Let This Pass

Let this pass from me. Let it pass to my understanding that it never was. If it never was, it must have passed as it appeared, yet never appeared. How did the impossible happen? Well, it never happened.

Even this tiny sliver of the Whole, this “I”, yes I am loved as the Son, as I would love a cell from my body that suddenly gained conscious awareness and declared it was the whole body.

We are not meant to be separated, and so we in truth are not. We will not be absorbed into a vast gestalt. No, we already are Who and What we are.

What we call our individuality is just what we thought we stole from Heaven. We have but to give it back. I begin by telling myself not to fear my own mind.

The moment we say we have only to give back what we thought we stole, and the moment we see that we never left Heaven, are the same moment. Nothing has changed, nor could it. And so, I would let this pass.

The Moving Hand

What is God? I ask myself this question, then I sense a deeper question: Why do I not know what God is? This is my real question, my true prayer. I should know my own Creator...I should not be apart from my Creator...I did not create myself.

Asking such questions is a sign that we are split off from our Creator, each other, and ourselves. But these questions are designed to distract us from knowing that we are not apart from God. We seek, but we are terrified to find.

It accomplishes nothing to ask a question but not desire the answer or accept it when it comes. Asking what is God keeps me here. The question comes not from idle curiosity, but from fear. An entire world and universe sprang up before our sight because we were afraid and forgot to remember that we are God's Holy Son.

Place your hand on the table. Let it be still. Now declare: "I will move my hand." As you make that declaration, hold your hand still. "I will move my hand now. It is fully functional, and capable of movement, so I will now move my hand"...All the while keep your hand still. You do not really want to move your hand, so you hold it there even as you demand that it move.

This is what we do when we ask a question but refuse the answer. We do not want to know.

We are not little creatures, we are aspects of our Self. Our Self is not some nebulous unknown into which we move, to ultimately lose ourselves. That is the illusion, that is what keeps us here. We really believe we did some terrible harm to our Home; we really believe we offended, even enraged, our Creator. All the while we remain Home. Our return to the place we never left has been accomplished. We already are what we seek. Being chased out of the Garden was a dream, a mistake on our part. The mistake was instantly corrected. It will not repeat because it never took place.

I must look at my fear, because if it is buried, I cannot heal the illusion. I must look directly at the illusion so I can see it for what it is. And so moves the hand.

Sing

We are afraid of being one. We think we are separated, individual, unique, special. Not only do we think it, we demand it. We fear being absorbed into some strange, vague, impersonal "oneness". But if it is true that "we" are one unlimited Self, it follows that we already are that Self; we are not becoming one, we are one.

The part of us that thinks it is separate is simply afraid. It thinks it must hide from its creator. The world we see sprang into awareness (perception) in reaction to our mistaken thought that we were suddenly apart from God.

We have become expert at claiming spirituality while at once clinging to our special individuality. We might believe God is all there is, but still demand the equation, "God plus me." And I am no different. Ego still tries to rule in me. It is just that I sense something else, another self.

I hear another song beneath what the ego is singing. This is because the ego is not singing: the ego does not exist. And yet, it is part of our mind, because we made the ego. But so powerful, so creative is mind, so powerful is belief, the ego appears very real to us. It demands, it attacks. Its question is not "What am I?", but "What are you?" Thus, our mind is split.

By and large, the world is afraid of exploring mind. Whole religions teach their followers not to go within: "Devils live there." We did not actually forget that we are mind (that we are spirit); we only dreamed it so. When I go into my mind, I know that if I come across something that frightens, I made that something. It is not something apart from me, over which I have no control or defense. I know my beliefs, emotions, expectations, come together to form my experience.

One night a woman had a nightmare. She was in a strange house. It was dark. She was being pursued by a monstrous demon. After being chased and nearly cornered several times, the demon's hot breath scorching the back of her neck, the exhausted, terrified woman at last could run no longer. As the hideous thing lurched up, nearly touching her, she screamed: "Who are you! Why are you chasing me! What do you want!" At that, the demon stopped, put its hands in the air, shrugged its shoulders, and replied softly, "I don't know, lady. It's your dream."

