I Choose Sight

Our thoughts, or what we call our thoughts, appear as images; we call these images "the world". I see my own version of the world, and you see yours. We both agree telepathically that we are seeing the same world (the same room, the same basketball, the same car.) But I can't see through your eyes, and you can't see through mine.

We are not meant to be separate beings, and so in truth, we are not. It's a dream, a wispy veil covering our true sight. What we actually are is beyond words, and not of this world. There is no language that can be employed to describe it (us).

The ego is still present in me. The ego is the thought we had that we were suddenly separated from our Creator. We now think that we are each an isolated being, set off one from the other. I can tell the ego to get behind me, as Jesus Christ told Satan (I believe Satan is a symbol for the ego).

The ego does not exist. We invented it when we found we could no longer see our Creator. Invention comes from a sense of lack; but there is no lack. We believe in scarcity. We are confused and frightened. We forgot to laugh when the images (the world) came into our awareness. Then we forgot we are doing this. Now we are convinced that the world is very real, and that it is coming at us rather than from us.

Because we believe we are inside a body, our awareness stuck inside a skull, the world seems to be outside us. There is nothing outside. There is no outside. The world we see is not only in our mind; all the various objects we see are basically pieces of our mind. We each make our own version of a world; when the versions are combined, we think it is all one world. The thoughts we think we are thinking appear as images that we call "the world".

"There is a light in you the world cannot perceive. And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world. Yet you have eyes to see it. It is there for you to look upon. It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight...To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love." --A Course In Miracles.

I choose sight.

The Eastern Star

The Song plays on in this forever-now; it calls. I only dream I can't hear it, for there is no chance of my not hearing what is forever mine. The little life I think I have, this is but a desperate refusal to let go a tiny moment of fear that was healed and gone in my (our) creation. Herein lies the clue of the ages, not because You tease us with some grand mystery, as if You were a cosmic fooler. No, it is a clue because we who dream of separation catch glimpses of our Reality: You. Our Home.

Our tiny moment of fear made us feel suddenly alone, and this made us feel as if we had betrayed You. But You, being perfect Love and only this, know that we, Your Son, remain forever as created. But our sense that we threw our Home away was so unbearable that we fell into a deep sleep and dreamed we were many. This in order to displace this terrible guilt onto others like us, but different. We needed something to perceive with, so we made bodies, thus a world in which to house the bodies.

But Dearest, You simply sing to us, knowing we never could leave Home, only dreamt it so. We think we cannot understand this, but we are simply hiding. Yet truthfully, we awoke in the same instant that we slept, as it is not Your Will that Your Son be anything but Your Son. Thus, the hiding--and the world--is over. The Eastern Star hangs in a night sky we made because we believed in darkness; but the Star gently reminds that nothing unreal exists, no one real has been harmed.

There is no harm, no dark sky; none but a tiny forgetting that we are with You; and since it is not Your Will that Your Son be anything but Your Son--forever one with You--neither harm nor dark skies can exist: They are unreal. As are the stories we told ourselves, thus our children, of an angry god, a god who holds "love" in one hand, and dangerous rage in the other; whose all-too-human failings would have destroyed him eons before he had even a thought of making a little planet, and peopling it with tiny creatures with huge desires they know nothing of, then punish them when they err.

Dearest, my Creator--Father/Mother/Great Spirit--I yearn for You, though You are right where I (think I) am; my (our) nightmares mean nothing. They cannot prevail against the peace You Will for us. What is called the Holy Spirit, our link to the memory of Who we really are; is this the Star we see? Are we one with that Light that never goes out (because "going out" has no meaning)? The Whole of us, called The Christ, remembers You. "He" is the Self we thought we lost, but no, not ever, because You are perfect Love. Thus, we are not stepchildren.

I want to remember You. I find I think of You more and more as I go about these little days with which the world I see is cloaked. Everything I see, I make; everything I see is not only in my mind, it is my mind. And You are right "here". You are in everything I see; this means what I see is a result of perception, thus has no effects; because since You are in everything I see, everything I see must be but shadows on the walls of my mind. Is this not so, Father?

