this occured two years ago[that we do to the least we do to god]..!
jesua..says it has all been recordedhttp://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7cK0CRDoULmTdlKyBWEpH8NuFZ6v6xfAHlb%2bUQKLEUoFEGH%2blizSWxob8gD2rA3cW%2bHHofHCbhI2JQu6acjiJfCoAt2W6dGb8oabTHuJx2zU%3d
so dont worry that you missed ANY of itthe records are intact..and every vile must..[in the end]..be redactedby works,..not words..
so stop ya bickering and fighting..we got a lot to do..
so lets begin by cleaning up our own acts first..!
leave the sorting of the tares from the wheatto those who do it with passion
were still debating wether to lop the top of the josua treeor his faux..xmass tree..[the parrable of the ram comes to mind]
the rite was betrayed...a long time agowhen one tribe killed an other tribe..recovering from the rite
this broke any promise..as being binding
or in jesus own words"what..!..ya think god didnt make men right?"
god grew itlet him..lopp it off...[or not]
oh mary..just what have we begot?
let the past be..*for*-got....
live this moment..for the creations..of god...*for*-godnot...*for*..skin*Posted by one under god, Monday, 27 December 2010 8:36:43 AM oh dearmary was...in a sad state..thus morning]she put the babe in the sun..to dry some nappy-rash[nappies..are on the banned-list apparently]
and went inside..for some shade cloth...came back..and the babe was gone
as he has..decided to moove arround latly...[by rolling]using the heavey-head..as a weight..to initiate the roll
anyhow
she went down-hill..searching for the little one..in the briar-patchthe poor thing..was in such a state..shedding her holy-blood..looking for her boy
anyhow..we madly rushed about..searching high and low for the babe
even..went to the local mossad-agent/provocateur..for help...and were made to wait and wait..till in time we simply had to leave..and eve was sent for phsyc-evaluation
anyhow we got home[eventually] to find him playing..with his new friends[thomas..who seems another doudfull character..and his best friend...judas...[we think his father..is a banker..thus feel he might be bankers/scum]...
but jesu loves him non the less,[he is so like..his father[god/good]
jesus loves..his new deciplesin fact..said to them..he needed to go..to the beach
wanted to meet..fisher men
thomas advised him..of course..that they would have to go through 6 check-points...to do this...but jeshua insisted..
so thomas..and judas went to sea...jesus..was wrapped up in a pea skin boat
luckly judas credit was good...and they bribed their way to the sea-side..
in less than 8 hours..what should have been an hour..by took-took
only to find out the fishermen...arnt allowed to fish...but..they had fun playing..'baiting'..with the invaders...
launching the boat..and pretending to fish..then pulling the boat onshore..as the two israelie war craft zeroed their guns
we had sooo much fun..little jesus lisped..as he sukkled..his mothers generous engorged feasts...as soon as his mum came home..from the mossad prison
i think we are going to have to watch this judas and thomas but jesu..says they are cool...
but were not so sure
anyhow its time to do the roundsyesterdays yield..seemed rather meagre
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-attacking-helen-thomas-is.html
its a rather informative articlebut trying to be..too fairPosted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 6:04:25 AM continueshttp://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/KILLINGJESUSFAMILY.phphttp://www.smh.com.au/world/peace-deal-unrealistic-says-israeli-foreign-minister-20101227-198j9.html
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/the-new-abu-ghraib/
oh...jesus has decided..to not take the top offgod made it the way it is...
and eve and maries saying it looks more 'pretty'.....isnt cutting the mustard
well jesus said..you go first...
and the matter seems settledthe tree..gets the chop...
in a few more days
there is a shortage of landhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOARvsevl4Qmust need to build more check points
grow more sewragehttp://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/12/crops-absorb-pharmaceuticals-from-human.html
to sell at..'farmers marketts'http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/12/grocery-stores-erect-fake-farmers.html
obama seems to learning..catching on to..the israelie policy fasthttp://uruknet.com/?p=m73279&hd=&size=1&l=e
georgie porgie is going to canadashttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeZXgb8_0Co
then usahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLUV4p8CM4
seems there is a new offensive building
The drums of war are heard again in Israel and they are sounded because once more Israel's invincibility in is question. http://uruknet.com/?p=m73292&hd=&size=1&l=e
Despite the triumphant rhetoric in the various media commemorative reports, two years after 'Cast Lead', the sense is that that campaign was..as much of a failure..as was the second Lebanon war of 2006.
What is needed now is for the noble..but totally futile energy invested by the Israeli peace camp..and its like in the west in the concept of 'co-existence'..and the projects of 'dialogue'
to be reinvested in the attempt..to prevent another genocidal chapter in the history of Israel's war..against the Palestinians,..before it is too late.http://uruknet.com/?p=m73308&hd=&size=1&l=e
same same shamehttp://cryptogon.com/?p=19507
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12043290
shame shamhttp://beforeitsnews.com/story/328/336/Gaza:_Two_years_later,_still_in_ruins_largely_due_to_the_reluctance_of_the_international_community_to_stand_up_to_the_bully..html
http://uruknet.com/?p=m73296&hd=&size=1&l=ehttp://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/warwithkorea.php
http://dailybail.com/home/dylan-ratigan-the-wall-street-heist-of-2010-the-biggest-bank.html
sham http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2010/12/26/global-warming-hysteria-we-knew-arctic-cold-would-be-caused-by-global-warming/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/5638-mother-nature-to-alarmists-chill-outPosted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 6:22:55 AM the news is too depressinglets hear what jesu learned/taught to thomas on the first day..at the sea-side
Jesus said,
"Let him who seeks..continue seeking..until he finds.
When he finds,..he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled,..he will be astonished,
and it is by overcomming astonishment..he will rule..over himself...and over the All."
Jesus said,
"If those who lead you say, 'See,..the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky..will precede you.
If they say to you,..'It is in the sea,' then the fish..will precede you.
Rather,..the Kingdom..is inside of you, and..it is outside..of you....within theee...as well as me
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known,
andyou will realize..that it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
But if you will not know yourselves,..you dwell in povertyand it is you..who are chosing to live...within..that poverty."
Jesus said, "The man old..in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old..about the place of life,..[heaven]..and he willlive.
For many..who are first..will become last, and from then on..they willbecome one..and the same."
atonement..[at one meant]
Jesus said,
"Recognize..what is in your sight,[our fathers creations] and that which is hidden..[our father]..for you will become plain..to you.
For there is nothing hidden..[cause]..which will not become manifest."[affect]
oh how the truth floweth from the mouths of babes[ok a lot of dribble too]
but look at what the dribble can dojesu made once 7 ponds of dribble
then made 5 mud swallows...but this perhaps..in another day
the world is not alone good news...so recall..the parrable of the lost/found horsePosted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 6:53:52 AM let others inform thee of the power/parrable..of the horsehttp://www.personal-development.com/chuck/thatslife.htm
Jesus said,
"Do not tell lies,..and do not do..that which/what..you hate,for all things are plain..in the sight of Heaven.
see haters..*chose to hatelovers CHOSE*..to love
For nothing..*hidden will not become manifest,
and nothing covered..will remainwithout being..uncovered."
Jesus said,
"Blessed is the lion..which becomes man..when consumed..*by man;
and cursed..is the man..whom the lion consumes,
and the lion..in no way..becomes a man."
And He said, "The Kingdom..is like a wise fisherman who cast hisnet into the sea and drew it up..from the sea..full of small fish.
Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish.
He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty.
Whoever has ears to hear,..let him hear."
see the large fish was a breederprotector..of a safe place..for the young..to grow strongwhen the big one was taken away...the other..big fish ate all the little ones..
why didst he not take half the smalland return..the big-fish..back to its god given dutyprotecting the small
Jesus said,
"Now the sower went out,..took a handful..(ofseeds),and scattered them...unthinkingly.
Some fell on the road;..the birds cameand gathered them up.
Others fell on the rock,..did not take rootin the soil,..and did not produce ears...after their kind.
And others fell ammoung the thorns;they choked the seed(s)..and worms ate them.
And others fell onthe good soil..and produced good fruit:
some in tens..some in hundreds..but each according to the season
for even a dead seed has life withinjust as you have life..WITH-in
worry not about the asdnmixture of good wheat..or bad tareslet the harvest..make the judgment call...and each redeem their odious debt..in their own timmingPosted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 7:09:53 AM Jesus said,.."I have cast fire..[wild fire;passion of love]..upon the world, and see,..I am guarding it..until it blazes....its own wisdom..with loves passions"
Jesus said, "This mortal idea..of heaven will pass away, BUT..the one above..it will never pass away.
The dead are they not alive?, and the living will..to sefve good or vile..cannot die.
In the days..when you consumed what is dead, you made it..what your thoughts sought it to be...it is thus made alive.
When you come to dwell in the light,..what will you do?but the passions you also then chose to do[make real;make live]
On the day..when you were one with loveyou became two.
But when youbecome two,..what will you to do?"
Jesus said to His disciples, "Compare me to someone and tellMe...whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to Him,.."You are like..a righteous angel."Matthew said to Him,.."You are like..a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to Him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable ofsaying..whom..You are like."
Jesus said,.."I am not your master...Because you have drunk,life's wisdomsyou have become intoxicated..by the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
but it is the fathers waters i shareall wells...all beliefs..all creeds[all wisdoms...come from..the same water source..[good]god
And He took...thomas..the light source of these words..within him and withdrew..and told him three things.
When..Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him,.."What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them,.."If I tell you one of the things whichhe told me,..you will pick up stones and throw them at me;..then..a firewill come out of the stones..and burn you up."
[this addressed to the sun of the ursuror..[judas]
buzz words...imf...
15 counties/govts must pay...accumulative intrest*ONLY..of 10.2..TRILLION..which is a large percentage.,.of their total gdp..not govt intake....[via..odious tax]
comec* silver exchange...holds 107 million ounces of silver..on handbut has..*outstanding...*contractual-promises..to deliver silver...of 720 million ounces...
[how many hold..valueless paper promises*]promise of future pension..paper promising resources..treasury promises
you cant eat paper
the rich used their credit..to buy hard goods..in handthe poor have paper promises..held by some trustee/trustPosted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 7:50:17 AM When you go intoany land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you,eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them.For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that whichissues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."
15) Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman,prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one isyour Father."
16) Jesus said, "Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which Ihave come to cast upon the world. They do not know that it isdissension which I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword,and war. For there will be five in a house: three will be againsttwo, and two against three, the father against the son, and theson against the father. And they will stand solitary."
17) Jesus said, "I shall give you what no eye has seen and whatno ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has neveroccurred to the human mind."
18) The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be."Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, thatyou look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will theend be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning;he will know the end and will not experience death."
19) Jesus said, "Blessed is he who came into being before hecame into being. If you become My disciples and listen to Mywords, these stones will minister to you. For there are fivetrees for you in Paradise which remain undisturbed summer andwinter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever becomes acquaintedwith them will not experience death.Posted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 7:52:16 AM Mary said to Jesus,.."Whom are Your disciples like?"
He said,.."They are like children who have settled in a field..which is not theirs.
When the owners of the field come,..they willsay,..'Let us have back our field.'
They..(will)..undress in their presence..[for slaves gain their freedom..by returning the masters parnments]..in order to let them..have back..their field and thus..give it back..to them.
Therefore I say to you,..if the owner of a houseknows..that the thief is coming,..he will begin his vigil before he comes
and will not let him..into his true house of his domain to..carry away his goods.
to casst pearl before swineYou,..then,..be on your guard against the worldly spoil.
Arm yourselves with great strength lest the robbers find a way to come to you,bearing gifts..powers adorations..material honours
for the difficulty..which you expect will..(surely)..*material-ize.
Let there be among..you a man of understanding...Whenthe grain has ripened,
he came quickly with his sickle..in his handand reaped it...
Whoever has ears to hear,..let him hear."Jesus saw infants being suckled.
He said to His disciples,"These infants being suckled are like those who enter theKingdom."
They said to Him, "Shall we then,..as children, enter the Kingdom?"
Jesus said to them,.."When you make the two hearts..of one living loving mind..two become one,..and when you make the inside..like the outside...and the outside like the inside,
and the above..like the below, and when you make..the male..and the female one and the same,..so that the male..not be male nor the female..be female;
and when you fashion eyes..in the place of an eye,
and a hand's..in place of a hand, and a feet..in place of a foot,
and..a likeness in place of a difference;
then will you enter..[the Kingdom]."Posted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 8:03:35 AM His disciples said to Him, "Show us the place where You are,since it is necessary for us to seek it."
He said to them, "Whoever has ears,..let him hear.
There is..light within a man man is not..the light..but..of the light, and he..(or "it")..lights up..the whole world.
If he..(or "it")..does not shine,..he..(or "it")..is rejecting the lightthus has chosen..to reside within the darkness..."
2Jesus said,.."Love your brother..like your soul, guard him..like the pupil..of your eye."
Jesus said, "You see the mote..in your brothers eye, but you..do not see..the beam in your own eye.
When you cast the beam out-of..your own eye, then you will see clearly..to cast the mote..[blind spot]..from your brother's eye."
If you do not observe..the Sabbath..[the rest-day]..as a..Sabbath,...[earned/deserved..equally..by all]..you will not see..the Father...in you..or them"
Jesus said, "I took my place..in the midst of the world, andI appeared..to them..in the flesh.
I found all of them intoxicated;I found none of them thirsty.
And My soul became afflicted for the sons of men,..because they are blind..in their hearts and donot have sight;..for empty they came into the world,
and empty toothey seek to leave the world.
But for the moment they are..intoxicated. When they shake off their wine,..then they will repent."
Jesus said,.."If the flesh..came into being..because of spirit,..it is a wonder.
But if spirit..came into being..because of thebody,..it is a wonder of wonders.
Indeed,..I am amazed at how thisgreat wealth..has made its home..in this poverty."
The disciples..said to Jesus, "We know..that You will departfrom us...Who is to be our leader?"
Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are,..you are to go to..[James]..*the righteous,..for whose sake..heaven..and earth came into being."
[for he above all..is a servant..[righteous-servant]he..who would lead you..shall serve..*you][not banker'd/ursurers/corpe-rations/state/..or the party
not pauls-peter?let his works..reveal...
all in gods-timenot mans..Posted by one under god, Tuesday, 28 December 2010 8:41:25 AM Jesus said, "It is impossible..for a man to mount two horses..or to stretch two bows...at the same time
And..it is impossible..for a servant to serve two masters; otherwise he will honor the one..and treat the other contemptuously.
likewise..its impossable to change what a man belief's
No man drinks..old wine..[creed]..and immediately desires to drink new wine...[new ways]
And new wine..[creed/belief]..is not put into old wineskins,[fixed minds]..lest they burst;
nor is old wine..put into a new wineskin, lest it spoil it...[this is the lesson..of those who wanderd the desetrts..for 40 years...till ONLY their children..walked upon the promised..land
An old patch..is not sewn onto a newgarment,..[like with like]..because a tear would result."
48)Jesus said, "If two make peace..with each other..in this one house,[of one mind]they will say..even to the mountain,..'Move Away,' and it will..move away."
[no one likes a crouchy host]shake the dust of your feet..and leave them bethus as they chose to be
49)Jesus said, "Blessed are the solitary..and selective, for you will find..the Kingdom...within..and they decry it
For you are from it,..and..to it you will return."[as a man thinketh...so he is..in his heart]
50)Jesus said, "If they say to you,..'Where did you come from?',say to them,..'We came from the light,..the place where the lightcame into being..on its own accord..and established..[itself]
and..became manifest..through their image.'[lighten up]
If they say to you,..'Is it you?', say,..'We are its children,..we are the erect..of the LivingFather.'...doing that of love/good..as he does..for all
If they ask you,..'What is the sign..of your father inyou?',..say to them,..'It is movement..[light life love logic]..and repose.[grace mercy forgiveness..patience]'"
51)..His disciples said to Him, "When will the repose..of the dead..come about, and when..will the new world come?"
He said to them, "What you look forward to..has already come,to each in their own time..
but you..do not recognize it."
let the dead..tend the deadfor what are dead worksPosted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 6:48:11 AM His disciples..said to Him, "Twenty-four prophets..spoke in..palistein, and all of them spoke..in You."
He said to them, "You have omitted the one living..in yourpresence..[cause..you talk of affect]..and have thus spoken..(only)..of the dead."[affect]
53)..His disciples..said to Him, "Is circumcision beneficial or not?"
He said to them, "If it were beneficial,..their father wouldbeget them...*already circumcised..from their mother.
Rather,..the true circumcision..[of thyne lips]is in spirit...which has become completely profitable."[has good works]..[not good words]
54)Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor, for yours..is the Kingdom of Heavenly reperation."
55)Jesus said,.."Whoever does not hate his father..[good/god]..and his mother..cannot become a disciple to Me...[one gave me..*lifethe other..brought me into..all this material-muddle]
And whoever..does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross..[burden]..giving good for bad..in My way[by doing as theee see me do]..will not be worthy of Me."
i will say i know him not by his workshe has harvested..but not planted
56)Jesus said, "Whoever has come to understand..ONLY..the world has found (only)..a corpse,
and whoever has found..a corpse is superior..to the materialistic being of this world."
57)Jesus said,
"The Kingdom of the Father..is like a man..who had..[good]seed. His enemy came by night..and sowed weeds..among the good seed.
life has many temptationsbut are you building your house on firm foundations[or why evil thrives...here]
The man..did not allow them..to pull up the weeds; he said to them,[who judged in hast..
'I am afraid..that you will go..intending to pull upthe weeds..and pull up the wheat...along with them.'
you have removed freewill..for we all change we are not plants...we all..have choice..to grow into wheat
[by loving living..doing good works]Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 7:03:10 AM Jesus said, "Take heed of the Living One..while you are alive, lest you die..and seek to see Him..[yet have rejected the light]..and thus be unable..to do so."
60)
He*,,said to his disciples, "(Why does)..that man(carry)..the lamb around?"
They*..said to him, "So that he may kill it..and eat it."
He said to them, "While it is alive,..he will not eat it, but only..when he has killed it..and it has become a corpse."
They said to him,.."He cannot do so otherwise."
He said to them, "You too,..look for a place for yourselfwithin the Repose,..lest you become a corpse..and be eaten."
..Jesus said, "Two rest on a sick-bed:..the one will die,and other will live."yet both live..regardless of who lives on here..or who lives on there
but its the quality of livingyou lived here..that determines the quality of life you live there
61..Salome said to him,,.."Who are You,..man,..that You,..as though..from the One,..have come up on my couch..and eaten..from my table?"
Jesus said to her, "I am He who exists..from the Undivided. I was given..some of the things of my Father."
"Therefore I say,..if he is..
And just who owns..the Federal Reserve Bank?
I will tell you: 1. The Rothschilds of London and Berlin; 2. Lazard Brothers of Paris; 3. Israel Moses Seif of Italy; 4. Kuhn Loeb and Warburg of Germany; 5. Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs; 6. The Rothschild-controlled Rockefeller interests of New York.
it is these ursurors..who seek to run the world
they make you borrow...every dollar..*into egsistancebut you must..repay..*usury...they dont create
MEANING..someone else..must default..their debt
just as the bankers..have defaulted..their debt[and we need..to repay..their debt]..
and still no extra dollarsto cover..the ursury..its a clever judas scam[but recall the caution..about throwuing rocks]
and so the zionist..conspiricy goes onPosted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 7:22:33 AM Jesus said, "It is to those..[who are worthy of My]..mysteriesthat I tell My mysteries.
Do not let your left hand..know whatyour right hand is doing."
Jesus said,.."There was a rich man..who had much money.
He said,..'I shall put my money to use so that I may sow,reap,plant, and fill my storehouse with produce, with the result that..I shall lack nothing.
Such were his intentions, but that samenight he died...Let him who has ears hear."
64)..Jesus said,.."A man had received visitors. And when he had prepared the dinner,..he sent his servant to invite guests.
He went to the first one.and said to him, "My master invites you.'
He said,..'I have claims against some merchants. They are coming to me this evening. I must go and give them my orders. I ask tobe excused..from the dinner.'
He went to another and said,..'Mymaster has invited you.'
He said to him, 'I have just bought ahouse and am required for the day. I shall not have any spare time.'
He went to another and said to him, 'My master invitesyou.' He said to him, 'My friend is going to get married, and Iam to prepare the banquet. I shall not be able to come. I ask tobe excused from the dinner.'
He went to another and said to him,'My master invites you.' He said to him, 'I have just bought afarm, and I am on my way to collect the rent. I shall not be ableto come. I ask to be excused.'
The servant returned and said tohis master, 'Those whom you invited to the dinner have asked tobe excused.'
The master said to his servant, 'Go outside to thestreets and bring back those whom you happen to meet,..so thatthey may dine.'
Businessmen and merchants will not enter thePlaces of My Father."Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 7:34:02 AM Jesus said,.."Show me the stone..which the builders haverejected...That one is the cornerstone."
Jesus said,.."Whoever believes..that the All itself is..deficient...is..(himself)..completely deficient."
He said,.."There was a good man..who owned a vineyard.
He leased it to tenant farmers..so that they might work it..and hemight collect the remainder..of its produce from them.
He sent his servant so thatthe tenants might give him..the surplus-produce..of the vineyard.
They seized his servant and beat him,..all but killing him.
The servant went back..and told his master.
The master said,..'Perhaps..
He sent another servant.
The tenantsbeat this one as well.
Then the owner sent his son and said,'Perhaps they will show respect to my son.'
Because the tenants..knew that it was he who was the heir to the vineyard,..they seizedhim and killed him...
and then taxed their labouers...and made them..under threat..and imprisonment..pay other ursury
Let him who has ears hear."
Jesus said,.."Blessed are you..when you are hated and persecuted. Wherever you have been persecuted..they will find no Place....of peace..in their lives herafter"..reaping theirbitter harvest...till the last vile has been re-payed..in full
but not with intrestno ursury
Jesus said, "Blessed are they who have been persecuted..within themselves. It is they..who have truly come to know the Father.
Blessed are the hungry,for the things of spiritfor the belly of him..who desires..to the goodwill be filled."
70]..Jesus said,
"If you bring forth..what good..is within you, what you..bring forth..[outside you]..will save you.
If you do not..bring forth what is..within you, what you do not bring forth..will destroy you."
Jesus said,.."The harvest is great..but the laborers are few.and the landlords too greedy/needy/seedy..
Beseech the Lord,..therefore, to send out..laborers..to the harvest."
He said,.."O Lord, there are many around..the drinking trough,but there is nothing..in the cistern."
cause the govt..gave it to the bankersPosted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 8:02:29 AM Jesus said, "Many are standing..at the door,..but it is thesolitary..[one by one]..who will enter the bridal chamber."
76)..Jesus said, "The kingdom of the Father..is like a merchantwho had a consignment of merchandise..and who discovered a pearl.
That merchant was shrewd...He sold the merchandise and bought thepearl alone for himself...You too,..seek his unfailing and enduringtreasure..[of eternal-spirit]..where no moth comes near..to devour and no worm destroys."
77)..Jesus said,.."It is I am..[god]..who am the light which is above them all.
It is I am..who is the All.
From He..did the All come forth,..andunto He did the All extend.
Split a piece of wood,..and I am is there. Lift up the stone,..and you will find he..is allready..there."
Jesus said,.."Why have you come out..into the desert? To see a reed..shaken by the wind?..And to see a man..clothed in finegarments..like your kings..and your great men?
Upon them are thefine..[garments],
and they are therebyunable to discern the truth."
Jesus said, "He who has recognized the world has found only that of the body,..[flesh]
but he who has found the body withinis superior..to the world."
81)..Jesus said,
"Let him who has grown rich be king, and let him...who possesses power...renounce it."
Jesus said, "He who is near Me..is nearer..to the fire, and he who is far..from Me..is far from the Kingdom."
Jesus said, "The images..are manifest to man, but the light..in them..remains concealed..in the image of the light of the Father.
He will become manifest, but his image..will remain concealed..by his light."Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 8:13:54 AM Jesus said,
"When you see your likeness,..you rejoice.
But..when you see your images..which came into being before you, andwhich neither..die not...nor become manifest,
how much..you will have to bear!"
85)..Jesus said,
"Adam came into being..from a great power and agreat wealth,..but he did not become worthy..of you.
For had hebeen worthy,..[he would]..not[have experienced] his 'death'."[and this material realm..wouldnt egsist]
Jesus said, "[The foxes have their holes] and the birds have..[their] nests, but the..Son of materialistic-Man..had no place..to lay his headand rest."
Jesus said,.."Wretched is the body that is dependant..upon a body, and wretched is the soul..that is dependent on these two."
88)..Jesus said,
"The angels and the prophets..will come to youand give you those things you..(already) have.
And you too,..give them those things which you have,..and they too..allready have
and say to yourselves,..'When will they come..and take what is theirs?'"[know you not oh man...its allready within you..its for you to give]
Jesus said, "Why do you wash..*the outside of the cup? Do you not realize..*that he who made*..it is...*he inside...
is the same one who made..the outside?"
Jesus said, "Come unto me,..for My yoke is easy..and Mylordship is mild,..and you will find repose..*for yourselves."
They said to Him, "Tell us who You..are so that we may..believe..in You."
lolHe said to them,
"You read the face..of the sky and of the earth,
but you have not recognized the one..who is before you,..within you..and without youandyou do not know..how to read this his..LIVING moment."
HIS PROOF
this one..ever live [living-moment]now
gods timeall the time
oh how to put it on a cardPosted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 8:26:02 AM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGgARDuVynU
40% of all corporate profits came from the financial services industry.http://political-economy.com/wall-street-money-never-sleeps/
Not production, not anything remotely to do...with the needs of the American public.http://snardfarker.ning.com/forum/topics/16-shocking-facts-about-theThe truth is we are all part of it..now.http://snardfarker.ning.com/forum/topics/someone-is-trading-stocks?commentId=2649739%3AComment%3A279917
Banks,..consumers they are moving the money around..in circles.
We take a buck,..we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage...I call it steroid banking
We are ruled by parasites. http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/nearly-100-bailed-out-banks-may.html
We are ruled by people who not only don’t work..but expect us to work for them.
This is totally irresponsible on our part...And we have been carefully trained to be irresponsible..because responsibility is the key to power.
We can gain total power over our lives http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/12/28/jb-campbell-responsibility-is-the-key-to-power/
but not without accepting..full responsibility for everything.
Chart of who "owns" the Federal Reserve
http://www.save-a-patriot.org/files/view/whofed.html
Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence
Putin’s Purge Of The Rothschild Money Changers
WHEN PUTIN WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT of Russia in 2000,..Russia was bankrupt.
The nation owed $16.6 billion to the Rothschild-run International Monetary Fund while its foreign debt to the Rothschild-controlled Paris & London Club Of Creditors was over 36 billion dollars.
But Putin took advantage of the current boom in world oil prices by redirecting a portion of the profits of Russia’s largest oil producer Gazprom so as to pay off the country’s debt.
The continual surge in oil prices greatly accelerated Russia’s capacity to restore financial sovereignty.
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=205
THE U.S. STOCK MARKET IS RIGGEDhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-U-S-STOCK-MARKET-IS-R-by-lila-york-101227-303.html?show=votes
Does the United States still have a stock market? Not really. In a real market, when there are more sellers than buyers, prices decline.
And vice versa of course. That is called "price discovery"; or used to be.
Since January of 2010 investors have withdrawn a net total of 81 billion dollars from U.S. stocks and funds,this week marking..the 33rd consecutive week of outflows,
work..makes freehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-1ts3VTeeI&feature=player_embeddedor fee?http://www.heretical.com/miscella/rudolf.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342013/How-slim-French-women-paid-figures-lives-miracle-diet-drug-proved-killer.html
http://preventdisease.com/news/10/121010_no_value_flu_vaccines.shtmlhttp://www.rys2sense.com/anti-neocons/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1388
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/12/rise-and-rise-of-super-fascism.html
http://whatreallyhappened.com/Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 8:47:27 AM OUG,
Thought this might interet you: among the summer activities organised for the Muslim kids will be (or was, yesterday)
"The Story of Lady Maryam & Issa (a.s) for Little Hearts"
http://muslimvillage.com/2010/12/28/dec-28-2010-syd-the-story-of-lady-maryam-issa-a-s-for-little-hearts/
Issa, of course, is the Arabic/Muslim name for Jesus.
true peace to you bro,salaamsPosted by grateful, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 7:39:05 PM gratefull..the link didnt reveal actual..infoi tried to ask for some..via commentbut comment didnt work..either
do you have a script...of the teaching?
anyhow i was talking about ursury..[i hate it]recall jesus upset the tables of the creedsselling tokens..according to the sin...
[or rather the blood sacrifice..that would redeem the...'sin']
i suppose on the surface..paying a token-coinsacrificing money..is better than murder of an innocent beast
never the less..by god all sin is forgivenas soon as we repent...and seek to do good worksand not before...if we learn nothing...know god needs no intermediator
we can know god direct..one to onesimply by loving neighbour as thyselfone way...love
so lets egsamin the table's incident
Perhaps you would need to be the light. Sometimes we are in that place in our life where we are surrounded by darkness,..so we need to hold up our light,..by works..to the good..
to serve creation..just as god serves us..[created]..our living
take a good look all around us to see where we're going.
But I want you to realize, my brother, that when you're holding up your light, there's a whole host..whose prayers for you..to find yourself..are even stronger than your own.
We are guiding you...Do not doubt that. And follow your heart...Find your home.
half a shekel of silver, the amount laid down in the Law of Moses for the atonement of every Israelite, in Exodus 30:11-16.
In the first century half a shekel was reckoned the equivalent of two Greek drachmas or two Roman denarii.
A laborer could earn that amount in two days.
The priests decreed...lol..that payment should be made in coins..of the purest silver...[special..lol..type...creed]Posted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:34:10 PM Only one sort was acceptable,..the silver coins of the city of Tyre.
Many of the traders charged very high prices,..taking shameless advantage of the pilgrims who came..from the countryside and from foreign lands.
The traders had to pay for permission to have their stalls in this area, and they had to pay...the leading priests...their kickback...the tokens..at reduced fee..to sell to the next batch of elites...trying to buy a soul..
It can be estimated that the amount taken to the Temple each year was about half a million shekels. The Tyrean shekel was worth four denarii, so the annual income of the Temple would be equivalent to wages for two million man-days of work, or 5480 man-years of work, on a basis of 7 working days per week.
Let's say the average yearly income of a North American today would be 30.000 dollars. Then you could calculate the Temple income almost as 170 million dollars.
[The Temple was not the spiritual center any more,it had become big business!]
Very well,..this was the situation. Jesus entered with us,..and stayed silent for a while, observing the chaos, the noise, animals bellowing, people screaming, clients haggling with dealers, humble people with scared looks, a tremendous tumult.
And then he took the word, hollering to dominate the commotion with his voice. And suddenly, there was all silence.
Those were the famous words: "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."
Jesus didn't mince matters, he uttered openly what he thought and felt. And what..had to happen..happened....see you not what is happening today..?
People got angry. A great uproar arose.
Everybody knew that Jesus was right, and they let off their steam over the salesmen.
Jesus didn't incite that incident,..but his words certainly unchained the feelings,..which until then had been restrained..in the people's hearts...
they simply were blind...but did they chose to see...?
or did they follow the blinded..by greedthe priests...in their materialism..Posted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:37:34 PM there comes the moment..in each one’s life, when one must find hard words,..when one must pronounce himself clearly,..with all severity,..yet not kill..or interfere with a per-suns free will
in order to be true to himself and true to God. Jesus knew the risk,..but he was not afraid...for our fathers house is one..[undivided]..
How could he have disregarded what was happening before his eyes?
No, he did the correct thing, but he had to suffer the consequences.
No, they did not put him into jail. No, they did not do anything, for the moment.
There was no pretext under which it would have been possible to arrest him.
He had not uttered anything but the truth.
He had not participated in the riot. We could leave the Temple area..without problems.
Yes, that incident also contributed..to my decision of betraying him. [this by judas]In fact, I loved him very much. But for me, he didn't behave correctly.
Jesus had power,..I had seen it,..a lot of power! He could mobilize people,..he had all the potential of changing things,..*but he didn't do it.
Then,..what I did was to force him into a situation, where he had to demonstrate his power,..putting an end to the supreme priest's henchmen,
to show his antagonism openly to the Temple hierarchy and to launch a rebellion. Yes, these are political, revolutionary ideas, but politics and religion then were one and the same thing, there was not separation between them, that is a modern idea.
I failed,..I didn't understand him. And you know the rest of the story.
now the ursorers own 90 percent of it allbuy silver gold..with paper...manufacture credit from a computer entry
think they dont need god..nor his creationindeed seek to kill it all..need fear..need eternal warallways needy..needing ever more...treating god within..like a slave
not the honourable mercyfull living loving host within..us allhe allways isPosted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:46:37 PM Jesus:
It is always a temptation..for the mind to seek to have an understanding..of its relationship to God.
It wants tangible..[material]..external evidence and symbols to represent..that relationship that is a purely inner-spiritual one.
I represented..to my disciples that good of God's will, that they become at one..*with Him..in Love.
But they could see my Love...was his love..reflected..back to them.
They could see Its demonstration..*in our lives..together. They could have faith..in the power of this Love..as it demonstrated Itself through my hands../.yet via their hearts.
It was not until I left..that they..had to realize the power was in their own hands..through..his Love..that they prayed for, through...their hearts-desire..to do for the good/deed..of God's Will.
I want you to realize how important it is to realize your relationship with God.
He Loves you. and..He Loves you... And it is..through your hands..that His Love comes.
Do not look to the material for the assurance that you have this relationship...Look to your hearts and feel the Love..in your heart reaching out to your brothers and sisters...who need that Love....not by lips..or words..but works..
you..and Your Father..*are one, and His Love..is manifest through you to these brothers and sisters..who are all..God's children.
We are all God's children...We are all beloved..by God. Is it not the greatest gift..we have..to share – this Love..that God has shown us?
Would it not bring us the greatest joy to touch someone in the greatest Love that we have, that is..with the Divine Love..that we have been shown?
Sometimes we ask ourselves..if we are good enough, if we are worthy..of this tremendous Love,..this Gift that we recognize..in this Life..good of God has offered to us.
If you could only imagine yourself..as God sees you, the beautiful soul that you are,..the beautiful child that He sees before you..within/without..you..that He loves..with all His Heart,
it would put to shame any jewel,..any treasure that you might find..here on earth. It would put to shame..any monument that has ever been built by man.
You are the most beautiful creation..of our Heavenly Father. There is only one of you. You are precious, you are rarePosted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:50:38 PM 1) And He said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of thesesayings..will not experience death."
80) Jesus said, "He who has recognized the world has found thebody, but he who has found the body is superior to the world."
81) Jesus said, "Let him who has grown rich be king, and let himwho possesses power renounce it."
the Son of Man has no place to lay his headand rest."
87) Jesus said, "Wretched is the body that is dependant upon abody, and wretched is the soul that is dependent on these two."
88) Jesus said, "The angels and the prophets will come to youand give you those things you (already) have.
2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds.
When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomestroubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
"Let him who seeks..not cease until he finds,and when he finds..he shall wonder;
by wondering..he shall reign,and by reigning justly..
shall rest....his other body...br-..*other life spirit...
and the karmic body...of all soulsthat reach the atonement...[at one meant]"
3/b..the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known,..and..you will realize that it is you..who are the suns of the living light/love logic..logus love
one LIFE GIVING Father.
But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you ALONEwho are that poverty."
the Kingdom of God..is inside of you, and it is*..outside of you.
[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves]will find it;
[and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [youwill understand THE KNOWING [LOGIC]..OF IT BEING ME..in thee...and we
that]
it is you who are the suns of the living..light sourcesustaining all living...via the light...into love
we..in thee..who in being me..reveals i am..in thee
Father..speake of grace love mercyupon the least
because that done upon the leastis done to the most..[the all...me of we]..allPosted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:55:20 PM But..if you will not know yourselves, you dwell..in poverty...and as long as one is in provertywe all be...in me
and it is you who are that poverty."that allows poverty to egsist in me
For many who are first..will become last,
and they...*will...all in time..become*..one and the same."...and they will become...a single one."
me was onebefore the big bangas we draw neareer..the unity of onesets up the next sepperations...with the next big bang
we done it oncelets do it againcollectivly we are
god...[i am/you are...we are =..me]me became wewith a guge bang
let there be lightbehold the light[me/we]..is good
let the light bring forth life...for the same is the same..each after their kind
think of a hologram...brokenyet each retains..the image of the whole hollow-gram
or think of me as WE..revealing me..to me...via we
we each are but like a neuron..of the big me
or think of me..as like a t cellcause of..be cause...holding within...all causes
you are the light..have within you the lightbut all light has its one source...just like your skin cellcovers the rest of you...so too gods skin is the light...think of it as
a magnetic attraction...where all sparks...create the lightbecause there is the attraction of the light..to itobscuring..'it'...cause we can only see the lightnot that..who attracts all the light to it
think of like jesus..issa...walking in the darkbut each...of the crowd..has a lamp...that throws its light..upon him
so drawing back from this vision
see all the individual lightssurrounding jesu...even if we cant see him...we know he..is there..because of the lamps/...lights..we can see
collectivly..as we...being we...when actually...we are me
the totality of the lamps lightseen collectivly as simply the light
of grace/mercy/good/love/light/logic/logus...love sustaing life
life from life[let the dead tend the dead]
he in me...he in theee....WE..inverting..our sepperatness...into the oneness[atonment]
[turn ya froun upside down]me=we
invert..WE%know..i=ME
we/me\we/me\WEME/WE\ME/WE\ME
WEME
WEME
i am...because we arewe are..because i am isPosted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:56:26 PM feel all the good..[of god]..is inside you
yet in truth...god..IN-DWELLS..inside..!*..us all
where god is..no darkness..[vile]..can beif god is..with youwho can stand..against you
where the smallest light isdarkness is dispelled
thus is the kingdomonce you loose ALL Fear
turn your fear upside down
we = me...=i am
as you are..so is he..[within thee]
betwixt...your body me..and your soul..we
lies..the only distance...
which yet ALL..lies withinthe infinate..without measure
without...there is no distancethere is only...the one
no time...no darkness..no pain...no need..nothing to create sepperation
for all there have been rejected...by all...thus form into one
Recognize what is in your sight,
and that whichis hidden..from you will become plain to you.
