The Only Real Relationship

"You have no need of special relationships at all. You but seek in them what you believe you have thrown away. Relate only with what will never leave you, and what you can never leave. Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen. Yet God created the only relationship that has meaning, and that is His relationship with you." -- A Course in Miracles

What IS my relationship with God like? I have only to look at my relationship with the world around me to see it. My projections show me my illusory self image. What must I do to change this and to really know God, my Self? Well, struggling to change the outer, working to please the world around me, this has never, never worked. It perpetuates the illusion of separation from God and the world and around me and encourages guilt about the futility of it all. Because the one thing you can say about all outer solutions is that they never work in the long term. All things pass.

A Course in Miracles reminds us again and again that forgiveness is our only function here in this world, and that it offers us everything we really want... the remembering of the Oneness that is our true Self. This is the only real relationship... everything else is that hall of mirrors that we keep gazing into with the dysfunctional love of Narcissus. We love our illusions. ACIM goes so far as to say, "Forgive, and this will disappear." Notice it is not saying it will change into a better illusion. It says it will disappear.

It has occurred to me that all stories have two sides, like everything else in this dualistic universe. What if the myth of Narcissus is not only the story of our ego, but the story of our true Self remembering ItSelf? Everything is projection in this world, but when we forget that? Well, then we seem to be gazing at an illusory world that appears to happen to us, and we see ourselves as the effect, the victim of those illusions. On the other hand, when we forgive this and remember that it is all and always our own projection, we reverse ourselves, and discover that the world now mirrors our real Self, and the Truth and Love and Joy and Peace that are hallmarks of the Kingdom.

The old saying 'wherever you go, there you are' is true on so many levels. It's up to us to forgive and reverse the flow of perception, to acknowledge the great projection. And this willingness returns our minds and hearts home, to the only real relationship... with God, our very Self. All other relationships in the world only mirror the nature of this One.

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward." -- A Course in Miracles