A Reason to Be

"I need add nothing to His Plan. But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it. And that is all." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 5:12-13, 6:1

I've always been prone to inquiry. When I was 9 years old I was ridiculed in front of the whole class for asking "why?" too many times. When I was 16 I gave my algebra teacher pause when I asked who "gave" the axioms on which it was all based. I've always wanted to get to the bottom of things and to know the truth. The problem is, in this world, if you really have no allegiance except to the Truth, you don't fit in very well... and you are often perceived (by those with vested interests in their delusions) as threatening.

Most of us remain purposefully unaware of our vested interest in protecting the rightness of certain thoughts and groups and ideologies. This can take the form of the self help book or guru du jour, a church, a profession, a new-age philosophy, a political group, a certain habitual way of doing things, or even the myths and stories of our own nuclear families. We tend to accept certain things as necessary or true without deeper inquiry, since we have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction. The thought that none of it is true is quite disturbing to the imagined separate self we dream ourselves to be. The myth that keeps the lies in play is that we have to believe in something to have a reason to be. "Well, we have to do something, don't we? Why else are we here? Why did God create us, if not to live our lives?"

I don't have to believe a movie is true to enjoy it. I don't have to imagine the rightness of a novel to lose myself in it. They are stories, and they serve the function all stories serve. Dream worlds emerge and fall away. And so it goes. This is not being alive... this is dreaming. There is nothing true about a dream. And being has nothing to do with it.

The Truth of Our Being IS Reality. The Awakened Awareness that is God with Us, in which we truly live and move and have our Being... this IS Truth, and IS at the heart of all inquiry, since it is what remains when all dreams have been seen clearly as fictional. The question is, are we willing to really LIVE? Are we willing to stop generating dreams to obscure the Truth? Are we willing to follow Truth where it leads, without thinking that we have to manufacture something to believe in? What could we possibly need that is not already fully present in the Allness of God that is our Reality?

Only the false separated self, the fictional character that you imagine to be you, needs a purpose in a dream. Your Reality is safe in God, forever fulfilling as an emanation of God, radiating Life, Love, Beauty, and Truth. Don't take my word for it. Simply inquire into your stories, and you will see that ultimately none of them are true. And so they are not real. They needn't make you suffer, or make you lust. They are clouds passing momentarily over the sun... they come and they go. And as you let the Truth of this dawn, the bliss of Self is revealed and remembered. Life, Truth, Love... these are the eternal, unchanging attributes of your True Self, the Oneness that we are. And this Self needs no other reason to BE.

"Remember always that your Identity is shared." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 9, Section IV, 1:6