An old tale, not original with me. But it speaks to our forgetting that we are doing this. This is our dream. Thus, it is our song to sing. We did not write the song anymore than we created ourselves. We have a Creator, but we seem to not know "Him". We seem to be hiding. I no longer wish to hide. Sing we all the song.

Where is Outside?

We think we are looking at something outside us. "Outside" is meaningless, an invention we made to hide from what we really are. It feels as if we are inside what we call "bodies". That is why it seems there is an outside. Everything we see is images we made. This includes the body. It is an image too, but we tend to overlook that. This is an ego-trick. The ego wants desperately to keep what it thinks it has. Without the body, we are free.

In truth, we are free anyway. The body makes us certain that we are bound to limits. The body cannot contain us. If it can keep us convinced of an outside world, the ego can hold us hostage. Sometimes I can see my ego objectively, as if it were across the room. The ego is a thought of separation, and the body is the symbol of separation.

Certainly, there is no separation. Separation is not our nature. What is not our nature cannot exist, yet we are clearly capable of great imaginings. But perception is perception, as a child with imaginary friends. But creation is eternal. Creation is one. "What is one cannot have separate parts." --A Course In Miracles.

We have convinced ourselves that we do not know what "God" is. We do know. We are not separate from God. There is no line, no division, between us and God. This little body, its little fingers tapping away--it knows nothing. Nor does the self that thinks it is inside this body. So what is it that comes out here? It must be that everything I see, including the body, is in my mind. This means I am responsible for everything I see. Thus, it must be that I (we) never left Home (God).

Nor could we ever leave. "God Wills you be in Heaven..." --ACIM.

A Profound Silence

I hear a voice that does not speak. I hear it perfectly, and I understand its wordless message. I am not separate from it, only thought I was. But that thought, being of mind, had all the power of mind, though its effects were unreal. The voice I hear tells me I but dream, and my dream is very real to me. I believe in the dream more than in the voice. In the belief lies the power of mind.

I trust the voice that does not speak, as my belief in the dream lessens. It was the valley of death, and I walked through it for an instant and saw that I’d been home all along. It is not my Creator’s Will that I be anywhere but home. My Creator’s Will is my will. I will the end of dreams.

There is nowhere but home. The sky is never dark, nothing whithers to die. There are no opposites, no gradations. Here my joy is true, for I see all it means, all it is, and that forever.

A profound silence fills and defines and is, everything. The nightmares, their terror, all nothing. Shadows. It seemed so real, but all along that tiny moment of fear, the voice remained: “Look. I am with you always.” Dreams are dreams, but home is real.

I did not scar the walls of heaven, only dreamed it so. How does perfect love allow something unlike itself? Here at home the sky is never angry. Everything is everything. Infinite creation abides. I need not hide myself. I am one with my Self.

The shadows I made are mine. They cannot harm me. I thought they could, but I was mistaken in my fear. I will not fear, for You are with me. Here in the silence, in this perfect rest, this infinite peace…there are no shadows. Amen.

Home All Along

How far do I want to go? I tell myself I want to wake and see that I was always home. Yet I persist in this dream of separation. A Course In Miracles tells me I do not know the thing that I am. It also tells me the world is over. It was over in the same instant it seemed to appear in the mind of God's Son. We are God's Son.

I think I am this small creature living a small life, a tiny march of days toward a frightening mystery called death. I sense the other self that ACIM tells me about ("Myself is nothing, but my Self is everything.") The truth is, I (we) did awake. Here is a tiny portion of mind that stubbornly holds on to a non-event, a tiny stab of fear. We think we harmed Heaven, our home. We think we betrayed our Creator. We are afraid of turning back. Thus, we have legends of an angry God punishing His sinful creation.

That must be why I claim to want to wake, but seem to remain "here".

The world is our hiding place. We made it to hide from God.