For there is nothinghidden..which will not become manifest."
Recognize what is before your face and that which is hidden from the you..will be revealed..to you. just follow the light..line up in the same direction..feel the force of good
For there isnothing hidden
which shall not be made manifest, nor buried whichshall not..be raised."
Do not lie, and do not do what you hate,
do not adulterate..the words that lead to good..[god]
for allthings are disclosed..before truth. For there is nothing hiddenwhich shall not be..shown forth...for all to see/hear/feel/do/correct//make right"
Do not tell lies,..and do not do..what you hate,for you canm ONLY become that you love
for all things..are plain in the sight of Heaven...[when seen in the lightor rather the affect of the light..[cause]
For nothinghidden..will not become manifest,Posted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:57:33 PM and nothing covered will remain
without being..uncovered."
Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man whenconsumed by man;
and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes,and the lion remains lion..never man."
Jesus said: "Unless you fast [control the glorying of/by]to the worldly material-istic temptations, you shall in noway find the Kingdom of God;
and unless you sabbatize theSabbath,..equally for all
no exceptions[god needs his rest..tooand who is not god?]
you shall not see..the Father..the one i am.for that you do..to the least...you do to him"
that you did for the leastyou did..for him
my soul grieved over the souls of men,because they are blind..[deaf]..in their heart and see not.
There is light within a man of light,not the light..but radiating his light from it
and he..(or "it")..lights up the whole materialistic world universal uni-verse.
If he (or "it") does not shine,..from withinhe (or "it") is creating the veil..
that suspends lights..revealingscreating thus..darkness....[in its manyfold vairiations]"
Jesus said,.."Love your brother like your soul, guard him..like the pupil of your eye."he is a mirror of..[me]...we as one
Jesus said, "You see the mote in your brothers eye, but youdo not see the beam in your own eye.
When you cast the beam outof your own eye, then you will see clearly to cast the mote fromyour brother's eye."
27)
youwill not find the Kingdom.
If you do not observe the Sabbath as aSabbath,[all of you].. you will not see the Father."
28) Jesus said, "I took my place in the midst of the world, andI appeared to them in the flesh. I found all of them intoxicated;
I found none of them thirsty. And My soul became afflicted forthe sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and donot have sight;
for empty they came into the world, and empty toothey seek to leave the world.Posted by one under god, Thursday, 30 December 2010 1:58:29 PM But for the moment..they are..intoxicated.
When..they shake off..their wine,
then..they will...to repent."
Jesus said,.."If the flesh..came into being..because of spirit,..it is a wonder.
But if spirit..came into being..because of thebody,..it is a wonder..of wonders.
Indeed,..I am amazed..at how thisgreat wealth..has made its home in..this materilistic-realm..
yet..so filled..with spiritual-poverty."
Jesus said:.."Where there are..[two, they are..not]..without God,
and when there is one..alone, [I say,]..I am with him.
Raise/the stone,..and there you will find me;
cleave/the wood,..and there I am."
When you make..the two one, and when you/make the inside..like the outside
and the outside..like the inside,and the above..like the belowyou shall know
no-one..lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, nor does he put it..in a hidden-place,
but rather..he sets it on a lampstand so that everyone who enters and leaves will see its light."
[know it..by its workings/deed/good fruits...light]
Jesus said, "If a blind man leads a blind man, they will/both..fall into a pit."
[will you see]..the Sun..[light]..of theLiving One,..and you will not be afraid"
Many times have you desired..to hear these wordswhich I am saying to you,..and you have no one else..to hear themfrom.
There will be days when you look for Me..[i am]..and will not find..Me."
"The Pharisees..and the scribes have taken thekeys of Knowledge..of self and cause of self..and hidden them.
They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to.
You,however,..be as wise as serpents and as innocent..as doves."
For you are from it's materialism, and to it..[of spirit]..you will return."
Jesus said, "If they say to you,..'Where did you come from?',say to them,..'We came from the light,love..logic..ot the living truth
the place..where the lightcame into being on its own accord and established..[itself]..and became manifest
through their image.'
If they say to you,..'Is it you?',
say,..'We are its children,..you are his child we are the elect..of the Living-Father.'
If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father..*in you?',
say to them, '
It is movement..*[life]..Posted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:13:16 PM and..in repose....[it's..sleep]...then..will/peace/rest.....[sabbath]..'"
and..when will..the new=world come?"its been here..all along..its just some..prepher it..to be hell..[for others]
but there are no...'other'there is only dreamer..[god]...and dream...[us]
He said..to them,
"What you look forward to..has already come,but you do not recognize it."
take sabbath...and it finds youas you find that..with-in you
You have omitted the one living..in yourpresence..and have spoken..(only)..of the dead...[material-matter/s]"
Jesus said,
"Whoever has come to understand the world has found..(only) a corpse,..and whoever has found the world..a corpse is superior..to the world."
the greatest shall be the leastyet the least..is yet greater..than the baptism
Jesus said,.."Take heed of the Living One..while you are alive, lest you die..and seek to see Him..and be unable to do so."
He said to them,.."You too,..look for a place for yourselfwithin the Repose,..lest you become a corpse and be eaten."
Jesus said to her,
"I am He who exists..from the Undivided. I was given..some of the things of my Father."
as have you..~given your own lifes gifts..of him
Therefore I say,..if he is..
62)Jesus said, "It is to those..[who are worthy of our fathers]..mysteriesthat tell..of his mysteries...that they be seen clearly..by all..
Whoever believes..that the All itself..is deficient is (himself)..completely deficient."
If you bring forth..what is within you, what you bring forth..will save you.
If you do not bring forth what iswithin you,..what you do not bring forth..will destroy you."
Tell my brothers..to divide my father's..possessions..with me...we"
77)..Jesus said,.."It is I am..who am the light which is above all...It is I..[who am]..that is the All.
From he did the All come forth, andunto he..did the All extend...forth from he..
Split a piece of wood,..and I am is there. Lift up the stone, and you will find...Me is there."
When you see your likeness,..you rejoice. Butwhen you see your images..which came into being before you, andwhich neither die..nor become manifest,..how much living you will have tobear!"
i give you..those things you..(already) havePosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:25:04 PM And you too,..give them those..things which you know..they allready..have,
and say to yourselves,..'Whenwill..they come..and take what is theirs?'"
89) ..Jesus said,
"Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you not realize that he who made he inside is the same one..who made the outside?"
you will find repose..for yourselves."
[Jesus said,].."If you have money, do not lend it at interest.. but give..[it] to one..from whom you will not get it back."
97) Jesus said,
"The Kingdom of the..[Father]..is like a certain man..who was carrying a jar..full of flour...While he was walking home with it..still some distance from home,..the base..of the jar broke..and the flour emptied out behind him..onto the road.
he did-not realize it;
he had noticed..no accident...noticed..no difference..as his food..for the day..slowly dribbled away.
When he reached his house, he set the jar down..and found it empty."
[the jar..is that..in our mind..[intent]the flour is that in our heart..[intention]setting the jar down...reveals the other works..we didst not see needed doing..in the complete..doing ..of all things...we chose to do]
99) ..The disciples said to Him, "Your brothers and Your motherare standing outside."
He said to them, "Those here..who do the will..of My Father..are My brothers and My mother.
It is they who will enter theKingdom of My Father."
it is he who sustains our livingand we..who use the gift of life to create good fruit
101)
And whoever does[not]..love his father..and his mother as I do..[by works]..cannot become a..[disciple] to Me.
For My mother..[gave me falsehood], but..[My]..true..[father]..gave me life."yet..in its giving...give it..to be taken away
102) Jesus said, "Woe to the Pharisees,..for they are like a dogsleeping..in the manger of oxen,..for neither does he eat..nor wake nor does he let the oxen eat...nor sleep"
104)..They said..[to Jesus],
"Come,..let us pray today..and let us fast."
Jesus said, "What is the sin..that I have committed,..that needs prayer's salvPosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:28:44 PM orwherein..have I been defeated..from serving the good..of the fatherthat i need to deperive..my material rewards..and my earned sabbath?
But..when the bridegroom..leaves thebridal chamber,..then let them fast..and pray...only this..can help the helper...now on his way...to recierve his fair pay"
107)Jesus said, "The Kingdom is like a shepherd..who had a hundred sheep. One of them,..the largest,..[oldest]..matriarchal first born..mother of the flock
..went astray.
He left..the..ninety-nine sheep and looked for..that one..until he found it.
When he had gone to such trouble,
he said to the sheep,..'I care foryou...more than the ninety-nine...'"
let he who hath ear hear
this..[the largest/oldest]..was the child-sheppards..first chargehe raised it..from a lamb...from it..he learned..the art of sheppards care
from it grew his flock
it knew..where there was good waterit knew..where there was good pasture..knew where was safty..or the dens..of wolves
it did his job for him..!
the great gandmother..[sheep elder]..knew..what the sheppard knewled..her flock...to safety...and from danger..to plenty..to the good
[think of the protector fish parrable]108) Jesus said, "He who will drink..the words..from my mouth..will become like Me....being like he..[our father]..I myself..shall become as he,..and thee like me
and the things..that are hiddenwill become revealed..from him...to thee..and to me"setting us all free..
109)Jesus said,
"The Kingdom is like a man..who had a..[hidden]..treasure in his field..without others knowing it...but forgot about it..
and..[after] he died,..heleft it..to his only begotten son.
The son did not know..(about the treasure).
He inherited the field didnt want to work itand thus sold [it].
And..the one who bought it wentplowing..and found the treasure.
He began to lend money atinterest..to whomever he wished."
he bought yet mopre fields...and even for-restsfound often much treasure...but just as often nonein the end..he destroyed all the forrests...had plowed..[mono-culture]..upon every field
grew plenty of green..mono-culturebut none of it fit to eat
he had plunderd the creation of the fatherdespoiled it all...gained the treasure he could gatherand spent it destroying all god had created...[you can see the desetrts there to this day]
110).Jesus saidPosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:33:38 PM "Whoever finds the world..and becomes rich, let..him renounce the world's plunder..lest it bind him into materialism."
having all the blamegetting the blame as his credit
111) Jesus said, "The heavens and the earth will be rolled up in your presence.
And one who lives..from the Living One serving every other one..by works..will not see death."
he will live..in their memory..for money is soon forgotten
Does not Jesus say, "Whoever finds himself..as the body within the body..is superior to the world?"
whos soul enjoines with the soul
112)..Jesus said, "Woe to the flesh..that depends on the soul..to gain that fruit..of the body..[materialism]..;
woe to the soul..that depends..on the fruits of flesh."
woe to the flesh...that begets only that of the flesh
113) His disciples said to Him,.."When will the Kingdom come?"
It will not be a matter of saying..'Here it is'..or 'There it is.'
Rather,the Kingdom of the Father is spread out..upon the earth,..and men do not see it."
they feel the wind...yet see not its causethey feel the heat..yet see only the fire
feel the flame withinsee the flame..in others
let not any one be fiend]we must all become as brothers
yea..be as lovers
114) Simon Peter said to Him,
"Let Mary leave us,..for women..are not worthy of Life."[seems the church..of peter..hasnt changed a lot,..lol]
Jesus said,.."I myself shall lead her..in order to make her male,..so that she too..may become..a living spirit..resembling you males.
For every woman..who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."...{as male}
but every mother..shall enter it by her good works..with plenty of perks..
the least shall be the most..
each holds withinthe most holy..of holy hostscome enter into..the holy of holies
its all goodif its not good..
its not of godPosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:34:33 PM what binds you...but you?
You all have this common bond in Love to one another. You all need love...You need to give love....be the love...feel the love...do love..
And as for the diversity of the races..that you see on this planet, you must realize that the soul..is as diverse..[unique]..from another soul..as are the grains of sand..and the stars in heaven...or the order's of words..from gods messangers
You need to recognize..
in one another..this humanity..[gods reflections]..that elevates you to the status..of being the greatest of gods creations..on this earth.
We are one in the spirit..of this Love...We are one family.
I want to say..that I am indebted to our Heavenly Father for having rebestowed..the Gift of His Love...
He did not offer it..just to me; He offered it..to all of His children.
At the time that God rebestowed this Love, there were among those spirits..who were awaiting..this Good News, our first parents – your first parents..who were offered this Gift..upon their creation.
They had many years to wait..to finally accept this great Gift..that they had denied. But if you can imagine,..just for a moment,..what their joy and their gratitude were..
if only for that day.
Try to realise..that our Heavenly Father..will wait for an eternity to Love..every single one of His children.
His Love has been in the world..all these years. He has not failed to answer one prayer,..not one.that was prayed..for good reason..to the betterment..[for everyone]
There have been many,..many souls who have recognized their relationship to God.
But my brothers and sisters,..do you not always feel, feel this Love..[his]..in your own life;
just to the small amount that you may be able to open your souls..to how great,..how powerful and strong..his Love is for you?
As our brother has to do sometimes,..and close the door – it's so great. God is with you,..will always be with you...The truth is here;..it lives in your heart.
There are many [who know of their immortality]
I will say..that if with your heart,..you ask God to speak to you, you will hear His answer..with your heartPosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:37:50 PM God never fails..to answer our heart's questions.But sometimes we fail ourselves..to trust..the answer.
We may believe that what we decide is not right, because as you receive your answer,..you must activate, put into motion,..and effect,..what it is your heart is telling you.
Do not cut off His voice..from your hands,... Make your hands say..what your heart..has heard.
Make your voice[hands]..speak..what your heart has heard.
God Loves your hands,..He Loves your voice,..He Loves your eyes.
Let Him Love you that way...Love yourself..as His good-instrument....
revealing the unseen..by deed..able to be seen..and felt..known..and recognised..for what is its true cause..[good of god]
And even though you may not understand..or believe..in the reasoning..of things,
..if God's Love has spoken,..have faith..in that Love, have faith that you have moved..in Love.
As we became fishers of men,..we picked up our hands, and we asked God,..what do we do with these hands..that only know how to fish?
Let Love show you..what to do with your hands.
all creation..every breath breed..herd plant or men,..women..sinmple souls..or human souls, are ALL..living thoughts of the Father,..EACH..gifted with countless attributes..and liberties,..like the free will..love nurture..lofic..luife..and man’s own capacity of reasoning...the cause behind it all
God’s pure thought..is still ever present...in each live time/..living moment..[now]
I will give you an example.
You read that scientists detected a background radiation,..which astronomy interprets as a feeble remainder..of the radiation produced at the moment of the “Big Bang”.
In other words,..this radiation is like a footprint left behind in the moment of our universe’s creation,
and it allows us..to follow back the development until the very moment..of the movement..of creation.
Something similar happens with us.
Our souls possess this “background radiation”,..in form of a minimum awareness,..which is very weak..and may be covered/forgot/destroyed quite easily...
Part of this awareness is that God does exist,..that God loves us,..also the knowledge of good and evil,
in short,..it is a trace..which allows us,provided we pay attention to it,..to find a straight and safe way..to our destiny:..At-one-ment..with God....at one meant..with love grace/mercy..life
This “background radiation”..forms part of what scientists call..the subconscious mindPosted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 2:41:42 PM But the situation..becomes complicated when we consider that there are..other influences which act upon..our subconscious mind.
Those are the ideas and the guidance of spirits.
And they,..too, form part of..our so-called inner voice.
It those ideas..and this guidance that comes from Celestial spiritsor from higher spirits..of the spiritual realm..and they are in complete harmony..with God’s original thought....or when destructive..only reacting..with your current will
there is the possibility..that dark spirits..convey their thoughts, and then some conflict will arise....
[but only because your own thoughts..WERNT..in conflict with theirs..[to begin with]...
see you let the thief..into your mind..by thinking vile thought..FIRST..you invited more to come in..
In other words,..there may be a conflict in the subconscious mind..itself.
And to this potential conflict,..the conflict between the material mind..and the subconscious mind..adds futher confusion.
Someday we will analyze..exactly what..the material mind is...
is not..what the spirit mind is...but yet it attracts..other spiritual minds..to it
As always,..we come back to..the same subject.
From what I have put forth previously,..we can conclude that listening to their inner voice..does not constitute a priori ..a reliable guidance for men,..due to the possible..negative spirit influence.
So it is necessary..to tune in to a reliable source..for guidance and information...that is ever willing to sort the good thoughts...of god...from those..not of good..
and feeling god...feels good..but if hurtfull..TO ANYONE-else..cannot be..of god..
it begins with..seeing no evilfearing no evil...where god is..no vile can be
then loving neighbourloving..his creation..as he loves us his created
see not the speck..in your others eyelook into his eye..and see..only your other self
see god of god..within us alluse every artifice..of human ingenuityto be the love..live the love...do only that done..of love
one instrument is,..of course,prayer....after loving works
Besides the many benefits..prayer brings to us,..it also elevates our spirituality...pure prayer[unselfish/prayer]..[block's..negative thinking..that feeds negative act-ions]
To raise the best of living..loving..spirituality..as the best means..to block the access...where vile thought begets vile works
before spirits of little or negative spirituality latch onto..then*..into..our astral-soul,
and prayer..to the goodhelps..to open up..the access for
bright/living/loving..good..spirits...Posted by one under god, Friday, 31 December 2010 3:02:54 PM May your loving guardian angels of God Our Father bathe you in love and light, protection health and safety while delivering His Good Words OUG.
Happiness and Peace for all of 2011.Posted by we are unique, Saturday, 1 January 2011 1:18:35 AM so too..i thank you..we are unique..[you are unique]for your kind words..and great imagry
may all the good of god..keep you and keep you swellnot just in 2011...but for eternity as well
anyhow..by the time i post this..new year shall be herepost limits..oh well we can work within those too
im cleaning up that which was..from last year
then egsamining the 'ritual'..[lopping the top off]
continued from yesterday..
yet even then..there are the dark-ones..feigning..good
the only way..that we may transform..our inner-voice into a reliable compass..showing the right course...is via the love filter..
if its really good...its ALL GOOD..[for all]..especially not alone..good for you..and those you call you from you
Additionally,..there is the effect..[as opposed to the cause]
that just as we will..perceive that seen..as being of goodeventually the good spirits’ voice..shall be heard..more clearly,
we can also..listen to..the far-away echo..as then..joins with nowthat of the very Voice..of the Heavenly Father Himself..,
His Thought,..which lives ever on in us..like the delicate whisper of absolute Truth...for in truth..he has been..here before..done all before..
knows our very inner thoughts..
[its almost like..he was here...because he is here..in us all..nowlol..all the time]...[and for all time
and via the filtering out of that not of goodeven understood,..when we obtained God’s living love made into Substance,..[life sustained by his light/logic]
then but clothed it..into this materialised form..
his whisper..became a clear thought,..that sustained us..to be...to be..the very fruit..of his thought...to now bear..the fruits..of our own thought
for our soul’s mind..moves toward..with,and with-in..the origonal thoughts of..the Father.
The thought..which one day left God,..and became thee..and me..and he..and her...[we us them..all in one mind..of one mind..]
united into one living loving...goodatonement...at one meant...[at one with the good of god]Posted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 3:22:13 PM the fruit..[works]..of the thought..returns to its source,..re-unites with its source,..and lives eternally...as the thoughts..and works..of your thoughts..
as we resolve..in absolute/harmony...of i am..in me.[he]..
with all us..[of other thought...]with-in..the eternal..i am..[beyond thought..[knowing]
thoughts..*are things...This sounds strange,..but..if we re-formulate it...to say..“all thoughts..can materialize..into tangible things”,..it will be easier..to understand..
thus all material..was begat..within higher-thinking[his]
his thinking...as in him..beyond him/her..into we..[the great i am..which is/was..and shall allways be....and allways was...the only-cause
This happens also..with the even mortals’-thoughts... They materialize..individually..or collectivly..as a whole..'creation'..,...
both..on earth..or in the spirit-world...[here-after]
We are co-creators; you may still be..unconscious, but we are..*all destined to be..fully conscious..co-creators
Perhaps you may now..better comprehend..the significance of the phrase..“the mind is only..the spiritual evidence of thoughts..that congregate..from with-in..the body of human/being..within your body..within your brain,unto the without[out-side]
but which really..are not..a part of..the material-thing which the..'wise men' call..the subconscious self..or mind.”[only cause]..
And besides,..as the word..ego is allowed to be mentioned, take note..that we will soon analyze..more thoroughly..the question of individuality.
Today’s message has-been very difficult, but you received it well...god made heaven..
but we..made hell
god is the lightits we..who create darknesswe can simple know the light..by letting it reveal
or we can dwell..in the darkness...when we seek to conceal;
It is always a pleasure to answer the questions and heal..the doubts of my sisters..and brothers on earth.
to say that ability...to be forming..a question..as well as formis the fundamental-object..of soul/development...
it is often...more important than the answer..
an answer is easy...forming a question..is the key
all questions ever asked..shall be answerd..but what of those questions..no one thought..to ask?
First,..try to achieve harmony..in your “subconscious”, tuning into..the all being..[after affect]..resonating with eternaly adequate..sources/causes/potentiality/possability and probability.
Luke wrote these..wise words: “While the personal Satan..does not exist, yet the idea conveyed by..the necessity of binding him in order to bring about..this millennium of love and truth..is a true one,..
and applies..to the actual relationship..of the manyfold..thoughts..of mankind...realised into beingPosted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 3:35:42 PM Soul development begins with raising spirituality/and awareness.to seek question..and frame questioning..to ask and to get..
The most efficient way is by obtaining the Father’s Love, His own Substance....as truth..revealing grace/mercy/love
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things..shall be added unto you.”
mortal and spirit alike.
I realize that as you leave here and you go back to the place that you have called home, you're taking Love home within you..with you.
Home is where our heart is. We choose with our hearts..wherever we are. We make our home here..for reasons we're not always aware of, why we live..how/when/where we live,..and why we do the works we chose what we do.
But our hearts are involved..because we are souls that are seeking to know ourselves.
to these evil spirits,..except this,..that in the case of the latter it is not necessary..or even possible..to bind them,..but alone..to loosen them/set them free
-that is to loosen their rapport with..or influence over men, for when that is done,..men become,..as it were,..free, and these evil spirits are..as if..they were not.”
To do this, you have to pray.
Then,..you must try to resolve the conflict..between the material mind and the soul’s mind..together with..your good/loving/living..inner voice
Do you see the soul..in other people? Is there someone you recognize..in your life that helps you rekindle that knowledge..of who you are as a soul?
it may well be the one we despise..the mostwe often hate that in otherswe hate within ourselves..
love is the most powerfull forceits well worth trying love first
what do you have to looseits your choice..your voice...you hold your heart's wor-kings..in your hands
remember gods throne...is our heartheck..it will never fit on a card
this continues on from herehttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4174&page=0began herehttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4008&page=0or herehttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11008&page=0went to herehttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4092&page=0
for..the time of good-works..draws near..
so thats all folks
we can do it betternot alone..next year..but now..
next..top-lopping?Posted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 3:37:40 PM *CAUTION*graphic adult content
mens business
oh dear..horror of horrorshttp://www.google.com/search?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=circumsision%20protocol%20ritual%20methodoligy
Deuteronomy 10:16 says:.."Circumcise the foreskin of your heart," suggesting that ethical acts..(among people)..are as important as materialistic rituals...called lol..spiritual acts..(between people and God).
as if god got it wrong[but it looks so pretty]..quiet mum..this is mans business
The prophetic tradition..[that looks spelled wrong]..pathetic?
emphasizes that God..expects people to be good as well as pious, and that non-Jews..will be judged based on their ethical behavior.ie not by their being chopped/lopped or topped..
Thus,..Jeremiah 9:25-26 says..that circumcised and uncircumcised will be punished..alike by the Lord;..for "all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel..are uncircumcised..*in heart."
anyhow it seems...the tree must bleed...its sap
how this applies to the heart...is that of love without fruit..[works]
Hatafat dam brit
Medical circumcision alone,..in the absence of the brit milah ceremony, does not fulfill the requirements of the mitzvah.
In the case of a Jew who was circumcised..outside*..of a brit milah, or an already-circumcised convert,..the mohel draws a symbolic drop of blood from the penis...[ooops tree]...
Hatafat dam brit..(heb. דם ברית "Drop of the blood..[sap..of the]..Covenant")..refers to the fulfillment of the mitzvah..of a brit milah...
ok sap it islop the treeare there any special prayers?
Blood A brit milah is not considered complete unless blood..[sap from the tree]..is actually drawn.
This is not...the intentional spilling of blood..OOPS...the lopper's izmel...slipped...[at least it wernt in-tent-ional
The standard medical methods of circumcision through constriction..do not meet the requirements of the halakhah for brit milah,..because they cause hemostasis,..i.e.,..they stop the flow of blood.
A brit milah,..to be conducted properly, requires the use of a specialized surgical knife, called an izmel,..which does allow for..dam brit...
Unlike the traditional Jewish method,..when circumcision is performed by a urologist..or other surgeon,..the foreskin..is removed by.constriction,..either with the use of clamps..or a synthetic ring.
This non-Jewish method works by crushing..the skin..until it is severed.
The nerve endings..NOTE*..and the blood vessels are severed..in the same manner,..causing pain..and hemostasis..
oh dear..this needs..be..in..two-parts?Posted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 4:50:59 PM no thats it..!
if you need to know more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah
im over it..
[un-mentioned..is the rush of adrenolin..that causes eternal wars..lol..over land...
does not all land..*belong to god..is not all land..wholy gods?...
the Israelites born in the wilderness..after the Exodus from Egypt were not circumcised...
Joshua 5:2-9,..explains,.."all the people that came-out"..of Egypt..were circumcised,..
but those.."born in the wilderness"..were not...
it should be noted..ONLY THE UN-lopped..emerged from the deserts..
those who had the rite..never*..left the desert
surely..in this..is a sign..for a thinking...'man'.
ok the tree gets it...
[if abraham can shed the blood of a ram]
then
this blessed tree..can shed its sap for me..
im over the whole thing..its just...unnn holy
next ya be saying i died for you..[to sin..all you like]
next ya be drinking my bloodeating my flesh...making ritual..more that aserving the goods of god
boy talk about putting it in a cardim over putting it into words
have a happy new yeareven if the new after chist year does start 6 days after his birth
lol...only on earththis really must be satans realm
im off to lop the top off the treei will put some sap..on ya card
have a great yearim glad..this is only re-hearse-al
if it was..REALLY that impirtantgod would have done it
he need but say be goneand it is
ya want sapget another sapPosted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 5:00:00 PM i seem to recall...egypt..had a blood ritual
[or maybe it was the aztex]..
regardless i recall some piercing of the royal tree..[ok penus]...and that the lords/kings/rulers blood..was sacred...
i have searched for a referance..but fail to find ithttp://books.google.com/books?id=EEQlVC_clo8C&pg=PA847&lpg=PA847&dq=egypt+blood+shed+ritual&source=bl&ots=sOiLd1P99a&sig=qAxfK0_sb4aMlsd3PcznyYGueD0&hl=en&ei=twUfTYW9HdPzcYrXyPEP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=egypt%20blood%20shed%20ritual&f=false
anyhow..its revealing..that the bringer of the 10 commands[ok more like 16...but note that mosus...stopped the blood ashedding ritual...the whole 40 years they were in the desert
and it was only...those of the tribe levi[the priesthoods]..that initiated it...again*..
JUST BEFORE..they enterd palistein..[after they left mosus in the desert]
no doudt the semites..decended of abraham..cobntinued the riteand as slaves entering into the 'promised land'..took the mark...of the master
[apparently slaves got to lop the top off to become slaves..to those circumsized...at the REQUIRED...7/8th day
depending on how you measure a day...[a day begins with...a night]
in the begining was night/darness,..then came the first day..then the 2 de night..then the 2 de day...etc
i sem to recall the blood thing on the door lintle...at passover..pre exodus...this blood ion the door jamb..must..have made the egyptians a bit suss...
they could only referance it back to the sheding of blood from the royal tree..of the ruler..of egypt..
it all sems to get a bit messybut as we hold the ten commands sacredthen what mosus done..[or rather didnt..allow to be done]..in the desert..has to hold..a certain weight..
the law after al is flexable..[or rather was]as a lamb is hardly a ram...
and as for being first born..this can only be a matter of faith..if law is to be law
thus the command..re adulterating..gods words..[commands]
ie not commiting adultery...[not watering down]..gods few laws
anyhow..the tree is lopped...chopped...or circum-sized
i lopped off a symbolical 7 inches..using a stone/flint.. from mount/warning..but the makshift izmel..worked a treat
i hacked it..rather badly..to beginproducing sap..a/plenty
but..soon realised..i need not cut-off..the tiponly circumsize..the bark...leak the sap
but..to be sure..i broke off the tip..anyhow
mainly..because my tree..was too big..to fit in the chapple..[arc-h]..
symbolising..the holy of holies..[from/..by..which we all..get birthed..into this..*reality]Posted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 9:31:20 PM and in which..my now ritualised tree..stands
we shall next..adorn the tree
so every day we add a bauble...each..to symolise..the christ-childs..teachings
tomorrow i will add..the deer[its johans family totum/trust]
it keeps the deer boy happy...and his service flowingthe sap has stopped flowing...[in itself the first miracle]..as the tree is plastic
and since we have to continue with the work, I will go ahead and write to you..a number of these dealing..with my early life.
Now, the first thing I wish to tell you about is the Star of Bethlehem, which in reality was not a star at all but an exploding nova,..or supernova,..which caused considerable light..in the eastern skies..over Tyre and Babylonia..but not in palistein;
and the three Wise Men who saw this exploding supernova..in the heavens,
being astrologers with a knowledge of an ancient Chaldean astrological lore,..determined that a great event..was to take place as a result of the appearance..of the great light..in the heavens.
And in their readings of the Hebrew writings with which they were familiar,..and also with Hebrew circles in Assyria, they determined upon a visit to Judea where..it was predicted that a Messiah of the Hebrews..and for all mankind was to be born.
This seemed to them all the more true..since the light seemed to point..in a westerly direction..and they set out for Jerusalem,..the capital of Judea,..rather than Israel or Galilee.
And it was a long time..before they reached Jerusalem owing to the preparations for the trip and the actual trip across the Arabian desert;
and the light..was no longer with them,..having disappeared,..having been seen in the eastern skies for several weeks..and caused great excitement..and anxiety in the land.
They purchased gifts of myrrh and frankincense..in addition to a small amount of gold while on their way across the desert in one of the Arabian cities,..
for the three Wise Men felt that since they did not know exactly what to offer..a Hebrew Messiah,..to offer something that the Arabians,..whom they felt were closer to..in kinship..than to the Hebrews,
I would favor,..and for this reason..
...continuesPosted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 9:42:00 PM the gifts that the three Wise Men..offered to me at my birth..were not particularly of a Hebrew character..in the way of gifts..to newborn infants,..nor were they especially..Persian or Chaldean,..but Arabian.
When the Wise Men entered Jerusalem, they went first to the Temple..and inquired about the birth of "the Hebrew Messiah for all mankind,"..
one who would be "King of the hebrews."
And the high priests sent the three astrologers to Herod, for they feared any mention of a "King of the Jews" was political in nature and might be offensive to Herod, with whom they were allied for the maintenance of the status quo in Jerusalem.
Herod took alarm and his queries as to the date of the so-called "Star of Bethlehem" were made in order to determine the ages of the Hebrew children of Bethlehem that he would have put to the sword to eliminate any chance of the appearance of this Messiah from the prophecies.
The three Wise Men were able to make their way to Bethlehem to pay their respects to me at my birth,..but the appearance of them was due to an event that had taken place in the eastern heavens two years before.
At the time of my birth,..which was shortly after midnight of January 7,..there was no star..of great light that guided the three men to Bethlehem..nor did the shepherds who were watching their sheep..see anything unusual,
neither did they see any angels to announce the birth of a Messiah,..for there was no Messiahuntil I had obtained that sufficiency..of the Divine Love in my soul..that enabled me to have knowledge..of my/our joint immortality
Fixing dates:is a worry
In.."Revelation 33: The star of Bethlehem..and the Three Wise Men",
Jesus states:
"At the time of my birth,..which was shortly after midnight of January 7,..there was no star of great light ..."
So,..he was born on January 7th..(because the Jews counted a new day starting with the sunset)..or on January 8th..(after January 7th,..less probable)...but hey who knows...right
this..is only a practice-runfor next yeaPosted by one under god, Saturday, 1 January 2011 9:48:39 PM christmas...is everyday that the spirit..[within us...within..Jesus]..gets reborn..Reborn in Us
but today..it was happylly/lopping-day
[that traditionally get followed by..letting go dayworry about the things....before change comes..not after]..
ie..let it gothus it was so
there is..in the news...today..about good-ridance.dayand this was the thought..as i held..and beheld..the chopped off..'bit'..in my hand
now if it were..a true four-skin..it could be made into interferon..or some other perfume..or cosmetic type/thing..old men..and young woman..smear on their faces..to keep the wrinkle-demons at bay..[citation needed]..
but here was i..with a top-off/lop-off..piece in my hand..and thought..what would issa do
so i put it..in a pot..that has no other usei stood it..amoung twelve stones..to support the branch...lopped/top
but its butt..was too short..to reach..the twelve stonesno worries..i did a quick extension..on the base of it..using some hose..and an appropriate..usefull length was obtained..and the lopped-top..instaled into..the pot
of course in the end...many more stones were neededthe loose pine-needles...formed a base...[so the rocks didnt bust the top-pot]
if it were a real tree..and real needles..[not just saw-dust]..it would smell..*sweet
so now..i have two trees[ok i noted..in letting go..the branchesthat the lopped top...allready..had got the lop...long ago
[but i shed blood..in clamping the hose off-cut..to the lopped top...so appropriat sheeding..of sap was done...by the real sap...writing this ccc-[xmas]-rap
of course...how to put it..into card-formwell..thats not my task
also the timming..of lop-off day..[or top-potting day]and good ridance day...followed by..the lopping off..the tip..day
well their reality..for the rest of youthat is..still..too far away
so for now..lets hear from our brotherwho like me..was inspired..by the course in miracleschanneled by jesus..not so long ago...revealing miracles are simply an order of..degree..not diffi-cult-ty..
acim..is of course difficult..for many to concieveat this materialistic stage..of huh-man beingbut in time..it will become real
and then the veil betwixt..heaven..and earth..shall fail
of course while we seek joinder..to the heavensothers still seek..to realise hell on earthPosted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 3:47:45 PM so keep love..working..in your heartand..express it..with your handsall shall turn out..well
filter that you read/..do..via loves-filterturn junk..into jewels...or fertiliser..into magnificent blooms
this.next is..by Allen Watson
Christmas is the time,..traditionally,..when we remember..the birth of Jesus
Historically,..that event was significant..because it was the entrance..into our world..of a man..[born of woman].who remembered his identity..as the Christ,..and brought..the light of that awareness...back IN-to..all of the world.
[a reminder..of that we all are]..
he said..that ye see me doye shall*..do greater
That is certainly an event..worthy of some celebration..and remembrance.
In..A_Course_in_Miracles,..Jesus speaks..of his birth in another way..as well...He speaks of being reborn..*in us.
Perhaps,..this next Christmas,..we can remember not only to celebrate..his birth 2011 years ago,..but to seek for,..and celebrate,..his birth..with/*in..us..today.
Learning..the Way..Out of Pain
My resurrection..comes again..each time I lead an other..safely to the place..at which the material-journey..ends and its pains..angst..hurt..is forgot.
I am renewed..each time an..other learns..there is a way..from misery and pain..(W-pI.rV.in.7:1-2).
What does it mean..to have*..Jesus-spirit..to be re-born in us?
It means allowing him...by works..to allow us to do..*our good works..to lead us all..out of our materialistic..misery..and..material_isms..*pain.
no more sepperation
He says..*he is.."renewed"..each_time..any-one of us..*allows him..to lead us..out of..our earthy pain.
This Christmas..give the Holy_Spirit..everything that would hurt you...Let..yourself be healed completely..that you may join with Him..in healing,and let us celebrate..our release together..by releasing everyone..with us..(T-15.XI.3:1-2).