Yes, the Song calls. The Star shines, its sparkle a calm and gentle reminder that God's sleeping Son awoke long ago in his terms of time; awoke and saw his (our) Creator holding us in His perfect Love. The light we see is the light we are. The gifts we receive are those we had given. Creation, after all, is sharing. Sing we all the Song, recall our Home we never could leave; this is ours, this perfect mind we dreamed had split into untold pieces. We awoke, nothing was lost; we shared a gentle laugh. Thank You, Dearest. Amen.

I Believe In The Light

This morning, before dawn, I woke and saw through barely open eyes, a golden light. The light seemed to be coming through branches of a tree. My eyes opened as if by their own volition, and I realized I was looking at the floor lamp at the end of the couch. The lamp was off.

I believe such a light exists. I believe it is here, right where we (think we) are. I think the light is not a figment of imagination, nor synapses firing; I believe in the light.

We who dream we are no more than skin stretched over a collection of bones; we whose joy demands its opposite; we who believe in darkness...we are the offspring of this light!

And such peace! No opposite to this. Attendant to the light, but one with it. Yes, and it seems so still, yet a certain passion rides along with it; a passion for creativity, as this is its nature. To be creative; to dance the eternal dance.

I said the light seemed to come through trees, but it was not sunlight; and maybe the branches were symbols for our veiled vision. I recently practiced seeing this light "in" all the people, buildings, cars...What I saw cannot be put into words.

There is a Song. Somehow, it is not so that we cannot hear its melody. We simply shut off our hearing when we made these ears. The body's ears were made to hear a world that is not there, as the body's eyes were made to see that illusory world. We all know the Song.

The light faded as I opened the body's eyes, and saw the dark lamp shade. I was not disappointed, as I know by now that the light cannot go away. It is here, it is eternal, it is real. It was I who returned to the physical, as we always do, because we are convinced it is our home, when Home awaits in perfect patience.

Only This (first version. Unfinished.)

Are we adrift? Is there no shore? Is it true that we are the creation of infinite anger? Do ancient words have power over us, or is it we who decide how to interpret? How many ways to see the same teaching?

There is “something” here. It is felt so deeply that most of us are unaware of its life within us. But it is not so that we cannot see, and this something is more than within us.
This is more than a sense, more than some indistinct presence, that cannot really do anything for us but watch as we struggle along our frightened way, whistling in the dark. The ancient words say that it is closer than skin. But then they say other things that make us more afraid. This contradiction tears at us with fingers of old shame, their nails dirty with the guilt of ages past.

We keep reading, trying to understand. But which is it? Are we damned, or blessed? If we cannot untangle this burden, then let us release it, and begin again.

Come. Rest here. For not only is there a shore, it is our home, and we never did leave it…and we never could. We can pretend we left it, and we do. We act as if we are separated from this something, which created us. Yes, we are created. We act as if we are also separated from ourselves, and from one another. But in truth, there is no “other”. And yet, there are many “others”, with different beliefs and from different religions, or no religion. But even those with no religion, who think they just popped out of nowhere, from nothing, into nothing; they sense as well this something…this energy, this presence, this everywhere existent, that we call “God.”

Once we say that word, what is left? Do we cower, cover our nakedness, or do we see at last the reality behind the old legends of our Creator? No, be brave. So afraid have we been, that we see controversy in not using the uppercase letter, and in avoiding the many pronouns to describe “Him”. Or “She”. Or “It”. There is no need to fear. If you want to use capital letters, then use them. Let us ask the reader to use whatever pronoun is comfortable, and let us continue.
God does not ask, “What have you done?” He knows His creation only as He created it. Does He think we are wicked? How could He think so, and Himself remain good? If His perfect creation, His Son, does horrible things to his brother, how does God remain sane? How is there peace if even one soul burns? It is hard to see how on one hand, God has only one Son, but on the other hand, His Son has a brother. Hard, but not impossible.

The Teaching of the Ages

The teaching of the ages will transform the individual. Great religions will fall, and of course many will see this fall as the end of the world, and from the outside looking in, it will seem so. All great transformation, whether on a personal scale, or global, causes upheaval.

The individual will see (all this is very gradual, though it may not feel gradual) at first a connectedness to and with all things. There will grow a great awareness of mind; science will at last have to accept that mind forms what we call matter.

