Allness, Oneness, Nothingness

"There is no fear in perfect Love because It knows no sin, and It must look on others as on ItSelf. Here there is only holiness and joining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it? Here we are One, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section III, 10:2-5, 11:3

"We love Him, because He first loved us." -- The Bible; 1 John 4:19

I had a reader e-mail with some great questions. How, the reader wanted to know, do we know what is real and what is not? How do we know that God is? All of us have asked these questions... and if we are honest, we continue to ask them in times of challenge and personal anguish. Even Mother Theresa had her dark nights of the soul.

So let's look at three questions that lead us to the Truth:

1. What is God? Every scripture and every spiritual teacher throughout time agrees on one very important description of God... Allness. What does this mean to me? If God is All in All to me and in my life, then everything I do and everything I say and everything I think about is God... there can be no escaping this Allness or being separate from it, no going unconscious, no fear of what it All means. "And thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength." All. This means that when times are apparently challenging, the Allness of God includes the opposite. Allness includes all Divine Ideas and their expressions... all ideas in harmony with every other idea. There is no competition in Allness. My judgements about what appears are made up, illusory stories about appearances. But every idea that appears in the Mind of God is self-complete, is ALL. As I rest in this, I do whatever needs to be done in any given situation in harmony with All, as a transparency for this Divine harmony, without resistance or judgment.

2. What does it mean that I am One with God, the image and likeness of God? What does this tell me about my spiritual nature and the Truth of my Being? What does it tell me about the situation in which I find myself now? Oneness with God means that there is no attribute of God that I do not share, and share equally. "Beloved, All that I have is thine." Oneness with God means that there is nothing in me that is not perfect and good and in Divine harmony with everything else, which is also my Self. Oneness with God means eternal love and companionship and sufficiency and ever-new joy. Oneness with God means that I can only ever find my Self in God, and that there can be no other situation. Only the Allness and Oneness of Self, of God, of the One.

3. What is my actual relationship with and to God? What does it mean? What is this Oneness we share with God, and how does it help in this situation? How does this relationship bring healing even when faced with seemingly insurmountable circumstances? If you stop and think about it, how can the Allness and Oneness that I am in God be anything other than self-complete and harmonious? Nothingness is the word that spiritual teachers and scriptures have used to describe all situations that seem to be problematic, insufficient, lacking, or full of fear and loss. How can that which is forever One and Whole be anything other than in Divine Order and Self-Loving? Nothingness is the only word to describe the nightmare stories we believe about ourselves and the world. Just as the stories about who I thought I was as a teenager had no real effect on Who I Am (as a matter of fact, I can now look at them and laugh, knowing it was all made up and ridiculous), in the same way, all stories of fear and loss and lack and limitation (whether of the body or finances or relationships or personal identity in any form) are all make believe, hurtful images that we have made. And that is all they ever are, images with no real substance. Nothing at all.

There is one other thing to remember... we reflect the Allness of God, and our Oneness with God assures that we Love and express that Love as God does. Everything else is the Nothingness of the dream. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, only that Love is real.

"The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section VI, 1:1