Let us,then,..see if there are any spots of pain..in our minds, and consider making..a gift..of them..*to the Holy_Spirit.
It's amazing..how stubbornly..we hold on to..old pains. The question is,..are we willing..for our pain..to be gone?
Are we willing..to let ourselves..*be healed completely?
Or do we still foolishly..cling to our pain,..thinking it is necessary..to prove..*how badly..*someone-else..has hurt us?
Pain..is misery;..are we willing..to be free of it?or does..your plan..of revenge...guilt...make you feel..so good?
There is a way out of misery..and pain. Let us,..this Christmas,..open our hearts to being shown...this way out of..the endles_cyclePosted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 3:57:09 PM thus..releasing everyone_else..along with/us,..and in so doing, allow christ-spirit..to be reborn..*in us....[heck..why wait..till next year...lets do it..now?]
Turning..in-to..the Light..within Us all..
I am reborn each time..a br-other's mind turns to the light..*in him..and looks for me...ie..[he]
I am..have forgotten..no-one...Help me now..to lead..you back..to where the journey was begun,
to make..another choice..to dwell..in me..as i dwell..*in thee...be..one..with me..(W-pI.rV.in.7:3-5).
Another way..the spirit/..within..is reborn..in us toois when we turn to..the light..*within ourselves,..and look for the Christ-spirit..living..*in us....that we know..dwells in us all..
Each time I quiet my mind..and turn to the light/within,..he is reborn...in me
Each time..I remind myself,.."I am..as God created me..to_be"..(W-pI.94)
or.."I am..the holy_Sun..[light]..of God [the..only_light]..himself"(W-pI.191),
he is reborn...As we..begin to find our way out of pain,..we discover,..in the Course,..of miracles..an amazing thing:
It looks..on us..as the light..of the world! (See Workbook/Lesson 61,..for instance.)
In the traditional view..of Christmas,..Jesus was the light..of the world..the only..light of the world.
but we each..*are the same light
The Course intends..for every-one..of us to discover that light..with...*in..ourselves, and to shine it..[gods..good/light]..on all the world..around us.
There is a light..that this world..cannot give. Yet..*you can give it,..as it..*was given you(T-13.VI.11:1-2).
There is a light..in you..the world..can-not perceive. And with your materialistic- eyes..you will not see..this light, for you are blinded..by the 'things/thought/feelings/materialism..of..the world.
Yet you have eyes..to see it. It is there..for you to look upon. It was..not..placed..in you..to be kept hidden..from sight..(W-pI.189.1:1-5).
We can look upon..that light..in ourselves..look upon..our light within other..we do have the eyes..to see it,..if we choose to see it.
Our looking upon,..and seeing, the light of Christ in ourselves..as well as the perfect..in others..is the way..
we can give birth to..the wholy-Christ..within..give..it back into..this world.
Awakening..to Our Own Grandeurvia seeing..the grandeur..in others
My birth..in you..is your awakening to grandeur...within us all..but see..its not..me in you..but..*he..in us all..Posted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 4:11:30 PM Welcome..he..not into a manger, but into the heart-altar..into holiness, where our whole-i-ness..abides in perfect peace
where hos...holiness..abides in perfect peace.
My Kingdom is not of this world..because it is him..in you. And you are of your Father...Let us join..in..honoring you, who must remain forever..beyond littleness(T-15.III.9:5-9).
Jesus is reborn,..not in a manger, but in the hearts.."altar into THE holiness"..within our own hearts
The altar represents that..to which we are devoted, that which we consider..HOLD..deep within..to be sacred.
The "altar to holiness,"..then, represents our devotion to holiness,..our dedication to realizing, recognizing, and manifesting the holiness of God in all His creations..including ourselves. Holiness,
in its turn,..whol-e-ness..within..means divine innocence, untainted by any shred of sin,..guilt,..or impurity...inside the most vile cup..
When Jesus asks us..to welcome him.."into the altar of holiness," he is asking us to recognize..*the divine innocence..with-in..ourselves.
That is where we can be reborn, and take up residence...in him..as he resides in us.
Welcoming him..to our altar of holiness means awakening..to our own grandeur..as God's creations.
It means being willing..to let go..of all of our guilt.
It means that we stop thinking..of ourselves as unworthy..of him..and realize that what we are,..as God created us,
we each are needed for the full story of good of godto be revealed..not reviled..if it is wholly worthy..of him,[in sin].. to yet be wholly worthy,..even,..of him...being the dwelling place..of God.
What we are,..as aware God's creations,is something grand,..something deserving of great honor...but who deserving the greater honour...him within..or him..who is allways without?
who cannot even concieve..how great thou art
All through the Course,..the way to the recognition of our own grandeur..is through being willing..*to see that same...grandeur..with/in...all..our sisters and brothers:
Thus..do the body's eyes..behold..in one..and other...all whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love..and God created perfect...This is his reality...
And in Christ's vision within us all..is his loveliness reflected..in a form..so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet...but who has the glory due...but he within...even youPosted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 4:54:14 PM What you are..is.."so holy..and so beautiful..that..if I saw it, I could scarce refrain..from kneeling..at[your]feet." we_are..all so unique..
That's..an awesome..statement,..isn't it?
Yet..that is our reality. That is..*what we all..are.
The tradition..of Christmas is often,.., filled..with expressions of awe..that Good..should come to dwell with/..in mankind;
exclamations of amazement..and wonder at the incredible significance..of what was in that..tiny child,..lying in a manger....YET..lies..within_us..*all
"Joy..to the world!...The Lord..is one!...EVERY-one" "Silent night!..Holy night!
Sun..of God,..Love's..pure Light!"
"O holy night!..oh the darkness gone..…O night..when Christ..*in us..was born!"
I think what Jesus..is suggesting to us in this passage..about his birth..
of an altar..into holiness..is that all of that..awe,..all..of that wonder,..wonder for all..
all..of that breathtaking_glory..that righfully belongs..to thee..*with-in us..all!
For we are..the birth-place of..*Christ..within. What traditionally is seen..as having taken shape with-in..that material-baby..in a manger..
is actually taking shape..within..each and every one of us....all the time..
within gods..ever living/loving..now...moment..Christ is born..too..in me...Hallelujah!
Demonstrating.,.that He Lives..in UsWhat does it mean..to have Jesus..reborn..in us?
Well,..it isn't like..the reincarnation..of some Tibetan-Lama in a young boy..in Seattle..(a story told..in a recent movie);
it doesn't mean..that all of us are..(or become),..in some literal sense,..the re-incarnation..of Jesus...
Yet in a figurative sense,..that is exactly..what it means:
In our lives,..in our thinking,..in our behavior, in our compassion,..in our kindness,..in our forgiveness, and most of all,..in our love,..
we can reproduce..or.."reincarnate"..christ..within.
We become..what he was,..a human being.."who remembered..his..*spirit..inheritance..its knowledge"and the need..for its application..into everday living...(T-3.IV.7:3),
and..who.."saw the face..of Christ in all..his others..and remembered God" saw god in him...
see me see my father..sustaining..the goods..of life..(C-5.2:1).
Teach not..that I died..in vain. Teach rather..that I did not die..by demonstrating..that I live..in you..(T-11.VI.7:3-4).
christ..is reborn in us..when we remember..*WE ARE..spirit. Jesus is reborn..in us..when we remember..*God lives..in our heart.
We remember God..by choosing,to DO..as Jesus chose,to do..good
to see..the face of Christ..in all our others.
Those words,.."demonstrating..that I live..in you,"..never fail to move me.
They awaken..a deep longing...in my heart,..a longing..that the apparently..ordinary events..and encounters,of my daily life..would become ways..of demonstrating..that he..the ALL/lives..in me...and thee..Posted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 5:13:44 PM [Deleted. Looking at the thread it is apparent that One Under God has been flouting the word limits so I have suspended him for a month.]Posted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 9:35:26 PM oops..doubled postcontinued..from previous/post
Yet..you will take..his love..and express that hidden..[unseen]..from the minds-eye..[image]..hidden/within..using your hand..and make it seen..
instead of,..the good..being unseen...the unseen becomes seen
for you..are like..your father..in the sight..that the mind/sees..it creates..that..unseen..into that seen..by the will..that say's..be..and is..[see?]
see him thus..not alone..within..and..not only...without..but the means..and the way..of things..becoming..being/seen..(W-pI.161.9:1-4).
Many years ago,..Charles Sheldon..wrote,..a book of inspiration,..titled,.."What..Would Jesus Do?"
It told..of a man..who decided..to ask himself that..deceptively simple question..in every situation..of his life.
It seemed..an innocuous decision,..and yet it revolutionized his life.
In A Course in Miracles,..Jesus makes..a similar suggestion..to us.
He suggests..that we go through our days..asking the Holy Spirit, "What would You..have me do?..Where would..You..have me go?
What would You..have me say,..and to whom?"..how?(W-pI.79.9:3-5)
We are told..that the Holy-Spirit,..the Voice for Good,..can direct our every step:
"Seeing your strengths..exactly as they are, and equally aware..of where/how..they can be best applied, for what,..to whom..and when,..He chooses and accepts..your part..for you"..
and you chose the part..even..can refuse..to play any part..and he loves you still..(W-pI.154.2:2).
Jesus tells us..that he is our model..for learning.that learning..is the aim of teaching...the teachers learning..is the teaching..
If we are to demonstrate..that he lives in us,..we must live..to the good..as he did.
be the light..living..not the darkness obsuring..that good/true..
He says,
"I have enjoined you..to the one..within youenjoin you..to behave..[do]..as I behaved..[to do]..,that of the good but we must respond..to the same good..within Mind..and..h-ear-t..to do this
This Mind..is the Holy Spirit,..Whose Will..is for the Good..always...good.."(T-5.II.12:1-2).
So the way we learn..to be/have/do..as he behaved/did/does..is to listen to the same Voice,..to decide,that good..as he did,
..to hear only..the good..of the Holy-Spirit...that the good..be done..and seen to be done well
If we listen..only to the judgment..of the un-Holy..Spirit's,
we will ever condemn..one another..or perceive sin..in one...and..another;and this..is not the way of it...is not the truth...[not good]
anything not true..is not real..unless we make it real..
[we give it reality..to that..we decide to..bring into reality..]..[do]Posted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 10:02:10 PM when we..will to see..the face of Christ,..in neighbour which symbolizes the innocence..of a Sun of Good.
It is our forgiveness..of our sisters and brothers that demonstates..that Jesus lives..in us.
Just as he..did not perceive attack..even..in those who crucified him,
we—if we listen..to the same Voice..Jesus listened to..will see only the innocence,
only the call..for love,..in those..who seemingly attack us. Demonstrating that he lives..in us..is but..one way..we can celebrate his birth.
by..Becoming the Manifestation of good..of the Holy Spirit
You are..His manifestation..in this world.
Your FATHER calls to you..to be His Voice..without..along with him..who attends that within.
Alone..we cannot be..the Helper of God's Son..for he..alone is functionless. But joined with you..he is the shining Savior..of the world,..Whose part in its redemption you have made complete..(C-6.5:1-4).
We honor Jesus..by becoming..like him.
The great significance..of the birth of Jesus,..to Christians, is that God..was manifested in the flesh...and the flesh knew itthough most..of the flesh..even now..know it not..
a sun of Good..took birth,..and lived among men..as a man...right here on earth.. The Course refers..to Jesus as.."the manifestation..of the Holy Spirit"..but so too is he within us all..( T-12.VII.6:1; C-6.1:1).
So,..in a certain sense,..it agrees with Christian tradition; Jesus was the manifestation..of God in this world...but so too are WE ALL..
"Manifestation"..means a form..in which an image..an unseen idea,..or divine being,that only by doing..is revealed;
the American Heritage Dictionary definition includes these very applicable words:
"The materialized form..of a spirit."
That is exactly what Jesus was,this..is egsactly..what WE ALL ARE..
"the materialized form"..of the Holy Spirit.
That is what made his birth..so significant.
The Course,..however,tells us,.."You are His..[the Holy Spirit's] manifestation..in this world."..Jesus is..the materialized form..of the Holy Spirit,..
but so are we!
That is,..to me,..what it means..to give our body to the fulfillment of the purpose of the Holy Spirit.
It means that you..and I can become,..quite literally, the embodiment of God..[good]..in this world,..the expression,..in material form,..of God's Love...
This is not something you..or I can do..alone, however;..it is only possible..as we join..with one/another, in recognition of..that same Christ-spiritus..within us allPosted by one under god, Sunday, 2 January 2011 10:08:05 PM Dear One under God, happy new year to you.You must surely be suffering from repetitive strain injury after all the typing above?
Cheers,Suze.Posted by suzeonline, Sunday, 2 January 2011 10:21:54 PM bless you..suzelong..may you be..on-line
your words..help give energybut recall..these arnt my words im typingim only adding bits..to what others..labouriously wrote
just joining..the dots..listening to my inner-thought...as i read and re-read..others thoughts..that they too read..and re-read..then writ by rote
so here again..is the last of..of but one..of Allen Watson'smany writings..inspired by study..of a course in miracles..[link at the end]
I..can become the Voice..for Good..for my brother..[and..so he has] as I allow him..to become..the Voice for Good..for me...[as he was..for me]
And the light..life/love..WITH-in..them..[us all] will..show you all that you need..to see...[the light with]-in..you.
When the peace..in you..has been extended..to encompass everyone, the Holy Spirit's function here..will be accomplished..(T-19.IV.3:4-6).
As I behold innocence..in my sister's,..and the silences of my br-others..as I learn to hear..God's-Voice/speaking..through her..longing to hear..him
to tell me..*of thy innocence,..[and them..of theirs]..so too..I will come to recognize..my innocence..and experience..the Holy-Spirit..working..through me..to heal my others.
The process of a holy relationship is, at least in part,..a process of learning..into perceiving
my relationship partner..as a witness..to my own innocence,..rather than a bringer..of guilt...blame..shame..or condemnation..
I need..to learn to recognize the Holy Spirit in her,..or in him...see the way to recognize your many..other is by recognizing..the Holy Spirit..in all..(T-5.III.1:1).
You cannot see..the Holy-Spirit, but you can see..your brother..truly.as he is..
simply by being..who you are..just as he is sustained..to be him..in him
In turn,..I began to realize..that my brother..or sister is calling to me..to be voicing..God's/good Voice..for him..or for her...for now.
The pain,..the guilt,..the attack,.the anger..and the fear that I perceive..in those around me..is calling out..to God's Voice..in me,..to work quickly..[thus..the many errors in typing..and..cutting/pasting/trimming/lopping and chopping]
calling out..to hear the words..of divine Love..I have heard in me..as was in he..speaking to me..to speak...to be heard?..to be voiced?
As I open..to the possibility..that I/we..really am/are..here..to save the world,..with word..to be a savior..*from guilt/fear/blame/shame....to those..around us,
I come..*to know myself..as what I am:..only..huh?-man..
being..the Love of God good..in materialized form.
And thus is..Christ born again..in me...and theePosted by one under god, Monday, 3 January 2011 4:04:53 PM What does it mean to have Jesus..reborn in us?
It means that:
•..we allow him..to show us the way..out of our misery and pain;..via active fliltering all through loves filter..[rose coloured glasses if you will]
•..we begin..to learn..to turn to the love/light..within us,all and seek his face;..outside myself..feel his light within you..
•..we open ourselves to awaken to the grandeur..of the Christus-spiritus..within us all;
•..we begin to demonstrate..that christos/spiritus..lives..within us all;
•..and we become,..like him, the manifestation..of the WHoly Spiritus...brings spirtus/logus..good/logic reason back..into this world....that we allready had hidden..deep within..
As this Christmas season approaches, then,..let every carol,..[sing]..and remember thisin every manger scene,..every Christmas card,..in every xmass greeting
and every time..we hear someone say,.."Merry Christmas," be to us..a reminder of the Christus/with-in..who is daily being..reborn..in us all.
Let each such occurrence,..no matter how trite..it may appear, no matter how insincerely offered,..remind us to turn to the light within us..and look for christus...outside....as well as within..
Let our walk through the shopping mall/park..beach or the for-rest let every act..become a prolonged..holy instant...ever gods now..
Let each string of lights..on houses we drive/walk or stumble by speak of the light..within us...all.
Let all of Christmas..be a constant reminder: "He has come!..He lives in me!"...just as he lives/loves/is..in thee
want more..unedited..?
till now i have filled..in the blanksbut there is much more to learn..from the paths./.others have walked before us..the true joy..is seeing...a place to plant thy own floweror..pull thy own weeds..or plant..thy own seeds
the harvest..is heaveythe workers are few
http://www.circleofa.org/indices/god.php
What Is the Christmas Story For?
by Greg Mackie
In this article,..I want to compare the original Gospel writers'..purpose for writing what became our Christmas story..with the reinterpretation of that story's imagery in A Course in Miracles.
As we will see, the author of the Course—who,..of course,..claims to be Jesus himself[not quite right greg]...mary channeld..jesus dictated it
she had great difficulty..in accepting the whole coursethat it even got written...is a miracle..
but back to your quote..[from previous link]
jesus speaking in acim..—has a radically different view of what..the luke/mathew xmass story..is forPosted by one under god, Monday, 3 January 2011 4:12:01 PM While the Gospel/writers..wrote it..to exalt Jesus, the Jesus..of the Course..uses it..to exalt everyone.
so..like/him..
He transforms..this beloved story..from a celebration of the birth..of Jesus_Christ..into a celebration..of the birth..of Christ..in..all of us
the fundamental purpose..of what became our Christmas story..was..to exalt Jesus.
Scholars have suggested..a number of ways..in which the various elements..of the birth_narratives..were used..to serve this purpose.
editedhttp://www.circleofa.org/articles/WhatIsTheChristmasStory.php
Jesus' purpose..in a_course_in_miracles..[acim]..is for..*our Christmas/story:..to exalt..*everyone
Jesus,..as he does..with so many things..in the Course, turns..the traditional Christian view..of him..on its head.
While traditional Christianity..regards Jesus..with the awe befitting a superior-being,..*he says..in the Course..that this attitude toward him..is profoundly mistaken:
Equals*..should not be in awe..of one another..because awe..implies inequality.
"It is therefore an inappropriate..reaction to me...."
"There is nothing about me..that you..cannot attain."(T-1.II.3:5-6,10)
The affirmation..that..we_are_*all equals..with Jesus..is a huge theme..in the Course.
One way Jesus..expresses this theme..is to take..a biblical quote that was..originally..about him,..and apply it..*to us...
For instance,..he adapts..the biblical words..that acclaimed him..the_Son..of God..at his baptism..to say..IT..to us,
"You..are [God's]..beloved Son..in whom..He is well pleased"(T-4.I.8:6)
He redirects..the self-exalting words..attributed..*to him in the Gospel..of John..
to say to us,.."You*..are the way, the truth..and the life"..(T-7.III.1:9).
And he plays off of..the biblical confession..of Peter that Jesus was.."the Christ,..the_Son/of..the living God"
to say to us..(in the third person),.."Is..[Jesus]..*the Christ? O yes,..along with ALL..of you"(C-5.5:1).
It should come..as no surprise,..then,..that Jesus does the same thing...with the birth_narratives..in Matthew..and Luke.
He shares the evangelists'..lack of concern..about the historicity of those..narratives..he never renders..a historical verdict..on them..in the Course—
but..does_not share..the evangelists'..purpose..*for them.
As he does..in so many..of his biblical/references, he uses..the imagery..of our traditional Christmas/story not to proclaim..a message..about who*..he is,..but about..*who..we-all*..of us..are,..[including him.]
Let's look at..some examples of this..from the Course.
The following passages..demonstrate..how Jesus has shifted the purpose..of Christmas-story/imagery..
from exalting him..to exalting..all of us.
Each "From...to"..pairing in the points below..expresses this shift.
As you read..these passages,..I encourage you to actually apply them..to yourself,..even inserting your name..at various points,
to capture..the sense of*..majesty..and grandeur that Jesus..*is trying..to awaken*..in all*..of us.Posted by one under god, Monday, 3 January 2011 4:23:42 PM From..the celebration..of Jesus'..physical birth to the celebration..of our..spiritual_birth.
This is the season..when you would celebrate..my birth..into the world...Yet you know not..how to do it...Let the Holy_Spirit teach you,..and let me celebrate..your birth..*through Him.
The only gift..I can accept of you is the gift..I gave to you...Release me..as I choose..your own release.(T-15.X.1:5-9)..[thats deep]..
The original story,..of course, is all about..the birth..of Jesus. That's what we celebrate..during the Christmas season.
But..in this passage,..Jesus turns this..completely around: for him,..the Christmas-season..is a time..in which he celebrates..*our birth—
the birth..of Christ..*in us.
All he asks..is that we do our part..to bring..*that birth about, by giving him..and..all of our brothers..the same-gift..of freedom.
I see another parallel..with the Christmas/story..here. In the original story,..the wise men..gave Jesus gifts. Here,..we are als.. to give him..*a gift,[us]
but once again..Jesus turns it completely around, for in this case,..it is a gift..that he has..already..given to us.
From the manger..in a stable to the holy_altar..*within us all.
My birth in you..is your awakening to the grandeur...we all*..are.
Welcome me not..into a manger,..but into the altar to holiness,[heart]..where holiness abides..in perfect peace.
My Kingdom is not..of this world..because it is..*in you. And you are..in/of your Father....as he is..with-in you.
Let us join..in honoring you, who must remain forever..beyond littleness.(T-15.III.9:5-9)
In the original story,..Jesus is born..in a manger. Here,..he is born..in the altar of holiness..within us.
This inner*birth..opens our minds..to the indescribable holiness and grandeur..of our true*Self...within.
Again,..we see a dramatic reversal: Christmas is normally a time..in which..we honor Jesus, but here..Jesus wants to honor us...
We are eminently worthy of such honor, for we are..the Suns of Good..in which..the King..of Heaven abides.
What is true of Jesus is also true..of us.
From the newborn Jesus..in Bethlehem to the newborn Christ..in*all*..our holy relationship
Behold this infant,..to whom you gave..a resting place by your forgiveness..of your br-other,..
and see..in it..the Will of God.
Herein..is the babe of Bethlehem..reborn.(T-19.IV(C).10:7-8Posted by one under god, Monday, 3 January 2011 5:12:29 PM In..the original/story,..the baby..Jesus is born..in Bethlehem. Here,..the "babe"..is the Christ..born..within a holy inclusive..relationship...with god.
He is no longer..an individual/infant..in..a distant land..from long ago,..but is instead..*a living-presence..who enters any relationship..in which we forgive..a brother/sister..other..and join with him..in a truly common_goal.
This presence..gives the relationship..the goal..of holinessand immediately begins..shepherding it..towards..its lofty/goal.
This presence..is "the babe/of Bethlehem..*reborn."
From the proclamation..of God's gloryto the proclamation..of our glory
Glory to God..in the highest,..and to you..because He..*has so willed it.
Ask..and it shall be given you,..because..*it has already been..given.
Ask for light..and..learn..that you are..the/light.(T-8.III.1:1-3)
In the original-story,.."Glory to God..in the highest" is the angelic choir's..hymn of praise..to God..for the precious gift..of Jesus.
Here,..the glory..*of God..is still proclaimed, but..with a significant_addition:..
our glory..is proclaimed..as well. And just/as Jesus..is the light..of the world,..so are we; all we need do..is ask God..to reveal to us..the light*..that He created us..to*be.
From the star..of Bethlehem to the light..of Heaven..within*..us ALL*..
The sign of Christmas..is a star,..a light..in darkness.
See it..not*..outside..yourself,..but shining..in the Heavenly -host..*within, and accept it..as..*the sign..the time of Christ..has come.(T-15.XI.2:1)
In..the original story,..the star/of Bethlehem is the light*..that leads the wise-men..to the place..where Jesus was born.
Here,it is not*..an external_star..at all, but..the light/of Heaven..at the heart..of our being...at one..[at-one-ment]..with the only..1
As..we accept..t-his_inner_light, the Christ..in*us..is born..*again.
From the angels..witnessing..the birth of Jesus to the angels..witnessing..the birth of Christ..in*us..all*
glory/glory..glory
Watch with me,..angels,..watch..with me*..today. Let all God's..holy_Thoughts..surround me,..
and be still with me..while Heaven's Sun..is born...Let earthly sounds..be quiet/stilled,
and the sights..to which I am accustomed..disappear. Let Christ..be welcomed..where He is..at home...here/now.
And let Him hear..the sounds..of love..He understands, and see..but sights..that show all..His Father's Love...here/now.
Let Him..no longer be a stranger..here,..for He..is born again..in me..today.(W-pII.303.1:1-6)
In the original/story,..the angels of God witnessed..to the birth of Jesus..in Bethlehem.
Here,..in a passage..that is surely meant to evoke the peaceful nativity scene..that inspired hymns..like "O Holy Night" and "Silent Night,"
the angels of God..witness..to the birth of Christ in the stillness..of our hearts.Posted by one under god, Monday, 3 January 2011 5:25:02 PM
As with all of these passages, the evangelists' celebration of the birth of Jesus has been transformed into a celebration..of the birth of Christ..in us.
Jesus' reversal of Christianity's reversal
As I reflect on all we have just examined,..I am struck by the tension between Jesus' view of himself..[and us]..and Christianity's view of him.
As scholars have sifted through the Gospels..in search of the historical Jesus, the Jesus that has emerged..is a person who never spoke of himself..in exalted terms, but instead spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven..available..*to everyone.
see that ye se me doye will do greater..[with the emphasis..on DOING..[loving activly..for other]
After his mortal-death,..however,..his followers did begin to exalt him, and the Jesus of history..was quickly overshadowed by the Christ..of faith.
As we've seen,..the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke were part of this overall process...As a result of this process, the focus of Christianity shifted..from Jesus' teachings..to Jesus..himself.
It became a religion..*about him.but..he came to restore..his[our]..fathers house..*back to the father
If the scholars are right..about the historical Jesus, then the Christian tradition's..exaltation of him is a profound reversal..of what he *actually taught.
And if the Course..is indeed written by Jesus, then it represents..a profound reversal..of that reversal.
For the message of the Course is clearly not..*about him, but about..*all of us,..including him.
As we've seen,..one way..*he elevates all of us to..*the status..Christian tradition reserves..only for him..is through..his use..of the Gospel birth narratives.
Throughout the Course,..he uses the very images..the Christian church created to exalt him..to exalt *everyone—to express once again his original message of the Kingdom of Heaven..that belongs to all of us,..and is..*with/in..all of us.
As Course students,..we have a precious opportunity to participate in this..return to Jesus' original_message.
This holiday season,..whenever we encounter..the traditional Christmas story, let's infuse it..with the purpose Jesus has given it.
Let's see it..as a celebration..not only of the birth..of Jesus, but of the birth..of Christ..*in everyone.
Let this be a season in which we celebrate our God-given equality*..with our beloved elder brother,Jesus.
In equality..our union with God..and all our br-others lies in,..
and as Jesus reminds us in the Course,
"The gift of union* and is the only gift..that I was born..to give"..(T-15.X.3:4).
ok end quote..note*
as to this days..baublei havnt a clue
i think its about watersbaptism and such..but its all become..too much
but it might be..the tree..that i lopped/chopped..or circum-scribedneeds only a good drink...to top up..the lop-top-off...juice
[hey the 2 de miracle]plastic trees..dont drinklol ..plastic spruce juice
lol*
love on lips!lips only lie?love only laughs?
well..thats my xmass card
[lol]
what did you think
i could keep on editing..for eve*roh well..never say never..isnt god clever..[lol]
we're the problembut we are also..the only solution
happy new earall the best..from the deerwho knows..our father within...allways is near
here/hear?
How to Listen For Guidance
by Robert Perry
How many times have you heard,..or said,.."I ask for guidance, but I just don't hear anything"?..Wouldn't it be great if A Course in Miracles gave us detailed instructions in precisely how..*to listen for..the Holy Spirit's messages?
Thankfully, it does exactly that. There is extensive training in Workbook Lessons 71-90..in how to receive..from the Holy Spirit...Significantly,every point in this training..is echoed by dictation Helen Schucman received..years earlier,on the day before..the Text started coming through.
This dictation can be found in Ken Wapnick's Absence from Felicity..(p. 197).
I'll begin by commenting on this dictation, which was meant to help Bill Thetford..in his own listening..for guidance:
QUOTE
1/..I can't answer..where he asks amiss. 2/..When he asks right..I have answered. 3/..He has a tendency..to get part of an answer and decide's for himself..when to disconnect...He should ask..*if that is all.
Since I don't know when he's going to ring off I have to be very short and even cryptic. It chops up messages..too much. Bill's first problem..is that he simply gives up..too soon.
This forces Jesus..to make the messages.."very short and even cryptic," since he doesn't know..*when Bill will suddenly decide to quit
(this is a brief reference to the power..of our free choice, which is so free that not even Jesus knows..what choices we will make).
4/..Bill simply needs to be more patient.
Jesus then goes on..to list "three major areas"..of interference..in Bill's reception of guidance:
1/..He doesn't have much real confidence..that I will get through. 2/..He never just claims his rights. 3/..He should begin with..much more confidence...I will keep my promises....
He has to learn..better concentration. His mind..flits about too much..for good communication.[he needs to focus]..i Suggest a very short phrase like "Here I am Lord" and then..*don't think of anything else...Just pull in..your mind slowly from that thought of everything and being..everywhere else and center it..on these words.
This will also give him..[bill]the realization that he..[Bill]..really is here. really is hearing from jesus..not his own thought...He's not too sure.
Tell him..to be sure not to mistake your..[Helen's] role. If he overreacts to..or over-evaluates you..as a person,..both of you will be in danger.
The first of the three areas of interference is that Bill listens..without real confidence..that he'll actually hear.
Receiving guidance..is one of his God-given rights. Bill, however, "never just..claims his rights."
When I first read that line..it hit me like a ton of bricks: "So I have a right..to God's guidance,..and I should claim that right."
What a refreshing and empowering idea!
Asking tentatively and sheepishly..may seem courteous to Jesus, but it's actually a subtle accusation..that he is a liar,..for he has promised that he will be there..to answer us.
If we believe that Jesus keeps his word, then we will listen..*with confidence.
The second area..is that Bill..has poor concentration. "His mind flits about too much."
He needs to learn..how to still his mind so that it becomes truly receptive.
Hearing the still,..small voice..with a mind full of chatter is like trying to hear someone whisper to you..*in a noisy room while you are still jabbering away.
Bill needs to learn..how to quiet his inner chatter, learning..the art of listening..[johan has the same problem..in verable conversation]but has learned to listen..as he reads...so that the room..of his mind gets so quiet he could hear a pin drop...[and occasionally the penny drops]
To help him..enter this state of inner silence, Jesus gives Bill..a meditation technique—
one,in fact,..that was used by the famous seventeenth—century monk Brother Lawrence,..author of the spiritual classic..The Practice of the Presence of God.
The third problem area..is that Bill is over-estimating Helen's role. I assume this means..her role as receiver of Jesus' guidance...Certainly, he needs to respect her role,..but if he lets himself..get too dazzled by her ability to hear Jesus, this will simultaneously undermine his confidence..in his own ability,to focus on just listening..as well as weaken his motivation to try.
Overall,..Bill's approach seems to be,his belief/faith..this material realityto put it simply,..he is too weak....to have faith...in that he cant see/hear/smell/touch..materially..
He gives up too soon,..has little confidence that he'll hear,..doesn't concentrate enough,..and leans too much on Helen.
When it comes to listening for guidance,..in other words, he's a bit of a materialistic control freak...That sounds harsh until you realize that Jesus' critique applies to virtually every one of us...Surely you saw yourself in at least some of the above points...What,..then,..can we do to stop being "materialistic..guidance wimps"?
The answer is to really go through..the training provided in the Workbook. not just mouthing..the concepts..by rote..but practice..like any learned skill..
The Workbook has a bank of lessons,..71-90,..designed to teach us how to listen to..and receive from..the Holy Spirit..(almost all the quotes below will be drawn from these lessons).
What I find amazing about the instruction..in these lessons is just how closely it reproduces..the private counsel given to Bill..nearly four years earlier.
Except for the caution..about over-evaluating Helen's role,..every single point in Jesus' counsel to Bill..shows up as a main theme..in these lessons.
I'll list the points in the same order as we discussed them above:
Listen in patience;..with expectation..not antisipation..paying attention..only to that good/pure/loving..[gracefilled..mercyfull]..
don't give up too soonto ask is to recieve..in fact the question..is often the result of percieving..the answeryou have allready recieved..the answer...thus knowing the question..its only a matter of recalling the answer..you allready have...[stored..in your unconscience]..
Once you have asked the Holy Spirit your question, "wait patiently for you to recall..the answer allrwady sent to you..from Him"..(W-pI.75.7:8).
And while you wait,..periodically repeat your question...your re-quest[ion], not to remind..a forgetful Holy Spirit,..but to renew your own recall into attentiveness and your confidence..that you'll hear....that you allready recieved..[be..re-lieved]..
Whenever you feel your confidence wane..and your hope of success flicker and go out-side of the limitations of the question's bounds,..repeat your question..and your request...[re-call]..re-quest-[ion]..(W-pI.72.12:1)
While you wait,..repeat several times, slowly and..in complete patience..[your re-quest]...staying within the topic/relivive to the question..(W-pI.75.6:7)
Listen with confidence; claim your rights..to remembersee how..the thoughts you get relate to the topic..being questioned
anm egsample is worth a thousand wordssay you ask how should i react..[to this..'event'..or thingand all you..'get'..is say a kitten playing..the answer is of course...react playfuly
if its positive..its from godif it was say a kitten..eating a ratwell that cant be from god...its not good..[for the rat]
The instructions for listening..repeatedly emphasize being confident that you'll hear....[but often...this hearing..is heard by..'seeing'
The lessons are full of language..designed to instill this confidence that the answer..is heard..but see hearing...is relitive as a measure of certaintywether you heard it or seen its image...in your minds reciever..regardless how it gets in you.
hear something...your mind pictures what its hearingthus even in hearing...your mind recierves it by images..it 'sees/hears..fels/smells...knows by recieption..into your minds awareness
They assure you..that you have a "claim/reasoning..to God's..[good]..answer"(W-pI.71.9:10)
knowing, that.."He will answer"..or you couldnt have framed the question..(W-pI.72.12:5),
knowing that.."you heard..[thus dared to ask]..and you will be[have allready been]..answered"(W-pI.79.10:6).
The attitude the course encourage's..is captured perfectly in this quote.. which sounds as-if..it could have been lifted straight from Jesus'..advice to Bill:
There is a message waiting for you. Be confident that you will receive..[re-call]..it's answer...even so..as you equally..framed the question...as you had gotten..allready..its reply
Remember that it belongs to you.to hear the answer..thus ask the question..(W-pI.rII.In.3:2-4)
he gives only that we allready haveto ask means you allready recieved..
think of it like teaching=learning..or what came first..god knows what we want..before even we do..he just likes..to let us think..we thunk it
Listen..[re-call]..in deep silence; wait for Him..in quiet expectancy..his reply preceeded..your asking the question...how amassing thou art lord..
another preception..to frame into wordsthink of arnold...[different strokes]..asking 'say/what?'...mainly because he didnt comprehend...gods comunication fully..but did frame its questionthat arises from that..allready given...
thus we ask the question..to rehear..the answer..
allrady given
so god speaks...[we say]...'say what..ie frame the questionand our still quite [unconsience..gives its echo/reply]
According to the Workbook's instructions,..so much of the task..[gift] of hearing the Holy Spirit..comes down to..one..:the question:
How still..can you get your mind? SAY;..what?
The Course puts it plainly:.."Learn to be quiet, for His Voice..is heard in stillness"...[ie recall]..recollection..remembering...hearing the faint..[echo](M 15.2:12).
This stillness,..however,..should not be passive..and/or lax. Rather,it should be an alert,..attentive,..expectant stillness. to recall..[that already given]..that framed the question..[echo]..in you
Your mind should be poised,..recalling/remembering..that prior..the questionie the allready given...'answer'[in-spi-ration]....gods..still quite voice.gives us continually
waiting for the recall..[echo]..of the answer...with every ounce of your attention...that recalls that definitive...that brought about the question..[say what?] think of it as a playback loop...Combining a quiet restfulness..with a poised alertness that is central..to the inner_art..of listening...that remembers
The following quotes..capture this delicate combination:
Spend the..*major part of the time listening quietly but attentively...knowing..to question..means a reply has allready been given..recall it..(W-pI.rII.In.3:1) Hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice That speaks the truth to you....untrill you dont even need the recall of a question to realise you allready have answer..(W-pI.76.9:2)
Wait in silent expectancy..for the truth...all the time..gods time..not thyne(W-pI.94.4:1)he knows your ready..before you are...answers...that we question..
Of course,..holding your mind in a state of alert, receptive waiting..is something most of us can't maintain for more than about half a minute...but its simply being awareliving in gods ever now moment...everything has meaning..just like every page of a book..tells the story of the life...progression..of the books life story..
Just like Bill,..our minds flit about..too much.living others stories...trying to be..'in'..their book..