The individual will go beyond the idea of "oneness" as it is presently taught; oneness will be understood as not simply everyone being connected yet separate, but as one whole Self. The first thought that comes is: "We will lose ourselves! Our individuality. I don't want to be absorbed into some impersonal mass of one mind..." Consider that nothing is lost. It is not necessary to understand everything. How does the eternally found become lost?

As the individual changes, there will be a deeper sense of love for the other. Not the old warm and fuzzy demonstrative love, in which we tended to hide ourselves, but love as love is. I believe it will begin (or has begun) in concert with a "new" awareness that we are non-physical beings, and that we invented the physical, we made it up, as a child makes up an imaginary world. Our clinging to physicality while we profess our deep spirituality...this will fade away as we come to recognize that there are no opposites...no divisions to Self.

We made up the physical world to hide in. We became afraid for an instant, and these images came into our perfect Mind. They lasted but an instant and were gone. What we now think we experience is but the memory, or more clearly, our repeating, replaying, of that memory. The world was over long ago, in our terms of linear time. We remain as created.

Now we are talking about changing, transforming, but we are not really transforming at all. It is but our perception. We already are everything. All that is "changing" is our awareness, and our choice. There are two choices, yet in truth, there is only one choice, as the other is false, born of fear, a tiny crazy instant wherein we thought we lost our Creator, angered our Creator. But our Creator is perfect Love. Thus, we are perfect Love.

Old long-entrenched ways of being and doing the world's business, are dying out. The old ways no longer work, if they ever really did. There will be violent opposition, as there always has been when great transformation occurs. For those that cling to the old ways will surely see that their world is coming to an end.

It will be proven by science that we have not only a physical body, but an ethereal body, or astral body. This idea will no longer be seen as esoteric, but as scientific fact. When the world begins to see what freedom it has, the individual witnessing and practicing the power of this freedom, there will be no more nations, nothing to kill for. Nothing to die for (death will be seen as false, too).

We will see that the old idea of "we cannot know 'good' without knowing 'bad'", is also false. But the false will drop away on its own. We need not do anything to it. When I choose to see clearly, the scales drop off. When I choose to stop seeing clearly, the scales come back. But the scales remain illusion. My (our) sight however, is very real, and eternal.

There is one teaching, and all teachings teach it.

"All you need to do..."

In certain terms, "we" do not exist. We are as characters in a dream, and we in turn dream. A wise teacher said, "There is no end to the 'within' of things." Mind never stops creating. But herein lies a clue. "I" sit here and tap on these little black plastic keys, which in certain terms also do not exist; I think I am a person, a man, separate and special. I write about mind as if it is "over there" somewhere, apart from me--as if I am not mind. We became confused, and now we think everything is outside, and coming toward us, and attacking us from all sides. We call it "the world".

We are mind, trying to learn what mind is. Just as scientists use their brains to study how the brain works, do you see? We have forgotten that we are mind. We have forgotten that we are one unlimited Self, holy, innocent, perfect, and at perfect peace; changeless in this eternal now. And we hear faint echoes of our own Voice, and we are so confused, we think it is from something unknown, apart from us. "You are too confused to recognize your own hope." --A Course In Miracles.

We are not really separate beings. We are not lost. We are not confined. We are free! It is not that we have been made individual, with individual lives, then suddenly be faced with this infinite Self that swallows us up, and forces us to be absorbed into Its all-ness, and "we" are no more.

What if a small piece of my personality broke off, became self-aware? It has no idea where it is, or what it is, just that it is suddenly aware that it lives. It looks and sees me, and becomes afraid, not realizing that it IS ME. It does not know how powerful it is, having forgotten that it is one with me, thus possessing all my power of mind. It did not create itself, but now it believes itself apart from me. This creates guilt, because this tiny aspect of me thinks I created it apart from me, when it is actually part of me. It thinks it offended me, and this drives it into such agony that it cannot bear to keep the pain. So the tiny "self" makes other selves, onto whom it can deflect its guilt at having angered its "God". So now everything is based on that one tiny instant of fear. The aspect personality now sleeps and dreams of a world in which it hides from me (itself).

We think that if we can make up our own world, we can hide from God. We do not understand that there is no need to hide from God. God is perfect love. But this is even more frightening than the prospect of "His" wrath. We are terrified of the idea of perfect love...it cannot possibly be true after all...just look at the world...no, we are obviously being pursued by a raging monster-god, bent on our complete destruction.

