One Forever

"The separation [from God] is merely a faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all. This is the miracle of creation; that it is One forever. Every miracle you offer to the Son of God is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspect is the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is the same, perceived in the same light and therefore One." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 13, Section VIII, 3:5 & 5:1-3

"Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else. God's Being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 481, Lines 2-4

The thought that anything unlike God, unlike Good, unlike Love, is simply an aberrant formulation of reality... this seems unlikely, an unrealistic and idealistic philosophy at best. Our practical, worldly selves base our judgements on experience and the views of other wiser people and their experience. We base our judgements on numbers, too... we love statistics as 'evidence.' What we don't take into account is that numbers are neutral... they are simply another mental construct to attempt to quantify reality. And they are only 'evidence' for what we already believe to be true. This is why statistics are used to justify both sides of pretty much every issue at one time or another. What we fail to realize is that Reality, what is True, cannot be quantified. What is One cannot be divided, cannot be compared, cannot be opposed. It is One forever.

We think that we experience what is already manifest. So we're always trying to judge and quantify the manifest world. But A Course in Miracles reminds us, "What I experience I will make manifest." The world that appears to be outside is simply the reflection of our own consciousness, our own inner experience. It is the fragmented perception of the Son of God, where what is One appears to be many... where what is forever whole and harmonious and loving appears to be divided and at war with itself.

Our Reality is One forever. We are collectively One Self, and reflect One Being which we call God. We are emanations, reflections of all that is Good. We can have no qualities but those of our Source. And so we come to question the 'rational' self, with its hidden agendas and skewed perceptions... and all it takes is a truly questioning mind to begin to glimpse Reality. Self-inquiry is the key to moving beyond the false perceptions of the human mind. Self-inquiry makes it possible for us to forgive, to really let our false perceptions go, and welcome the miracle of true perception in every circumstance, with every person.

Our Reality is One forever. But we can't know that until we see that every single aspect, every single person, every single situation as the same. The miracle of forgiveness returns our healed perception to this sameness... the awareness that God is All-Inclusive, and Everywhere. There is nothing else.

"You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God's Sons unless you love them all and equally. Love is not special. You can only love as God loves." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 13, Section X, 11:1-2 & 4

Loving the Real

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." -- A Course in Miracles; Introduction, 2:2-4

"Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 486:12-13

"The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." -- The Bible; II Corinthians 4:18

Loving the Real is a full time job. It isn't for the faint of heart, or for those who love their stories about reality more than the Truth about Reality. It's the practice of questioning, inquiring, looking deeper to find what's true. It's a continual exercise in overlooking the apparent, in seeing what can't be seen.

Our stories have it all set up as paradox and struggle. There is always an opposing force, always something 'other' that creates this apparent tension... and that very dynamic is what reveals the falsity. There is no tension, no struggle in Oneness. In the Allness of God, everything exists in harmony and order, abundantly expressing the Goodness and Light and Love that are the Truth of Being. Our stories about suffering and lack are revealed as fiction the moment we're willing to really question them... and behind every seeming story lies the Reality of God, which is eternally Loving and at Peace.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that "the opposite of Love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM; Intro, 1:8) And Mary Baker Eddy pointed out that "Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite." (S&H; 278:10-11) In the Allness of God, there isn't anything other than God. In the Allness of God, there isn't another power. There isn't anything opposing eternal Love and Goodness. The opposites we have been so carefully taught don't really exist except as mental constructs, and false ones at that. They are the gods of the material world, as fictional as Zeus or Bacchus. "All idols are false ideas." (ACIM; 30, IV, 1:8)

Material thinking, the belief that life and intelligence lies in matter, is at the heart of the false idols that populate our dream world. The belief that pleasure and pain are caused by the material, the serial adventures of a personal body and its cohorts, is pure fiction. But as long as we are immersed in the material dream it will seem to be real to us. In other words, we are loving the false, and invested in its continuing as long as we can... we don't want the dream to end, regardless of its origins. Loving the false, we dissociate from the real.

Loving the Real is a return sanity. We can remember Who We Are. We can spiritualize our thinking, forgive our errors and the errors that appear to be around us, and choose once again to Love the Real. Ironically, it's the only real choice there is. Everything else is samsara, the endless wheel of delusion and human suffering.

Loving the Real returns us to the Awareness of Love, the Awareness of the Allness of God, the Awareness of Infinite Good. It is the fulfillment of the Lord's Prayer: "On earth, as it is in Heaven."

"As we approach Spirit and Truth, we lose the consciousness of matter." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; 278:15-16

"You are surrounded only by Him. What limits can there be on you whom He encompasses?" -- A Course in Miracles; 18, IV, 10:6-7

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

Inquiry: The Philosopher's Stone

"Our life is not as we imagine it." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 167, 10:2

"The transfer value of one true idea has no end or limit." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 5, II, 4:5

"The Truth is true, and nothing else is true. Truth cannot have an opposite." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 152, 3:1, 5

Webster defines inquiry as "an examination into facts or principles." Inquiry-based learning advocates define inquiry as "a seeking for truth." Both definitions are apt... for only the inquiring mind can find its way out of the maze of its own making. Only inquiry can shed light on the fact that all concepts are invented, relative, and therefore neither true nor false. Concepts are all simply stories. Only inquiry can lead us past all mental constructs to the Truth behind it all.

You can state the basis for all inquiry very simply... that if Truth exists, it exists as Principle, and is the Ground of Being. So that means that we can inquire and question literally everything that comes and goes... and what remains is what is True. The ancient alchemists used the metaphor of pure gold for Truth, and the philosopher's stone represented the ability to turn base metal into gold. This is what inquiry will do with any situation or concept. If we're willing to question, and to forgive and release what is clearly relative judgement, we sooner or later experience the pure gold of direct Awareness of Truth, the direct experience of our changeless Self. As the poet Rumi put it so beautifully, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about."

Why is inquiry so discouraged in our world? Our educational system discourages inquiry and extols indoctrination and memorization of pre-packaged ideology and concepts. Our cultures and religions, all of them, are based on the normalization of indoctrination. Questioning is regarded, at best, as weird and reserved for intellectuals. At worst it's seen as blasphemous or unpatriotic or just plain evil. For obvious reasons. Remember the story of the Emperor's New Clothes? All the stories and myths and traditions and beliefs of culture depend on not questioning.

When Jesus walked in the dream we call the world, he walked and lived as other people do. The difference is he knew none of it was true. He felt no compulsion to wash his hands at certain times, or eat only certain things... and this threatened many people who believed those ways of thinking and doing things were sacred. He moved in the world, but he was most definitely questioning every mental construct and human belief all the time. He showed us that God is the real meaning of everything. And this he came to teach us.

If God is the real meaning of everything, what is there to fear in questioning everything that seems limited or unlike God? If you strip away every illusion, what remains must be the Truth. This is the purpose of true inquiry... and like the ancient alchemists with their philosopher's stone, when we practice inquiry faithfully we are rewarded with the gold of pure Truth.

"Nothing the world believes is true." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 139, 7:1