This is why..the Workbook..instructs us to draw them back again and again..and again—..as often as we need to...to be in our own story book
Review II, in which we listen..for ten to fifteen minutes, this urges us to be absolutely determined to keep our minds on track:
"Do not allow your intent to waver"..(W-pI.rII.In.4:1); "Refuse to be sidetracked"..(W-pI.rII.In.5:2).
you thunk it..means god sent it..now just recolect it..till you get instant re-calllive time..all the time.....live in gods holy instant..[now]..
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I hope you can see just how serious the Course is about us learning how to receive guidance. The last thing it wants us to do is fail to try in the assumption that we are unable to hear. Like Bill, we can be so dazzled by Helen's ability that we neglect to develop our own. True, some people do have more ability to hear the Holy Spirit, but presumably this is only because, like Helen, they developed their ability in the remote past. We can develop ours in the present. If we will train ourselves to listen in patience, in confidence, and in silence, we too can begin to hear that sublime Voice with increasing clarity and with greater frequency.
Hearing God's Voice Means Joining
by Allen Watson
During a weekend intensive on the Holy Spirit and His work in our lives, I was impressed once again with the importance that the Course gives to the Holy Spirit as the Voice for God, and to our learning to listen to Him and hear Him. Lesson 275 in the Workbook really struck me in that regard:
God's healing Voice protects all things today (W-pII.275). What stood out to me was the importance of hearing God's Voice through the day. This lesson singles out the day it is practiced as a day specially set apart for hearing the Holy Spirit: a day in which we will "seek and hear and learn and understand" (W-pII.275.1:2). Jesus appeals to us, "Join me in hearing" (W-pII.275.1:3). And that is something I want to do; I want to pay particular attention to the Voice for God in the days to come. I want to make a focused effort to hear, or, as Section I of Chapter 30 puts it, to make no decision by myself.
The practice instructions for this second part of the Workbook call for us to spend longer times in the morning and evening, and then, during the day, to spend a minute or two every hour, and to remember the lesson several times in between every hour. What would your day be like if you made a firm decision in the morning to set your mind into the pattern of listening for God's Voice, and then, four or five times every hour, paused briefly to remind yourself of that purpose, and to listen? What would your life be like if you did this every day for a half a year? Surely this is the lesson's intent; surely this is the Workbook's training goal: to encourage us in the practice of hearing and following the Guide given to us at all times, all through the day and every day.
I believe that, with practice, we can get to the place where, through our decision to hear God's Voice, we will begin to find ourselves guided by that Voice in everything. "For Your Voice will tell me what to do and where to go; to whom to speak and what to say to him, what thoughts to think, what words to give the world" (W-pII.275.2:3). That is pretty detailed instruction! And it covers every aspect of our lives. I believe we all can do this, and that training us in this listening and hearing is one of the major goals of this Workbook. It is something we must practice,however, if we are to learn it.
We might think that to practice listening to the Holy Spirit, we must get alone and be quiet. While that is partially true, and is certainly encouraged in the Course, this lesson hints at another aspect. To truly learn to hear God's Voice, we must unite, first with Jesus, and then with our brothers. We must be willing to learn to hear His Voice in our brothers.
In Lesson 275, Jesus asks us to join him in hearing the Voice for God, as if he were asking us to join him in his work. In the Text, he speaks of hearing the Voice for God as if that was the distinguishing mark of what he accomplished—as if "hearing one Voice" is what he accomplished:
I heard one Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone (T-5.IV.4:1). In the next sentence he ties listening closely to his recognition of our unity with God and one another. He says:
Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself (T-5.IV.4:2). There is an important connection here. To hear the Voice you must be willing to share the Voice. "Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share it in order to hear it yourself." The lesson echoes the idea: "For the Voice for God tells us of things we cannot understand alone, nor learn apart" (W-pII.275.1:4). That is why we must join with Jesus, and with one another, in hearing. If we do listen to the Voice, we will share it, because it speaks of sharing. It speaks of the one Self we all share; it speaks of our union with one another, our shared innocence.
What does it mean to "share" the Voice? In simplest form, I think it means that I see in others what the Voice says is true of me. If I am one with God, so are they. If I am sinless, so are they. If God loves me, God loves them equally. No one is excluded. In fact, the message of Oneness implies total forgiveness, because if I am "whole" it must mean my brothers have not hurt me, and therefore are innocent. Sharing the Voice means that I realize the Voice is speaking, not just to myself or about myself, but about everyone, and in everyone.
The paragraph quoted above continues:
The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek" (T-5.IV.4:3-6). When we listen to the Voice for God, we hear and share a message of wholeness. The fact that it is "one Voice" carries with it the notion that it is the same Voice for each of us; it is a shared Voice. When we listen to that Voice, we show our brothers that they have not and cannot hurt us. We do not reinforce their belief in their egos and the actions of their egos (see T-5.IV.2:13); we reinforce their (perhaps) dim awareness of our shared reality, our Christ Self. We show them their innocence. We hold nothing against them, nor against ourselves. The same message is repeated in the following chapter:
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Communication Link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His Voice you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves (T-6.I.19:1-2). Jesus makes this clear for us in a passage from Chapter 5 of the Text. He tells us that his decision, which was to hear only that one Voice, was what gave him all power in Heaven and on earth (T-5.II.9:2). He then says that you and I can make that exact same decision, and that helping us to do that is his purpose, his "only gift" to us.
My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision. This decision is the choice to share it, because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving, and is therefore the one choice that resembles true creation. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God I showed you that this decision can be made, and that you can make it (T-5.II.9:1-7). He wants us to join him in hearing, which means to make the same decision he made to hear only one Voice, which is also "the choice to share it." The choice is "made by giving." That means that to hear, we must give!
Jesus gave us his personal example of this, a "model for decision," in his crucifixion:
I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. We are still equal as learners, although we do not need to have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn from mine, and be reawakened by them. That is their only purpose…When you hear only one Voice you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by being able to hear the Holy Spirit in others you can learn from their experiences, and can gain from them without experiencing them directly yourself. That is because the Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all (T-6.I.9:1; 10:1-6). To join Jesus in hearing God's Voice means that we can learn from his experiences, even his experience of crucifixion, and we can be reawakened by his experiences. We need not experience those things ourselves. And that applies equally to learning from one another! If we can listen to the Holy Spirit in our brothers, we can learn from their experiences, without the necessity of our directly going through their experiences. So to hear the Holy Spirit means not only to hear Him within our own minds; it means hearing Him in others just as we can hear Him in Jesus. We hear the Holy Spirit in others by recognizing that He is in them, teaching them the same lessons of forgiveness that He is teaching us. We are told that our brothers do not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in themselves in order for this to happen:
The idea of the Holy Spirit…increases in you as you give it to your brother. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you have. This dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call for God in him, and thus acknowledge Its being (T-5.III.2:4-10). To hear the Holy Spirit in one another means, then, that we acknowledge the Call for God in each other. Doing so seems to be a key factor in our learning to hear God's Voice. In fact, the Course tells us that it is impossible to hear Him in ourselves alone. I have boldfaced two key sentences below:
You can no more pray for yourself alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his, and answers you.You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are not alone. And His answer is only for what you are. You will not know the trust I have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons (T-9.II.6:1-11)? So, let me be alert today to listen for God's Voice in the people around me as well as in myself. It's the same Holy Spirit; "the Holy Spirit is one." When a friend is going through a tough breakup in a love relationship, let me realize that I can learn the lesson he is being given in this situation if I acknowledge the Spirit of God within him. Let me listen for the Voice for God in him, instead of being caught up in the ego drama. And let me echo to him what I hear: the encouragement, the lack of condemnation, the call to relinquish judgment, the assertion that only love was real in that relationship, or any relationship. That, too, is part of hearing only one Voice.
I have assured you that the Mind that decided for me is also in you, and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This Mind is unequivocal, because it hears only one Voice and answers in only one way. You are the light of the world with me (T-5.II.10:1-3). Deciding to hear God's Voice also means accepting our place as the light of the world, along with Jesus. It means we are hearing in order to awaken the same hearing in everyone.
Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken and be glad. The world is very tired, because it is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for God. Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole? Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you (T-5.II.10:4-10). If we hear, we will share, because what we hear when we listen is the message of a shared Self, a message that tells us everyone must answer the Call or "the Sonship cannot be as one."
My prayer today is that many of you who read this will join with me, and with Jesus, in attempting today to hear only this one Voice, in ourselves and in one another. What better vocation could there be than joining together to waken the world to the Call for God, and to restore it to perfect integration, in which we recognize each other as parts of a single Whole? It takes effort to do this. It takes diligence. It takes repeatedly making the choice not to hear the voice of our "other devotions" (T-5.II.8:8). It is a task, a vocation, a calling, but it is a joyous one! "The healing of God's Son is all the world is for" (T-24.VI.4:1).
What I Have Learned About Guidance
by Robert Perry
What follows are my personal observations about following the Holy Spirit's plan. These may be somewhat idiosyncratic to me, my temperament and my experience. But I hope they will be of some benefit to you as well.
1. The Holy Spirit's plan is for real.
There is an actual plan for every level of your life—from the big vision all the way down to the details—that is infinitely brilliant and far-seeing, and that infinitely exceeds your ability to plot your own course.
2. His plan has a Mind of its own, a Mind that is totally independent of your usual thoughts, desires and dreams.
One of the hallmarks of His plan is that you wouldn't have come up with it on your own. Thus, it will often feel threatening, or like it is coming out of left field. Sometimes your dreams will overlap with His, but not because He has caved in to the overpowering pressure of your desires. He acts only for your happiness, and is uninfluenced by what you think will make you happy.
3. His plan is amazingly consistent over time—if you tap into the real plan.
Let's say you really tap into His plan once, try to apply it, fail, head off on a different course, change that course, forget the original guidance, then, after 20 years and many more course changes, tap into His plan again. He will not have changed His Mind one bit.
4. His plan is your lifeline. It is the rock you stand on. It is your foundation. Consider your life to be not your own. Consider it to be His.
Rather than thinking of your life in terms of charting your own course to find a satisfying life for yourself, think of your goal as settling your life into the groove of His plan.
5. Lean on His guidance as an older person would lean on a walker.
Realize that on your own you are lost. You are wandering in a strange city in total darkness…without your walker.
6. Try to build your visions, plans and decisions on top of genuine pieces of guidance.
…not on your logical calculations or on the pull of your desires. And try not to bring guidance in to take care of the details after you have already formed the big picture.
7. The crucial attitude is wanting to know the truth more than your own ideas, and being willing to constantly and ruthlessly separate the two.
In my experience, nothing is more important than this. Be willing to discard your ideas as if they were not even yours. Be excited when your ideas have been overturned, for then you can be certain you are touching a Mind beyond your own.
8. In the absence of solid guidance, be tentative.
Realize you are groping in the dark and try to wait before you make your decision. For when the guidance comes it could overturn all that you built without it.
9. Following guidance can save you an incredible amount of work and pain.
It can save you legwork, vacillating, backtracking, meandering, agonizing over the right decision and anxiety over whether you made it. Depending on the depth of your connection with the Holy Spirit, He can save you some or all of the work that goes into decision-making.
10. Making the wrong decision is perfectly all right. He can work with anything we throw at Him.
Factored into His plan are an infinite number of contingency plans, one for every possible misstep we could make.
11. Don't worry about being guided on every little thing. But try not to make a mistake on the big things.
…not because it cannot be cleaned up, but because you don't want to waste the time and effort.
12. The important thing is following the spirit of His plan, not the letter (the outer form). His letter, however, is the best vehicle for His Spirit.
The spirit of His plan is salvation of the mind. That is the thing to follow. But remember that the letter of His plan—His specific forms—is what is most conducive to the salvation of your mind.
13. You find His forms threatening because of their underlying content.
Oftentimes His guidance will feel like it is asking the hardest thing of you because the form He has chosen symbolizes the thing you don't want to learn—the relinquishment of your ego.
14. Guidance that tells you the right forms is valuable. But guidance that tells you the right content is more valuable still—if you apply it.
The drawback of guidance that tells you the form is that you can get too focused on the form at the expense of the content of love and forgiveness. The drawback of guidance that tells you the content is that, even though you are inspired by it, you will probably neglect to apply it.
15. Everything in His plan has the purpose, not of giving you the good life, but of finally bringing you home to God.
You may think the guidance is for something else, for instance, for making things work out well on the outside. But getting you home is the only thing He cares about.
16. There is a fog between our mind and His. This makes genuine guidance a somewhat rare phenomenon in the world.
This is the basis for many of the following points.
17. Your first question about possible guidance must be, "How can I be sure that this was real guidance from the Holy Spirit?"
How does it feel? Does it look fair and feel foul, or look foul but feel fair? See if you can tell a believable story that gives the impression that this guidance did not come from your mental machinations but from somewhere beyond them.
18. The real thing is precious. When you experience it, treasure it, keep it close to your heart, ask yourself over time how can you follow it better.
There are guidance experiences that tower above others. These are the ones to remember, to steer your life by, and to never let go of. Even if you have only one experience of guidance in your life that you are sure of, hang onto that one.
19. Before seeking specific guidance, try to identify and release your egoic perceptions, judgments and attachments.
Any strong egoic thoughts and feelings will either block the guidance from coming or make it sound threatening or irrelevant when it does come. So when you are going to seek guidance on a situation, first take a reading on how you are seeing and feeling about the situation. Look for strong ego attachments and assumptions and try to release them. Ask for help to see things differently.
20. The Spirit will sometimes speak more clearly and dramatically. When this happens and which topic gets addressed is a function of His agenda, not yours.
You can ask until you are blue in the face on a topic He does not consider important and get zilch. But you can merely turn your thought to a topic He cares about and have the heavens open up. Or they can just open of their own accord, without you asking at all.
21. You will probably receive guidance more easily and more frequently on your special function than on other topics, even topics you have more caring about.
This does not mean that guidance does not speak to other issues. I have just noticed, both in my life and in the lives of others, that it speaks to this issue more frequently.
22. In trying to apply a piece of genuine guidance, stay open about the details (especially of timing) but have confidence in the essence of it. Don't relinquish that frivolously.
This is a crucial juggling act. Guidance will often be either misleading or wrong about the specifics, but if it is genuine guidance it will have a solid core to it. So as you walk forward attempting to carry it out, know that there is something true, something of enduring validity, at the heart of the guidance. But stay very open about how it will all work out.
23. Keep a written record of your guidance.
If you really want to steer your life by guidance, you will probably want to keep a written record of what you have received, both for the sake of getting to know how much (and under what conditions) you can trust your guidance, and for the enduring value that guidance may hold for you.
24. Look for patterns among different instances of guidance. These patterns will allow you to see directly into the Mind of the Holy Spirit.
If the instances are genuine and are about roughly the same topic, there will be patterns (see #3 above). Discovering these will bestow priceless insight into His plan for you.
25. Find the forms of guidance that work best for you. When you find the one that works best, exploit it to the hilt.
Certain forms will work better for certain people. Much of this, I believe, is a matter of abilities that you have built up over eons. When you find the one (or ones) that really work for you, run with it. Count it as the most precious treasure you could have.
You can always consult what I call your highest inner sense. Quiet your mind, ask your question and listen for the purest impulse within you. This may or may not be a direct pipeline to the Holy Spirit, but it is always available. Other forms of guidance will probably not be as available.
28. Don't be picky about where guidance comes from. If it's from Him, it's precious.
If it comes through intuitions, dreams, inner voice, outer synchronicities or through someone else, who cares? If it is for real, that is what matters.
29. Your guidance may not do a lot of teaching on spiritual matters. If it does, make the Course your unabashed standard of measurement.
You simply cannot expect the guidance you receive from within to be on as high a plane as the Course, because you are not as gifted at receiving as Helen Schucman was. You're just not. So measure what your guidance says against the Course. And if there is a difference, trust the guidance that guided you to the Course. Consider the Course your guidance.
30. There is no substitute for the experience that comes from long, serious and frequent use of guidance.
Through using guidance for big issues and small ones over many years you will learn things you could never learn otherwise. You will become experienced in a field that is largely ignored but vastly important, that of living the Holy Spirit's plan.
How Can We Distinguish Between the Ego and the Holy Spirit?
by Allen Watson
Question: How do we know that it is actually the voice of the Holy Spirit and not the voice of the ego that we are listening to?
Answer: Another way of phrasing the question might be, "How can we distinguish between illusions and the truth?" The actual answer is, "Do the Course." But that seems to beg the question. My point, though, is that learning to tell the difference between illusion and truth, or learning to hear only the Voice for God and not the voice of our egos, is really what A Course in Miracles is meant to train us in doing. The only way, really, to learn how to distinguish between the ego and the Holy Spirit, or between illusion and truth, is to completely devote oneself to the Course's training program.
Recognizing the Holy Spirit's Voice May Take TimeLearning to recognize the Holy Spirit's voice is, for most people, a life-long process. The Course tells us: "Only very few can hear God's Voice at all, and even they cannot communicate His messages directly through the Spirit which gave them" (M-12.3:3). So hearing the Holy Spirit is not something we hear about and do, without any effort or training, the next day. A lot of people think they hear God's Voice; "only very few" actually do.
Even Jesus tells us that learning to hear only God's Voice was his final lesson, the last thing he learned! He says:
The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as sons (T-5.II.3:7-11). These lines are simultaneously discouraging and encouraging. They are discouraging in that they let us know hearing only the Holy Spirit is not easy. Learning to hear only that Voice "takes effort and great willingness to learn." Not only that, but it was also Jesus' final lesson, so it isn't something elementary, something we can learn quickly. It takes a while! However, on the encouraging side, Jesus points out that we are his equals as learners, and therefore, if he learned it, we too can learn it.
Clues in Discerning Between Ego and Holy SpiritThere are some practical tips on recognizing the Spirit's voice. There are several signs that are pretty clear indicators that the voice we are hearing is the ego. There are also a few signs that indicate what we are hearing is the Spirit's Voice. And, since the ego attempts to counterfeit these positive signs, there are also warnings about false signs.
Signs That Say "Ego"
The Holy Spirit is often referred to as a "still" voice, or a quiet voice. We are told that "the Holy Spirit never commands" (T-6.IV.11:1). So if the voice you hear is commanding you, it isn't Him.
We are also told, "The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors" (T-6.V.4:1). So if the voice you are hearing is listing all your faults, it isn't Him. By extension, if the voice you hear is making you guilty, it isn't Him.
The Holy Spirit is very clear that you are the innocent, holy Son of God. The Course says: "The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy" (T-6.V.C.1:10). If the voice you are hearing is engendering something besides joy, it isn't Him.
The Holy Spirit doesn't ask us to sacrifice: "The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does" (T-7.X.5:5). So if the voice you are hearing is calling for sacrifice, it's the ego.
Another clue:
Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves will always be one in which no one loses. And this must be true, because He asks no sacrifice of anyone. An answer which demands the slightest loss to anyone has not resolved the problem, but has added to it and made it greater, harder to resolve and more unfair. It is impossible the Holy Spirit could see unfairness as a resolution. To Him, what is unfair must be corrected because it is unfair (T-25.IX.3:1-5). Therefore, guidance from the Holy Spirit will always arrange things so nobody loses. He probably won't guide you to steal your brother's car, for instance.
Qualifications of the Above Rules
Despite these seemingly simple rules, we need to watch out here. Sometimes we can be hearing the Holy Spirit, but then reacting with our egos. The ego will always react negatively to the Holy Spirit, and will try to confuse us, to cause us to react to love as if it were fearful, and to fear as if it were lovely.
Negative Reactions to God's Voice
Sometimes we have what seem to be negative reactions to the Voice for God. This occurs when we are genuinely hearing guidance from the Holy Spirit, but we are allowing our egos to hear and respond to it. Although the Holy Spirit never commands, if we are hearing Him with our egos, it will seem to us that we are being asked to do something against our will. Prayerful self-examination at such times will usually reveal that we really do want what the Holy Spirit is asking us to do; only our ego or our independent self, which insanely wants autonomy at all costs, feels imposed upon.
The Course also speaks of a kind of false guilt that can arise in us as we listen to God's Voice. This is to be expected in a mind that has not wholly lost its fear of God. For instance, when we begin to realize that our projection of guilt upon the world is a mistake, and that the guilt we are seeing is in fact our own, "the beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within" (T-11.IV.4:5). Some people have even stopped reading the Course (few students would question that the Course itself is an expression of the Holy Spirit) on the grounds that "It makes me feel guilty." The Course's own answer to this kind of false guilt is quite simple:
...only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego defense as blaming others (T-11.IV.5:4-5). In other words, give up the guilt. Guilt is always an indication of the ego. You may be thinking that you are feeling guilty because you are listening to the Holy Spirit, but if you are feeling guilty, you are listening to the ego. It isn't what the Holy Spirit is saying that gives rise to guilt; it is your own ego's interpretation of it. The Holy Spirit may be saying, "Your loss of peace is not your brother's fault; you, yourself have chosen to give up peace." If that seems to make you feel guilty, however, it is only because your ego is telling you so; the Holy Spirit never blames, and never condemns.
Similarly, what the Holy Spirit has to say never makes our egos feel joyful; on the contrary, the ego is fearful and depressed when the Voice for God is heard. So the mere absence of a joyful feeling does not mean that the voice you are hearing is not the Holy Spirit. If some inner guidance seems to be from God, and yet does not give rise to joy, look carefully at the reasons behind the lack of joy. If the guidance is truly of God, you will find that the lack of joy is being caused by some belief in fear or sacrifice, or some false perception of loss of specialness.
Likewise, many times our ego will perceive sacrifice where there is none, and sometimes, therefore, what the Holy Spirit asks of us seems, at first, to be sacrifice. We think nothing is something; if the Holy Spirit asks us to give it up, we think "sacrifice," but really we are sacrificing nothing. If you feel you are being called on to sacrifice by the Holy Spirit, ask yourself what you are sacrificing, and if that something is truly something of God. Possibly, the only way to resolve the doubt is to actually give up whatever it is, and so discover that, instead of loss and grief, we find happiness.
[There may be a situation in which] the teacher of God feels called upon to sacrifice his own best interests on behalf of truth. He has not realized as yet how wholly impossible such a demand would be. He can learn this only as he actually does give up the valueless. Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy lightheartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him, he finds a gift bestowed on him (M-4.I(A).5:5-8). Positive Reactions to the Ego's Voice
On the other hand, there are times when we are hearing the ego's voice, and the ego attempts to simulate the positive reactions of joy and peace.
We can often mistake a feeling of triumph for a feeling of joy. True joy is always a shared feeling. It never arises from besting someone else. Beating out the competition for that new job may seem to feel good, but it is a simulated joy that arises from specialness and competition. The Holy Spirit, being an equal-opportunity Helper, will never lead you to gain at the expense of someone else's loss.
There is also a kind of false peace that the ego can give us. As an obvious example, think of the "peace of mind" that effective denial can bring. If we take some problem or negative emotion and bury it deeply enough, cover it over with layers of darkness, we seem to achieve a certain kind of "peace." But such denial is only a temporary palliative. It masks the problem rather than healing it. Ask yourself, "Is my peace coming from resolving the problem, or from avoiding it?" Another kind of false peace is referred to in the Workbook discussions of meditation as "withdrawal":
After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to experience the peace to which your reality entitles you. Sink into it and feel it closing around you. There may be some temptation to mistake these attempts for withdrawal, but the difference is easily detected. If you are succeeding, you will feel a deep sense of joy and an increased alertness, rather than a feeling of drowsiness and enervation (W-pI.74.5:1-4). The clear instruction here tells us that true peace brings with it "a deep sense of joy and an increased alertness," as opposed to the "drowsiness and enervation" (a loss of energy) that will come from false peace. God's peace is awake and energetic, confident that all problems can and will be resolved, rather than retreating into withdrawal and avoidance.
Signs That Say "Holy Spirit"
The section of the Text that speaks to this question most directly is "The Test of Truth," Chapter 14, Section X. Here are two key paragraphs:
You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God's lesson, and not your own. Unless all this is true, there are dark lessons in your mind that hurt and hinder you, and everyone around you. The absence of perfect peace means but one thing: You think you do not will for God's Son what his Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this, in one form or another. And each bright lesson with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not accept, teaches you that you will with the Father and His Son.Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything that you have taught yourself. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not want. Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned. When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself:
I do not know what anything, including this, means. And so I do not know how to respond to it. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now. By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant you abandon it, and offer it to Him (T-14.XI.5-6). The first paragraph says the "one test, as sure as God" that can tell us we have heard God's Voice is that we are wholly free of fear of any kind, and that everyone who meets or even thinks of us shares that same peace. Now, honestly, that lofty criterion seems to put the whole thing completely out of my reach! Don't you agree? And it is the only final test, the one sure test. No wonder Jesus tells us that it takes "effort and great willingness" (T-5.II.3:10), and that it was his final lesson. But it is not out of our reach; it is attainable, as we saw earlier. If Jesus, who is no different from any of us, could do it, that means we can also.
Realizing I Don't Know
Yet, until we have achieved that extremely high standard, the passage continues, it means that we all have "dark lessons" in our minds that hurt and hinder us and those around us. Despite that, Jesus advises us:
Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything that you have taught yourself. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not want (T-14.XI.6:1-4). To me, what this is in essence saying is that all we really need to "do" is to recognize our dark lessons—the ego's voice—and when we realize we are hearing the ego's voice, to be willing to realize we do not want its lessons, and to let them go. Adopt the attitude at all times of "I do not know what this means." Sentence 7:10 makes it clear for me: "By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself" means refusing to try to figure things out, to determine what things mean or, in a word, a refusal to judge. That is all we need to do; refrain from teaching ourselves. If we do just that, the Holy Spirit will speak to us. If we get out of the way, and don't interfere, He will guide us. And when He does, we will have that "perfect peace" spoken of.
So, how we learn to hear His Voice isn't the real question. Since all I need to do is stop listening to the ego, the real question is, how do I recognize the ego's voice? If I learn that, I do not need to concern myself about how I will learn to hear the lesson of the Holy Spirit. He'll take care of that.
My own opinion is that we learn this very gradually. We can start with the basic assumption that virtually everything we hear is at least tainted by the ego, and therefore assume the attitude of "I don't know." As the Course says, "I don't know" is our "firm beginning" in learning:
You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all (T-11.VIII.3:1-4). Don't be Stopped by the Ego
At first, I think most of the "guidance" we get will be a mixed bag at best. "Not one thought you hold is wholly true" (T-11.VIII.3:2), the Course tells us. The ego will wriggle in almost every time. We can't let that stop us, though. I've come to look on life as a process of learning to hear one Voice: "Learning is living here" (T-14.III.3:2). I once wrote an article titled "Don't Let the Ego Stop You!" My idea was that as we begin, the ego will always manage to work its way into our choices, and we can't avoid that. It will be by making choices and experiencing the results of the ego's directions—usually pain of some sort—that we learn to disregard them. We will "fall down" a lot while learning to "walk" in the Spirit. But that's how we learn.
SummarySo, in summary, my advice in answer to this question is:
Recognize you don't know anything. Be willing to let go of all your preconceptions. Ask the Holy Spirit for help. Evaluate what you hear: Commanding, demanding, sacrificing, specialness-supporting, guilt-inducing, or non-joyous guidance is almost always from the ego. When you think you hear His guidance, act on it as purely as you can. Evaluate the results, and look to see where the ego crept in. Be willing to adjust and change your mind. Over time, with effort and great willingness, we will learn to hear only the One Voice. Be patient with yourself; be willing to learn; be a happy learner.
Does the Holy Spirit do things in this world?
by Greg Mackie
Note: This is a revised and expanded version of a "Course Q & A" article that appears on The Circle of Atonement's website (www.circleofa.org).
The question of whether the Holy Spirit acts in the world is a crucial one, because it has a direct impact on our understanding of God's relationship with the world, and our relationship with God. Did God actively respond to the separation by creating the Holy Spirit, a loving Being Who literally has a plan for the world's salvation and helps us bring that plan to fruition by actively guiding our thoughts, words, and actions if we will let Him? Or does God not even know about the separation, in which case the Holy Spirit is just an illusory split-off part of our own minds, a metaphorical symbol for the memory of God that we brought into our dream of separation, a memory that does not have a plan or actively help us in any way, but is simply a stationary lighthouse that passively illuminates the way back to our true home?
Clearly, these are two dramatically different views of God and the Holy Spirit. The first is the view of the Circle; the second is the view of Ken Wapnick. (This, at any rate, is our opinion, based on Wapnick's body of work.) In the Circle's view, then, the Holy Spirit definitely does act in the world; in Wapnick's view, He definitely does not. This is probably one of the most significant differences between our vision of the Course and Wapnick's.
Since Wapnick's views are so influential in the Course community, we thought it would be helpful to compare his view on this question with the Circle's. In this article, I will first present the Circle's position on this question and our reasons for holding it, and then present Wapnick's position (including quotations from his works) and our reasons for disagreeing with it. Some of the endnotes contain additional information, so please read those as well. It is my hope that this article will be helpful to Course students in their own efforts to discern where A Course in Miracles stands on this crucial issue.
The Circle's view: The Holy Spirit does do things in the worldWapnick and we would probably agree that the resolution of this issue comes down to one very simple question: What does the Course say about it? We simply differ on how to interpret what the Course says about it. In a nutshell, the Circle's reasons for believing that the Holy Spirit does act in the world can be boiled down to the following two points: 1) The Course very clearly states that the Holy Spirit does things in the world, and 2) The Course offers no reason to believe that it doesn't mean these statements literally. In my presentation of the Circle's view, then, I will simply be presenting Course material describing how the Holy Spirit acts in the world, material that we take quite literally.
Before I do this, however, I want to clarify how I understand the question being posed here, and what I mean by the answer I'm presenting. As I am understanding it, the question basically means this: "Does the Holy Spirit actively do things in the world in the same sense that we, the members of the Sonship, actively do things in the world?" This is what I think most people mean when they ask whether the Holy Spirit does things in the world. So, while I know the Course teaches that the world is an illusion and therefore no real acts occur in the world, the question I'm addressing here is whether or not the Holy Spirit acts within the illusion. In the Circle's view of the Course's teachings, He does act within the illusion, in the same sense that everyone in the Sonship does. This is what we mean when we say that the Holy Spirit does things in the world.
With that clarification out of the way, I would now like to present some reasons for the Circle's view.
Our reasons for believing that the Holy Spirit does things in the world
While the Course tells us that the Holy Spirit's primary function is to teach us true perception-in other words, to help us change our minds, not our external world-it also tells us clearly that one means the Holy Spirit uses for changing minds is working within the world of form. The Holy Spirit Himself has taken form to teach us in this world (see C-6.1:4), and He uses the forms of the world for His teaching purpose. Indeed, there is literally no form in this world He cannot use for this purpose:
All that you made can serve salvation easily and well. The Son of God can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf. (T-25.VI.7:4-5) And so, again and again, the Course depicts the Holy Spirit using things like time, bodies, relationships, situations, words, etc., as means to teach the lessons of salvation. Indeed, the Course itself-a form brought into the world by the Holy Spirit through Jesus-is a prime example of the Holy Spirit using form as a teaching tool.
Why does He use form as a teaching tool? Because we who are committed to the ego have a heavy investment in the world of form that the ego made. Form is what we believe in; it is a language we can understand. Therefore, in order to be an effective Teacher, the Holy Spirit needs "to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has 'learned'" (T-7.IV.3:3). He needs to use the world of form as a means to teach us how to transcend the world of form.
Not only does the Holy Spirit use form to teach us, but He also uses it to enable us to teach others. This is an important emphasis in the Course. If we are to fulfill our function of extending healed perception to others, we must do so in a language they can understand. In order to get the message, they need "a body they can see. A voice they understand and listen to, without the fear that truth would encounter in them" (M-12.3:5-6). And so, the Holy Spirit guides us in using forms, like the body, to communicate with those who need to receive the message of salvation in a concrete, tangible way.
If the Holy Spirit does indeed work within the world of form, what exactly does He do? The following points are a list of some of the things the Course explicitly says the Holy Spirit does (or has done) in the world:
He has given us God's plan for salvation, which includes a script for our entire journey through the world.
The plan for salvation (also called the plan of the Atonement) is God's response to the separation, and we are told that the Holy Spirit has the function of "bringing the plan of the Atonement to us" (C-6.2:1). The content of that plan is forgiveness, the earthly reflection of the formless Love of God. Yet because we believe in a world of form, the plan has also taken form. In fact, we are told that the Holy Spirit has written the script (see W-pI.169.9:3) for every single thing that happens in the world.[1] Absolutely nothing is left to chance (M-9.1:3). While this may seem painfully restrictive at first glance, ultimately it is deeply reassuring, as the following passage invites us to recognize:
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-pI.135.18:1) He gives each of us a function in His plan for salvation: both the general function of forgiveness, and a special function in the world.
In addition to giving us God's plan for salvation, the Holy Spirit has the function of "establishing our particular part in it and showing us exactly what it is" (C-6.2:1). Since the content of the plan is forgiveness, our general function in that plan is also forgiveness-primarily, extending forgiveness to others. Yet because each of us is different on the level of form, the Holy Spirit has given each of us a particular form in which we are to fulfill our function of forgiveness:
Such is the Holy Spirit's kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm. To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill; a part for only him. (T-25.VI.4:2) Our special function is the specific form our forgiveness takes in the world, a form that is uniquely suited to our individual personalities, talents, and life circumstances (see T-25.VII.7:1-3 and W-pI.154.2:1-2). In short, it is the particular part each of us has been assigned in God's plan for salvation.
Our special function could take a wide variety of forms. For example, Helen and Bill had the special function of taking down the Course. A part of Bill's special function was to be a classroom teacher.[2] In the Course material, the Manual discusses the functions of teacher of pupils and healer of patients, and the Psychotherapy supplement discusses the function of psychotherapist. All of these are examples of forms our special function could take, though of course there are countless more. The key point is that each and every one of us has a special function assigned by the Holy Spirit, whatever it may be.
He chooses the people we are to help as part of our special function in the world, and puts us in contact with them.
The Course is clear that literally every encounter with another person is pre-arranged by the Holy Spirit. For instance, here is a description of how the teacher of God meets up with those he is to teach:
The plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet. (M-3.1:5-7) A later reference in the Manual says that even the specific purpose for each contact is pre-arranged: "Not one is sent without a learning goal already set, and one which can be learned that very day" (M-16.1:7). The bottom line is that our special function is always a way to help other people, and the Holy Spirit brings us together with those who will benefit the most from our particular form of help.
He gives us all the physical things and circumstances we need to fulfill our special function in the world.
To some Course students, it may seem almost sacrilegious to suggest that the Holy Spirit literally gives us things. Yet the Course unequivocally states that He supplies us with material possessions (see T-13.VII.12:-13) and money (see P-3.III.1,4-6). In addition, He takes care of the circumstances of our lives, including bringing about meetings with specific people (as we saw above) and arranging our life situations (see T-20.IV.8:1-8).
I want to say a little more about T-13.VII.12:-13, because I have heard some Course students claim that this passage isn't referring to material things, but to spiritual things like peace, forgiveness, etc. However, if we examine the passage and the paragraphs immediately preceding it, we can see that this simply isn't the case. The "things" referred to here (all references in this paragraph are from (T-13.VII) are described as things we buy in stores (1:3), things we need on earth (10:4), things that can be owned or possessed (10:10-12), things the ego wants for salvation (10:11), things that we need in time and need to be renewed (12:4), things that meet temporary needs (12:6), things the Holy Spirit has no investment in and doesn't emphasize (12:7, 13:2), and things that could be used by us "on behalf of lingering in time," but needn't be because the Holy Spirit can prevent this from happening (12:7). Given these descriptions, how could these things possibly be spiritual things like peace and forgiveness? There is only one class of things that fits all of these descriptions: material things.
Of course, the Holy Spirit does not give us things to serve our ego needs; He is not a divine butler at our beck and call, Who delivers worldly goodies to keep our egos fat and happy. Rather, He gives us things only to enable us to fulfill our special function in God's plan for salvation. Thus, the surprising answer to the often-asked question of whether the Holy Spirit manifests parking spaces is "Yes, He does, ifdoing so serves God's plan."
He gives us detailed guidance for all of our decisions and all of our actions in the world.
In the Course's view, we are utterly incapable of making sound decisions on our own. Our limited human judgment is simply not adequate to the task. Therefore, we need a Guide Whose judgment is unlimited, a Guide Who can make decisions for us. That Guide, of course, is the Holy Spirit.
Again and again, we are told to let go of our judgment and allow the Holy Spirit's judgment to replace it. An entire section of the Manual for Teachers (M-10) is devoted to this topic. And while the Holy Spirit's most important role is to guide our perception of the world, the Course is clear that He is to specifically guide our actions in the world as well. In fact, the Course goes so far as to say that Jesus-through whom the Holy Spirit works-will control all of our actions automatically if we allow him to guide our thoughts (see T-2.VI.2:8-9). Throughout the Course, we are told very explicitly that if we turn to the Holy Spirit, He will tell us "what to do and where to go; to whom to speak and what to say to him, what thoughts to think, what words to give the world" (W-pII.275.2:3; see also T-2.V.A.18:4-5, W-pI.71.9:3-5, and W-pI.rVI.In.7:2). Not only will He tell us what to do, but He will even "do it for [us]" (T-14.IV.6:6). It can't get any clearer than that. There is simply no doubt that the Course depicts the Holy Spirit doing things in the world.