We think that if we can create ourselves, be our own god, we will be safe here in this world we made then forgot we made.

But God only knows us as God created us. We are as created. Nothing changed, nor could it change. The world is a dream, a tiny mad idea that we are separate from perfect love. Not only separate, but that we tried to kill perfect love, and make up our own love, and send out our terrible guilt, pin it on "others". Then we will not have to see it in ourselves, for it is far too ugly to hold within our own hearts.

We never left Home, nor could we. We are part of God. We have but to decide what we want to see; the world we made, or the truth of what we really are. This One Voice we think we cannot hear...it is our own Voice...it is wholly certain that all is well. "All you need to do is accept what I am telling you." --ACIM.

Not looking at our guilt keeps us "here".

Only This, pg 23

Truth comes through this filter of mind, thus may appear to contradict itself. Earlier, I spoke of Self as multi-layered, but there are no layers. This is a simple distortion, and the reader should be able to tell the difference. In this writing, this book of essays, I am a man, writing of his true Self, using the small self to do so. I have many issues, resentments...in short, I am a person. But this person has learned to move aside as much as he can in order to receive the message...the person I seem to be is not my true Self, it is the self I put on to hide from God.

That is the basic reason we are "here". We desire to hide from our Creator. So powerful is mind, that this desire formed the world in the blink of an eye.

The individual can rise above the shouting of the small self, because there is nothing there. This shouting makes no sound, thus cannot be heard. Simple images cannot harm us...nothing can harm us. There exists nothing that can harm. There is whatever God is, and everything "He" created. The more we can understand this, the more we can move through the filter that is not there, and see more clearly, and by seeing more clearly, comprehend what "All is well" means. "Yes, but the suffering...the cruelty..." We have hypnotized ourselves into thinking it is kind to express in such a way, but in truth we are keeping our eye on the very thing we wish to end. We are demanding its "reality" because by the virtue of suffering, we have a "reason" to keep hiding. A Course In Miracles teaches that everything in the world can hurt us.

This is the dichotomy. This is what we must understand as completely as possible, if we wish to stop hiding. Everything in the world has the potential for pain. There is this two-edged-sword attribute to everything. The electrical power that allows me to write here can also burn this house down. The gas we use to cook can kill us if we breathe it. I invite the reader to go slowly, and sense the reaction to these words. Listen for that still voice. Often the simplest idea is the one we bypass.

Our true state of being is abstract, non-specific, yet we are obviously capable of focus. Our true state has no gradations, no mood swings...oddly, perhaps, this quality is why we are able to perceive gradations, but only as gradations, levels, opposing attributes (illusions).



Each individual knows these things. Each knows the power of mind. Herein lies our freedom. I do not speak of freedom to turn away from (ignore) suffering because we know it is not real, but to heal it through our love. But by clucking the tongue, and declaring, "How sad", we are healing nothing. Again, we are upholding the very thing we claim to want ended.

It seems too big, too complicated, but it is the simplest thing. If what I say is true, what ACIM teaches is true, added to all our other yearnings for understanding, then we know as well that we need do nothing. This is where our understanding must come to its highest. "Do nothing" does not mean what our small self tells us it means. It means turn from the condition, or more clearly, turn to truth. Knowing truth does not preclude caring, but clears away the debris of old attitudes, to allow our sight its vital clarity. Knowing the truth is as it is, we need do nothing, because the truth is the truth (ACIM: "Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true.")

Our promised heritage cannot be but true. If I lend someone a hand, I am helping, not holding an image of "Poor thing." I am knowing the glorious truth of that person, and thus we are helping one another. This one temporarily has less, and I temporarily have more. This means that in our collective terms, our joined consciousness, there is always need, and this goes back to our idea of that double-edged-sword. I once gave a pair of winter gloves to a sleeping man; I wanted to know (after I had gone) that he awoke, and wondered, "Where did these come from?" I wanted that image in my mind, because herein lies our connectedness. All of us. I did not think, "Oh, poor thing." Can you sense the superior attitude there, in those words? This is why we must learn to help and at once know the truth that lies beneath appearances. Herein thrives our strength.

Giving and receiving are the same. Helping and knowing the truth are the same. It is not so that we cannot see these things.