Enlightenment

"There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly.  These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon.  No one can call upon them in vain." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 26. 2:1-2, 5

"Sometimes a teacher of God may have a brief experience of direct union with God.  In this world, it is almost impossible that this endure.  If God were reached directly in sustained awareness, the body would not be long maintained.  Those who have laid the body down merely to extend their helpfulness to those remaining behind are few indeed.  And they need helpers who are still in bondage and still asleep, so that by their awakening can God's Voice be heard." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 26. 3:1-2, 8-10

Yesterday a friend and I were talking about enlightenment... about the tendency to look for teachers, gurus, for someone who gets it and knows more than we do.  Maybe even someone whose state of consciousness can be directly transmitted to us, like taking a pill, or being given all the answers.

I remember in the late 60's and early 70's when I was reading Alan Watts and experimenting with hallucinogens to experience God.  I had some amazing openings, and it did indeed change my life.  I experienced enlightenment more times than I can say.  And yet it seemed that I couldn't stay there.  Taking a pill can give us a glimpse.  Being in the presence of an enlightened teacher can give us a glimpse.  But it's not a glimpse of something we have to attain or somewhere we have to go.  It's a glimpse of our True Self... always here and always readily available.

So why do I say I couldn't stay there?  Why after we leave the retreat do we fall back into old ways of seeing and believing?  Because an awareness of Self requires the conscious relinquishment of perception and sensory data.  Taking a pill or being in a holy place can give us a glimpse of what is always here... but we can only see it by giving up the false.  This is why the Course says that these glimpses are almost impossible to maintain here in the dream we call life.  The sensory data and the collective beliefs are seen as necessary and even good (really, they're neither good nor bad... just all made up).  The conscious choice, which must be continuous, to shed all such judgments and perceptions... well, as Jesus would have put it, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  Not because it's hard... illusions aren't easy or hard, big or little... but because we have a vested interest in the world we walk in.  It's our dream.  As ACIM puts it: "I have done this, and this I would undo."

So here we are.  We can call on the image of our enlightened Self, in the form of Jesus or Buddha or Quan Yin or a host of others.  These images will always respond, because they are not anywhere but in us.  They are the Voice and image of Self in a language we can currently hear and respond to.  This is not the same as looking outside of ourself, to pills or physical gurus, to save us.  The images of Self we find within, like the Voice of the Holy Spirit, ARE Self.  A Self so vast and loving and perfect that tears of joy and gratitude are often shed as we remember, however briefly.

Finally, the Course reminds us: "Do not despair, then, because of limitations.  It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them.  If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language.  If you would be a savior, you must understand what needs to be escaped." 

Enlightenment, the remembering of Self, requires the conscious shedding of the false self we have constructed.  This is the interlocking chain of forgiveness that A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement Principle.  Perfection and Radiance is the Truth at the heart of it all.  Everything else is only for forgiving. 

Our Name and Our Inheritance

"This is a Course in how to know your Self.  You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 16, Section III, 4:1-2

"Repeat the Name of God and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His.  Repeat His Name and all the tiny nameless things on earth slip into right perspective." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 183, 5:1-2

It is becoming clearer and clearer each day.  The only thing that matters is remembering and remaining anchored in Who I Am.  All problems, issues, and challenges point to one thing only: the false self.  Only the false self, the conditioned persona, can be victim of illusions.  The True Self remains changeless, all powerful and all loving, lacking nothing, confronted with nothing other than Self, in the heaven of endless Oneness and Completion.  It is such a joy-filled ride, awakening.  Such a kick to relax and realize I Am, and have always been, right here in God, God appearing as and through me, always new, always expanding, yet always complete and whole.  There really aren't words in our vocabulary to describe this Beingness and this process of Awakening.  Many have tried, simply because the joy of it can't contain ItSelf, and wants to be shared with Self.  So forgive me the inadequate symbols, and listen instead to the Truth that shines unimpeded through these words.

