The Illusion of Time

"Each day should be devoted to miracles.  The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively.  It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end.  Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section I, 15:2-4

"Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is the ego's domain, accepts it without question.  The only aspect of time that is eternal [real] is now." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section III, 6:4-5

The illusion of time seems to be the thickest veil we project across reality, to obscure the eternal.  We may question a lot of the world's thinking, but my kids still appeared to grow up, my hair still appeared to turn white, and the seasons still appear to come and go... along with these bodies we seem to live in.  We still seem to have deadlines and appointments to keep.  How can we say this is not real, when our very lives appear to be slaves to time and its seeming power over us? 

This morning I had a very interesting learning experience.  I thought I had somewhere that I had committed to be, and it involved getting up very early (5 a.m.) and taking care of all the animals here at the Sanctuary so that I could leave the house by 7 a.m.  No problem, usually.  But this morning I woke up and felt like I shouldn't go.  I prayed about it... in other words, I forgave and released my belief in time and the part of me that didn't want to go... but still couldn't get a clear 'go' or 'don't go'.  I knew that in reality it didn't matter what I do... it matters only what the whole situation symbolizes, since that's all it really is.  So I gave it to the Holy Spirit, my true Self, and forgave the whole notion of time and space and went back to bed.

When I woke up, two interesting things happened.  One, I checked my e-mail and discovered that I 'miraculously' wasn't supposed to be there today, even though I clearly had it down in my calendar!  And second, the wind had blown the barnyard gate off its latches... but only one horse was out, and she came right back in when I went out to feed them... no chasing involved.  Now all of the horses could have run... but they didn't.  And I could have driven to St. Louis and not been there when the gate blew off, and all the horses could have run off and been who knows where when I got home this evening.  But I was here.  So all I said was, "Thank you, Holy Spirit."  

Now I don't think it matters at all whether it's about appointments or horses.  They are symbols in the dream, and what they stand for in my dream is the awakening of the Son of God.  By releasing it all to the Holy Spirit, by making no decisions by my egoic self, the meaning of all of it is changed.  Now they are learning symbols, pointing to the timeless and eternal, the unchanging and Real.  "Thank you, Holy Spirit, that only God is the meaning of everything."  And God is everywhere, everything, always, and forever... wholeness, fulfillment, joy, love, and peace, this very now.

Jeshua ben Joseph gave us many ways to see past the illusion of time and impermanence.  He said, "Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven." (The Bible; Matthew 18:3)  The complete dependence of a child, without any thought of yesterday or tomorrow.  They simply know that they are loved and cared for NOW.

A Course in Miracles tells us that, "Except ye become as little children" means that unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father.  The specialness of God's Sons does not stem from exclusion, but from inclusion." (A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section V, 3:4-5)

We live and move and have our Being in God, and live as currents of thought and Being within the Mind of God.  This Being is eternal and infinite and ALL, as God Is.  Our Being is not exclusive, but inclusive of the entire Kingdom that is the Mind of God.  The Sons of God are ONE, and without limit... whether appearing as horses, gates, or people.  And the illusion of time has no meaning or power or reality in the Infinity of God.

"You cannot understand yourself alone.  This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place of the Sonship is God.  This is your life, your eternity, and your Self.  It is of this that the Holy Spirit [always] reminds you.  It is this that the Holy Spirit [always] sees." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section III, 8:1-5

The Power of Truth

"The power of Truth, of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material senses." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; page 412, Lines 16-18

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind, and I will rest in Him Who is my Self." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 107, 9:5

In yesterday's blog we explored the tool of inquiry, and how it cuts through illusion to reveal Truth. And this is an important tool as we move through life, because it's so easy to get caught up in our own stories. But Truth, the unchanging Reality, is not dependent on our inquiry or on human belief or on anything at all. It is unmoving Principle, and is the Ground of All Being, our True Self. It is not the product of anything, but rather is the Source of All. Truth is the infinite, radiant Being of the Allness of God.

What this means is that when Truth becomes our focus, it automatically clears away the mists of illusion. When A Course in Miracles says that Truth will correct all errors, it speaks literally, not poetically. It's not speaking about the specific, relative truths that we bandy about in the dream we call life. It's speaking of Principle ItSelf. And Principle is abstract, inclusive, and unchanging. In other words, it includes everyone and everything, and has limitless self-organizing power. Truth radiates, Truth IS. And we are all a part of that IS. So as soon as we give our attention, our consciousness back to PRINCIPLE, back to SOURCE, we are filled with awareness of TRUTH as the only force and power in that IS.

Our human, dreaming minds want to know specifics. What does a life of truth look like? What are we wearing? What will we eat? How will we amuse ourselves? Will it be fun? Will it hurt? Will I be alone? Such is the realm of the relative that occupies our time and attention. We don't have to give up our human occupations... we simply have to want to know the inclusive Truth more than anything else. We have to be committed, married to Truth. More than any form, more than any identity, more than any longing to have... Truth becomes the beacon that shines through it all, that leads us ultimately out of the many-storied dream of a separate self.