Ken Wapnick's view: The Holy Spirit does not do things in the world [3]In spite of all of the evidence presented above for the Holy Spirit's activity in the world, Wapnick has a very different view of the Holy Spirit: "He does not actively do anything."[4] Not only does He not actively do anything in the world, but He doesn't even actively do anything in our minds; as we will see below, He is not a real Being, and thus cannot act in any way.
Given the evidence, why does Wapnick hold the view he does? It certainly isn't because he is unaware of the evidence. He does not deny that the Course depicts the Holy Spirit doing things in the world. What he does deny is that those depictions are to be taken literally. He offers various reasons for why the Course doesn't literally mean the things it says about the Holy Spirit, reasons that are based on the underlying assumption that the Course can't possibly mean these things, given its overall thought system. (We will explore that assumption in more detail below.)
As I've already made clear, we disagree with Wapnick's view. We can find no evidence whatsoever in the Course to support it. We can find nothing in its overall thought system that precludes the possibility of the Holy Spirit acting in the world. In fact, the thought system we see in the Course makes the Holy Spirit's activity in the world absolutely indispensable to our salvation.
Wapnick's reasons for believing that the Holy Spirit does not do things in the world, and our reasons for disagreeing with him
Before beginning this exploration of Wapnick's view, I would like to briefly address a couple of issues that came up in my recent reading of Wapnick's work: First, Wapnick does occasionally make statements that suggest the Holy Spirit does act in the world, at least in the role of guiding behavior. Here is one example: "Our function in the world is therefore not to feed the hungry, free the oppressed, nor to serve any other social or benevolent cause, although certainly our behavior may be so guided by the Holy Spirit" [5] (emphasis in final phrase mine).
I do not know what to make of such statements. It seems to me that Wapnick is contradicting himself. Wapnick may argue that he doesn't intend these statements to be taken literally, but that instead they should be interpreted in the context of his overall teaching that the Holy Spirit does not act in the world. This is actually the same way that he says we should interpret the Course's statements about the Holy Spirit acting in the world.
However, this strikes me as a very confusing way to proceed. Why state in such plain, literal language that the Holy Spirit guides behavior, when you actually believe He doesn't guide behavior? Such an approach seems bound to lead to misunderstandings. At any rate, Wapnick's references to the Holy Spirit guiding behavior are very rare. His overall position on the Holy Spirit is abundantly clear, and it doesn't include the Holy Spirit guiding behavior.
Second, it should be said that Wapnick seems to have changed his mind on this issue. In his early works, up until about the mid-1980's, he clearly taught that the Holy Spirit does act in the world. For instance, in the very first piece Wapnick wrote about the Course, Christian Psychology in 'A Course in Miracles,' he says that we should find out from the Holy Spirit "the particular function He has reserved for us in His plan for salvation"[6] and "turn over to the Holy Spirit all our problems regardless of their form, and…refer to His wisdom all questions for which we need answers." [7] Then he adds, "Perhaps it seems at first to be the height of arrogance to believe that the Holy Spirit is so intimately involved with the minutia of our daily lives."[8] In The Fifty Miracle Principles of 'A Course in Miracles'(1985), he says that the Holy Spirit is a Being Who "can function in a world of symbols [this world],"[9] and "can use all situations and relationships to teach us the single lesson that the separation is unreal." [10]
Wapnick's earlier works certainly seem to present a view of the Holy Spirit that has much more in common with Circle's view. But as I've said, he really seems to have changed his mind since the early days of his writing about the Course. All of his current works heavily stress that the Holy Spirit does not do things in the world in any way, and it is his current position that I will focus on here.
With these issues out of the way, the following italicized points present some of Wapnick's main arguments for the idea that the Holy Spirit does not do things in the world. I will also present our response to those arguments.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because the world is an illusion.
This argument runs basically as follows: The Holy Spirit can't really act in the world, because there is no world to act in. The world is just an illusion in our minds. If the world is an illusion, then the Holy Spirit's seeming "acts" in the world must be illusions as well. Wapnick puts it this way:
In fact, the Holy Spirit or Jesus do nothing in the world, because all correction and healing occur at the level of the mind. "There is no world!" [W-pI.132.6:2]. [11] This point is perfectly logical, and we have no argument with it as far as it goes. From the Course's standpoint, the world is indeed an illusion in our minds. Therefore, all acts in the illusory world, whether they are ours or the Holy Spirit's, are illusions. Given this, we wholeheartedly agree with Wapnick that the Holy Spirit doesn't do real things in the world, just as we don't do real things in the world.
But this valid point doesn't really address the question I think most people have in mind when they ask if the Holy Spirit does things in the world. The question isn't whether or not the Holy Spirit's acts within the illusion are real, but whether or not He does act within the illusion. In other words, to repeat the version of the question I presented above: Does the Holy Spirit actively do things in the world in the same sense that we, the members of the Sonship, actively do things in the world? The ultimate reality-status of those things and of that world is not really relevant to this question. Therefore, the world's illusory nature can't be used to refute the idea that the Holy Spirit does things in the world.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world, because His role is to help us change our minds, not to guide us in the world.
This is closely related to the first point. Wapnick is emphatic that the Holy Spirit's "activity" takes place only within our minds, not the world: "We are taught in the text that it is not the role of the Holy Spirit to guide us in the world of effects-the material world of specifics-but rather to help us change our minds about the cause of our problems: our belief in the reality of sin and guilt."[12] He often cites the following passage from the Text as evidence for this:
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely?….You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. (T-27.VIII.9:1-2,4-5) Of course it is true, as I said above, that the Holy Spirit's function is to teach us true perception-to help us change our minds. That is what this passage is getting at. We think the cause of our pain is an outside world independent of our own minds, but in fact the outside world is only an effect generated by the real cause of our pain: the guilt in our own minds. The Holy Spirit knows this, and has already undone the guilt in our minds through His judgment that we did nothing meriting guilt. This passage is encouraging us to acknowledge the real cause of our pain (the guilt in our minds) and the Holy Spirit's undoing of that cause, so that we can change our minds, let go of guilt, and relieve our pain.
But it simply doesn't follow that because the Holy Spirit sees the cause of our pain as in our minds instead of out in the world, He therefore does not do anything in the world. When this passage says He "looks not to effects," it doesn't mean that He has nothing to do with effects; it simply means that He does not erroneously ascribe the cause of our pain to those effects, as we do. This doesn't in any way overrule all the evidence already presented that He does things in this world. And, as we will see in the next point, His activity in the world of effects actually plays a role in facilitating the change of mind that is the Holy Spirit's goal.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because if He did, that would make the error real.
This is a major argument of Wapnick's; he says that if God or His agents were to act in the world, they "would be violating the Course's 'prime directive' (to borrow a term from Star Trek), which is not to make the error real."[13]
My first response to this argument is that Wapnick seems to have radically redefined the Course idea of making error real. I am aware of six Course passages that refer more or less directly to this idea.[14] In every one of these passages (read in light of its immediate context), making error real means making the errors of other people into real sins through focusing on and magnifying those errors in our minds. This, the Course says, makes forgiveness impossible because seeing our brothers as sinners blinds us to the Christ in them.
But in Wapnick's view, making error real-which he has rephrased in his writings as "making the error real"-seems to mean the act of accepting as true any idea that (in Wapnick's view) implies the physical world is real. In this reinterpretation, the word "error" no longer refers to the mistakes of another person, but instead to "the error" of the separation, and the universe of time and space that stems from it. What ideas make the error real, according to Wapnick? For the most part, they seem to boil down to this: any idea that suggests that activity in the world-such as the activity of God or His agents-has an important role in salvation.
As you can see, the Course's idea of making error real and Wapnick's version of it are quite different. The Course's idea addresses the practical concern of our dwelling on other people's mistakes. But Wapnick's version addresses his theological concern of avoiding anything that seems to imply that the world of time and space is real. The two are quite far apart. However, by grafting his meaning onto the Course's phrase-by using "making error real" to refer to his concept-he makes it appear that the Course is holding the same theological concern he is. He makes it appear that the Course's "prime directive" is concerned not with focusing on the errors of others, but with believing in ideas that seem to imply that the physical world is real.
"Not to make the error real," as Wapnick uses the phrase, is thus not the "prime directive" of the Course at all. Wapnick's theological concern does not really seem to be shared by the Course. Certainly the Course doesn't share Wapnick's theological concern about the Holy Spirit; I cannot think of anyplace in the Course where it says anything like, "Don't you realize that seeing the Holy Spirit as active in the world would imply that the physical world is real?" On the contrary, we have already seen that His activity has a prominent role in salvation. The Course never says that such activity inevitably makes the physical world real.
In fact, there are passages in the Course that indicate the Holy Spirit acts in the physical world to prove that it is unreal. One example is in Chapter 30, Section VIII of the Text. The second paragraph of that section discusses a miracle that brings about a positive external change in a brother's life situation. According to that paragraph, one powerful effect of that miracle and the external change it brings about is the following:
The miracle attests salvation from appearances by showing they can change....The miracle is proof [your brother] is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed. This demonstrates that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. (T-30.VIII.2:2,6-7) In other words, the miracle changes external situations, and in so doing proves that those external situations are only illusory appearances, not reality. We are thus saved from those appearances.
Think about the implications of that. Miracles come from the Holy Spirit, "Who gives all miracles" (T-30.VIII.4:7). Their primary result is a change of mind, but they also produce positive external effects. And these external effects are not simply pleasant by-products of miracles, but actually perform a vital role in reinforcing that change of mind: They prove the unreality of appearances. Therefore, the result of the Holy Spirit's intervention in the world (through the external effects of the miracles He gives) is that the physical world is shown to be unreal. This is reason enough to dismiss the idea that the Holy Spirit cannot do things in the world because that would automatically make the error real.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world; if we believe He does, we are falling into the trap of "spiritual specialness."
According to Wapnick, the belief that the Holy Spirit does things in the world is not only incorrect, but is actually a sneaky ego ploy to get us to engage in what he calls "spiritual specialness." [15] In his view, the belief that the Holy Spirit does things in the world is simply the ego's insatiable drive for specialness masquerading in a "spiritualized" form. In particular, seeing the Holy Spirit as a personal Being Who has "specially chosen [us] to do holy, special, and very important work in this world" [16] is nothing more than the ego's last-ditch effort to make the error real, to defend its specialness against the threat posed by the ego-undoing message of A Course in Miracles. Therefore, Wapnick concludes, we really shouldn't seek guidance concerning our function at all: "Focusing on hearing Jesus or the Holy Spirit is clearly setting oneself up for a painful fall, for such a practice grossly underestimates the unconscious investment in the reality of the ego's thought system of specialness." [17]
Certainly, the idea that we have a special function in the world can be a fertile ground for ego-based specialness. But to say that this idea is inherently ego-based is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As we saw above, the Course clearly says that the Holy Spirit has given us a special function in the world. Rather than being an ego trap, this special function is, in the words previously quoted, "the Holy Spirit's kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm" (T-25.VI.4:2). It is the Holy Spirit's reinterpretation of our desire for specialness, in which He converts it from an ego trap to a means to serve God's plan.
Far from discouraging the idea, then, Jesus really wants us to know that we do have a special function, because "[our] part is essential to God's plan for salvation" (W-pI.100.Heading). If we totally reject the idea that the Holy Spirit has given us a special function and does things in the world to help us fulfill that function, it will have the devastating effect of causing us to reject our part in God's plan. Ironically, in trying to escape "spiritual specialness," we will end up playing right into the ego's hands.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because only our own minds really do things; the Holy Spirit only seems to do things.
This is Wapnick's explanation for the many passages in the Course that depict the Holy Spirit doing things in our lives. Such passages, in his view, aren't meant to be taken literally, but simply "reflect…the experience within our split minds of the abstract Presence of God's Love."[18] In truth, Wapnick says, only our own minds actually do anything; it only seems that the Holy Spirit does things for us.[19]
Wapnick uses the following analogy to make his point: Just as our experience is that the sun moves when in fact the earth is moving around a (relatively) stationary sun, so our experience is that the Holy Spirit "moves" and does things for us when in fact our minds are "moving" in relation to the "stationary" Presence of God's Love.[20] Thus, what seems to be the Holy Spirit's activity in the world is actually a deception of our ego-driven minds, which "interpret our change of mind as being done for us by the Holy Spirit."[21]
The problem with this theory is that it finds absolutely no support in the Course. Of course, our minds do "move," but so does the Holy Spirit. Recall the line from the Text I quoted above, which said that not only will the Holy Spirit tell us what to do, but He will even "do it for [us]" (T-14.IV.6:6). Wapnick's idea that the Holy Spirit does nothing seems to be based not on evidence from the Course, but on his own logic, rooted in the idea I will discuss in the next point.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because God does not even know about the separation.
According to Wapnick, the Holy Spirit does nothing because the Course's "basic metaphysical premise is that God does not even know about the dream." [22] This idea is central to Wapnick's view of the Course: "This God [the God of the Course] does not even know about the separation...and thus does not and cannot respond to it." [23] Therefore, God could not possibly have literally created a Being like the Holy Spirit in response to the separation. Given this, it goes without saying that He didn't create a Being Who could actually act within the illusory world of separation.
But the Course never actually says that God doesn't know about the separation. In fact, there are two passages that directly say otherwise. One is T-6.V.1:5-8; the other is the following:
Unless you take your part in the creation, [God's] joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows it in His Own Being and its experience of His Son's experience. The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:4-7, emphasis mine) Clearly, this passage tells us that God knows we have somehow cut off our minds from Him-or at least cut off our awareness of Him. Wapnick may dismiss this passage as metaphor, but we at the Circle find that very hard to do. A metaphor usually brings to mind a specific concrete image, an image that represents or symbolizes a more abstract idea. A Course example would be the metaphor of giving your brother lilies, which represents forgiveness. But this passage doesn't contain such language; instead, it speaks in abstract terms about things like God's Being, knowledge, and experience-language that is more philosophical, theological, and metaphysical in nature. The two sentences I emphasized in particular look a lot more like the technical language of abstract theology than the colorful language of concrete imagery; they are more metaphysics than metaphor. Therefore, we have every reason to believe that this passage represents Jesus' literal teaching about the nature of God, a teaching that he wants us to take seriously as a statement of the Course's theology.
In our opinion, this passage (along with T-6.V.1:5-8) is strong evidence that God knows about the separation, and could therefore respond to it by creating a Being capable of acting within the illusion of separation. Indeed, T-6.V.1:5-8 concludes with a statement that God did respond to it: "So He thought, 'My children sleep and must be awakened'" (T-6.V.1:8). [24]
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because He is only an illusion.
This point follows from the previous one. For if the Holy Spirit is not a Being created by God in response to the separation, then just what is He? Clearly, He can't really be anything substantial. Wapnick, in fact, says point-blank that "the Holy Spirit is an illusion." [25] One of the Course passages he offers as evidence for this rather startling claim that the Holy Spirit is only "a symbol and not reality" [26] is this one from the Manual:
His [the Holy Spirit's] is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ….And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form, but to return to the eternal formlessness of God. (C-6.1:4-5,5:8) Wapnick's claim apparently rests on the lines in this passage referring to the unreality of the Holy Spirit's form, and the fact that His form will disappear once the dream is over. But while these lines do say that the forms He takes are unreal (as all forms are), they certainly don't say that He is unreal. On the contrary, we see in this passage a direct reference to "His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ."
Moreover, the section from which these lines are drawn (C-6) says that the Holy Spirit is "a creation of the One Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit," a creation that "is eternal" (1:2). An eternal creation of God is real by definition. Throughout this section, the Holy Spirit is described as a real Being Who works in the world (see especially 2:1). He does this in order to accomplish His "dual function" (3:2) of serving as a bridge between Heaven's knowledge and the world's perception: "He knows because He is part of God; He perceives because He was sent to save humanity" (3:3). And even though His form will disappear when the dream is over, the Course assures us elsewhere that He will remain with us forever in Heaven when the dream is done (see T-5.I.5:5-7).
Therefore, the passage Wapnick quotes here does not depict the Holy Spirit as an illusion; rather, it depicts Him as a real, eternal Being Who takes on illusory, temporary forms in order to serve His function of mediating between the reality of Heaven and our illusory world.[27]
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because He is only the memory of God.
What is the nature of the illusion described in the previous point? According to Wapnick, the Holy Spirit is simply "the memory of God's Love and the Son's true Identity as Christ that he carried with him into his dream." [28] He is "a distant memory of our Source,"[29] a memory that comforts us within the dream of separation just as the memory of a human loved one comforts us when we feel lonely and cut off from our earthly home. We experience this memory as a personal Being external to ourselves only because we have projected this ego-threatening memory outside of our minds: "The figures of Jesus or the Holy Spirit are really the projections (reflections) of the memory of a non-dualistic God within our dualistic minds."[30] The Holy Spirit is thus nothing more than a "projected split-off part of our self," [31] the part that remembers God.
But there are at least two problems with this definition of the Holy Spirit as the memory of God. First, the Course itself never uses anything like this definition. The closest it ever comes is to say that the Holy Spirit reminds us of God (see, for instance, T-5.II.7:1-5), but saying that He reminds us of God is quite different than saying that He is actually the memory of God. That would be like saying that when my wife reminds me of the trip to San Francisco we took ten years ago, she herself is my memory of that trip.
Second, the term "memory of God" has a specific, technical meaning in the Course, and it is not synonymous with the Holy Spirit. Rather, the term "memory of God" refers to our final awakening in Heaven, accomplished by God in His last step (see, for instance, (W-pII.8.5 and C-3.4). One passage, in fact, spells out the relationship between the memory of God and the Holy Spirit: "I have within me both the memory of You [God], and One [the Holy Spirit] Who leads me to it" (W-pII.352.1:7), emphasis mine). Here, the memory of God and the Holy Spirit are clearly depicted as different things. Thus, rather than defining the Holy Spirit as the memory of God, I think we are wiser to adhere to the definition of the Holy Spirit that the Course itself gives us: a Being Whom God created in response to the separation, a Being Who can and does do things in the world to carry out God's plan of salvation.
The Holy Spirit doesn't do things in the world because pure, non-dualistic spirit simply cannot interact with a dualistic world without compromising spirit's non-dualistic nature.
This is the heart of the matter. This is the fundamental assumption underlying all of the arguments presented above against the idea of the Holy Spirit doing things in the world-the assumption at the core of Ken Wapnick's entire view of the Course's thought system. He explains his basic interpretive stance toward the Course in a section of Few Choose to Listen entitled "An Uncompromising Non-Dualism." [32] In that section, one way in which he expresses his basic rule of Course interpretation is to paraphrase (M-27.7:1), replacing the word "death" with "duality," as follows: "Accept no compromise in which duality plays a part." [33]
In this view, God's Heaven is so purely non-dualistic, so absolutely One, that nothing within it can possibly reach down and interact with a dualistic, separated world in any way, shape, or form. If anything in this realm of pure spirit were to do so, its purity and Oneness would be impossibly compromised. Therefore, whenever the Course talks about spirit interacting with the world (as when it describes the Holy Spirit doing things in the world), it simply can't be taken literally.
Why, then, does the Course talk this way? According to Wapnick, Jesus' purpose for this "metaphorical" language is to comfort beginners on the path by "couch[ing] his teachings in words that his students-always referred to as children (or sometimes even younger)-can understand without fear." [34] Taking this language literally is fine for beginners, but once we have progressed beyond the beginning stage, we should give up childish notions like the idea of spirit interacting with the world, or we will "find ourselves back in our childhood world of fairy godmothers, Santa Claus, and a Sugar Daddy for a God." [35]
But how do we know that Wapnick's assumption that spirit cannot interact with the world is correct? The Course itself never states this once; it is only a logical inference based on a particular interpretation of certain passages. Not only does the Course not state this, but it states the opposite-that spirit can and does interact with the world-countless times. How do we know that it does not mean what it says? If the choice is between a questionable logical inference never stated in the Course and a teaching stated again and again in the Course, which should we choose?
In the Circle's view, the clear choice is the latter. Whenever we are trying to determine what the Course teaches, I think we are on much firmer ground when we stick to what the Course itself actually says, rather than taking unwarranted logical leaps. And besides, we actually have a very obvious, irrefutable example of non-dualistic spirit interacting with a dualistic world without compromising spirit's non-dualistic nature. That example is us: the Sonship.
Think about the current situation of the Sonship as the Course describes it. Our true nature is spirit. Our home is the absolute Oneness of Heaven. Yet somehow, in a way that the Course says is unexplainable, we managed to convince ourselves that we are something other than spirit. Out of this mental error, we managed to project a dualistic, illusory world with which we interact. But in spite of this, we are told, we have not really compromised our spiritual nature. We remain in the Oneness of Heaven, which we never really left.
Clearly, then, it is possible for a non-dualistic Sonship to somehow mentally separate from God, make an illusory, dualistic world, and interact with that world without compromising the Sonship's non-dualistic nature. Now, here's the punch line: If this is so, then why can't a non-dualistic God respond to the separation by sending a Teacher and Comforter Who can and does interact with the illusory, dualistic world without compromising God's non-dualistic nature? Personally, I see no reason why He cannot.
ConclusionWe at the Circle have every reason to believe that the Course literally "means exactly what it says" (T-8.IX.8:1) when it tells us that the Holy Spirit does things in the world. We see no reason to believe otherwise. Personally, I am immensely comforted by this, because it means that we are not cut off from God, all alone in a nightmare world that our remote Father can't help us out of because He does not even know about it. Instead, He knows in His Own Being that we are suffering in seeming exile. And so, out of His Love for us, He created the Holy Spirit, a Guide Who leads us home using every means at His disposal. Nothing is too "impure" for our Guide to use; He even uses the illusory world that we made to imprison ourselves as a means to set us free. In the pages of the Course, Jesus assures us that we have Help in this world. Why not take him at his word?
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[1]. For more about the Holy Spirit's script and how it relates to the Course's idea that we are responsible for everything that happens to us in our lives, see my "Course Q & A" article on the Circle's website, entitled "Are all the events and circumstances in our lives predetermined, or do we have free choice?"
Let all God's holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while Heaven's Son is born.
All of the remaining sentences in this paragraph contain the word "let." They are inviting us to let something happen, something that will help facilitate the holy birth that is meant to take place on this day. Here, we are asked to let the angels ("God's holy Thoughts") surround and protect Christ's birthplace in our minds. Protection of our minds is the main reason that God created the angels in the first place (see T-26.IX.7:1; W-pI.183.2:2; and Absence from Felicity, p. 19). Just as we need a safe place in which to give birth to our children—even if, as in the case of Jesus, that place is nothing more than a manger in a stable—so we need a safe place in our minds to welcome Heaven's Son. The Thoughts of God stand guard over our minds and keep away the thoughts of the ego, which threaten to abort the Christ child before He has a chance to be born.
One way in which the angels surround us and protect our minds is simply by helping our minds to be still. The ego is a noisy and boisterous voice, always demanding our attention and attempting to distract us from seeing the Christ within. Stillness is like rat poison to the ego, because stillness opens us up to "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Phil 4:7, KJV). This is the last thing the ego wants us to experience. But the birthing chamber of Christ is holy ground, and holy ground is marked by stillness. It is in the stillness of our quiet minds—the stillness of the holy instant, in which we enter the eternal present where Christ dwells—that the recognition of Christ dawns upon us.
Stillness is often very difficult to find during the Christmas season. It is a truism that, for all the joy Christmas is supposed to offer, it is actually a time of great stress for many of us. Our minds are a maelstrom of activity as we send our cards, buy our gifts, decorate our homes, bake our goodies, take our kids to see Santa, and plan our Christmas parties. We ride an emotional roller coaster as we get together with our families, and long-standing issues and grievances come to the surface. Imagine what a blessed relief it would be if the frenzy of your mind during the Christmas season were replaced by a peaceful state of mind in which you quietly joined with the angels in awaiting the dawn of Christ within you: a holiday that is truly a holy day. This is the experience Jesus is calling us to have.
Let earthly sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed disappear.
When a mother gives birth to a child, she withdraws from the world and finds a place apart from the hustle and bustle that normally surrounds her. Here in this lesson, one way in which we are asked to cultivate the peace of mind that facilitates the birth of Christ is to withdraw our attention from what normally surrounds us. The world around us is constantly barraging us with appeals to the senses, and at no time is the barrage more intense and more insistent than at Christmastime. The stress within our minds is mirrored by a frenetic outer world. I personally find the Christmas season to be overwhelming. My senses are pummeled with an endless onslaught of repetitive music, flashing lights, bustling crowds, noisy toys, and determined pitchmen trying to sell me the "perfect gift." Everyone and everything is clamoring for my attention. It is simply too much. I want to retreat into my cave and not come out until it is all over.
The whole nature of our conventional Christmas is summed up for me in a tongue-in-cheek Star Trek Christmas ornament I recently saw (at Hallmark, of all places). It was a miniature "Borg Cube," the starship of a sinister alien race called the Borg, whose sole goal is to rapaciously assimilate everyone they encounter into the evil Borg Collective. At the touch of a button, the ornament droned out a Christmas version of the Borg Collective's standard message to the unfortunate souls they aim to assimilate, a version that for me perfectly captures the relentless nature of the season: "We are the Borg. Enjoy your holidays. Resistance is futile."
But resistance is not futile. We can turn away from the sensory barrage. One way we can do this is by literally withdrawing from the world in meditation, as we do in our extended Workbook practice periods. Another way we can do this, a way we can use when we are out and about in the world, is simply to de-emphasize the importance of what our senses are reporting to us. Even as we take in the sights and sounds of the world around us, we can remind ourselves that none of what we are seeing and hearing is the truth. The truth is in Christ, Whose birth we are quietly awaiting amidst the cacophony of the outer world.
Let Christ be welcomed where He is at home.
By setting aside both the stress within our minds and the frenzy without, we open a space where Christ can be welcomed. Just as we set up a quiet nursery to welcome a newborn baby to her new home, so we set up a quiet "nursery" within our minds to welcome the newborn Christ child to His new home. Actually, "new home" is not quite accurate here, for Christ is our true Self, and He has in fact been at home in our minds from the very beginning. In truth, He is being welcomed into the ancient home He never really left.
This is the essence of Christmas in the Course: It is not primarily a celebration of the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, but a welcoming of the Christ into our own minds right here and right now. This is the welcome that Jesus is asking of us, the welcome of Christ to the inner altar of our minds: "Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace" (T-15.III.9:6).
And let Him hear the sounds He understands, and see but sights that show His Father's Love.
When we bring a new baby into our home, we want to provide an environment that is appropriate for her, a nurturing, healthy place where she can grow safely into adulthood. It is the same with the Christ child that we are welcoming into our minds. He is not at home in the physical world, the world of the senses. He does not understand the sights and sounds that make up our world. Such a world is not a healthy place for Him to grow up; it is the ego's world, and the ego is constantly threatening to kill Him before He can ever reach maturity, just as Herod tried to kill the baby Jesus. Our conventional way of celebrating Christmas, then, is strange indeed. We claim to be celebrating the birth of Christ, but because our manner of celebrating it emphasizes physical sights and sounds so much, we actually end up pushing Christ right out of our minds.
So, we must provide Him with an environment other than the physical world to grow up in. And we do this simply by choosing to see the world with His vision: the vision of Christ. This points directly to the Course's main means of birthing the Christ in us: forgiveness. "Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn" (T-19.IV(C).10.8), and here is the source of His sustenance. It is through forgiveness that we look past the sights and sounds of the ego's world, and see beyond them to the real world of holiness and love. It is through forgiveness that we interpret the physical world in a different way, a way that shows us the love shining behind the fear and hatred and attack that the world seems to present to us. This is what the Christ in us understands.
The true way to celebrate Christmas, then, is by beholding the world with the eyes of forgiveness. "Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines?" (W-pI.192.8:1). We see Christ in ourselves when we see Christ in everyone. Forgiveness is the environment in which the Christ in us is born, and in which He flourishes and grows to maturity.
Let Him no longer be a stranger here, for He is born again in me today.
Christ has been a stranger, both in our minds and in the world, for a long time. Our minds have been lost in the ego's darkness. Our outer world has been a projection of that darkness, a world of fear and chaos in which we have been under constant stress. Our way of celebrating Christmas has been simply one more version of this same dynamic, one more way in which we lose ourselves in the darkness of the ego's world and push away our awareness of the Christ in our midst.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We can turn away from the ego, and turn toward our true Self. We can lay aside our stress, and open our minds to peace. In the Gospels, Jesus said, "I was a stranger and you invited me in" (Matt 25:35, NIV). This Christmas season, we have the opportunity to invite the seeming stranger, the pure and holy Christ Who is our true Identity, into our minds. Let us not wait any longer. Let us heed the voice of our elder brother Jesus, calling upon us to make this very day the birthday of the Christ in us: "It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now" (T-15.X.4:1). May you find the holiness and peace that Jesus wants us to experience on Christmas Day and every day: the holiness and peace ushered in by the coming of the Christ Self that all of us share
Please Take What?
by Robert Perry
I have often heard students claim that doing anything in the world as an expression of the Holy Spirit's plan or an attempt to save the world goes against the Course's teaching about the illusory nature of the world. If you truly grasped the real depths of the Course, they say, you would realize that all of that is beside the point. When I hear such statements I usually wonder how they account for Jesus instructing Helen to scribe the Course, which, after all, was a behavior in the world. To illustrate my point I have devised the following humorous dialogue between Jesus and Helen on the night he first asked her to take down the Course. Here is how Helen might have responded if she "truly grasped the real depths of the Course."
Jesus: This is a course in miracles. Please take notes. [1]
Helen: Notes? Do you mean with paper and pencil? I am sorry, but I cannot do that. Those things are illusions. If I did as you say, I would be affirming that pencils and papers are real. I would be making the world itself real.
J: You use paper and pencil all the time. Why is it suddenly so objectionable now?
H: It's different to use them because a divine being asked me to. That would imply that the Divine is aware of pencils and paper, and cares about physical forms, and that would mean that the world is real.
J: But this is the role I have chosen for you. This is your function in the world's salvation.
H: How could wielding an illusory pencil be my function? I'm afraid you have it all wrong. My function is simply to forgive, in the privacy of my mind, wherever I am. And if you will just let me be, I'll get back to doing that.
J: But the role I have chosen for you is very important. In this world it has been given few to give a gift to God as you will do. [2]
H: That sure sounds like the voice of specialness to me, promising me some important role. If you were really Jesus, would you be sweet-talking me with promises of being ever-so-special?
J: People need this book. Look about the world, and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest? (W-pI.191.10:7-8)
H: Their salvation is important, I agree, but it is none of my business. All I need do is accept salvation into my own mind. Since we all share a single Mind, once salvation comes into my mind, it automatically spreads throughout the one Mind of which I am part. It is very simple. See?
J: But our brothers have a difficult time receiving things directly mind-to-mind. They are too bound to their body's senses. They cannot hear my voice as you can. If I am going to get a message through to them, it will have to be through their senses. A body they can see. A voice they understand and listen to. (M-12.3:5-6) And, I might add, a book they can read. And what they read might just affect their minds .
H: I question this whole line of reasoning. How can people need our help? There isn't really anyone out there. Why are you so anxious to help a situation that does not exist?
J: It is not just they who need your help. Stop a while, long enough to think of this: You have perhaps been seeking for salvation without recognizing where to look. Whoever asks your help can show you where. What greater gift than this could you be given? [4]
H: But helping others doesn't gain salvation for me. It actually blocks me from receiving it, because while I am out there trying to take responsibility for them, I am overlooking my one responsibility: to accept the Atonement for myself.
J: Helen, the world situation is worsening to an alarming degree. People all over the world are being called on to help, and are making their individual contributions as part of an overall prearranged plan. Part of the plan is taking down A Course in Miracles , and I am fulfilling my part in the agreement, as you will fulfill yours. You will be using abilities you developed long ago, and which you are not really ready to use again. Because of the acute emergency, however, the usual slow, evolutionary process is being by-passed in what might best be described as a "celestial speed-up." [5]
H: Excuse me. Are you talking about a prearranged plan in response to an acute emergency? Are you talking about Heaven speeding up its efforts to help the world in response to a crisis on earth? You can't really mean that.
J: And why not?
H: Well, if Heaven actually saw that there was an acute emergency on the earth, or any kind of problem, and then made plans to solve the problem (especially prearranged plans), and then went into heavenly high-gear (your "celestial speed-up"), that would make the whole thing real. That cannot be, since there is no problem. And Heaven can't know about a problem that is not there. It was all over long ago, and in fact never happened in the first place. Non-dual reality could never have noticed something so miniscule and non-existent as a world of space and time that needed to be saved. Therefore, my good savior, there can in fact be no celestial speed-up.
J: Where are you getting this stuff?
H: From A Course in Miracles.
J: But I haven't written it yet.
H: And you never will.
Does God Have a Plan?
by Robert Perry
Does God have a specific plan for us, something in particular He wants us to do with our lives? Normally, I would address this question by discussing passages from A Course in Miracles (there are many that answer this question quite explicitly; see, for instance, W-pI.135.18). In this article, however, I want to address it from the standpoint of my own life experience. I have had many experiences that seem to me to reveal the workings of a higher plan, and these experiences, I believe, have taught me a great deal about how the plan actually works. I would like to share one of these experiences, a particularly pivotal one, and then attempt to draw out what this episode says about the plan itself.
An example from my life
In my teens and early twenties I knew where my life was going. I was heading for a career in philosophy. In my mid-teens I had begun asking questions about life and trying to figure out the answers. I wrote my insights down and, after a few years, the beginnings of a philosophical system began to emerge. It addressed traditional philosophical questions and many psychological questions. I loved this sort of thing. I had a passion for truth and felt completely at home creating a system of ideas aimed at finding it. My system attempted to explain the nature of consciousness, including the workings of thought, will, emotion, and memory, from a novel vantage point (one that I still think has great promise). It contained a proof for God's existence which was not a variation on the traditional proofs. I was pleased when Huston Smith, the great scholar of world religions, said he thought the proof worked and recommended a journal that might publish it (though he admitted to not being excited about such proofs).
On my twenty-first birthday something pivotal occurred. I had gone to a local park to think. There, my thoughts turned to my magnum opus, which I planned to write in about ten years, when my system was more developed. This would be a huge book—at least 1,000 pages—in which I would present my system to the world. While at the park an unusual and significant thing happened: it felt as if a title for my magnum opus was just dropped into my mind. You may have experienced something similar, where an idea pops into your head fully formed, feeling as if it has just been downloaded from somewhere else, rather than conceived by you. The title was Behold the Man. This comes from the scene in the Gospel of John where Pilate is presenting Jesus to the crowd. He brings out Jesus, who has just been beaten and scourged and crowned with thorns, and says to the mob, "Behold the man."
I couldn't believe how perfect this title was for my book, for at least two reasons. First, my system was claiming to reveal what human nature is, how it works on the surface and what it is at its depths. Behold the Man seemed to capture this perfectly. It seemed to say "Behold the Nature of Man." Second, my system claimed that, despite our frail, mortal appearance, our fundamental nature is spiritual or divine. This seemed to be perfectly captured by that scene from the life of Jesus. Here he was a divine being, yet in that moment he looked all too human—broken, bloody, on the verge of death. In my eyes, the title seemed to almost gesture over to Jesus as he stood in front of the crowd and say, "Behold the nature of man; though he looks all too human, he is really divine." This title was so sacred to me that for the next several years I refused to tell it to more than one other person.
I got back from the park and met a collection of friends who were taking me out to dinner. I still have a picture of me at the Mexican restaurant that night, looking like an idiot under one of those huge sombreros. When we got back home I received my birthday present. At the instigation of Susan (my then—fiancée), my friends had chipped in to buy me a book I had read about months before but was too lazy or too cheap to buy: A Course in Miracles. As we sat there with me holding the blue books (they were three separate volumes back then), it felt like an important moment, and as it turned out, it was. That moment changed my whole life.
Not long after (perhaps even that night), I realized that something very strange had happened that day. On the same day that I had received that perfect title for my book I had also been given A Course in Miracles. I had been given someone else's 1000-page magnum opus, which presented an intellectual system that, like mine, was philosophical, psychological, and ultimately, spiritual. This system claimed, like mine, to reveal how our minds and emotions work and to reveal what we fundamentally are. Like mine, it presented Jesus as a symbol for the rest of us, human in appearance but divine in truth, whose brutal end was a poignant symbol of the human condition. Finally, its title, just like my title, subtly likened us to Jesus. The title of A Course in Miracles claims that it will teach us to do what Jesus did; that is, work miracles.
I was amazed by the parallels with my book. This could not be chance, I thought. It was almost as if someone had given me the book that I planned to write. I intuitively felt that this simply had to mean something. But what? Without giving it much thought, I concluded it meant that there must be something important about the Course for me and something important about that title of mine—with my emphasis on the second, of course. As it turned out, I had no idea of the real implications of that day.
If I had thought more about it, there was a fairly obvious message there. As I said, it was almost as if someone had given me the book that I planned to write. That potentially carried a disturbing implication: my book was already written, and by someone else. Moreover, this was not just anyone else. This book claimed to be written by Jesus. My book merely held Jesus up as the symbol for our true nature; this book was supposedly written by him. If this was true (and I eventually came to believe it was) it changed everything. Why would the student think of writing the book which the master had already written? At that point what could the student do but devote himself to the master's book?