The news that we are One and the same as God is not new.  Even the Bible has it stated quite clearly:  "I say,"You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince." (The Bible; Psalm 82:6-7)  Because we insist on embracing the false identities of separateness and lack and limitation, we die as if we're NOT sons of God, NOT One and forever Whole.  And why do we insist on hanging on to a fiction of self that seems to suffer and die?  Because it seems safer in our insanity to pretend we're small and at the mercy of our own dream, than to take responsibility for our choice to live in endless illusion, in a shadowy world of projection and skewed perception.  Because for as long as the dream has seemed to be, people have been threatened by the Truth of Who We Are.

Look at the following passage from The Bible:  "Jesus replied, "I have shown you many good works from the Father.  For which of these are you going to stone me?"  The Jews answered, "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God."  Jesus answered, "Is it not written in your own law, "I said, you are gods?" (The Bible; John 10:32-34)

We stone ourselves now, each time we let the inner voice that says, "Who do you think you are?" or "What are you, God?" throw us back into unworthiness and guilt.  We are the Sons of God, and God has ONE SON.  That is US... not separate little selves, but the Self we are collectively, with all of creation.  This Self has a Voice that speaks so clearly in our hearts and minds that it can never be mistaken or forgotten, unless that is what we want and what we choose. 

"Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between the selves.  Each one builds this bridge, which carries him across the [imaginary] gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it.  You will go through this last [imaginary] undoing quite unharmed, and will at last emerge as your Self." (A Course in Miracles; Chapter 16, Section III, 8:2-3 & IV, 2:3)

There is no gap!  How can there be any separation in what is eternally whole and One?  If there is One God, and we are gods, then each of us must be a transparency for the One, and for nothing else.  All that is required, as ACIM reminds us, is to expend a little effort to remember as we go about our lives.  For nothing else is real, and we are not who we thought we were.  The Christ, the Son of God, reflects only God.  This is our name and our inheritance.

"The Name of God is my inheritance.  God's Name reminds me that I am His Son, not slave to time, unbound by laws which rule the world of sick illusions, free in God, forever and forever One with Him." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook Lesson 204, 1:1-2

Gang Wars

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you.  And what you choose is what you think is real.  Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power.  And the light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 2:3-6

I was watching some crime drama on T.V. (don't ask me why!) and I saw very clearly the choices that led a young man from a good family to become a member of a street gang... and not just a member, but an active participant in an ongoing war against other street gangs.  The choices he made were always based on who he thought he was, and where his safety and fulfillment could be found.  Wrong choice after wrong choice led him to a nasty ending.  Does this sound familiar?

I love how extreme examples in our lives and cultures serve to show us our own mental choices.  We project them and create cultural stories and tragedies to pretend they are 'out there.'  We live in perpetual cultural gang wars... clashing ideas, values, stories, all seemingly competing for our time, our allegiance, our money, and our very souls.  What gang do you belong to?  What are your colors?

I used to belong to the 'spiritual' gang.  We tend to act like we're not a gang, but we are.  We pretend we're lacking enlightenment, so we have to perpetually seek fulfillment.  We attack the culture and society that seem to prevent us from living as we want to live, that doesn't seem to honor us or understand us.  We pretend to be 'better' and more evolved, and so we are entitled to judge the other gangs.  We think our safety and fulfillment lie in these games.  We are no different than any other gang.  We are mentally at war with the world.

Every country, every culture, every political party, every passionate cause, and even every family has its colors and its gang culture.  We all belong to gangs within gangs, and sometimes our gang wars overlap and intertwine with each other.  But make no mistake... every conflict, no matter how mild, is the result of gang wars, always based on choosing to value a weak and fictional self as real.  "Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.  In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, "My brother, choose again."  He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 3:1-3 

How simple to realize that we are always choosing between the false self, the gang member, or our True Self, the Christ in us!  The false self is like that boy in the crime drama... he thought he was weak and limited, thought he needed to belong to a gang to be strong and protected.  Was he ever wrong!  And so are we.  "The images you make cannot prevail against what God HimSelf would have you be.  Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength [your True Self] prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before.  You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see.  What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell.  Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 31, Section VIII, 4:1-2 & 6:1-3

Wow.  This seems too good to be true, doesn't it?  And besides, we are loyal to our gangs.  Our family is still our family.  We should be grateful to belong to (fill in the blank).  Our family, country, church, school, group, etc.  is so much better, isn't it?  What if we belonged to that country?  What if we had those people as relatives?  What if, what if, what if... an endless litany of justification for our choices of misplaced allegiance and mis-identification.  We feel safe and protected by the numbing familiarity of belonging.  And we never question.