Once the light of Truth shines again through our sleeping minds, there is no more hiding in delusional stories of egoic dreams. The Power of Truth shines away every shadow and every sense of lack and every imagined loss, revealing One Eternal Self, forever Whole, Holy and Beloved in the Allness of God. We still walk in the dream, and we still dream.... but the dream is daily returned to Source, and the Power of Truth transforms every dream of separation into a dream of union and awakening. Such is the transformative Power of Truth.

"When Truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear or change to something else. It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and go and go and come again. It stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts that the appearances the world presents engender. They will merely blow away, when Truth corrects the errors in your mind." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 107, 4:1-4

"Truth spares all that is true. The unreal vanishes, while all that is Real is eternal." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 474, Lines 24 & 28

A Year Without Blame

"Only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego-defense as blaming others. You cannot enter God's presence if you attack His Son." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section IV, 5:4-6

"Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." -- The Bible; Habakkuk 1:12-13

Happy New Year to everyone! I love the way I'm seemingly led to a topic. Today is New Year's Day, and I'm at peace with the world. There's no one I seem to be struggling with or blaming at the moment. And yet this topic chose me. Thank goodness the Holy Spirit knows better than I do what's needed.

The fact that only the ego blames at all is important. I woke up yesterday morning after a fearful dream, in which I felt personally responsible for the evils happening to others in my night-time dream. This type of self-blame is the source of all guilt and all projection of guilt and blame in the dream we call the world. And while it remains unconscious, we just keep projecting and experiencing the dream of it, night and day. It's the product of a deluded mind that imagines it's separate from God and thinks it's creating stuff in opposition to the Goodness of God. Rationally we can agree that if God is All, then what else exactly could we be creating that is other than All? Rationally we can agree with this.

Yet our eyes keep beholding iniquity. Habakkuk tells us that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and that God doesn't even see iniquity. So what are we seeing? If God doesn't see it, it can't exist. GOD IS ALL. That means ALL. When ACIM tells us we can't enter God's presence if we attack His Son, that means we can't experience our Oneness with God and each other if we attack ourselves. The buck starts and stops with self-condemnation. Because all seemingly external blame and attack comes from projected self-guilt and self-blame. Because deep-down, in the part of us that remembers Who We Are, we know that God is All, and that we are One with All. We know we can't have a power that opposes or rebels against what is Whole-ly Self. And so we feel guilty for wanting to be separate and autonomous, and project it all as a huge holographic dream universe of imagined opposing forces, and attempt to lose ourselves in a haze of dreaming and forgetting. All because we fear our own imaginary and illusory rebellion against the inclusiveness of Self.

So here we are on the first day of the imaginary year of 2009. Years are, of course, a human construct. We have tried our darnedest to segment the eternal into a progression of years, and to label and judge them all. The good news is that as we give this holy instant and every holy instant to God, our perception (projection) is released and healed. The miracle of sight is returned. For a holy instant, there is no blame, no judgement, no problem at all in the endless Oneness that We Are. This is the Peace of God. And this is the hope of 2009 and every other year... that we remember we are One, and that we don't need to look so hard for solutions to the problems that seem to appear, that are actually our projections. It's the observation (projection) of iniquity that keeps it in our dream experience. Kind of like it's people going to movies that keeps the industry going. We're the producer and director and viewing audience of this film. To behold the world without iniquity... to see self and each other, including Israelis and Palestinians, as innocent and as my Self, is to behold a year without blame and without blemish. This is my prayer for us all.

"All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 3:6-7

The Past Has Never Been

"You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No one who believes this can understand what 'always' means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal because you are eternal, and 'always' must be now." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 13, Section I, 8:1-2

"By accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless and will not be." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 13, Section I, 9:1

O.K., so today's blog is sort of a continuation of yesterday's thoughts about eternity. The ideas of past and future, of right and wrong, of guilt and innocence... these polarized ideas perpetuate the myth of separation from God, dissecting eternity into segments of time and experience, blinding us to the meaning of 'always.' Forgiveness, the release of all preconceptions and judgments, all mental constructs about a given person or situation, returns our mind to an expanded state, the right-mindedness that can directly experience 'always' and eternity. "Always has no direction."

We often think we're forgiving someone or something else, someone separate from 'me.' That is never the case. We're always and only forgiving ourselves, since the holographic dream we each experience is a projection of our own guilt in our own mind. The fact that guilt is such an individual and private judgment, a private matter, is the best evidence that it is not real. We can never know what's truly in the mind of someone else in the dream... because they're not there. Our perception of others is really a projection of our own mind. We are the projector. As Byron Katie likes to say, "No two people have ever met." :-)

The beauty here is that the past has never been! No matter what our projections are now or have been, it never happened! The miracle is that through our willingness to let go of our projections, our willingness to return to right-mindedness, we can actually experience the Truth of this. The past has never been. The linear concept of time has been dissolved in the dream. The miracle is forgiveness, the healing of our own mind. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." -- The Bible; Isaiah 1:18

"The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless. The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section I, 47:1-3 & 48:1

"Forgiveness offers everything I want." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 122