With a little reflection, I would have seen that the seemingly exciting, enigmatic events of that day carried a hard message: rather than devoting my career to my book, I would devote it to someone else's. This was such a deeply unwelcome message that it did not even occur to me. At that point, in fact, there was no power on earth that could have caused me to seriously consider that possibility.
That message, however, kept knocking at my door. After a few years, I received what I felt was genuine guidance that I would teach the Course. I took this in stride, assuming this must mean that I would teach the Course on the side, while my day job would of course be my philosophical system. In the meantime, my best friend had started working for a local Course center; then my wife started working there. Next I was asked to teach there, and then write. After a few years, I began receiving invitations to travel and do workshops elsewhere. I turned around and found I had a career in teaching A Course in Miracles.
Yet throughout this time I still held onto the idea (though my grip was weakening) that my real career was going to be devoted to my own system. To think that I had an original contribution to make to humanity's quest for truth, but that I would forever keep silent about it while I promoted someone else's contribution, was a bitter pill to swallow.
Then, on my 31st birthday, ten full years after I received the Course, I did a Course workshop in Oklahoma City. On the plane trip home I thought the whole thing through. In that time I had come to believe that the Course had importance not just for a few New Agers, but for the entire world. I had also come to realize that, as an intellectual system, it towered above anything I could ever have produced. I also was aware that it would require a great deal of intellectual work to draw out that system and make its wisdom clear to others, which meant that there was a need for someone like me. In sum, I saw with perfect clarity that all those years ago on my 21st birthday, this is what I had been hired to do. It had all been set from the moment I got the Course (and who knows how long before). I was to take the same passion for truth and the same intellectual abilities that I planned to devote to my system and devote them to his. On that day I finally got the message and I finally said "yes," and I have never looked back.
10 observations about the planIn hindsight, I felt I could see a genuine plan of the Holy Spirit at work in this situation, a plan that from the start had its own idea of where I should be heading, and that managed to gently nudge my life in its direction. The way the plan seemed to work in this situation is exactly like what I have seen in many other situations. Therefore, I would like to use this story as a window onto the workings of the Holy Spirit's plan. What can it tell us about the plan? I have drawn from it the following ten observations.
1. God's plan may trash our plans, but always for something far better.
True, my plans for my life got trashed, but I have grown to realize that His plan is far better. The Course has led me in directions I would never have gone on my own. Not only is the Course vastly superior to my system as an intellectual system, but it is also a path of transformation. My system aimed purely at explanation, not transformation, and frankly a good portion of its value for me was that I was the explainer. Thus, my system had the inherent danger of exalting my ego, whereas the Course is aimed at erasing my ego. It is always more edifying for the student to represent the master than to represent himself.
2. When the plan comes knocking at our door we may not hear it. Even if we do hear it to some degree, we will probably try to minimize the changes it spells for our lives.
As you saw in my story, I had no clue what plan was actually knocking at my door on that fateful day. And even when, years later, I started to faintly hear the knocking, I didn't consider that it might mean a whole different life than the one I had planned. It was like an alarm whose sound I automatically tried to incorporate into my dreams, rather than hearing it as the wake-up call it was.
3. The plan has a mind of its own, a mind over which we have no power. It comes up with novel, creative ideas for our lives that are completely independent of our ideas (though there may at times be some similarity).
This characteristic of the plan is probably the most threatening, yet it can also be deeply consoling. While I was making plans for my life, there was Someone else out there making different plans, plans I never would have made myself. Devote my intellectual career to a channeled book? What kind of crazy idea is that? Yet no matter how crazy it would have seemed to me, there was absolutely nothing I could have done to change this Mind. That can feel very threatening, as if there is some general up in the sky sending us into battle without regard for our personal welfare. Yet we can also experience it as comforting, for it means that there is Someone watching over us in a very specific way, Someone Who is not just a figment of our imagination, but Who has a Mind all His Own, and Who knows what is in our best interests.
4. The plan will give us a role to play in the world's salvation. This gives us the opportunity to live for a meaningful purpose.
In my experience the plan is particularly focused on giving us a role to play in the larger purpose of saving the world. This may sound trite, yet it seems to be exactly what happened in my story. It looks as if I was hired to fill a need. One could reasonably infer that in some way, to some degree, the Course needed me, just as the world apparently needed the Course. To feel that our lives are filling a meaningful purpose in a larger plan is something we all crave. Who wants to feel that his life is serving no purpose? Who wants to feel totally useless? The belief that I am being used for a larger purpose has been an incalculable gift. It fills my life with meaning and keeps me going in the face of all the obstacles.
5. The role the plan gives us is perfectly tailored to our talents, abilities, and interests. It wouldn't fit anyone else like it fits us.
I already pointed out that the plan clearly drew upon the exact same things in me that had given rise to my system: my passion for truth and my skills in assembling a system of ideas. I have been struck for years at just how tailor-made for me this function is. It is as if Someone knew me inside and out, better than I knew myself, and designed a role that fits me like a glove.
6. The plan will use our talents and abilities, but in a way that is different than the way our ego would use them.
This, of course, was a major theme of my story. Not only would it have never occurred to me that I would devote my career to another philosopher's system, it was even further from my mind that this master philosopher would be Jesus, and that he had expressed his system in the form of a channeled book. The whole situation was just a little weird.
7. For this reason the plan may well frustrate our ego's desires. Given this, we may resist it for a long time.
This was almost the central theme of my story. This plan was Someone else's idea and I liked mine better. Thus, even while His played out, I stubbornly clung to mine.
8. The plan will frustrate our ego because its purpose is to lead us beyond our ego, towards the transcendence of our ego.
The plan is almost sneaky. It will not only give us a role to play in the world's salvation, it will design that role in such a way that fulfilling it naturally wears away our ego until it is gone. In my plan for my life, my ego stood at the top of a system of explanation that it had designed. It was king. In the Holy Spirit's plan for my life, my ego stands at the bottom of a system of transformation, one that is totally intent on erasing it. Further, the fact that I teach this system has pushed me into giving myself to its goal of erasing my ego. I am ten times the student I would be if I had never become a teacher. Somehow I suspect the Holy Spirit knew that.
9. The plan is consistent and persistent. If we don't like its ideas, it won't change its mind. And if at first we don't hear it, it will keep knocking.
We often assume that the Holy Spirit's plan is incredibly fluid and spontaneous. It may tell us something one week and tell us something quite different the next. For instance, when I didn't get the message at first, we might assume that the plan would move on, flowing and adapting in the face of my resistance and coming up with an endless string of new, equally tentative ideas. This is a rather comfortable idea, but this was not my experience in this case (nor has it been in my other encounters with the Holy Spirit's plan). The fact that I didn't get it and was resistant didn't change a thing from the standpoint of the plan. It just kept insisting on the same idea until I came around.
10. It is all right if we don't answer when the plan knocks. It will keep offering us more opportunities. They will never stop coming.
I am convinced that it is all right if we don't hear the plan knocking, or hear it but refuse to answer. If the plan were like us it would get angry and eventually give up on us, but thankfully it is not. Being ever-patient and forgiving, it will simply continue to generously lay before us more and more opportunities, for as long as it takes.
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Does God have a plan for our lives? In my experience, He does. This plan is on our side. It offers us the chance to live for a meaningful purpose. It has our best interests in mind. Yet it also has the demise of our ego in mind, and it is hard for us to see that this is in our best interests. Therefore, the plan's ideas may be so alien to us that we at first may not notice them, and once we do we may kick and scream for a long time. But that is all right. The plan is patient and we will come around in the end.
The Holy Spirit Will Provide
by Nicola Perry
I want to share a wonderful story of something that happened to me last year. It gave me a definitive experience of the teaching in the Course that the Holy Spirit will provide all things that we truly have need of.
My work in the publishing "wing" of the Circle means that I am very dependent on a computer. In addition, because I do quite a lot of traveling, it needs to be a laptop computer. That way, whether I am in America or England, I can continue, uninterrupted, with my work schedule.
Two years ago, when the urgent need for a laptop initially arose, I was very generously donated one by a friend of the Circle, and although it was an old one, it had everything I needed. Last October, however, I bought a new computer program for a new aspect of my publishing work. This program required quite a sophisticated computer, and after having someone check my laptop over, I was told that there was virtually no way it would be able to handle the new software.
Within days of this bad news, the laptop suddenly started to behave very oddly, and very soon it finally "died" on me. Disaster! Now I had no computer at all! And with the Circle's finances being so tight, I wasn't sure how I was going to get a new one.
I mentioned on our staff conference call that day that my computer had died. An hour later, Greg Mackie called me to say that his wife, Margery, had been listening to the local classical radio station, and they were announcing a one-day contest which was part of their fundraising pledge drive. They would be putting all the entrants into a draw, and the following day they would select a winner. The prize was to be a brand new laptop computer. It seemed worth a try at least, so I followed Greg's suggestion and entered the competition.
The next day, Robert Perry decided that the Circle would just have to bite the bullet and borrow money for a new laptop for me. We went on the Internet and found one that suited the specifications I needed, and ordered it by phone. We just needed to sign the paperwork that the salesperson said he would fax through to our office. The one downside was that it would take about a week until it was with me, which was work time I couldn't really afford to lose.
Mid afternoon, there was a phone call for me. It was the local radio station. I thought, "I couldn't have won the contest. They're probably just calling me with some other promotion." To my amazement, however, they told me I had won the laptop! What an incredible moment that was! It seemed that all my unspoken prayers had been answered—a brand new laptop computer, one that was more than sophisticated enough to run the new software I needed to run. I was told I could go and collect it as soon as I wanted to, and so I arranged to go first thing in the morning. No having to wait around for a week!
Luckily, the papers for the other computer I'd nearly bought were faxed through later, so that I hadn't signed the papers and been locked in to buying it. Possibly the most amazing aspect of this story, though, is that the one-day competition was held on the very day my old computer died. The timing couldn't have been more perfect!
To me this was an incredible example of what the Course teaches about the Holy Spirit supplying all the things that we truly need. I did truly need a laptop, and I did need a new one. I also needed it as soon as possible, and the Circle did truly need the thirteen hundred dollars it would have had to borrow to get me one. My understanding is that the Holy Spirit will not fulfill our endless desires for material goodies, but that He will supply us with anything that we truly need in order to fulfill the reason we are here.
Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them....Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. (T-13.VII.13:1-2, 4)
God's Word or Human Words?The Quest for Truth in Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief and in the Course Community
by Greg Mackie
"How…can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words?"1 How can we distinguish real wisdom of the spirit from "wisdom" that is nothing more than human imagination? This question is central to Elaine Pagels's book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. This fascinating and engagingly written book tells the story of how the diversity of early Christianity was swept away by the architects of what became the one true Church—the story of how heterodoxy (literally "different opinions," a variety of different ways of seeing the Christian message) was defeated by orthodoxy (literally "straight thinking," a single authorized way of seeing the Christian message). Interwoven with this story is Pagels's personal story, in which her own Christianity moves in the opposite direction: from orthodoxy to heterodoxy.
What intrigued me most about Beyond Belief was the striking similarity between the early Christian community and our current Course community. As I read Pagels's account, I found it all eerily familiar. Like the early Christians, the Course community is faced with the question of how to discern spiritual truth, and the answers offered now are as varied as they were then. Most Course students regard the Course itself as authoritative, but what that actually means in practice varies a great deal. Some hew to a particular teacher's interpretation of the Course. Some turn to the various Jesus channels who claim to be getting further messages from the author himself. Some look to other channeled guides who claim to be enlightened. Some use other spiritual books. Some depend on the pronouncements of teachers who claim enlightenment or special inner knowledge of the true meaning of the Course. Some rely exclusively on their own personal experience of the Holy Spirit within. Many use a combination of these various sources.
In this essay, I want to briefly summarize Beyond Belief and then apply what it says about Christianity to the Course community. My goal is to offer an answer to the question of how we Course students can discern truth within our own developing tradition. I encourage you to reflect on your own journey as you read. The question of how we can tell true spiritual wisdom from the tempting deceptions of the ego has been pondered through the ages. The ancients called it "the discernment of spirits." For Course students and for anyone on a path of awakening, this question is not just academic, but is central to the spiritual life. If awakening to God comes from finding truth, then we must learn how to find truth if we want to awaken to God.
Beyond Belief: from heterodoxy to orthodoxy; from orthodoxy to heterodoxy
Beyond Belief tells two stories. The main story, which takes up the bulk of the book, is the story of Christianity's journey from heterodoxy to orthodoxy: from the dizzying diversity of its early days to its eventual consolidation into a single unified church with a single official teaching. In particular, Pagels focuses on the conflict between two views of salvation. A prominent view among the heterodox Christians was that salvation lies in discovering one's own inherent divinity through inner knowing or gnosis. This, however, was wiped out by what became the orthodox view: that salvation lies in believing in the unique divinity of Jesus, along with the other tenets summarized in the fourth-century Nicene Creed.
The second story, referred to only briefly and intermittently yet important to the overall message of the book, is the story of Elaine Pagels's personal journey. This journey moves in the exact opposite direction from the history she is exploring. It moves from the orthodoxy of the conservative church she attended as a youth to the heterodoxy uncovered in her later research into the "gnostic" gospels, which eventually became a lifesaver for her when she was confronted with a major crisis in her personal life.
The journey of Christianity: from heterodoxy to orthodoxy
The story begins with wild and woolly heterodoxy. Pagels writes that while historians had originally hoped to find a more simple, "pure" early Christianity when they delved into Christian origins, what they found instead was stunningly diverse. Many different teachers toured the various Christian communities, each offering his or her own distinct teaching. While there were a few basic beliefs they agreed upon—above all, reject the pagan gods and turn to the true God revealed by Jesus—their emphasis was not on what to believe, but on seeking God in one's own experience. To aid this seeking, they shared stories about the life of Jesus. Indeed, there were many gospels to choose from besides the four that are in the Bible today: everything from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene to the Gospel of Truth to the Apocalypse of Peter to the Round Dance of the Cross. There was also a smorgasbord of different rituals, including baptism and communion feasts featuring bread and wine, rituals whose meaning was understood in different ways by different people.
The one thing that seemed to unite early Christianity—and helped it spread even in the face of bitter persecution by the Roman Empire—was the radical practice of agape love. Christians contributed all money voluntarily to a common fund to help the needy, including criminals. They healed people in ways often regarded as miraculous and did it free of charge, unlike the pagan temples, which always charged a fee. They took care of contagious plague victims no one else would touch. They called each other "brother" and "sister," and sometimes applied these terms to non-Christians as well.
This did not mean, however, that there were no rivalries. Different Christian teachers did dispute with one another, and Pagels highlights one such dispute: that between those who traced their lineage to the apostle Thomas, and those who traced their lineage to the apostle John. Here, Pagels introduces the Gospel of Thomas, a product of the Thomas Christians (though almost certainly not written by Thomas himself). This was a gospel suppressed and finally destroyed by the Church, lost to the world except in fragments, until a copy was discovered among the texts found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945.
In Pagels's view, the Gospel of Thomas teaches that God's light is within each one of us—we are all created in His image—and so the way to salvation is to seek and find the light of God within. One of her favorite lines from Thomas is this one: "Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you'" (32).2 She claims that the Gospel of John was written to refute this view. According to the author of John (almost certainly not the apostle John), God's light is not in each one of us, but instead resides in Jesus alone—we are not the light of the world, he is—and so the way to salvation is not through seeking the light of God within, but solely through belief in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God.3 (This distinction between the way of seeking God's light within and the way of believing in Jesus and the creeds is a central theme of Beyond Belief.)
The dispute between the Thomas Christians and the John Christians was not immediately resolved; some people took one side, some the other. As Christianity grew and Roman persecution increased, some began to see disagreements like this one as a serious problem. One who felt this way was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 125-202), a major figure in Pagels's book. As one who saw the terror of persecution firsthand—his own mentor, Polycarp, was martyred, and his own community almost destroyed—he came to believe that only unity would enable Christianity to survive its enemies. He was not against all variation in doctrine and practice, but did believe that for the sake of unity, and thus survival, there needed to be certain core doctrines on which all Christians agreed. He "hoped that Christians everywhere would come to see themselves as members of a single church they called catholic, which means 'universal'" (80).
Since Irenaeus saw himself in the lineage of John-Polycarp claimed that John himself was his teacher—the "catholic" church he envisioned was a church unified on the John side of the John-Thomas debate. He believed that the light of God was in Jesus alone, and so he set out to refute the views of the heirs of Thomas, those who sought the light within themselves. He saw these "spiritual Christians" (they are often called "gnostics," though Pagels avoids that term in this book) as the major threat to the unity he sought.
The main threat to unity he saw in them was that they tended to regard themselves as a spiritual elite, even performing a "second baptism" for special initiates that they called apolutrosis, or "release." In their view, the mass of ordinary believers were like children on the spiritual path, while they themselves were the mature few who really "got it." Pagels says that according to Irenaeus, when he questioned followers of the teacher Valentinus, "they either remained silent or said that he was simply wrong, since he had not yet advanced beyond a naïve level of understanding" (159). This separation into "simple" and "more advanced" groups created division within the churches, which Irenaeus considered a threat to their survival.
In addition, the spiritual Christians were always claiming new revelations—even revelations coming from Jesus himself—based on dreams and visions they received through various spiritual practices. Many claimed to receive wisdom from what the Secret Book of John calls the "luminous epinoia" (164)—a term that has no exact equivalent in English, but refers to a kind of spiritual intuition that reveals hints and glimpses of the inexpressible divine. Various spiritual Christian movements arose, such as a popular movement called "the new prophecy," led by three self-proclaimed "prophets" who claimed to communicate directly with the holy spirit, shared these revelations with others, and taught others how to receive their own revelations. But in Irenaeus's view, there was no consistency to the "revelations" of these prophets and other teachers like them. None of these teachers agreed with one another; in his words, "each one of them comes up with something new every day" (128). The "luminous epinoia" was little more than their own overactive imaginations. How could there be unity when no one could agree on anything?
Irenaeus's attitude toward these seekers of gnosis is summed up in his account of a meeting led by a prophet named Marcus, who had drawn followers from Irenaeus's own congregation. Marcus would encourage some person, often a "foolish woman" (in Irenaeus's words), to prophesy, and
she, then, puffed up with vanity and elated by these words, and enormously excited in soul by expecting that she herself is about to prophesy, her heart beating wildly, reaches the necessary pitch of audacity, and, foolishly as well as brazenly, utters whatever nonsense happens to occur to her, such as one might expect from someone heated up by an empty spirit. (93) As caustic as this account is, Irenaeus did not believe that all revelations were bad or wrong. Pagels says that "although Irenaeus liked clear boundaries, he was not simply narrow-minded, and he was by no means intolerant of all difference" (133). He believed that people could and did receive genuine guidance from the spirit. But he was concerned about the division into "enlightened" elites and simple believers, and he believed that there needed to be a way to evaluate spiritual guidance, so that genuine revelations could be distinguished from the "nonsense" of human imagination.
This led him directly to the central question of this essay: How can we tell the word of God from mere human words? This question applied not only to revelations like the ones put forth by these various teachers, but also to the plethora of gospels floating around the Christian world. The first step of Irenaeus's answer was to narrow the field of gospels. He declared that of all the gospels, only four were based on eyewitness accounts of Jesus, and so only these four were valid: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As far as we know, he was the first Christian leader to champion the "fourfold gospel" that has been a pillar of Christian orthodoxy to this day. Of these four, Irenaeus believed that John was the most important. All of the others were to be seen through the lens of John—particularly John's emphasis on believing in Jesus as the sole light of the world, God's only begotten Son.
But this by itself was not sufficient to provide the unity Irenaeus was seeking. The problem was that spiritual Christians still interpreted those four gospels—including John, one of their favorites—in myriad, often allegorical and metaphorical ways. For instance, Valentinus claimed that the story of Jesus' cleansing of the temple is really (in Pagels's words) "a parable showing how, when God shines into our hearts, he shatters and transforms what he finds there in order to make us fit dwellings for the holy spirit" (119). Such metaphorical interpretations could wander far from the original material; at times, spiritual Christians would interpret scripture in ways that flatly contradicted the literal meaning of the text.
So, Irenaeus needed to add a second step to his answer: Now that he had a set of orthodox writings, he had to develop an orthodox method to interpret those writings. The method he proposed had two aspects. First, he said, the interpreter should adhere to an essentially literal interpretation of scripture: Irenaeus "declares that, wherever possible, one must discern the obvious meaning; and wherever a certain passage seems ambiguous or difficult, one's understanding should be guided by those passages whose meaning seems clear" (117). A later bishop, Athanasius, called this basic approach dianoia, which Pagels defines as "the capacity to discern the meaning or intention implicit in each text" (177).4 This stance was disdained by the spiritual Christians, who regarded their own metaphorical interpretations as a higher understanding.
Second, Irenaeus said, the interpreter should "hold unmoving in [his] heart the canon of truth received in baptism" (129). What was this "canon of truth" received in baptism? It was a set of beliefs, rooted in the Gospel of John and what Irenaeus regarded as apostolic tradition, that amounted to a kind of proto-creed. According to Irenaeus, it consists of faith in
one God, Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and the seas…and in one Christ Jesus, the son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation, and in the holy spirit…and the birth from a virgin, and the suffering, and the resurrection from the dead, and the heavenly ascension in flesh…of our beloved Jesus Christ. (129) I'm sure you can see where this is heading. In the next century and a half, as many converts joined Christian churches despite persecution, more and more bishops adopted Irenaeus's model and rejected those who deviated from it. Finally, when the Roman emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, he called the Council of Nicea in the year 325 to create the unified church Irenaeus had dreamed of. The bishops who gathered at Nicea affirmed the fourfold gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; selected the rest of the books of today's New Testament; and formulated the Nicene Creed based on Irenaeus's "canon of truth."
And the rest, as they say, was history. Nonorthodox groups were ordered to stop meeting. Their churches had their property confiscated and given to the orthodox churches. All the noncanonical gospels and other scriptures were destroyed, including the Gospel of Thomas. Orthodoxy now had the answer to the question of how to discern truth. Truth was found through 1) the fourfold gospel and the other books of the New Testament, 2) interpreted in an essentially literal manner through the lens of the Nicene Creed (and the creeds that followed), by 3) the orthodox bishops who were the leaders of the official, imperially sanctioned church. The heterodox seekers after the inner light were vanquished; the orthodox believers in Jesus the one true Light reigned triumphant.5
The journey of Elaine Pagels: from orthodoxy to heterodoxy
Elaine Pagels began her personal spiritual journey immersed in the orthodoxy built by Irenaeus and the bishops of Nicea. When she was fourteen, Pagels joined an evangelical Christian church. Her membership in the church felt nourishing at first, because she felt assured that she belonged to the true faith, God's true family. But eventually, she became dismayed at the exclusivism of this church. Things came to a head when a friend of hers was killed in an auto accident and her friends in the church told her that because he was Jewish, he was condemned to hell. She disagreed, but found no openness to alternative views. She left that church.
In college, Pagels learned Greek and studied the New Testament. Reading the gospels in the original Greek was a revelation; it was as if she were reading them for the first time. She also grew to love the pagan Greek authors, appreciating their alternative religious perspective. After college she studied dance, but was still irresistibly drawn to Christianity, which she found "so compelling and at the same time so frustrating" (31). Unable to escape the pull of Christianity, she eventually entered the Harvard doctoral program, hoping to find the "real Christianity" through studying the earliest Christian texts.
Here, she encountered the Nag Hammadi "gnostic" gospels for the first time, and this too was a revelation. She was amazed at the diversity they revealed in the early Christian tradition and deeply attracted to the Gospel of Thomas teaching that salvation comes from seeking and finding what is within you. She loved these alternative voices so much that they became the focus of her academic career. She published a preliminary examination of them, The Gnostic Gospels, in 1979. Her search for a simple "real Christianity" had failed, but what she found instead was even more fascinating: a diverse, complex movement with no single voice of orthodoxy.
Her fascination with Christianity did not lead her to return to church, at least not for a while. But eventually, when her two-and-a-half-year-old son was diagnosed with a terminal disease, her need for comfort in the face of grief drew her to a church in New York City. Her experience there helped to clarify in her mind both what she loved about the Christian tradition and what she did not love. What she loved in this church was the fellowship, the ritual, and the comfort she found in sharing grief and hope with others on the spiritual journey. What she did not love about the Christian tradition was its emphasis on adhering to an official set of beliefs, and its tendency to say that adhering to these beliefs is the only way to God. Reciting the creeds meant little to her. Sharing fellowship with other spiritual seekers at this church meant the world to her.
Pagels concludes that while she no longer believes everything taught in the traditional Christian creeds, she still feels something powerful and compelling in the Christian tradition, because "besides belief, Christianity involves practice—and paths toward transformation" (143). She does acknowledge that the standards orthodoxy gives us for evaluating truth claims can help mitigate our human capacity for self-deception: "we can, to an extent, thank the church for this" (184). But in the end, she says that orthodoxy's tendency to encourage unquestioning acceptance of religious authority is a harmful barrier to spiritual progress. "Most of us, sooner or later, find that, at critical points in our lives, we must strike out on our own to make a path where none exists" (184-185). In her study of the diverse voices of early Christianity and in her personal experiences at her new church, she has found kindred spirits who have followed and are following Jesus' injunction to "seek and you shall find."
What, then, is Pagels's answer to the question of how to discern truth? One of the frustrating things about Beyond Belief for me is that she never gives a clear, direct answer. But based on the clues sprinkled throughout the book, it seems that for her, truth is revealed above all through personal experience. Two aspects of personal experience seem important. The first is the experience of inner wisdom or gnosis. Clearly, Pagels holds a high regard for inner experiences like those reported by the early spiritual Christians. Commenting on the Gospel of Thomas passage that says bringing forth what is within you will save you, she says that "with a shock of recognition, I realized that this perspective seemed to me self-evidently true" (32). She also says that what spiritual Christians seek "is often not a 'different system of doctrines' so much as insights and intimations of the divine that validate themselves in experience—what we might call hints and glimpses offered by the luminous epinoia" (183). There is a sense in Pagels's writing that experiences of the inner light are to some degree self-validating. The experience of gnosis is its own confirmation.
Yet there is another aspect of personal experience that is clearly important to Pagels: the effect such inner experiences have on one's life. This is evident in her high regard for the agape love practiced by the early Christians. At times, she seems to suggest a "by their fruits you shall know them" approach: a life of compassion and service to others, like the early Christians practiced, is an indicator that one is on the right track. Moreover, her personal story suggests that her experiences of "hints and glimpses offered by the luminous epinoia" through her return to a nurturing church had a profound impact on her life, getting her through her personal crisis. So, putting these two aspects together, my sense of Pagels's position is that while no method gives us anything approaching certainty, truth is best discerned through experiences of inner knowing that produce positive fruits in one's life. Thus, for Pagels, the orthodox insistence on external standards for evaluating spiritual truth claims is of limited use at best and harmful at worst. The heterodox seeking after the inner light is where truth is really found.
The Course community: heterodoxy versus orthodoxy revisited
As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, in reading Beyond Belief, I was struck by the similarity between the early Christian community and our current Course community. The issues those early Christians wrestled with—including the issue of how to tell God's word from human words, how to discern truth—are much the same issues we face today.
Like early Christianity, the early days of the Course were characterized by wild and woolly heterodoxy, a heterodoxy that is dominant to this day. The Course community, too, has many diverse voices. We too have our "enlightened" elites asserting that their messages come straight from the Holy Spirit. There are people claiming new revelations, including new revelations from Jesus, on a regular basis. There are other "scriptures" regarded by some as equally authoritative or even more authoritative than the Course, especially the writings that are said to come from Jesus. These different revelations often (in my opinion) contradict the Course and each other, but their adherents do not seem to see this as a problem. There are people who interpret the Course metaphorically, even when that interpretation contradicts the literal meaning. These interpreters tend to regard the more literal interpreters as less sophisticated and less spiritually advanced. Above all, there is a prevalent view that individual inner experiences—a modern version of the quest for the "luminous epinoia"—are the gold standard of truth. External validation of truth claims is not a prominent value in this community.
Yet there is an "orthodox" element in this community as well. In a general sense, a kind of orthodoxy arises whenever Course students submit to a particular teacher's views without question, reflection, or evaluating those views by the standard of the Course itself. Yet there is one locus of orthodoxy that deserves special mention: Ken Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles.
I know I'm wading into controversial waters here, but in my opinion, Wapnick and FACIM do represent orthodoxy in the Course community, in at least two ways. First, Wapnick and his views have an aura of authority around them because of his role in the Course's early history and his current role as head of the teaching arm of the official publishers of the Course. He is perceived as the heir to Helen Schucman's legacy, and many of his interpretations of the Course are now part of Course community lore, even for those who have never read any of his works. In short, his views have become a kind of orthodoxy (whether consciously acknowledged or not) among Course students.
Second, Wapnick and FACIM have tended to be dismissive toward those with views that contradict this orthodoxy.6 Wapnick himself has steadfastly refused to dialogue with people who have other perspectives. He doesn't engage with other Course interpreters, and even denies that he himself is a Course interpreter; he claims that he just knows what the Course says.7 And the copyright suits of recent years have been seen by many as attempts on the part of the official, "orthodox" disseminator of the Course to suppress heterodox views. Certainly, no one can claim that FACIM did what the orthodoxy Christians did; no one was killed, and no one was forbidden to teach and practice the Course in his or her own way. Yet there does seem to be a parallel, in that FACIM's actions did make it difficult for those with alternative interpretations to publish and disseminate their views. Rightly or wrongly, a number of people in the Course community have equated FACIM with the Catholic Church and Ken Wapnick with the Pope. Whatever the truth of the matter, the perception is there.
Prescription for the Course community: combine the strengths of orthodoxy and heterodoxy
What method should Course students use to discern spiritual truth? In my opinion, neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy has the complete answer. To express my view in the terms that are central to Beyond Belief: I think there is a place for both believing in ideas about God that come from sources outside your mind (especially from the Course itself) and seeking God through personal experience of the inner light (certainly a major theme of the Course itself). Indeed, I think the Course sees belief and experience as two parts of a developmental progression. You start out with a surface belief in the Course's ideas that is little more than an untested theory. Then, through walking the Course's path, that initial surface belief is ultimately confirmed and transformed into true conviction by personal experience.8
Though alternative spiritual seekers may be loathe to admit it, there is something appealing in the simplicity of accepting a single view, as many Christians have discovered since the days orthodoxy triumphed. Orthodoxy does have its strengths: its insistence on external, communal ways to evaluate truth claims, and its appreciation for the value of the community coming to some sort of agreement or unity. Yet all of us, especially those scarred by their personal experience of traditional religion, are familiar with the big weakness of orthodoxy: its tendency to take a "my way or the highway" approach, insisting it is right and suppressing the dissenting voices that might force a re-examination of things.
There is also something appealing about joining Pagels on the journey back to the freedom of heterodoxy. Many alternative spiritual seekers have done just that. Heterodoxy, too, has its strengths: its respect for personal experience as one valid means of discerning truth, and its openness to exploring diverse views. Certainly, there is tremendous value in experiences of inner knowing that produce positive fruits in one's life. I'm especially attracted to the idea that a life of compassion and service to others is evidence that one is moving in the direction of truth; as Karen Armstrong says, the ultimate litmus test of any spiritual path is the fruit of practical compassion.9 Yet heterodoxy also has its weaknesses: above all, its tendency to take a relativistic "there's my truth and there's your truth" approach, denying the validity of anything outside one's own subjective personal experience to evaluate truth claims.
Therefore, I think the answer to our question should be one that maximizes the strengths of both orthodoxy and heterodoxy while minimizing their weaknesses. With that in mind, I'd like to suggest a method to help Course students discern spiritual truth. Based on Pagels's book, I see three elements that make up the orthodox Christian answer to this question: 1) an authoritative scripture, 2) an agreed-upon method of interpreting the scripture, and 3) a community of interpreters. While problems can arise with all three, I think the elements themselves are basically sound. The biggest mistake of orthodox Christians was using these elements in a rigidly authoritarian way that killed (sometimes literally) the voices of dissent and innovation. In my opinion, then, the most effective way to discern spiritual truth for Course students is to use Course versions of these three elements, but use them in a nonauthoritarian way. This enables us to avoid both the authoritarian tendencies of orthodoxy and the relativistic tendencies of heterodoxy by giving us the best of both worlds: orthodoxy's external measures of truth and respect for agreement, and heterodoxy's experiential measures of truth and respect for diverse views.
Here, then, are Course versions of the three elements:
1. An authoritative scripture: A Course in Miracles
This is the most important element. The Course is what defines our spiritual path. It gives us both the teaching that promises to bring us to God and the practical instructions for how to apply that teaching. If one believes that the Course is his path, that it really was written by Jesus, and that Jesus is fully awake, then logically the Course needs to be the ultimate authority. The Course itself says this about its author: "But Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ's single message of the Love of God. You need no other" (C-5.6:4-5). If we need no other bearer of Christ's message than Jesus, then clearly his Course is meant to be the standard by which everything else is evaluated
Yet, as I will emphasize in all three points, assent to this is strictly voluntary. There need not and should not be any authoritarian structure mandating belief in the Course as the inerrant Word of God. (In this sense, the ultimate command authority—the authority to decide what one believes—should always rest with the individual student.) There will always be students whose path is not the Course, as well as students who don't believe the Course was written by Jesus and aren't sure the author is fully awake. For them the Course need not be the ultimate standard.
Even those who regard the Course as authoritative needn't accept it without any question at all; we all question it at times, sometimes vehemently, and the author of the Course himself has no problem with that.10 He does not demand unquestioning obedience; on the contrary, he says, "Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another" (T-8.IV.6:7). And accepting the Course as our authority doesn't mean that we must categorically dismiss other scriptures, such as the products of Jesus channels. These can be evaluated on a case by case basis, using the Course as our guide for determining what to embrace and what to set aside. While I haven't yet found a Jesus-channel work that I think measures up to the Course's standard, I can regard each new one that comes along with an open mind.
2. An agreed-upon method of interpreting the Course
If we want to come to any sort of agreement about what the Course says—and I think such agreement is valuable, as long as it is freely given, not coerced—we need to have some common method of interpretation. If one person carefully studies the Course's words and another consults his guardian angel, the two really have no point of contact on which to build a dialogue. The interpretive method must be based on external standards that can be agreed upon (so the guardian angel is out). It needs to effectively capture what the Course says as completely as possible, leaving no loose ends and providing what we need to effectively walk the path. At the Circle, we've developed an effective method rooted in the Course's own contention that it is "very simple, very clear and totally unambiguous" (W-pI.39.1:2), "a very practical course…that means exactly what it says" (T-8.IX.8:1). This method, which sees the Course as much more literal than metaphorical, is much like Athanasius's dianoia, in that its goal is to discern the meaning or intention that the Course's author placed in the text.
But, as with the first point, assent to such an interpretive method is strictly voluntary. This is not about dictating some sort of interpretive fundamentalism. There will always be those who disagree with whatever method is adopted by a majority, and that is their right. And even if an interpretive method is shown to be effective and gains wide acceptance, it needn't be engraved in stone. It can and should be open to revision and refinement—our interpretive method at the Circle is evolving all the time.
Finally, a good interpretive method would value both external, objectively verifiable elements—especially the words of the Course itself—and insights gained through inner wisdom and personal experience. Both dianoia and epinoia have their proper place. The Course places a major emphasis, of course, on receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit, and also has its own version of the "by their fruits you shall know them" approach. It says, "If you do it, you will see that it works. Its results are more convincing than its words" (T-9.V.9:2-3). Experiences of inner knowing that produce positive fruits in one's life—especially the fruit of practical compassion—are certainly important indicators of truth in the Course's view.
I find that external and internal methods of insight work well together. A careful analysis of a Course passage using our study techniques can spark an inner experience in me, and then this inner experience can, in turn, further illumine the passage. Yet in the end, for one who has accepted the Course as the ultimate authority, the final arbiter has to be the words of the Course. When our inner experience (or life experience) seems to shed light on some teaching in the Course, we need to make sure that this insight harmonizes with the Course's words, instead of conflicting with them.
3. A community of Course interpreters
In a broad sense, the community of interpreters includes every Course student. But I think there's also an important place for a community of Course "experts" or scholars: a group of people who have delved into the Course deeply and have developed effective methods of interpreting it, who can share what they have learned with each other and with other students. The Course itself does not say anything about this, but the Manual for Teachers does speak of experienced Course students serving as teachers to less-experienced pupils, and having a group of experienced interpreters is simply a logical extension of that. Let's face it—the Course is such a sophisticated and intellectually challenging work that expert help is truly needed. A community of Course scholars discussing the Course together can be an invaluable resource for Course students. Careful study of the Course by this community can lead to a helpful consensus on many points of teaching and practice.
