“Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. (T51)”
Affirmation: “My starting point is truth”
Reflections:
1 – Philosophical Backdrop
This is a difficult passage; it hints at a philosophical backdrop for the Course.
2 – Returning, but Still in Heaven
We are told that we are actually “returning,” even though we have never actually left Heaven. This returning leads us to the Beginning, before the ego, in its madness, was made. Naturally, to the ego, its own destruction is terrifying. We can perhaps gauge the amount of ego still in us by the fearful nature of our thinking as we study the Course.
3 – Living an Illusion
“Nothing has really happened.” Here is the point made again that we are living an illusion, and should any of us really fear an illusion?
4 – Reason to Fear?
If we are truly walking a pathway that was over in an instant, long ago, and we only seem to be reliving it now–then what is there to fear at all? We chose correctly, for God, in that tiny mad idea that arose in our minds, when we forgot to laugh (from the Text). If this theology helps us, then we would be well to try to understand it. But if the theology is a stumbling block, we are bade not to embrace theology that would divide us from one another, but instead seek the one experience that we all can share.
5 – We Share Love
And this experience that we all can share is always one of love. We fall many times. We attack verbally, we have misunderstanding and regrets, but all of this is meaningless when we recognize that we are caught in illusions, and that these illusions are madness. Certainly we cringe at being called “insane,” but it is the best way, is it not, to describe the hold that the ego has over us. The ego has never given us anything to keep. It has always tangled prizes out in front of us, but prizes that rust and decay. And then we cry, for we do not have what we really want. And what is it that we really want?
6 – The Real World
The real world, as described by A Course in Miracles, is a world free of vengeance and rebuff, a shining world of joy and peace. This is not “pie in the sky” thinking, because our projections make our perception (an ACIM tenet), and we can make any world that we want. If we see something that we do not want to see, we turn inwardly to the Holy Spirit, and we ask for a new picture. Indeed, ACIM says that we are seeing these distasteful things because we do not want to see them. They are an outward indication of an inward condition, and only when that inward condition is healed will we, once again, walk a green earth.
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
As I study the Course, I may become fearful. This is because my ego senses its elimination.
Help me to realize that this fear can be abated by Your strength. Help me to realize that the elimination of the ego is what I really want.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 