Loving the Real

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." -- A Course in Miracles; Introduction, 2:2-4

"Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 486:12-13

"The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." -- The Bible; II Corinthians 4:18

Loving the Real is a full time job. It isn't for the faint of heart, or for those who love their stories about reality more than the Truth about Reality. It's the practice of questioning, inquiring, looking deeper to find what's true. It's a continual exercise in overlooking the apparent, in seeing what can't be seen.

Our stories have it all set up as paradox and struggle. There is always an opposing force, always something 'other' that creates this apparent tension... and that very dynamic is what reveals the falsity. There is no tension, no struggle in Oneness. In the Allness of God, everything exists in harmony and order, abundantly expressing the Goodness and Light and Love that are the Truth of Being. Our stories about suffering and lack are revealed as fiction the moment we're willing to really question them... and behind every seeming story lies the Reality of God, which is eternally Loving and at Peace.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that "the opposite of Love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM; Intro, 1:8) And Mary Baker Eddy pointed out that "Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite." (S&H; 278:10-11) In the Allness of God, there isn't anything other than God. In the Allness of God, there isn't another power. There isn't anything opposing eternal Love and Goodness. The opposites we have been so carefully taught don't really exist except as mental constructs, and false ones at that. They are the gods of the material world, as fictional as Zeus or Bacchus. "All idols are false ideas." (ACIM; 30, IV, 1:8)

Material thinking, the belief that life and intelligence lies in matter, is at the heart of the false idols that populate our dream world. The belief that pleasure and pain are caused by the material, the serial adventures of a personal body and its cohorts, is pure fiction. But as long as we are immersed in the material dream it will seem to be real to us. In other words, we are loving the false, and invested in its continuing as long as we can... we don't want the dream to end, regardless of its origins. Loving the false, we dissociate from the real.

Loving the Real is a return sanity. We can remember Who We Are. We can spiritualize our thinking, forgive our errors and the errors that appear to be around us, and choose once again to Love the Real. Ironically, it's the only real choice there is. Everything else is samsara, the endless wheel of delusion and human suffering.

Loving the Real returns us to the Awareness of Love, the Awareness of the Allness of God, the Awareness of Infinite Good. It is the fulfillment of the Lord's Prayer: "On earth, as it is in Heaven."

"As we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; 278:15-16

"You are surrounded only by Him. What limits can there be on you whom He encompasses?" -- A Course in Miracles; 18, IV, 10:6-7