But once again, both agreement among scholars and Course students' assent to the scholars' views is strictly voluntary. This need not and should not become some sort of ecclesiastical body that enforces its views like the Nicene bishops did. It would be a community that offers its conclusions to students for their benefit, rather than one that enforces its conclusions on them for their submission. Each Course student can interpret the Course on her own—our version of Martin Luther's "priesthood of all believers"—and if she disagrees with the scholars, so be it. Moreover, whatever consensus the community of interpreters reaches need not become rigid dogma. As in any healthy scholarly community, any consensus is open to question as the conversation continues. There will always be those who don't share in the consensus, and voices of dissent should be respected and appreciated.
Finally, as with the second point, inner insight and personal experience should certainly be a valid and valuable aspect of the interpretive process. Ideally, the experts in this community of interpreters should be practicing Course students whose inner journeys can illumine the Course in ways that intellectual interpretation alone could not.
Using these elements to evaluate a truth claim: an example
Let's imagine sometime in the future when all three of the elements I'm proposing are firmly in place. Let's say that in this future, a Course student has a deeply moving experience in which she gets the inner sense that we should really love the ego because it is a wounded child that needs healing. In our current Course community, if this view is shared in a group, it can draw both "orthodox" and "heterodox" responses. The defenders of orthodoxy may emphatically reject it, without supplying reasoned evidence for why they reject it. They might simply repeat a stock line from the teacher they follow. The ones inclined toward heterodoxy are more likely to say something like "What a marvelous insight!"—even if it totally contradicts the "marvelous insight" of ten minutes ago. Their view tends to be a version of the famous bumper sticker about biblical inerrancy: "I had an experience. I believe it. That settles it."
But let's say that in this hypothetical future, the student herself uses the three elements to try to discern the truth of what she received. She accepts the Course as her authoritative scripture, so she opens up the book and searches for references to her idea or to anything that might refute it. When she finds pertinent passages, she applies a method of interpretation to them that is in harmony with the Course's own instructions for how to read it, one commonly used by good Course teachers and shown to be highly effective. For additional help, she consults Course scholars she respects to see what they have to say on the subject.
As a result of all this, she concludes that at least based on these three elements, the view her inner sense gave her is not in line with the Course. Both her own study and the consensus of the experts point to a different view: The ego is not a wounded child, but is instead the ultimate wounder, a "murderer…within you" (W-pI.196.11:1). It is not innocent, but is instead "the evil self I made" (W-pII.330.2:2). Most important, the ego is not a real being that can be loved, but instead "nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself" (T-4.VI.1:6). As such, it is nothing at all, and so should be neither loved nor hated, but simply let go.
Now, throughout this process, no authoritarian voice has forced her to accept this view. She has voluntarily chosen the Course as her scripture, the interpretive method she uses, and the teachers she respects. She is participating in a process of free and open inquiry, and she can re-evaluate anything at any time. And taking these more external measures seriously doesn't mean that she shouldn't also take her personal experience seriously. Perhaps the experience is so utterly compelling that it forces her to question everything, even the authority of the Course itself. Or perhaps she decides that the external evidence is more compelling, which forces her to question what she heard in the experience.
Even if she ends up concluding that the "insight" she got in the experience is just plain wrong in light of what the Course actually teaches, she can still take the experience seriously. The fact that it moved her so deeply suggests that she may have come into contact with the Holy Spirit in some way. Perhaps the ultimate source of her guidance was real, but she simply misheard it. Perhaps it was really saying that the mind that believes in the ego needs to be loved because it feels wounded: "The pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied" (T-13.III.6:5).
Let's say that this is what she concludes: The teaching that she seemed to receive doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but there was something of real value in the experience. She concludes this on the basis of a careful, discerning examination of both external means of evaluating truth claims and the compelling nature of her inner experience. Now, even after all this examination, she still may be wrong—no method is absolutely certain, and she may rethink this teaching and experience in the future as she learns and grows. But isn't this process more likely to get us closer to the truth than either accepting some teacher's view without question or relying on personal experience alone?
Reflections on the three elements
A number of thoughts come to my mind as I consider the three elements we've discussed. Reflecting on the first element, I know that accepting the words of the Course as an authority over one's own experience is problematic for many people. For me, that decision is rooted in certain assumptions. One is that truth is not easily accessible in this world, an assumption that is certainly in line with the Course.11 Given the fact that we are deeply entrenched in ego and we "have learning handicaps in a very literal sense" (T-12.V.5:1), even our best experiential glimpses into truth, valuable as they are, are likely to be obscured somewhat by the fog of the ego. Paired with this assumption is a companion assumption about the nature of the Course: that something very rare and remarkable happened through Helen Schucman. I believe that, for whatever reason, Helen was able to hear the voice of Jesus with unusual clarity, and therefore what she wrote probably surpasses the clarity we will find through our own connection with truth. While of course these assumptions can never be proven, in my mind the evidence of human insanity coupled with the sheer brilliance and beauty of the Course makes them at least plausible, something a reasonable person can accept.
In addition, I think using the Course as an authoritative scripture is a lot easier than using something like the Bible, as Christians through the ages have tried to do. The Bible consists of many books written over many years by many different authors with many different perspectives.12 There is no systematic path in the Bible. Because of this, it has never been a simple matter for Christians to ground their own spiritual journey in the Bible. Even given the common ground established by orthodoxy, the Bible can be read many different ways, which is one big reason there are so many Christian denominations. But with the Course, we have a single book written in a short period of time by a single author with a single perspective. It offers us a systematic path that provides everything we need along the way. Because of this, those who ground their spiritual journey in the Course don't have to work nearly as hard to find a clear and consistent path.
Reflecting on the second element, though the topic of how to interpret the Course isn't discussed much in Course circles, the importance of finding the right interpretive method can hardly be overstated. This became clear to me as I was writing my portion of One Course, Two Visions, a book that compares the views of the Circle with those of Ken Wapnick. The central difference between the two views is interpretive method: Wapnick sees the Course as mostly metaphor, while the Circle sees it as mostly literal. These two stances lead to profoundly different ways of seeing virtually everything the Course says. For instance, Wapnick doesn't take the Course's statements about the Holy Spirit literally, so in his view the Holy Spirit is actually an illusion that doesn't do anything and doesn't really hear our requests for help in any way. The Circle takes the Course's statements about the Holy Spirit quite literally, so in its view the Holy Spirit is in fact a real, eternal Being created by God, Who actively guides all of our thoughts, words, and actions if we ask for His help. Clearly, which view we choose will have a dramatic impact on how we relate to the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. And since these different views arise directly out of different interpretive methods, our choice of method is not just an academic matter. It has a huge practical effect on how we walk the Course's path.
Reflecting on the third element, I'm sure some may be concerned that a community of Course experts would diminish the power of individual students to draw their own conclusions. Yet I believe that a healthy community of this sort would have the exact opposite effect. Our impression at the Circle is that Course students are much more influenced by prominent Course teachers than they realize. We have observed that perhaps most of the ways students see the Course are picked up, often unconsciously, from other interpreters instead of directly from the Course itself. Having a community of interpreters in constant dialogue with each other could help students become more conscious of which interpreters are influencing their views. Students could listen to experts responding to each other and measure these expert opinions against the Course itself. This would put students in a better position to make up their own minds, rather than being unconsciously swayed by the authority of a particular expert. So, paradoxically, a good community of interpreters can place more power in the hands of students, by giving them a more informed basis to decide for themselves what they believe the Course says.
Finally, I think we need all three elements if the Course is to guide us the way it clearly intends to. The first element is necessary because if we don't accept the Course as authoritative, we won't follow it. The second and third elements are necessary because if we don't have a sound way of interpreting the Course and a community of expert interpreters to help us in this daunting task, we won't know how to follow it. Without these three elements, we'll end up with something similar to the early days of Christian heterodoxy: so many conflicting voices claiming to be authoritative that the voice of the Course is effectively drowned out. With these three elements, we can reap the benefits of letting the Course be a truly effective authority, one that can guide us through the fog of our egos to the clear light of God.
The ego-transcending middle way
Human beings seem to have a tendency to bounce between extremes. They'll try to solve the problems of one extreme by running to the other, which is unfortunately just as problematic. Something like this has happened, I believe, with the extremes of heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Christian bishops like Irenaeus saw problems with extreme heterodoxy, problems I believe were truly there and needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, the bishops' solution was extreme orthodoxy, which brought about its own set of problems. Now, thoughtful people like Elaine Pagels who see clearly the problems of orthodoxy are calling for a return to heterodoxy. Unfortunately, while this helps us escape the problems of orthodoxy, it just reintroduces the problems of heterodoxy. Neither extreme is the whole answer.
Though the specific problems of each extreme are different, I think they do have one thing in common: both extremes tend to reinforce the ego. In extreme orthodoxy, we just believe whatever the external authority figure tells us, which is ego in the form of rigid conformity. In extreme heterodoxy, our only authority is ourselves, which is ego in the form of narcissism. But the method I'm proposing is a middle way that avoids both brands of egoism. Having external and communal ways of discerning truth helps us avoid the pitfalls of narcissism; honoring personal experience and diverse views helps us avoid the pitfalls of rigid conformity. Thus, while of course no method in itself can free us from ego, I think this method is a useful tool that can help us in our quest to transcend the ego.
How can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words? We have to be humble enough to realize that this side of Heaven, there are no absolutely certain answers to the question of how to discern truth. But I believe that the approach I'm advocating gives us our best shot, because it offers the best of both worlds—the best of both orthodoxy and heterodoxy. This is the approach, I believe, that will allow us to find the truth that will set us free.
• • •
1. Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Vintage, 2003), p. 92. Subsequent references to this work will be given as page numbers in parentheses at the end of each citation.
2. The quote is from Thomas 70.
3. As an aside, clearly the view that we are all Sons of God and that salvation comes from seeking and finding the light within is much more in line with the Course than the view that salvation comes from believing in a uniquely divine Jesus (though there is other material in Thomas that doesn't remind me of the Course at all).
4. It should be mentioned that as the orthodox Christian tradition developed, metaphorical scripture interpretation did become a major part of it. However, this was rooted in the principle that the metaphorical interpretation should never contradict the literal interpretation; rather, the metaphorical interpretation should simply augment the literal by revealing deeper meanings. It should also be noted that the literalism discussed here is not the extreme literalism of modern Protestant fundamentalism. Protestant fundamentalism is not a return to an ancient tradition, but a relatively recent reaction against the modern world.
5. This brief account may give the impression that once orthodoxy was in place, all dissent was vanquished for good. This, of course, was not the case, as the history of Christianity shows us. There were plenty of disputes in the centuries that followed, leading to all the diverse Christian denominations we see today. The point here is simply that the Council of Nicea did spell the effective end of the heterodoxy that had been rampant before, and the beginning of the orthodoxy that has been the prevailing current ever since.
6. This dismissiveness is especially apparent in Few Choose to Listen, the second volume of Wapnick's two-part work entitled The Message of 'A Course in Miracles' (Roscoe, NY: Foundation for A Course in Miracles, 1997). Few Choose to Listen is filled with harsh language directed at interpretations other than Wapnick's own. For example: "Differences in interpretation of A Course in Miracles thus become the rallying cry of those hellbent on proving the reality of their perceived separation from God and from certain members of the Sonship" (218). According to this view, differences in interpretation are not the result of interpreters having an honest disagreement about what the Course says; rather, they are the result of those interpreters being "hellbent" on preserving their egos.
7. See especially Ian Patrick's interview of Wapnick (Miracle Worker: Magazine of the UK Miracle Network, Issue 27, March/April 1999). There, Wapnick says, "I do not feel that the Course has interpretations." He also states that "What I say it says, is what it says," and finally makes this startling claim: "I say: 'This is what it [the Course] says.' I think I would be dishonest if I kept saying: 'This is what I think it says,' but I really know it."
8. One example of this progression is this passage about the miracle. Notice how it starts out with taking the miracle on faith—believing in it without experience, simply because the Course tells you it is real—and ends up with that belief leading to an experience that demonstrates the reality of the miracle and the world it rests on:
The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there. (W-pII.13.4:1-3) 9. Of course, a life of compassion and service to others is not inherently a characteristic of heterodoxy; certainly there were heterodox Christians who were self-centered charlatans, and through the ages there have been orthodox Christians who were (and are) paragons of compassion. And while I think compassion is strong evidence that one is doing something right, it doesn't tell us a lot about the truth of particular spiritual ideas. Mother Teresa's exemplary life convinces me that she was in touch with something real and true, but it doesn't convince me at all that the very conservative Catholic doctrine she professed is true.
10. For example, at one point Jesus says, "You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates" (T-11.VIII.5:1-2). Notice how Jesus responds to our complaining about the Course here. He does challenge the complaint, but he does so gently and without taking issue with the fact that we are complaining; he doesn't say, "Stop your complaining and just accept what I tell you without question!"
11. See, for instance, M-12.3:3, which says: "Only very few can hear God's Voice at all, and even they cannot communicate His messages directly through the Spirit which gave them."
12. The gospels themselves were written by authors with quite different perspectives (as we see in Pagels's discussion of John and Thomas), which leads me to an observation. While I don't agree with the conclusions the creators of orthodoxy drew about the central message of Jesus—"Believe I am the only begotten Son of God and you'll be saved"—I find it difficult to be too hard on them. They sincerely wanted to base their church on the real message of Jesus, but I think that by Irenaeus's time, the real message of Jesus was already pretty much lost. Modern Jesus scholars claim that the gospels, including the alternative gospels Pagels discusses, are full of material that is more a reflection of the authors' own views than an accurate account of the teachings of Jesus. So, the creators of orthodoxy probably had little chance of correctly discerning Jesus' real message.
Reader FeedbackGreg! I am grateful for your perceptive essay. In appreciation of the insights of Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong,Marcus Borg, and so many other historical Jesus scholars, so do I thank you, Robert and Allen for your many relevant and thoughtful writings!
This morning, as I reviewed review !V within the current workbook lessons under one of the Course major themes, "My mind holds only what I think with God," I was 'drawn' to Chapter 6 of the text referencing the idea of being vigilant only for God and HIs Kingdom:
"The third step is thus one of protection for your mind, allowing you to identify only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. The voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question. As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparent to you. This is why you must be vigilant on God's behalf. The ego speaks against His creation, and therefore engenders doubt. You cannot go beyond belief until you believe fully." T. 6 - V.-C.7 (page 110, 2nd Ed)
It is within the above paralleled context of God's (Jesus', Holy Spirit's,) Word that I convey my gratitude. Howie
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Greg
Thank you so much for your great article on Elaine Pagels and God's word. I found it very enlightening. I have read Elaine's book several times and it is one of her best, for sure. One point that I would like to interject about your article however, if I can. Probably the ONE big difference between the two eras of Christianity then and now is this media that I am using right now. It is marvelous. I can read your thoughts on the course and immediately call up Ken's or any number of other concepts on the idea. Communication and our capability to use it now is unparalleled in history. In Jesus' day MOST of the people never ventured much beyond their village life. They didn't have the capability nor money to do so. This, of course made a situation where the local religous leader was the authority, whether it be Johannian or Marcionian. If a village was lucky maybe a traveling teacher might come into their synagog to teach. Their world view was totally limited in most cases. This, of course set up the situation of hetrodox belief. Now, however we can even send satallite direct TV to a thousand different locations at once. A marvelous tool.
Today, however we are capable of gaining access to any number of ideas on any subject. A simple push of a few keys on this keyboard opens the world up to me. This being said I guess that my point is that I agree with you 100% on your concept of how to teach the course. I would say, however that I would like to see your ideas implemented but be accompanied with a church structure. Many people (or most, actually) get so much out of the fellowship of an ongoing, structured atmosphere with support and fellowship of others. A set dogma is certainly unnecessary, and in today's atmosphere really unacceptable by so many. That is good. But a church structuring around the Course concepts, I think, would be welcome by most. The LDS (Mormon) religion is an excellent example of the use of communication to keep the church philosophy ongoing.
Thank you for your time in reading this, and also again, thank you for your inciteful writings.-Ralph Renick
Life Is but a Dream
by Robert Perry
What does it mean to say that life is a dream? If we tell people that we believe the world is a dream, what are we thinking when we say that? Obviously we mean that the world is not actually real. Yet I think we mean more than that. Most of us believe that dreams reflect deeper dynamics in the mind, that they spill out of unconscious forces. In this view of dreams, every figure and every image in the dream is symbolic of thought-patterns in the mind.
Hence, to say that life is a dream is to say that our own personal life is populated with figures and images that are put there by our minds as symbols of unconscious thought-patterns. Look around you. That chair is not a real chair. It is just a dream image, a symbol of hidden dynamics in your mind. That person is not a real person (at least as you see her). She is just a dream figure, a symbol of hidden dynamics in your mind. Everything you see was put there by your mind because it symbolically expresses something in your mind.
It certainly does not seem as if this is true, does it? You seem to be just one more player in some larger (rather chaotic) script. You definitely do not seem to be the scriptwriter, nor the director. Surely you are not the one controlling all those figures. You appear to be just one figure moving amongst a collection of many others, all possessing the same independent, unpredictable will that you have. This raises the question: Given how real and objective this world seems, how can we actually see it as nothing more than our own dream?
There is a fascinating section in A Course in Miracles that answers this question. It answers it within the perspective that dreams are symbolic expressions of thought-patterns within the mind. The direction it takes with this perspective, however, is completely unexpected. It is a picture that we never would have come up with on our own. I think it is safe to say, in fact, that no one ever has come up with this picture. The section is called "The Forgiving Dream" (T-29.IX). It is not easy to decipher, but once deciphered it offers a vision of our lives here that is both disturbing and illuminating. After digesting this vision, we may well never see our lives the same again.
A dream of judgment
The section opens by discussing idols. What is an idol? The literal image, of course, is of a stone or wooden figurine to which we pray and which we hope will protect us from the ravages of the world, but which, being lifeless, can do nothing. The term, however, has taken on a much broader meaning in our culture. It refers to any object of extreme devotion. The Course takes this meaning and broadens it even further: idols are those things in the world which we look to for happiness, which we think will save us. In the end, they include all the things we value here. You name it—if we value it to fill the hole in us or to give us strength to face a hard world, it's an idol.
The Course calls us a slave to our idols, and then asks a heartrending question: "What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up?" (1:3; all references, unless otherwise indicated, are from "The Forgiving Dream"). Do you hear the poignancy in this question? How could this divine being, God's Own Son, fall so far that he looks to cars, hamburgers, jewelry, and money to lift him out of the dirt?
The answer: "A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself" (2:1). How is this the answer? How does having a dream of judgment lead us to become a slave of idols ? The rest of the section explains that, and in the process unfolds a fascinating picture of how our lives are nothing but a dream, a dream of judgment.
This simple phrase "dream of judgment" provides a crucial piece of the whole puzzle. It implies that the thought-pattern that produces the dream symbols around us is none other than judgment. Dreams spill out of mental forces, and the dream of our lives spills out of the mental act of judging. What, then, is judgment? Judgment in spiritual circles is often identified more or less exclusively with condemnation. However, the word itself has many meanings, all of which share a single idea: that of measuring something against a standard, and selecting or rejecting it based on how well that thing measures up. The simple process of choosing a tomato to buy from the supermarket involves judgment. We have in mind the ideal tomato we want to buy—plump, ripe, unblemished. That is the standard. We then measure a particular tomato against that ideal. If it comes close enough we select it. If it does not, we reject it. The Course points out, however, that "judgment always involves rejection" (T-3.VI.2:4). We always have some slight regret about the tomatoes we select. They are never the perfect tomato.
This process of measuring against a standard, and selecting or rejecting based on that measurement, is the process by which we erect the complicated structure of our lives. We are always deciding what to include in our lives and what to leave out, whose calls we return and whose we don't. Somehow, the Course is saying, this process not only builds our lives through guiding our behaviors, it also reaches out directly from our minds and literally dreams our lives into place. To understand how it does that, I will ask you to get out a piece of paper and draw a diagram consisting of three concentric circles. Draw the outer circle so that it fills the page. Then draw the inner circle about two or three inches across. Then draw the middle circle in between these two. Label the outer circle "the dream," the inner circle "the dreamer," and the middle circle "the idols." At appropriate points I'll invite you to fill in parts of this diagram so that you can see how this whole picture applies to your own life.
You, the dreamer
In the center of the picture is you, the dreamer. In this perspective, you are more than just the central figure in your life. You are the one dreaming the whole thing up, and doing so, as we said, via your judgments. These judgments, of course, are quite often about weightier issues than what tomato to buy. They are about who to include in our lives and who to include in our heart—and who to exclude. We use the same process as with the tomato: we measure people against an ideal, we select or reject them accordingly, and even the selection is never completely wholehearted. Since no one measures up perfectly to all of our standards, there is always some element of rejection.
The toll this constant rejecting takes on our psyches is incalculable. We turn the weapon of our judgment on ourselves. We decide that we do not measure up to God's standard, that we have made ourselves sinful, that we have put out the light within us (4:2). We condemn ourselves and become afraid to look within upon the terrible deformity that we assume is at the core of our being. As the section says, "Nor can he know the Self he has condemned" (2:8).
If you will, go ahead and write your name in the center circle. And under your name write "judgment," to identify the dynamic in you that produces the dream.
The dream
The colossal guilt we feel over our judgments is almost entirely unconscious, yet this guilt is the key to how our judgments produce the dream of our lives. Under the sway of our guilt we lay a penalty on ourselves (see 3:5, 3:6, 3:7, 10:6)—the punishment we think we deserve for being so judgmental. This penalty is more than just internal; we cannot keep it safely confined within the walls of our minds. It overflows into the dream. Ask yourself: If your mind was consumed with guilt, filled with the conviction that you deserved to be punished, and if this very mind was what was dreaming your life, what sort of life would it dream?
Wouldn't you dream a life in which everything was constantly punishing you? Wouldn't you dream a world full of disease and earthquakes and auto accidents and fires? Wouldn't you dream an existence in which you were always looking over your shoulder, ceaselessly building dikes against the flood, always wondering when danger would catch up with you? And wouldn't you dream a life story in which, in the end, you inevitably received the death penalty?
According to the Course, that is exactly what we have done. It calls this world "a dream of punishment" (T-27.VII.1:3). It claims the world is "the delusional system of those made mad by guilt" (T-13.In.2:2). The reason the world always seems to be punishing us is because, quite simply, we dreamt it out of a massive guilt-complex.
Thus, the outer circle of the diagram is filled with all the horrible things that we fear will happen to us and that we spend our lives trying to stave off. If you will, then, please spend a minute writing in that outer circle those disastrous things that you try to make sure never happen to you. Lesson 14 in the Workbook asks you to list "your personal repertory of horrors" (W-pI.14.6:1) and mentions wars, airplane crashes, cancer, and heart attacks as possible examples. What I'm asking you to do is write down this personal repertory in the outer circle labeled "the dream."
Once you have written these horrors down, look at them and realize that these are all the things that you secretly believe you deserve because of how judgmental you are. That is why they are part of your dream. That is why you have to expend so much energy pushing them away, because you are unconsciously drawing them to you as your presumed just desserts.
The idols
This is where the idols come in. They are the middle circle, the buffer zone between you and that repertory of horrors. Their purpose is to protect you from those horrors.
I said earlier that the idols are all the things we look to in this world for satisfaction, pleasure, and security. In this section, however, idols are primarily people . This is especially clear in paragraph 7. It says that when we see the idols differently, they will be "perceived as brothers" (7:8), and that at this point, "no one is used" (this phrase occurs twice, in 7:4 and 7:5) to meet our ego needs. "No one" refers to the idols, and this implies that an idol is some one rather than some thing .
Function #1: to protect us from the dream
In this context, then, idols are the people we surround ourselves with to protect us from the army that is constantly threatening to invade the peaceful sanctuary of our lives. Isn't that exactly what we hope that the people around us will do—protect us from life's travesties? Our doctor is there to protect us from disease. Our mechanic is there to protect us from our car not working. Our spouse is there to protect us from a life of loneliness. Our friends are there to defend us when our character is attacked. Our therapist is there to protect us against falling apart. Our employer is there to protect us against having no paycheck. Our local police force is there to protect us against criminals. And our parents (if still alive) are there to protect us when all the other systems of protection fail.
These people are essential, aren't they? Just imagine what our lives would be like without either them or their equivalent. All the threats the world holds would come crashing down on us. We would be alone, sick, homeless and destitute, prey to anyone and anything that came along.
Take a moment now, if you will, and write down in the middle circle the people you have collected to yourself to protect you from all the terrible things that could happen to you if you didn't have the help of others. While you are writing down their names, you might think about what, in your eyes, each one is there to protect you from. It may be a positive danger, such as disease, or simply a lack—a lack of companionship, a lack of money, a lack of pleasure, etc.
What does it mean to say that these people are idols? It means that, in our minds, we have turned them into mute pieces of stone who have no life of their own, whose only purpose is to magically protect us from the dream. We might imagine ourselves surrounded by a ring of stone idols. As we look closer, we see that each one closely resembles some person in our lives. He has been stripped of personhood; all he is now is a mere brick in the wall that keeps the dark unknown from overrunning our lives.
This section uses another image which conveys much the same content. It says that we have made these people into our toys:
You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. (4:4-7) Have you ever felt as if you were other people's toy? That your only job was to "talk and think and feel and speak for them," to be the instrument of their will in their private war with the world? If you have, you know what the Course is getting at here. Only it is applying this not to others, but to ourselves. It is saying that we have made our friends and family and colleagues into our toy soldiers, whose job is to fight our battles for us exactly as we order them to.
Now we can see the answer to the question I asked near the beginning: How does having a dream of judgment lead to us becoming a slave of idols ? The answer seems so obvious now. Because your dream spills out of guilt over being judgmental, you are desperate for idols to protect you from the punishment you lay upon yourself. As the section says, "Idols [middle circle]…are interposed between your judgment [center circle] and the penalty it brings [outer circle]" (3:7).
This, however, is just the first of the functions we assign to our idols. We have given them two additional, more hidden and perverse functions.
Function #2: to protect us from our own judgments
The toy soldier discussion leads right into the second function of our idols. As we saw, our idols are there to fight on our behalf. They are the instruments of our goal of keeping the undesirables out of our life, to keep our enemies outside the gate. This, of course, is a function of judgment. As we saw earlier, judgment rejects. It measures things against a standard and then rejects those things—and those people—that don't measure up.
In other words, we have hired our idols to carry out our judgments on our behalf. We have hired them as implements of rejection, making sure the undesirable people and things are shut out of our lives. That is how they protect us. Yet it is these very judgments that are the whole problem. Our guilt over them is what causes us to dream into place that outer circle, whose horrors are always pressing against our outer wall.
Rather than giving up our judgments, what we have done is to hand them over to our team of hired thugs. We are like a Mafia godfather. Not only do we surround ourselves with underlings as protection, we order hits that never get traced back to us. The hit man goes to jail, while we stay free, even though he was just carrying out our will. Can we not see this principle in our own lives? Our spouse is supposed to refute attacks on our character so that we don't have to. Our lawyer is supposed to play dirty, and when he does we can say, "That wasn't me. That was just my lawyer being a lawyer." The people in our lives are supposed to side with us against our enemies, and even fight those enemies off, while all the time we stand in the middle, looking innocent.
I saw a great example of this recently. A TV news magazine was investigating the questionable financial dealings of a famous televangelist. They were unable to get a response from him, and so they finally approached him on the street, only to be roughly pushed away by his bodyguards. Somehow, though, they managed to speak to him there, and he was surprisingly agreeable and cooperative. He promised to talk to them later, but when "later" came, he again refused to talk. There on the street, he appeared so innocent. The bodyguards, in their hostility, clearly did not understand him. Yet in the end, they were shown to be the pure instruments of his will. They were his own judgments moving about in the world, masquerading as independent people.
This is the second function of our idols: to make it appear that our judgments are not our own, that they belong to our supporters instead. This serves the crucial purpose of preserving our innocence, not only in the public eye, but in our own eyes. Now we can say to our troubled conscience, "That wasn't my attack. My husband was just sticking up for me." The section puts it this way:
The child…fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. (5:5-6) We can easily picture a scenario that fits the literal sense of this passage. Imagine a child who has murderous thoughts toward her parents. Just think of how frightening such thoughts would be for her. Thus, to maintain her stability, she gives her thoughts to her doll. Now it is the doll who talks about murdering Mommy and Daddy. The child is innocent; it is her doll that is evil. Of course, in this metaphor, we are the child, and all of our protectors are the doll. While they carry our evil thoughts for us, we appear to be innocent. That is how frightened we are of our judgments.
Our idols, then, serve the dual function of saving us from all the dangerous things outside us and from our own dangerous thoughts within. As the middle circle, they protect us from the outer circle and the inner circle.
Function #3: to betray us
The final function of our idols is to betray us. That is what they end up doing, isn't it? We ask them to protect us, and they seem to consent, but then they stab us in the back. In fact, when it is all said and done, they are the ones we need protection from . We buy a handgun to keep out intruders, and then we are shot with it by a member of our own family.
This betrayal is such a basic part of the human experience that it hardly needs pointing out. However, the point will be driven home more fully if you will go to your diagram. Look at each one of the names you listed in the idols circle. With each one, ask yourself, "Do I feel that this person in some way betrayed me?" Perhaps he failed to carry out his function of protecting you. Worse yet, perhaps he ended up doing to you the exact thing he was supposed to protect you from. If you feel that this person betrayed you, then draw an arrow, a line of attack, from his or her name to the inner circle, to you. (At this point in classes I often ask students to take their Course hats off, which means: don't try to answer according to Course theory; answer according to how you actually feel inside.)
It is remarkable how betrayed we all feel. It is as if we hired a team of bodyguards, paid them lavishly, gave them bonuses, only to have them all come after us. We all know how this feels, but do we know why it happens?
According to this section, the idols simply carry out our wishes. True, they are people with their own mind and will, but our life is our dream. We are the scriptwriter. If they want to be in our play, they have to read our lines. They have to play the role we have written for them, or they will have to leave and take part in someone else's play. And the role we write for them requires them, sooner or later, to betray us. Yet why would we write this into the script? The section gives this subtle explanation:
Whenever you feel fear in any form…be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal. (9:1-2) What does this mean? Remember that we give our idols our thoughts of judgment to carry out for us. Yet these are the very thoughts that lead us to feel guilty and to encircle ourselves with a dream of punishment. These thoughts, then, are an act of self-betrayal. To hand them over to our idols is to subtly hire those idols to betray us. Think of the girl with the doll. Her thoughts of wanting to murder her parents are thoughts that so attack her sense of stability that she has to offload them onto the doll. But now the doll is expressing thoughts that attack the girl. To act out these thoughts the doll has to attack her. Given this, how could the girl not secretly fear that the doll will turn on her? And if the girl was in fact in a dream, in which all the events were puppeted by her own mind, isn't this exactly what the doll would do? The section mentions this very thing:
Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. (5:1-2) This all may sound a bit weird, but it makes perfect sense if we reflect on the following:
1. Images and figures in our dreams symbolize thoughts in the mind.
2. Our idols are figures in our dream. They, therefore, must symbolize thoughts in our minds.
3. These dream figures symbolize our judgments. Our judgments keep unwanted people and things out of our lives, and that is precisely the function of these dream figures.
4. Our judgments betray us. They purport to serve us, but they instead make us appear guilty and deserving of punishment in our own eyes.
Thus, if these dream figures are our judgments personified, their behavior will actually be the behavior of our judgments. Therefore, they, like our judgments, will betray us.
This has power to change our perspective on all the betrayal we have experienced over the course of our lives. It says that all those people who turned on us were just reading the lines we gave them, just playing their role in our dream. With this in mind, look at your diagram. Look at all the arrows of betrayal going from your idols to you. Try to realize that those betrayals were just a case of those people playing the part you assigned them. As dream figures, they symbolize thoughts in you. They symbolize your judgments. Your judgments police the borders of your life, keeping out the undesirables, which is exactly the function of these particular dream figures. As your protectors and defenders, they are your judgments personified. And just as your judgments betray you, so do these dream figures. Just as your judgments bring punishment to you, so do these dream figures. That is the role you hired them to play in your dream of judgment. All they did was read their lines well.
A vision of our lives as a dream
This is a disturbing vision, to say the least. It offers a powerful explanation for how life is but a dream. But rather than picturing us rowing our boat merrily down the stream, it seems to show us being up the creek without a paddle. There are immense benefits to this view, however. To really appreciate those, let us first review it on two different levels, a more superficial level and a deeper level.
On the first level, even though it looks as if we are just trying to make the best of a tough life, we are really playing the role of king. We stand in the center of a grand drama, a drama that is all about us and our interests. We keep at a distance all those who might compromise our safety. We exclude all those whose low status would sully our highness. And we surround ourselves with all those who can help in this enterprise. Consequently, the buffer zone between us and the rest of the world is filled with bodyguards, ministers, attendants, servants, and armies. They are nothing more than pawns in our chess game. If they play their role well and keep the king protected, we reward them. If not, we toss them out on the street. All of this excluding and including based on the standard of our personal interests is one continuous game of judgment. We are in essence playing god:
The dream of judgment is a children's game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. (6:4-7) After all of our vigilant managing of our world through judgment, we can't understand why everything goes wrong, why our generals attempt a coup, why our bodyguards abandon us in our hour of need, and why our lover stabs us in the middle of the night.
To explain this we have to go to the next level down. On this deeper level, we are not a king or a god at all. We are just a child playing a game, having a dream. All the figures in this dream appear to be animated by their own independent will, but in fact they are all just toys, just dream symbols. We are the ones pulling their strings. "You do not realize that you are making them act out for you" (T-18.II.5:6). Because the central dynamic of the dream is judgment, we, the child, are filled with guilt. And out of this guilt comes a dream in which everything turns against us. We lose control, not because it's not our dream, but because we are using the dream to pay ourselves back for our sins. As the above passage said, the dream is governed by the laws we made-the laws of crime and punishment.
What I love about this vision is that it deals with the nitty-gritty of human life, things that we often avoid talking about in spiritual circles. It deals with the calamities and brutalities we spend our lives trying to escape. It deals with the pervasive fact of betrayal. It deals with our act of playing god through judgment, by which we choose friends and enemies, and then use our friends against our enemies. While looking all this ugliness straight in the face, it then offers a logical explanation for how this could really be our own dream. What makes it so hard to see this life as our dream is that so many things seem to happen outside of our will, so many cruel and senseless things that we cannot imagine actually choosing. According to this vision, the very dynamic of judgment that stands at the heart of this dream leads inexorably to a dream full of pain that seems to be thrust on us from the outside.
• It leads to a life in which punishment for our judgments is always looming on the horizon, threatening to rain catastrophe down upon us.
• It leads us to enslave ourselves to idols, who become our protectors against this looming catastrophe.
• It leads us to have these idols act out our judgments for us, so that we no longer seem to be the owner of those judgments.
• And it leads our idols to betray us, for they are simply acting out the judgments that betray us.
In light of this, look around you, look at your diagram-could it be true that this life quite literally is just a dream, a dream of judgment, a dream of punishment for your judgments? Could this life be your own private passion play, in which a divine mind wraps itself in the imaginary drama of paying for its sins against love?
If we can see this life as just a dream, however dark a dream it may be, then we have in our hand a great gift. We don't have to take it all so seriously. After all, we are not really here. This is just our dream. We dream that we are judgmental. And so we dream a world that punishes us. And so we dream that we have protectors. And we dream that they betray us. None of it is really happening. It's all in our mind. We are just perceiving certain thoughts as if they were outside our mind. We take our thoughts of deserving punishment, externalize them, and see them as enemies and disasters. We take our thoughts of wanting to keep the enemies and disasters away, externalize them, and see them as friends and protectors. We are so invested in disowning our thoughts that we convince ourselves that all the dream symbols we look upon are truly external to us, and that we are "but a part" (5:9) of their world. Given the way those dream symbols behave, however, we can thank God that life is but a dream.
The way out
What a mess this dream is! How do we get out? The answer is elegantly simple:
How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will waken. (2:3-5) It sounds simple, and it is, yet judgment is not some minor detail in the dream; it is the engine that drives the dream. That engine is running all the time. Judgment is the constant act of measuring everything against our standards, and the constant reaction of displeasure when things do not measure up. Let's face it, virtually nothing measures up completely. We never find that perfect tomato-or partner, or house, or job, or life. We never even find the perfect traffic conditions. The amount of displeasure that can result from a quick drive to the supermarket is amazing, and unsettling. Giving up judgment means training ourselves to turn off that steady reaction of displeasure to the daily stream of events.
To the extent we can actually turn it off, our guilt will drop away, and hence our fear will, too. Now we will no longer fear those catastrophes, for with our newly cleansed conscience, we will no longer see them as our just desserts. "Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety….So do your childish terrors melt away" (10:1-2). And as our fear level goes down, there will be an added benefit: we will no longer need to use our friends as toy soldiers to defend the castle. Simply put, we will stop using people. We will awaken from our game of being the lonely king surrounded by toys, pawns, and idols, and find that we are surrounded by brothers :
No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away….And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love. (7:5,8) All we have to do is give up judgment and the whole painful structure of human life is solved. The enemies who punish, the friends who betray, the self we condemn-all of it is gone. "And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy" (7:6). All it requires is giving up judgment. Do you think it is worth it?
