Safe and Healed and Home

“Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of “the mind of the Lord,” as the Scripture says.” – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 291, Lines 13-18

“There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within. What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else is there to give? The belief that you could give and get something else, something outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and of your Identity.” – A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section VI, 1:1-6 and 2:1-3

“Life is the everlasting I Am, the Being who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.” – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; Page 290, Lines 1-2

A divine state of mind; an awareness of perfect oneness; everlasting harmony among all manifestations; eternal, immortal, perfect wholeness and completeness; these definitions of Heaven give us glimpses of our true Self and our divine heritage as Beloved offspring and reflections of God.

The question inevitably arises… how can Heaven be within me, when all around me I see imperfection… when all around me I see fragments of seeming reality, needy and limited, unable to be happy? Of course, this is not really a question, but a statement that assumes a point of view… the point of view that what the physical senses seem to perceive is really there.

We have a saying in the world when we want to say something is not true. We say, “It’s all in your mind. You’re imagining it.” The implication is that ideas and imagination are not true, while the physical evidence of the senses is solid and real. This is why A Course in Miracles reminds us repeatedly that the world of physical bodies and physical senses is nothing but a fiction, the stuff of dreams projected upside down and backwards, so that the Truth is unrecognizable when you believe the story you’re dreaming. The Truth is that Mind is all that is real. Not the individual mind, not the dreaming fragment that is just a fiction, not the story of a ‘me’. The Real Mind is the One Mind, the Mind of God that is Omnipresent Life, Love, Light, Wholeness, and Truth, and whose attributes are Infinite Joy, Peace, Freedom, and Divine Contentment. The One Mind is our True Self.

The Unified Self, the Self that includes All in its Awareness, is not limited by fictional space, time, or form. The manifestations of Mind are reflections of Self and are completely One with Self, unlimited and unfettered and free. As ACIM puts it, ideas leave not their Source. That’s Who We Are, emanations of the Light of God.

The limited fiction is that this is grandiose and not provable. The fiction is like a not-so-benevolent master who wants his slaves to think that this is all there is. After all, if they knew that all they had to do was walk into the Light, would they stay? Well, we do. We do know, and we do stay. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that we don’t know, we do. No matter how many times we tell ourselves we’re lost or confused or conflicted, we’re not. We are One with God and All there is. Everyone, without exception, exists in the Mind of God and only in the Mind of God. Therefore, we can never be lost or confused or conflicted. That is the lie.

We’ve done a good job of lulling ourselves into self-forgetfulness, but it’s not the Truth. Everyone has equal Awareness and Knowledge of Truth available at all times, in all places. Since we live and move and have our Being in God, Who is Always and Everywhere, how could it be otherwise? But we continue to seek for solace in dreams, to try to lose ourselves in stories. Like alcoholics, we indulge ourselves and our appetites in an imaginary world… and then make up more stories about why things seem to work or not work, why we feel good or feel bad.

Heaven is not a place or a condition. Heaven is not a perception. Heaven is the return of our holy attention to the Oneness that is the Truth of Being. NOW I AM One with God. Dwelling in this Awareness, we are safe and healed and home.

"Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind of God. When you forget this, you will despair." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 9, Section VIII, 5:3-4