We each see our own version of the world. As one, we agree to its basic dimensions, and rules, like gravity. We forgot we made the world, and so deep is our forgetting that anyone who dares to declare otherwise is seen as crazy.

I want to know what I really am. I want to go beyond theory. The world I made is not my home. I (we) never left home, nor could we. We are deeply confused. But confusion, which is a form of fear, a turning away from love, is unreal. Only the real exists.

I awoke long ago, and I'd been home all along.

Deepest Heart

I made (or make) the world that I see. It is my version of the greater world. Thus, I am responsible for what I see. I think I understand what that means, yet I must remind myself that it is so. I forget. I get caught up in the (my) perception of an outside world coming at me. But the world I see is not coming at me, it is coming from me.

The world I see is neutral, but the thoughts that form it are not neutral. Mind is very powerful, and never stops. I want very much to go beyond these writings, the text of my deepest heart. I want to awaken, and see that I was always home. When I say that, it reminds me that I did awaken. The world that I still react to as if it is outside me is over. It is over because it never was.

This "I" thinks it is autonomous. It thinks it is separate from "you". It thinks there is a world outside. Not only does it think these things, it demands these things are so. It defends these beliefs with a great ferocity. It keeps the world before me, blinding me to my own reality. At the same time, it prevents me from recalling, realizing, that I am responsible for it. This "I" is the self I made. It does not exist.

But then, what does exist? I sense another self, even now, in this false present. It exists. It is not apart, it is not separate, it is not another self. It just feels that way, because I have been so convinced that I am an individual being, living among other beings, that I forgot how to recognize my Self. "Myself is nothing, but my Self is everything." --A Course In Miracles."

I am learning, when I speak about myself, to picture everything, every rock, every flower, every slap, every caress, as included in this "I". In other words, I am learning that everything I see (including what I think I cannot see), is me. Yes, even the "bad" things. This exercise helps me to forgive the world I see. I imagine this "I" as a radio tower, broadcasting its signal to all the earth, and "out" to the universe. But I must keep in mind that I am forming the earth and universe; not that it all exists on its own, and I move into it. I am making it.

But I must accept that I want the world I see. I believe this is what ACIM means when it says that we must hide nothing from the Holy Spirit. I see a world because I want a world. I want to hide. I am afraid. I am convinced of my unworthiness. I am a sinner, a murderer, a cheater of a divine love that I fear is a damning love. And yet, I still want it.

This is the hell we know. It is all we know. We catch glimpses, flashes of light, but the world is given precedence because it is so loud, so garish in its seeming assault on our senses. But all the while, One goes with us. That One is us.

My Prayer

We do not understand. "I do not know the thing that I am." --A Course In Miracles. We appear to be separated, but I believe we are not.

I believe it because I have demonstrated to myself over many years that the world I see changes as my attitude toward it changes: Change the way you see the world, and the world you see will change.

We feel as if we had been placed here. We seem to be at the mercy of outside forces (weather, the actions of others). "Others". What does that mean? What does "weather" mean, for that matter? Both terms suggest a separation. There seems to be an outside, an apartness, an isolation. There seems to be a part of us that denies anything that pulls our attention away from our separateness.

The ego. That part of us that we made when we thought we lost our Creator. Not just lost, but enraged "Him". We thought we needed to hide, to bury this horrible sense of guilt at having offended "Him". Thus, legends were born of a terrible force outside us that created us not like itself.

I have no interest in precluding anyone's beliefs; we are all "here" to find our way, and we all use different methods. It follows that I would have no interest in convincing anyone of anything. I simply speak of what I feel deeply.

The world I see is my own version; the world you see is yours. We agree in basic terms, let's say, that a couch is a couch. We both see the couch, and can measure its dimensions, basically agreeing to these. But I am forming my own couch, and you are forming yours. Mine will not be exactly like yours, and yours will not be exactly like mine. Yet, their basic dimensions will agree. For some strange reason, most people seem to find this idea quite outrageous. But to me, it makes perfect sense.