But we can always choose again.  As Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."  Each instant is new, fresh, infinite in possibility and beauty.  We have only to choose again.  Gang wars only go on as long as we think there are separate, conflicting gangs.  When we remember that we are collectively One Self, one with God and everything that lives, there can be no more war... only endless love, appreciation, and joy.  We have simply awakened to the Truth, safe in God.

"Learn then the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:  I Am as God created me.  His Son can suffer nothing.  And I Am His Son.  Thus is Christ's strength invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail.  And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made.  For in this choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 5:1-7

The Two Selves

In working with clients and with prayer requests (and with my own life) I have observed a persistent phenomenon that I will call the two selves.  This seems to be the delusion that all who walk the earth share.  We believe (and have a lot of sensory evidence to validate this belief) that we are human, weak, lacking, and subject to suffering.  At the same time, we believe we have infinite potential, that we are created in the image of the Divine.  So we all have a kind of split personality... there's the imaginary historical self that thinks we're a product of heredity and hierarchy and environment, that sees flaws in ourselves and every other living thing, that judges, criticizes, and condemns.  And there's the quiet true Self that loves and blesses, that takes joy in life, that gives of itself naturally and freely, that knows wholeness and freedom and love are all words for the same thing.

If you were suffering from multiple personalities, a good therapist would find a way to help you become unified again... because a house divided against itself cannot stand.  So spiritually, our task in healing and awakening is always a return to unified consciousness, to Oneness.  This is enlightenment... the realization that we are not two selves. 

To say we're created in the image of God is to perpetuate this split.  To say that we're a shadow, an image, a mere potential, is to put our becoming into the future, into perpetual process.  And where's the peace in that?  Where is the being?  If we are endlessly processing and becoming, we must still be incomplete, lacking in some way, still subject to suffering and failure.  This is the set-up we're born into.  It's a lose/lose proposition, and always has been.

There is good news.  We are not created in the image of a god... a mere shadowy image of some nebulous force that all are subject to.  We are living and moving and having our being in God, reflecting God, and nothing else.  Not a nebulous force that bosses us around, but the very Ground of our Being, and Source and Substance of Self.  There isn't anything but God. 

And what is God, my skeptical readers will ask?  GOD IS AN IDEA we share about the Source of all that is.  We can have false thoughts about this Source, but Source ItSelf can't be false.  We can have incorrect understanding of multiplication.  We might think that we can multiply ten thousand times a zero and still have ten thousand.  But the principle, the idea of multiplying anything with zero remains the same... it's always zero, no matter how you try to make it something else.  And anything multiplied by one always remains the same, remains itself.  Ideas are principles, and they are unchanging and true.  Thoughts are stories about ideas, they involve judgment, and can often be false, or at least only relative (two-sided, not unified).

Webster defines idea as "a transcendent entity that is a real pattern, of which existing things are imperfect representations."  Thought is defined as "the action or process of thinking, or something that is thought."  So we can say, as did Mary Baker Eddy, that GOD IS PRINCIPLE... the Idea that is the Ground of All Being, in Truth and in Love.  A Course in Miracles tells us that "God is Idea" and "Ideas leave not their Source." When we allow this transcendent Idea to take root, we realize that we cannot and have never left our Source.  We remain rooted and grounded in God.  And then our thoughts, our judgments and stories about the world begin to reflect the Truth of Being, rather than the weak and imperfect (and insubstantial!) image of self our stories have perpetuated up until now.   

We are not two selves.  This is the root of all our struggles.  No matter how we attempt to prove that our weak and human image of self is real, it's still multiplying by zero.  So take some time listen to the Real, the True, the God-Self that we all share.  It is very quiet, because It doesn't need to defend ItSelf, being wholly true and forever our Reality.  Thank God!