Love is Freedom

"Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate yourself from it." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 16, Section VI, 2:1-2

"Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Part I, Review IV, 4:2

Have you noticed that everything about our lives is bondage? We're always struggling, efforting to do the right thing... or to avoid doing it. Same struggle. Or we're struggling to discover what the right thing is... or going unconscious to avoid discovering it. Or we're simply struggling and efforting to make our lives work the way we want them to. The right job, the right beliefs, the right body, the right mate, the right thoughts... how can we possibly know the freedom and grace of Love when our whole attention is focused on these ways of limiting ourselves, of placing ourselves in bondage? Can Love, which is infinite and unchanging, be dependent on any of these things and still be Love? Can Love, which is free of all limits, be dependent on person, place, or thing?

I notice this especially among my spiritual friends. Their limits and beliefs have morphed into spiritual principles, but they're still bondage, still limits on awareness. To think that your reality depends on your own thoughts and what you believe is a form of bondage, and no different than thinking that your job depends on your performance. How can what is infinite and unchanging be affected by you at all, one way or the other? This false sense of responsibility is simply another form of bondage.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that our reality is eternal and unchanging. We live and move and have our being in Awareness ItSelf, in Oneness without an opposite, in God, our true Self. Our individualities are infinite expressions of the One. We can't change who we are through our self-deceptions, anymore "than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides." And yet our lives are dedicated to proving that we can. This is our bondage.

We seek for love through bondage in every aspect of our life. We think loving something means losing ourselves to it. We idealize those whose passions lead them to forsake all for their art or their work or their relationships... even when it's obvious they're prisoners of their own dysfunctions. We envy those with passionate interests and relationships... even though it's obvious how little light there is in them, and how much bondage. We place ourselves in bondage to diet and exercise and call it loving our bodies. Every obsession, every self-discipline is a form of bondage. Love is freedom.

Look at it this way... you are like an authentic masterpiece, a painting beyond price. But you're covered with layers of ghastly color and veneer. The truth of you remains hidden by all that appears... and you're truly revealed only by the removal (the letting go) of what is covering you up. All that you remain in bondage to is like the paint and veneer that hides your real Self. "Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is really part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system that taught you it was real, and understand the Thought that knows what you are." Now is the time to "learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing." (ACIM; Chapter 16, Section VI)

Which brings us to a final and important point... we can't know the freedom that is Love without letting go of our obsessions and control issues. ACIM calls them special relationships. "It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to re-enact the past and change it." (ACIM; Chapter 16, Section VII, 1:1-2) In other words, all of our human relationships (whether with people or places or food or ideologies or music or art) are simply attempts to finally get it right, the struggles and efforts that keep us in bondage. Maybe this one will be different. Maybe this place will be the right one. Maybe this time we can work it out. But there is no getting it right at the level of form... for the simple reason that all form is special relationship.

So how do we live in this world? How do we remember the Love that we are? How do we have jobs or hobbies or relationships at all? ACIM reminds us that forgiveness is our only function, and offers everything we truly want. Forgiveness is the solvent that washes away all the layers of delusion from the masterpiece that we are. Forgiveness is the continual act of letting go of all judgments, obsessions, control issues, all false gods... and letting the Truth of Being light our way. What is left when everything false is forgiven? What remains when we realize that all of our stories are fiction? What is revealed then is the Real World, and the unchanging freedom of Love.