But is there really a "me" as separate from "you"? Is there really some sort of a being that created you and I as separate selves, as if from a recipe?

Or is there "something" that we only thought was apart from us? What if our hiding need not be, thus never was? What if we are one unlimited, perfect being, at one with our Creator? I do not understand why that idea should be considered weird, or crazy.

Fear gave rise to the legends. Peace heals their effects, which never happened. "My brother, what you thought you saw was never there." --ACIM.There is part of us that knows (not believes, but knows) that fear is not real. I am convinced that this part of us brought forth A Course In Miracles, and every other teaching. There is one teaching, and all teachings teach it. This part of us is our Self.

I pray. I close my eyes, and I pray. My prayer is in reverence for All That Is, my Creator, my beautiful mystery which is no mystery. My prayer erases the illusion of differences, this religion against that. My prayer is all-inclusive, as my Creator is all-inclusive, because my Creator is perfect love, and only this. Amen.

We do understand. It is not true that we cannot see these things.

The Second Voice

It sounds like this:

I want to be separate. In fact, I demand it. I want to be an individual, distinct from everyone else, and everything else. I want to be special. I want you to play roles: cousin, sibling, friend, spouse, neighbor, citizen of another town, state, country. I want to at once hold you close and keep you apart, away from me. I do not know what I am, and that scares me. So, I pretend I know what I am; I discover all that I find around me, all the various things I label "nature." Or "universe." I learn how these work, all the many attributes of the natural world around me.

That is the loud voice we accept as our voice, our self. But there is another voice. Actually, there is but one voice, we just perceive two. The voice we perceive as loud is a sort of whistling in the dark as we make our frightened way: "Look! I'm not afraid. Here I am! I'm headed home!"

Might it be true that we are one infinite self? Would this self not be the "second" voice? Called the still small voice, but "still" and "small" only because we demand the first voice be real. Why should that idea, that we are not separated beings, but one self, be so strange an idea to us? Why so frightening a thought?

Because we think it means we lose something precious to us. Our individuality. I pause from typing, and I look up. There are two little shelves above my head. There I have some books, and various things that I treasure: a couple of old bookends I inherited from my mother, engraved with the image of a World War One aviator...various things scattered around me. Me.

What is "me"? Why do I still refer to "my" body as myself? Why do I look at these objects without automatically knowing they are part of me, pieces of my own mind? Why should that thought be so outrageous? I feel as if I am stuck inside what we call a body. I have a thing inside my skull that seems to make me think and speak, and able to observe what is called the outside world. Why does it seem so strange for me to understand that everything I see...is me?

I have to remind myself that the world I see is in my mind, that I invented the world I see. A Course In Miracles teaches this, that we made the world up. But long before I had heard of ACIM,I always had a sense of "I am doing this". It makes perfect sense to me, and yet I still give more attention to the loud voice than the still voice. Why?

As soon as I ask "why", the "small" voice tells me to be still. The voice reminds me that the Course also says, "myself is nothing, but my Self is everything." This tells me that the self we think we are, demand to be...that we made that self up in order to perceive the world we made in which to hide from our Self, which is us! "There is no world!" --ACIM.

As I ask what is "me", it follows that I would ask, what is "you". You must be my brother. Not your body, but you. Beneath your loud voice. It must be that we made one another. We needed something with which to perceive this world we were forming out of our fear and guilt for our perception that we enraged our Creator. So this body came to be. We are hiding.

It is impossible that we are scattered, isolated beings scrambling on a great rock in a cold dark space. It has been asked, "How did the impossible happen?" For me, the simple answer is that it didn't! Is that not the whole point? The world is but a tiny instant of fear that was gone in that same instant in which it seemed to appear. We need not demand to be anything that we are not. The world is over.

I hear morning birds outside my window. Their song reminds me of the Song we all hear. It is eternal. I need not fight against the world I see (the sounds I hear). I need only forgive (overlook) the world. The world is shadows. It lasted an instant because it never was. It is not our Creator's Will, and so it is not our will, as His Son.