Inconsistency

"It would be contrary to our highest ideas of God to suppose Him capable of first arranging law and causation so as to bring about certain evil results, and then punishing the helpless victims of His volition for doing what they could not avoid doing. Good is not, cannot be, the author of experimental sins. God, Good, can no more produce sickness than Goodness can cause evil and Health occasion disease." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 230, Lines 11-

"The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict -free, and only the conflict-free are Whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 7, Section V, 5:1-7

"The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake, consistent truth must be meaningless. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error. The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 14:2-8, 15:1

We, the people of this dream we call the world, value inconsistency. We are inconsistent about pretty much every single aspect of our lives. Division and separation are seen as normal, and therefore we don't have singleness of thought about anything. The only thing we do constantly, as referenced in the above quotation, is to find evidence that something is wrong. Except for brief and delusional moments when we pretend this is not so, this is our life. Jeshua ben Joseph said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Well, we treasure inconsistency.

Think about our favorite aphorisms, like "Change is the only constant," and "This too shall pass." We use such statements to make sense of this insane world, in our own warped way. And they seem true in the dream... we find evidence for inconsistency everywhere, proving to ourselves that only inconsistency is true.

It's impossible for the human, ego mind to conceive of the eternal and constant. Because the ego mind is itself a fiction, it cannot conceive of Reality. It can only scramble for evidence of its own existence. As it says in Scripture, "The things of God are foolishness to man."

The Good News is that we have never been separate from God, Good, and so our True Mind is always available to us. ACIM calls this the Voice for God, or the Holy Spirit. This True Voice of our Holy Mind knows and values only the eternal, and this it sees and knows everywhere and always, with perfect constancy and consistency.

We can always tell which voice we are listening to by the way we feel. Are we at peace? Are we valuing the eternal and constant? Are we consistent in which Voice we turn to immediately, always, for healing for ourselves and others? Or do we find ourselves restless, anxious, or wanting to change someone or something? This is the wish for inconsistency, a not-so-subtle desire to make the ego and its insanity true. "Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully. The case for insanity is strong to the insane." (ACIM, Chapter 11, Section V, 15:2-4, & 16:1-3)

Healing is healed perception. Every miracle is healed perception. Allowing our fragmented perceptions to be given a new meaning, a meaning consistent with Reality, is the function of forgiveness and is accomplished by the Holy Spirit whenever we are willing. Willingness to let go and allow our perceptions to be translated and unified is our only function here. This is the ongoing function of forgiveness. How consistently are we willing to practice our function? Until it becomes 24/7, we are still valuing inconsistency and the fictions of the human dream. This is ultimately what must be forgiven, and let go.

"The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. Your faith that sin is within you but witnesses to your desire that it be there to see. There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the reasoning of the sane. You have realized that all the gifts the ego would withdraw from you, in rage at your 'presumptuous' wish to look within, you do not want." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 21, Section IV, 1:1-2, 9, 6:1-2,6