The Beauty of Holiness

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness." -- Psalm 29

"Your purpose is to see the world through your own Holiness." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 37, 1:2

We are taught at a very early age to see differences.  These differences are quickly sorted into good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable.  And as we get older,, the compulsion to avoid the so-called bad and seek the imagined good is the only thing that motivates us (and the entire world!).

Ironically, this endless seeking to avoid pain and seek pleasure doesn't work.  It may appear to work for short periods of time, but all you have to do is look around.  We continue to pretend it works because the alternative is too fearful to the mind.  We avoid looking at the Truth, because we have carefully and methodically been living in the thought system we inherited from our parents or from our social peers.  And all of it is made up.  We make it up daily, as we obey the so-called rules and judgments we have so carefully constructed.

The first glimmers of hope come when we realize that everything is Mind.  What you are aware of is what you experience, even when it is all made up.  Who is experiencing this pain, or this pleasure?  Certainly it seems to be a body, but Who is aware of this body?  And certainly this awareness seems to come and go, but whenever you check, it is always here.  Whenever you become aware of Awareness, it is always here.  Mind Awake is pure Awareness.  And the only Awareness is that of Wholeness, which is what Holiness is.  And it is pure Beauty, pure Love, and pure Joy.

One of the first Bible verses I learned as a child was the famous Shema: "Hear, O Israel:  The Lord your God is One.  And you shall the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."  To be in alignment with the world of differences, this is interpreted as being something we have to do.  We have to work at being good, work at loving God.  But after studying A Course in Miracles for many years I have gradually come to know that it is a statement of fact.  God is One Mind, and that Mind is Who We Really Are.  This Mind is Whole, Holy, and wholly Loving.  It can only be known when the need to pretend that everything is separate and different falls away.  And this need falls away when we want to know the Truth more than we want to hang on to the carefully constructed ideas and judgements of the world around us.

As the earlier quote reminds us, our purpose here is to finally see the world through our own Holiness.  As we begin to see that there is only Mind, we begin to accept that this One Mind is our true vision.  This begins the process of mental housecleaning that The Course calls forgiveness.  And as the mirror of the mind is swept clean of the compulsion to judge and see differences, all that remains is the Beauty of Holiness.