The Unanswered Question

"Your questions have no answer, being made to still God's Voice, which asks of everyone one question only: "Are you ready yet to help me save the world?" Ask this instead of what the ego is, and you will see a sudden brightness cover up the world the ego made. No miracle is now withheld from anyone. The world is saved from what you thought it was. And what it is is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure." -- A Course in Miracles

"Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me? Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless? Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin? And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?" -- A Course in Miracles

The universal smokescreen of the unanswered question is one we all know very well. Why is the world the way it is? Why me? Why did this happen when I have done everything right? Why did they treat me that way, when I have been so good to them? Or why did I say or do that, when I knew better? Why was I so stupid? Why did I, why did they... blah, blah, blah... the wheel of samsara continues to turn, turn, turn. Questions like these have no answer. They are not real questions, but rather a way of seeing the world. A way of being. When we ask such questions, we are being victims, reactive effects of some other cause. We are being powerless.

A Course in Miracles tells us that there is only one real question in any circumstance: "Is this what I would see? Do I want this?" This is usually immediately and impatiently answered by the ego... of course I don't want this! But there is another question, and one that remains unanswered behind the smokescreen of many seemingly unanswered questions that are not really questions: "Do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?"

Be vigilant now, because it's easy to get lost in the maze of words. As ACIM puts it, we can never have what we are not willing to BE. We are always experiencing exactly what we are being. Not what we are pretending to be, as in the identities of the ego. It's not about being a nice person or being right. It's the core of it. Who are you being when you ask a question? And as we know, there are always and forever only two choices in this world, no matter how many there appear to be. And only one of them is true. Thank God.

We are always either being One with God, being our True Self... or we are being an illusory, victimized, limited fiction within the dream. This decision is seemingly complicated in the world by all of our unanswered questions. Why would we not want to know the Truth? Why, indeed.

In order to answer what ACIM calls the last unanswered question, "Do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?" we have to see that the world itself is meaningless. We give it all the meaning it has for us. We are the dreamer. And regardless of what we decide to do and no matter how we shift roles, it remains a world of illusions. It will never give us what we want. Because, "Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning. Happiness must be constant, because it is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy cannot be perceived except through constant vision."

We come here to dream awhile, always with the false hope that yet another dream will satisfy the endless desires that arise out of the dream itself. It never ends. Nothing will ever fill or satisfy our imagined lacks and empty places. And yet, within this very dream, another Voice calls us. Do you want to know the Truth? Are you willing to be ruthlessly honest with yourself? Are you ready yet to help Me save the world? The last unanswered question: "Do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?" is the call to freedom and sanity and peace. And what more could we ever want?

"The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind. It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation." -- A Course in Miracles