Inclusive Vision

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before." -- A Course in Miracles; T31, VIII. 8:3-4

"Truth is not fragmentary, disconnected, unsystematic, but concentrated and immovably fixed in Principle. The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal is made our own, it becomes the model for human action." -- Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy; p.93, lines 11-16

I love that the words 'intense' and 'inclusive' are used in the same sentence, in the above quote from ACIM. It is no easy task to return our minds to inclusive thinking. It requires focus and willing discipline... the willingness to surrender our fragmented , selfish ideas to the inclusive vision of our High Self, the Holy Spirit. It requires the focus to notice when we're not doing that. It requires the willingness to Awaken.

All of this is done in consciousness. Notice Mary Baker Eddy points out that lifting our thought in this way is done through stillness and strength, through stationary power. It's never about the outer, which is only the image-making projection of what lies in consciousness. What appears without is projected, and therefore illusory. As Mrs Eddy says in her scientific statement of being: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; p. 468, lines 9-10)

I was reminded of this in a very dear way by a friend. I was in the process of sending out a letter about some business matter. My friend commented that by sending out the letter in this way, I am in effect acknowledging that I see it happening to me, taking place 'out there,' and that I somehow need something else to happen 'out there.' She suggested that I write a letter in consciousness, thanking the recipients for having already met the requirements... in effect, forgiving their debts... and for the opportunities and income that have resulted for so many. All of this taking place in consciousness. Not out there. The letter will never be sent. Its purpose is not to get anything to happen 'out there.' There is no 'out there!' The purpose of the letter is to return my mind to Wholeness, to the realization, in stillness and stationary strength, that it is all taking place in consciousness, where every imagined problem, separation, or need is seen to be nothing. Whose consciousness? My dream is occurring here in my mind... and in the stillness I remember that there is only One Mind. I can release and forgive my aberrant dreams, the scattered dreams that see separate, fragmented selves.... and I can again welcome the inclusive, expansive vision of my High Self, the Holy Spirit. This all-inclusive vision is the Holy Spirit's gift to us when we are willing to once again be still.

Inclusive Vision is not about manipulating or trying to change the dream. It's about returning our mind and heart to what is true. There is only One, only God, only GOOD. Inclusive Vision returns us to the Wholeness of our right Mind. It is the Grace of God made manifest, on earth as it is in the Heaven of Oneness.

"In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." -- The Bible; Isaiah 30:15