The Joy of Realizing That This Place Is Hell
by Greg Mackie
Have you ever wondered if this world is hell? I think that deep down, underneath all of our paeans to Mother Earth and popular songs proclaiming "what a wonderful world," we all suspect that this is so. It is a truism that the world is crazy. We joke about Murphy's Law, which says that everything that can go wrong will. We have the word "snafu," which (in its G-rated version) is an acronym for "situation normal, all fouled up." Natural disasters are seen by many as punishment for our sins. Not only do we wonder if we're being punished for our bad deeds, but we even have a witticism that says no good deed goes unpunished. As the saying goes, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. However much the party line may trumpet the miracle of life, I think the dissident in all of us is whispering in our ear that Thomas Hobbes was right: Life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
In other words, this place is hell. A Course in Miracles certainly says so. Now of course, it also says this place is an illusion generated by our perception, an illusion that is neutral in and of itself and can be transformed with healed perception. But my point here is simply that the world as it normally operates, under the tyranny of the ego, is a hellish place. In the Course, it is described as "the hell we made" (W-pI.122.9:2). The body we seem to inhabit here is described as a means to "fence [the Son of God] into hell without escape" (W-pII.5.4:2). Everything here is painfully limited, " and what is limited cannot be Heaven. So it must be hell" (T-26.X.2:9-10). Indeed, this world is "the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true" (T-16.V.3:6). And the Course is full of descriptions of this world that Hobbes would find congenial with his own:
The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end. (W-pI.129.2:3-6) For years now, I've believed that what the Course says is true: This place is hell. Yet lately, perhaps due to some recent encounters with some pretty hellish situations, this belief has sunk in on a more visceral level. Yet to my surprise, while this is a depressing idea, it has brought with it a curious joy as well. There is something refreshing about getting out of denial and admitting a hard truth. And to the degree that I'm really letting this idea in, my work with the Course has become deeper, more meaningful, and more vital. There's nothing like recognizing just how bad the disease is to make you really want the cure.
In this article, then, I want to describe more fully my reasons for believing that this place is hell, and show how this realization can actually be a gateway to joy. Fair warning: The first part of this article will be rough sledding. I realize that I may come off as a bitter sourpuss, which is ironic since people who know me will tell you I'm actually a pretty upbeat guy most of the time. However, I ask you to bear with me. The point of laying out the depressing stuff is to set the table for the joy that follows, so hang in there. I promise that there is a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel.
This place is hell
The longer I've lived in this world and the more I've let the Course have its way with me, the more it has sunk in that every level of the world we see is a nightmare. First, there is the physical universe as a whole. Yes, astronomers like Carl Sagan have told us how magnificent those "billions and billions" of stars are. Yes, those pictures from the Hubble are pretty spectacular. But the fact is, the reason we can enjoy those things is that we're very far away from them. We're like the aliens in a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon I once saw, oohing and ahhing at a thermonuclear war on earth because (for them) it was a great fireworks show. Our earth (and any earthlike planet out there) is a tiny island of life in a hostile ocean of burning balls of gas, cosmic dust, and most of all cold emptiness. And scientists tell us it is all inexorably winding down, dying a slow but inevitable death. Recent evidence suggests that the universe will keep expanding until it burns out; what started with a Big Bang will go out with a whimper.
And even this island of life is no picnic—well, in a way I guess it is a picnic, for it is certainly a feeding frenzy. The circle of life on earth is a never-ending war, a dog-eat-dog world of vulnerable bodies which must kill and consume other bodies to survive—what Robert has often called the "circle of lunch." The Course puts it bluntly: " Devouring is nature's 'law of life'" (M-27.3:7). And while the process as a whole is terribly grim, some versions of it seem especially twisted. There are "slave-maker ants," which enslave the colonies of other ant species by invading, killing the other colony's queen, and rubbing her scent onto the slave-makers' queen so the invaded colony will follow her. Recently, I read about a parasite that lives in mice but must complete its life cycle in the body of a cat. So, to ensure that it ends up in a cat, it destroys the specific area of the mouse's brain where the fear of cats is located, so the mouse will make no effort to avoid cats and thus inevitably be eaten by one. And so the great circle of life goes on—that is, until it too ends in death, which will inevitably happen when our sun burns out, if not before due to some human blunder.
This brings us to the human world. At the most basic level, we human beings are participants in the biological circle of lunch. We too kill and consume other bodies to survive. Our bodies too are vulnerable, prey to countless illnesses and calamities of all kinds, from devastating ones like cancer and permanently crippling accidents to mundane everyday ones like colds and stubbed toes. Pain is our constant companion; even things as simple as breathing and eating are set into motion by the pain of lacking oxygen and food. Even the healthiest of lives is filled with the suffering that comes from just being in a body.
Then there is the human social world, which most of the time is just a more sophisticated version of dog-eat-dog. It is above all a world of egocentric self-interest; just as living things in nature consume other living things in order to survive, so human beings exploit other human beings in order to be king or queen of the hill. We see this on every level, from nations warring against nations to spouses warring against spouses. Yes, real love does exist and people are capable of selfless acts, but most of the time they are looking out for number one. Everybody is fighting for the spoils of war: territory, money, mates, prestige—to use the Course's term, specialness. This battle is fraught with pain and suffering of myriad kinds: poverty, loneliness, humiliation, constant worry and fear, and the profound guilt that is the inevitable result of participating in this free-for-all. And though we like to joke that he who dies with the most toys wins, this little joke contains a sobering truth: Like everything else, we die, and therefore all of our striving is in vain. You really can't take it with you.
The bottom line is that we're living in a place where attack, pain, suffering, and ultimately death are the fundamental facts of everyday existence. Now, let's think about the ramifications of this. What kind of people, in our usual way of thinking, most deserve to be attacked, to suffer, to die? Criminals, right? We punish criminals by inflicting some sort of suffering or deprivation on them, and the most vile offenders get the death penalty. If this is so, then doesn't the fact that we're living in a place of attack, suffering, and death suggest that someone or something regards us as criminals? Haven't you ever caught yourself wondering what nameless cosmic crime you must have committed to deserve all this?
Now for the punch line: In our religious traditions, we have a name for the place where people are punished for the crimes (or "sins") they have committed. It is a place they go after they die, where they are attacked with various forms of suffering, an abode where they are separated from goodness and love, a state which the book of Revelation in the Bible calls the "second death." What is the name of this place? It is, of course, hell. And since our world matches this description so well, it's difficult not to conclude that this place is hell.
Objections to realizing that this place is hell
I'm guessing that as you read the above litany of horror, you probably found yourself resisting it in one way or another. I know I have. Surely, we say to ourselves, it can't be that bad. Surely there must be some way out of the conclusion that this world is hell. I don't think there is a way out, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to find one. In my experience both with Course students and in the larger world, I've heard a number of objections to the dark picture presented above (some of which I myself raised earlier in my life). Here are just a few of the more common ones, with my comments following:
Lots of good things happen here too; don't be so one-sided
When I lay out the bad news like I just did above, I often hear something like, "Don't be such a gloomy Gus. What about all the good stuff? What about sunsets, and kittens, and romantic candlelight dinners?" There are several problems with this, though. First, from the Course's standpoint, most of the things we call good and pleasurable are actually aspects of the system of attack, suffering, and death in pleasant disguise. The sunsets are part of this hostile physical universe, the kittens are predators who take part in the circle of lunch, and the romantic candlelight dinners are often skirmishes in the war for specialness. Second, even if these things are good, the bad can descend upon us without warning at any time. And if we live in a world where we constantly flip-flop between pleasure and pain, isn't the overall situation hell? Finally, no matter how many good things happen in the course of life on earth, it always ends badly, because it ends in death. The end of a story is what determines the kind of story it is; a story with a sad ending is called a tragedy. And is this not hell?
You don't really have it so bad; count your blessings
There's certainly a grain of truth to this one, because compared to so many people in the world, I personally don't have it so bad. I live in a free country, and have a good home, plenty to eat, lots of friends, good health, fulfilling work, a rewarding spiritual life, and no major tragedies so far. I can count many genuine blessings in my life. But this doesn't negate any of the things I've said about life in this world. The fact that my life is less painful than most is hardly cause for gratitude, "for who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more?" (W-pI.195.1:5-6). And of course, like everyone else I have my own sufferings, and I too will die in the end. If even the most fortunate people have lots of pain in their lives and will end up just as dead as the less fortunate, isn't that hell?
You have to have the bad to appreciate the good; embrace the opposites
This argument says that in order to fully appreciate the good in our lives, we must have a standard of comparison. Therefore, we need to experience pain in order to really see how great the joy is. I've never understood the appeal of this idea. It certainly does seem that the pleasures of this world are sweeter when we've tasted the pains as well, but that's hardly a reason to think this world is wonderful. Why couldn't we live in a place where we can experience a joy without opposite, as the Course says we do in Heaven? To me, a place where we must experience pain in order to really experience joy is, well, hellish.
Individuals suffer and die, but the glorious whole goes on; celebrate Gaia
In this view, the earth is seen as a living organism (the popular understanding of the "Gaia hypothesis"); all of us are parts of Mother Earth's body. Therefore, there's no reason to feel sad when individuals suffer and die; it's no different than cells dying in a human body. Individuals may pass away, but the glorious whole of life goes on. This is another idea that has never had any appeal for me, since I happen to be one of those unfortunate individuals in this scenario. The human version of this, in which individual people are seen as merely disposable cogs of the State, is called a totalitarian regime and is regarded as evil. Why, then, should a biological totalitarian regime be regarded as glorious?
To use another illustration: Imagine a war that has been going on for ages, in which each side is of equal strength. Soldiers are constantly getting killed at the front, but they are constantly being replenished by new recruits who take their turn at the front. This has been going on for as long as anyone can remember. If you were to say how horrible it is that so many soldiers are dying, would you be comforted by someone saying, "Well yes, individual soldiers die, but it's all good because the war as a whole goes on"? Yet a version of this is the exact situation we have on earth. Sounds like hell to me.
Pain and suffering helps you grow; learn the lesson
In theodicy, the area of theology that deals with the problem of evil in the world, this is often called the "soul-making" theory: Pain and suffering exist in order to help us learn and grow and develop; without pain to teach us lessons, we would forever be in an immature state and would never grow into our full potential. In New Age circles, this takes the form of seeing everything as a lesson. My objection to this idea is along the lines of my objection to the idea of needing opposites: A world in which pain is necessary to learn lessons is hardly a wonderful world. Why couldn't God have created us fully formed, without the need to learn painful lessons, as the Course says He did? True, the Course says we can learn through pain, but this is because the Holy Spirit has given us a way out of the pain we've unnecessarily inflicted upon ourselves. A world in which we must learn through pain is like a giant Skinner box, and we're just experimental rats pressing levers that sometimes give us tasty pellets and other times give us painful shocks. Welcome to hell.
Calling this place "hell" is just your own judgment; think positive
I get this one a lot in Course groups. The Course says that we should relinquish our judgment, and some take this to mean that seeing the world as hell is merely our own judgment, which we must exchange for a more positive view. However, viewing the world as hell is not simply my judgment (though my judgment can certainly piggyback on that view); it is what the Course itself says about the world, as we can see in the quotes that began this article. "Thinking positive" in the way we normally conceive of that is actually the primary way of keeping the ego in business: It is listening to " the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven" (W-pI.73.6:1), and thus a way of holding on to our own judgment. Giving up our judgment means accepting the Holy Spirit's judgment in its place. If He thinks this world is hell-and He does, if the Course is any indicator—then giving up our judgment means seeing with Him that this world is hell.
Everything is in divine order; realize that it's all perfect
This is another one I get a lot in Course groups, yet the Course never says that this world is perfect. On the contrary, we've seen from the quotes that began this article just how dark the Course's view of this world is. Elsewhere, it depicts this world as " a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" (T-13.In.4:1), and pleads with us to recognize that "this is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity" (T-14.I.2:6). Rather than divine order, our world is maintained by "laws of chaos" (T-23.II.Heading); rather than perfect, "It is born of error, and it has not left its source" (W-pII.3.1:2). It's true that the Course also says that everything here has been incorporated into the Holy Spirit's plan for salvation, but this is similar to His enabling us to learn through pain. It's not that the pain and suffering and insanity of this world are perfect, but rather that He has taken all of our self-made imperfection and installed a doorway out of it. He's taken our lemons and made lemonade, which testifies not to the perfection of this world but to the Holy Spirit's genius for getting us out of it. The fact that He's installed a doorway to Heaven here doesn't mean this place isn't hell.
We don't really know what it's all about; surrender to the mystery
Appealing to "mystery" is the last refuge when all other arguments have failed. The appeal to mystery says that given our human limitations, we just aren't capable of understanding how it all works. After all, "God works in strange and mysterious ways." Therefore, how do we know there isn't an explanation that, if we were capable of discerning it, would reveal how good and glorious and necessary this world really is? Well, it's certainly true that our understanding is limited. However, it is perfectly reasonable to look at our experience and develop plausible theories to explain that experience, and we've seen that the hell theory is quite plausible. The Course itself regards the appeal to mystery as patently absurd: "[God] does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey's end, why He did this to you" (T-22.I.3:11). Yes, it's possible that this statement is wrong, but is it really likely that a loving God could have a satisfactory explanation for this? Many have concluded that He couldn't; indeed, the horror of life in this world is probably the number one argument for atheism. Given our actual experience in this world, I think the burden of proof is on those who say it isn't hell.
The joy of realizing that this place is hell
If you've made it this far, you should get a T-shirt saying, "I survived the first part of Greg's hell article." Now, at last, it's time for the good news: Just as seeing the true nature of an illness can open us up to the cure, so seeing that this place is hell, while initially sobering, can open us up to the pathway out of hell. To illustrate this, I want to trace a life journey that many of us who believe (or want to believe) in a loving God take: a journey that first sinks us into the dark night of despair but then, just when we think all hope is lost, miraculously lifts us into the glorious dawn of a joyous new life. This is a journey I have taken in my own life. As you read, I encourage you to reflect on your life experience and see if you too have been walking down this road.
If God is Love, why is there so much pain and suffering in this world?
This question is the catalyst that sets into motion the journey I'm describing. Among those who want to believe in a loving God, I don't think there's anyone who hasn't wrestled with this issue, because there is such a stark contrast between the God of Love and the slaughterhouse He is said to have created. This has been a burning issue for me for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, long before I was able to articulate the issue with the clarity that I can now, I struggled with this. I've always believed in a loving God; this idea just seems to be part of my being, as necessary to survival as food and water. But an animal would die, a natural disaster would strike, some senseless human cruelty would be inflicted on me or someone else, and I would find myself crying out, "Why, God? Why do you allow this?" Looking back on it now, it seems that my whole life has really been driven by the collision between my loving God and this cruel world. I know I'm not alone in this.
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him
The disconnect between a loving God and this world is very uncomfortable, so we try desperately to find ways to reconcile the good God we yearn to believe in with the evil we experience on a daily basis. God seems to be slaying us all the time (the heading here is from the biblical book of Job), yet we tell ourselves in myriad ways that we can trust and praise and justify Him and His painful world in spite of it all. I've listed some of the ways we try to do this above; there are many more. And when we run out of answers, we start grasping at straws; when transpersonal theorist Ken Wilber was asked why God produced all this, he replied, "It's no fun having dinner alone."
This issue continued to haunt me as I entered college. I studied European intellectual history, and there I encountered a famous expression of the dilemma: "If God is God, He is not good; if God is good, He is not God." In other words, if God is the only God and fully in charge of everything, He must have evil in His nature; if He is truly all good, He must not be fully in charge—there must be a competing evil power at work in the world. The logic of this was impeccable to me, but I simply could not shake my belief in a one-and-only loving God, anymore than I could shake my belief in gravity. After college I went on a spiritual journey through Raja Yoga, Zen Buddhism, various New Age teachings, and New Thought. Yet while I benefited in many ways from all of these teachings, and I tried to convince myself that they gave me what I was seeking, none really offered a satisfactory answer to my most burning question.
This place is hell; goodbye, cruel world
Like someone with an abusive spouse, we try mightily to love this world as it beats us into submission, yet I think something in all of us realizes it's a losing effort. I think we all suspect that there is no reconciliation of this world with a loving God—life on earth is, as I mentioned earlier, a potent argument for atheism. This place is hell, and as much as we deny it, our recognition of this seeps to the surface in all sorts of ways.
Of course, for some people, the recognition of the hellish nature of this world becomes fully conscious. And though many who reach this conclusion try to brush off its effects through flippant irony and gallows humor, let's face it: This is a devastating realization, one that can bring with it bitterness, deep depression, and even suicidal thoughts. " Men have died on seeing this" (T-31.IV.3:4), the Course tells us. Once we conclude that this place is hell and there is no hope of happiness here, what's the point of going on? Goodbye, cruel world. Of course, most of us never get to the point of actual suicide, but I think many of us give up one way or another as the depressing truth sets in.
As I said above, none of the answers in any of the paths I tried satisfied me. Try as I might, I just couldn't reconcile this place of such profound suffering with a loving God. The world really did look like hell to me, yet I still couldn't let the idea of a loving God go. I never completely lost hope and I certainly wasn't suicidal, but over time I did find myself becoming sad, confused, jaded, and lost. My life was fully functional on the surface, yet deep inside there was a tension that wouldn't go away. I found ways to minimize and deny the extent of the problem, but deep down I desperately wanted resolution.
I was in darkness, but now I see the light!
You've probably been wondering when I would get to the joy. Well, here is the turning point in the journey. While it's true that many people who have concluded that this world is hell fall into despair and just give up in one way or another, there is an alternative to despair. The realization that no happy alternatives exist in the world as we know it can lead to the joyous realization "that there is a real alternative instead" (T-31.IV.6:1). There is something glorious that transcends this nightmare world. This is the beginning of the joy that comes from realizing that this place is hell.
There are many examples of this realization. All of us are familiar with inspiring stories, about both famous people and ordinary folks, in which someone who was in the deepest pit of despair had an epiphany and "saw the light." Among the famous, there was the slave trader John Newton, who in his hymn "Amazing Grace" unforgettably depicted his transformation from a "wretch" to the realization that he was a beloved child of God. There was C.S. Lewis, who described his journey from atheism to faith in Surprised by Joy. There were Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, who in the dark depths of their alcoholism found the light of recovery in each other and went on to extend that light by founding Alcoholics Anonymous. There's Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle, who says he "lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed by periods of suicidal depression"; he decided one day that he could no longer "live with himself," and this decision led to a profound experience of awakening. There's the popular spiritual teacher Byron Katie, who was living in a halfway house and wrestling with depression and suicidal thoughts until her own transformation occurred. The list goes on and on.
Notice a common element in all of these examples: The life-changing experience of seeing the light comes out of the person's recognition (however this is expressed) that his or her current life is hell. Of course, these people didn't necessarily conclude that the entire world as we know it is hell; my point here is simply that honestly admitting just how painful one's life is can be a powerful catalyst for a spiritual awakening. No doubt there are cases where people didn't have to sink quite so low to have such an experience, but it is an extremely common pattern. Most of the time, people just won't change until they are forced to do so by the full realization of just how desperate their situation is. It seems that you often have to "hit bottom" in some way before you are lifted into the light.
My "seeing the light" experience was discovering the Course. I was blown away by the idea that God did not create the world at all, but instead created a limitless, perfect, one hundred percent joyful Heaven. I was really blown away by Section 27 of the Manual, which says that death is an illusion that is not of God, because God is Love. When I read that, I had a real epiphany. "Of course! That must be true. That solves everything!" It was one of those experiences in which you encounter something completely new, yet it feels like it has always been a part of you. My encounter with the Course changed my life forever. The tension was gone. The conflict between a loving God and this suffering world was over. I could follow the author of this course without any reservation.
From ancient hatred to present love
The dawning of the light brings with it another joyous gift: the shift from egocentric self-interest to genuine, egoless love toward others. What a beautiful thing! This, in the Course's view, is the essence of that "real alternative" to hell. Don't you find that the most inspiring stories are those in which people locked in some seemingly intractable conflict miraculously find the way to forgiveness and reconciliation? Every Course student I know melts when he or she hears that wonderful line, " The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love" (T-26.IX.6:1). Everyone is deeply moved by forgiveness stories; there's something about them that says to us, "These people are demonstrating what God is really like. The love they are expressing is reality; the hell we live in every day is not."
We've shared some of these stories in our Circle articles precisely because they are so inspiring: Ashley Smith extending love to her kidnapper Brian Nichols; Roy Ratcliff baptizing Jeffrey Dahmer and saying to him, "Welcome to the family of God"; Holocaust survivor Eva Kor forgiving her former tormentor, the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele; Imaculée Ilibagiza forgiving those who slaughtered her family in the Rwandan genocide. And again, the miraculous transformation arises out of the realization that things as they currently exist are hell. You can't hit a much deeper bottom than being kidnapped, or being a serial killer, or experiencing the German or Rwandan Holocaust. The most dramatic reversals seem to occur in those situations when we simply have to face the fact that we are in a living hell.
I haven't had to face anything as dark as what these people went through. But as I've come to the conclusion that this place is hell, people like these have become my beacons of hope. I've arrived at a deep and joyful conviction that in the darkness of our world, egoless love truly is "the spark that shines within the dream" (T-29.III.5:6), the ray of light that transforms hell into a reflection of Heaven. If Jesus could "teach only love" even as he was hanging from the cross, if all of these people could follow his example in the most horrendous of circumstances, then there really is a God of Love and there is shining hope for us all.
The way out of hell: walking the path of egoless love
This is yet another joyous gift the dawning of the light brings: When you've seen the path out of hell, you naturally devote your life to walking that path and helping others along the way. Again, think about the people who inspire us most: Mother Teresa doing "little things with great love" for the poor of Calcutta; Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. freeing their people from oppression by loving the oppressors; Bill Wilson and Bob Smith founding AA and freeing millions from the prison of alcoholism; the Dalai Lama demonstrating such great peace, love, and infectious joy in spite of the subjugation of his people. And of course, there is Jesus, whose loving example was so powerful that this ancient Jewish peasant, whose ministry lasted probably less than a year and ended with a humiliating public execution, became the most revered person in the world today.
I won't pretend that I'm as inspiring as these great people, but I'm trying my best to walk the path of egoless love. Egoless love is, after all, at the heart of my spiritual path, a course in extending miracles to others. I'm convinced that this is the way out of hell for me, and I hope that my work as a teacher is helping others find the way as well. I still experience times of pain and sadness like everyone else, but overall my life is happier than it has ever been. And as I look over the journey I've taken, I realize that so much joy has arisen out of the realization that this place is hell.
What about you? If you are resisting the idea that this world is hell, ask yourself these questions: Given your experience of life so far, is it possible that life on earth really is hell? Is it possible that your resistance to this realization is actually keeping you in hell? Is it possible that, as hard as it can be to acknowledge the hellishness of life as you know it, this acknowledgment might motivate you to practice the Course with greater dedication, and open you up to joy beyond any you have ever experienced before? I encourage you to really consider these possibilities. You may just find, to your surprise, that it really is a joy to realize that this place is hell.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Practice of Being Present to God
by Robert Perry
We tend to think of meditation as turning inward, clearing away the distractions, and being fully present to something within our own mind. In a sense, then, we view meditation as an act of being present to ourselves. While many of the Course's meditations fit right into this model, many of them offer another perspective. They frame meditation as an act of being present to Someone Else, namely God. They portray it as an attempt at total encounter, as an essentially relational act, in which we lift our mind out of its self-absorbed bubble and bring it into the Presence of God. In this article, I want to explore the idea of meditation as the practice of being totally present to God.
Usually, of course, our mind is not particularly present to God. Rather, it is present to an ever-changing jumble of external objects and activities, as well as internal thoughts, hopes, and anxieties. Yet as varied and disorganized as this jumble is, its various parts do contain a common denominator: self-concern. It's as if we are living in a hall of mirrors, in which we see in every person, every bite of food, and every car in front of us a reflection of our own face. For in it we mainly see our own welfare or our own danger. In this hall of mirrors, we are not really present to anyone else; even less are we present to God. In the scramble for survival, He is often the very last thing on our mind.
During this year, my aim in meditation has been, for a focused time each day, to reverse this condition which permeates the rest of my day. Inspired by a number of places in the Course, I have been using meditation as a way to step out of that hall of mirrors and make myself as present to God as I possibly can. I have been finding this so rewarding that I wanted to share the Course passages that have inspired it and what they have told me about meditation.
"Here I am, Lord"In the two days before the Course started coming through, Helen Schucman was hearing Jesus' voice and writing down what she heard. During this time, Jesus gave Bill Thetford what was essentially a meditation technique:
He has to learn better concentration. His mind flits about too much for good communication [for Bill to receive communication from God]. Suggest a very short phrase like "Here I am Lord" and [now speaking to Bill] don't think of anything else. Just pull in your mind slowly from everywhere else and center it on these words. (Absence from Felicity, p. 197) Jesus is clearly instructing Bill in meditation. He tells Bill to pull in his attention from everything else (i.e., the normal worldly stimuli), center it on a single short phrase, and then keep it there ("don't think of anything else"). This certainly sounds like meditation to me.
What I find particularly interesting about this is the phrase itself: "Here I am, Lord." To see what I mean, please take a moment, close your eyes, and say this phrase a few times. Go ahead and do that now, if you will.
What I find is that this phrase quickly gives me a sense of God being near, right in front of me. Did it do that with you? If it did, there's no mystery why it did. If you were to walk into a room and say to John, "Here I am, John," you would really be saying, "I am presenting myself to you. I am available to you. I am present to you." To say, "Here I am, Lord" is to say the same to God. Jesus made this clear to Bill in later guidance:
When I told Bill to concentrate on the phrase "Here I am, Lord," I did not mean "in this world" by "here." I wanted him to think of himself as a separate consciousness, capable of direct communication with the Creator of that consciousness. (Absence from Felicity, p. 285) In other words, "Here I am, Lord" did not mean "Here I am, down here in this world." It meant, "I am present to You, in contact with You, in communication with You." In this, we can really see the relational intent of this exercise. The intended effect was for Bill to know himself as a consciousness that could experience "direct communication with the Creator of that consciousness." It was for Bill to know himself not as an ephemeral puff of smoke, floating in the darkness far from God, but as one who lived in the light of direct communication with God.
Notice how Jesus' meditation instructions are designed to heighten this effect. To "pull in your mind slowly from everywhere else and center it on these words" is to make yourself completely present to those words—the words by which you are making yourself present to God. Jesus, in other words, wanted Bill to make himself totally present to the act of making himself totally present to God.
Calling on God's NameWe find this same basic approach to meditation in Lesson 183, "I call upon God's Name and on my own." There, we are given a meditation technique in which we remove our attention from dwelling on all the "little names" of the world and place it instead on repeating God's Name. There are, however, two very different ways of repeating God's Name, and this applies to any of the words we may choose for that Name (God, Father, Love, etc.). One is a third-person way, in which repeating God's Name amounts to saying "Him." Here, we are simply referring to a Being Who exists somewhere. The other is a second-person way, in which repeating His Name amounts to saying "You." Here, we are directly addressing God Himself. Which way does this lesson advocate? The answer is revealed in this passage:
Thus [by repeating His Name] do we give an invitation which can never be refused. And God will come, and answer it Himself. (W-pI.183.7:1-2) So, by repeating God's Name, we are really giving Him an invitation, an invitation to come to us. And we can trust that this invitation will not go unanswered. "And God will come, and answer it Himself." Saying His Name, then (as the very next sentence implies), is a way to "call on Him." This is clearly the second-person way of repeating God's Name, and it is miles away from the third-person way. To see what I mean, you might want to try them both. Try repeating the word "God" in each of the two ways described in the two sets of parentheses below:
Third person: "God" (that Being Who created all things) Second person: "God" (I am calling Your Name. I am inviting You to come to me.) There really is a world of difference between the two, isn't there? The second one is so much more direct. Indeed, it has a very similar spirit to "Here I am, Lord." To say, "God, I am calling You to come to me" is very similar to saying, "Lord, I am presenting myself to You." Both are just different forms of being present to God. You really can't sincerely say, "God come to me; I am calling on You," without being present to God.
In Lesson 183, just as with "Here I am, Lord," Jesus asks us to pull our mind in from everywhere else and center it on the one thing he is giving us to repeat:
Practice but this today; repeat God's Name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His [a reference to the "little names" of worldly things]. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on This. (W-pI.183.6:1-4) This is uncannily similar to "[Use] a very short phrase like 'Here I am Lord' and don't think of anything else." In both, clearing out all extraneous thoughts has the effect of making us fully present to the act of making ourselves fully present to God.
Finally, there is an additional way in which this lesson intensifies the act of being present to God. It adds the element of desire:
And then God's Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own. (W-pI.183.6:6) To the extent that something is the object of our desire, to that same extent we become present to it. Imagine saying to God the following things, based on the above quotation:
You are the only wish I have.Your Name is the only sound with any meaning to me.You are everything that I desire to see.You are everything that I would call my own. Or, to use the words of the prayer for Lesson 287:
You are my goal, my Father.What but You could I desire to have?What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? (W-pII.287.2:1-3) If you really meant those things, how could they not make you one hundred percent present to God? This is true of another attitude this lesson implies that we should hold: trust. Remember how it said of our invitation, "And God will come, and answer it Himself"? Trusting that the invitation will be answered has a similar effect to filling the invitation with desire. It allows us to release all of our energies into the invitation. If you know that the person invited will come, you can really pour your heart into the invitation. Can you do the same with an invitation that you expect will be ignored?
Here, then, in Lesson 183, we have another take on the act of being fully present to God. We take a single word and use it to address God directly, to call Him to us. We withdraw our attention from all the world's "little names" and focus it only on this one Name. We fill our invitation with desire and with trust that it will be answered. And we stay with this process, repeating our trusting, desire-filled invitation over and over, to the exclusion of all else, entering deeper and deeper into this relational act. All of these aspects amount to making ourselves completely present to God.
Empty hands, open hearts, open mindsI have also noticed that there are a number of passages in which we say to God, "I come to You." Here are four of the nine times that the Course puts this statement on our lips:
Father, I come to You. And You will come to me who ask. I am the Son You love. (W-pI.168.6:7-9) Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. (W-pII.221.1:1-2) Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. (W-pII.233.1:5-6) In deepest silence I would come to You, to hear Your Voice and to receive Your Word. I have no prayer but this: I come to You to ask You for the truth. (W-pII.254.1:2-3) To say, "I come to You" is such a direct and personal thing. It's the sort of thing you could imagine saying to a lover from whom you have been separated, right before a joyous reunion. Also, if you think about it, "I come to You" is not so different from "Here I am, Lord." Both are saying, "God, I am closing the gap between us. I am placing myself in Your Presence." Indeed, the two statements go together so well that we could imagine saying them together: "I come to You. Here I am, Lord."
What also struck me is how we are supposed to come to God. Notice these lines in the above examples: "I come in silence." "In deepest silence I would come." "I will step back." They all imply the same thing: I would empty myself so that I can be filled with God. There are some particularly beautiful examples of this sentiment in the Workbook. The prayer for Lesson 306 has us saying this to God:
In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give. (W-pII.306.2:2) A great deal is packed into this brief line. We come to God filled with gratitude for the gifts that we have received and will receive. We come with empty hands, open to receive. We come with open hearts, ready to let God all the way in. We come with open minds, not filled with a worldview that shuts Him out. And we empty ourselves because we want to receive only what He gives. We are tired of our own gifts, tired of listening to our own voice. Now we want God.
Interestingly, we find the exact same trio of open hands, hearts, and minds in Lesson 110:
Today we make a great advance to truth by letting idols go, and opening our hands and hearts and minds to God today. (W-pI.110.10:4) Notice that the same dynamic is going on. We open our hands and hearts and minds so that we have room to receive God.
After noticing that this trio of opening hands, hearts, and minds to God occurs twice (and it occurs again in rough form in Lesson 140, paragraph 12), I decided to incorporate it into my meditations. I would repeat "Father" and have a sense of coming to God with empty hands. To me, this meant empty of all the things that I am grasping, carrying, and doing. Then I would repeat "Father" and have a sense of opening my heart to God. To let someone into your heart, of course, means to make that person an important part of what you love and even what you are. Then I would repeat "Father" and have a sense of opening my mind to God. To me, this meant setting aside my normal view of things in which God is peripheral, and so making room for Him to fill my awareness.
To the extent I could do these things, I felt immensely more present to God than I normally would in a meditation. In fact, it was this practice that made me keenly aware of the Course's emphasis on the practice of being present to God. If you come to someone with empty hands, open heart, and open mind, isn't that the same as being fully present to him? Conversely, if you come to him with your hands lugging five bags of groceries, your heart closed, and your mind shut to everything that he represents, isn't that the same as not being present to him?
After this, I noticed that you can find different parts of the hands/hearts/mind trio in other places in the Course. For instance, there are meditation instructions about coming to God with empty hands:
Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. (W-pI.189.7:5) Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. (W-pI.133.13:1) There are meditation instructions about opening our minds to God:
Be very still and open your mind….We are trying to reach God. (W-pI.49.4:2,8) Open your mind to Him. Be still and rest. (W-pI.128.7:7-8) And, in Helen Schucman's final scribing, "The Gifts of God" (found in the back of her poetry collection by the same name), we find God imploring us to open our hearts to Him:
Come, My Son, open your heart, and let Me shine on you. (The Gifts of God, p. 128) The principle here is obvious. If our hands are filled with the things of this world, if our heart is filled with guardedness, and if our mind is clogged with our own know-it-all thoughts, what room is there for God? But when we open our hands to God, we have room to receive everything. When we open our heart to Him, He can enter and take up residence in our heart of hearts. When we open our mind to Him, He can stream into our awareness and become the center of our worldview. Only when we come to Him in silence and emptiness are we present enough to Him to allow His Presence into us. As Lesson 189 says, "And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself" (W-pI.189.9:4).
ConclusionI would really encourage you to try out this approach to meditation. Of course, it need not become the only way you meditate. The Course itself contains other kinds of meditation; for instance, meditations aimed at experiencing your true Self. But if you want to experiment with this approach, just try the various specific techniques I've suggested here:
Meditate on the phrase "Here I am, Lord" and, as Jesus told Bill, "don't think of anything else. Just pull in your mind slowly from everywhere else and center it on these words." For more on this, see my article "Here I am, Lord." Try the Name of God meditation. Choose a name for God and repeat it over and over to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Repeat it as a call to God to come to you, a call filled with desire and trust, trust that He will come. For more help with this, see my article "Name of God Meditation." Meditate on the phrase "I come to You," using the same instructions as those for "Here I am, Lord." Combine any of the above with a sense of opening your hands and heart and mind to God. For instance, repeat "Here I am, Lord" and imagine your hands being empty, open to receive. Then repeat it again and feel your heart being open to God. Then repeat it again while opening your mind to the experience of God. By the way, it's probably best to do the hands/heart/mind thing only towards the beginning of your meditation. Once that has cleared your mind and focused it on God, I find it best to let go of thinking about hands/heart/mind and focus just on being present to God via whatever word or words I am repeating. It makes for a simpler, more focused meditation. You may also want to try what I call Open Mind Meditation, in which being present to God takes the form of being completely empty of words, thoughts, and beliefs, and being filled with a wordless expectancy that God is about to dawn on your mind. For more on this, see my article "Open Mind Meditation: The Practice of the Final Step." Once you get the basic idea, feel free to experiment with your own forms. The common denominator is that few (or no) words are used, distracting thoughts are cleared from the mind, and your entire focus is on making yourself present to God. When using any of the above methods, make sure you keep foremost in your mind the goal of being present to God. The whole point is to leave your normal sense of being present only to your own self-absorbed hall of mirrors, and enter into a stable, alert sense of being totally present to God. And since the ego is the mother of self-absorption, to do this is to step outside the ego. Of course, distracting thoughts will regularly enter in, and so, as the Workbook often instructs, you will need to be ready to use words to draw your mind back to your focus.
To make this approach to meditation work, you will obviously need to want to be present to God. This may mean working on your sense of God as loving rather than remote or judgmental. One of the best things I have found to move one's sense of God in this direction are the prayers in Part II of the Workbook. You may therefore want to pick one of these prayers, such as the one for Lesson 232 or 264, and spend five or ten minutes praying it as an introduction to your meditation time.
At the heart of this whole approach is a very simple notion: God is always fully present to us; we have simply made ourselves absent to Him. But having done that, we can undo it. The Course is clear that God is always with us, around us, in us. Every heartbeat of ours is a call to Him, and He hears and answers every one (see W-pII.267.1:7). He is always, without exception, totally present to us. The reason we do not experience ourselves as constantly bathed in His Presence is that we have made ourselves absent to Him. We are so deeply and habitually distracted from Him that it seems that He is literally not here, that He has left us. We are like someone who is so lost in the gloom of his own drama that he does not see the sunlight shining all around him.
Therefore, in this kind of meditation, we are not approaching a God Who has been off somewhere else. We are not coming objectively nearer to God. And we certainly are not making the first risky move in a courtship process. We are simply reciprocating the move that God has already made. We are simply turning in the direction of a Presence that has never left us, that is always here, holding out His Hand in welcome. Are we willing to step outside our ego's lonely hall of mirrors, take this Hand, and be lifted into this eternal encounter?
fromhttp://www.circleofa.org/indices/god.php
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