Eyes and Ears

"Having eyes, see you not?  And having ears, hear you not?  And do you not remember?  When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand... ?" -- The Bible; Mark 8:18-19

During last night's ACIM teleclass, the subject of sense perceptions came up, along with Jesus' words about having eyes to see and ears to hear.  It's very clear to all of us that what we sense with the five senses, especially what we see and hear, is very real to us.  It seems very clear that the sensed object or situation exists first, and we sense it as an effect of the sense/cause.  But wait a minute... that means that we are an effect of something 'outside' or 'other'.  How can this be?  We are reflections of God, living and moving and having our being In and Through this reflection.  A reflection can only reflect the qualities and image of its Cause.  So what and where are the objects of our human senses?  What causes them?  What can exist outside the Cause of God?

Jesus performed many miracles that seemed to contradict what people's physical eyes and ears were telling them.  Even the disciples were hard pressed to explain this except in terms of the supernatural.  Jesus told them again and again, in parable and more directly, that our true eyes and ears are wholly spiritual, not physical... and that we can see only the reflection of God's Kingdom, the Truth of Being.  In Truth, there is only wholeness, abundance, harmony, and peace.  Jesus saw only the Kingdom everywhere, only the Truth of God reflecting as man.  And so there was a whole person where there had appeared to be a broken one.  And so there was bread for five thousand where only five loaves appeared to be.

This is a hard lesson for those of us who are heavily invested in the physical, in the sense world.  We have depended on our physical eyes and ears for so long, it's hard to trust what seems invisible.  It's hard to fathom that what we think we see might not really be there... that what we thought we heard was not there at all.  We know Jesus' words are true... but we mistakenly think he was talking about spiritual vision and hearing in addition to our physical eyes and ears.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The things we see and hear with our physical senses are false perceptions; they witness to our imagined separation from God and each other, in effect telling us what we want to hear, to maintain the illusion of an autonomous existence.  This is not idle speculation; this is demonstrable Truth.  Jesus walked us through the ways to demonstrate this, and reminded us that the eyes and ears we really have are the Vision and Voice of God. 

"Perception's fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there.  Perception has no other law than this." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 25, III, 1:3-4