Elevated Self of Form

“[W]e are talking now, in a certain sense, of an elevation of form.  While this is actually an elevation beyond form, it must begin in the reality of where you think you are.  In other words, it must begin with form.  You cannot await some changed state but must create the changed state you await.  (Treatises of A Course of Love:  Treatise on the Art of Thought, 9.3)”

Affirmation:  “I would choose an elevation of form today.”

Reflections:

1 – Do Not Give Up the Physical

Here Jesus is introducing the concept that will be elaborated upon later as the “elevated Self of form.”  We do not give up the physical, but we elevate it.  A Course in Miracles, in contrast, downplays the physical as illusory and perhaps therefore as less important to us.  Yet even though we live in a dream (until we experience the real world), the dream seems very, very real to us.  And Jesus is aware of that, very much so, in A Course of Love.

2 – Living Christ-Consciousness

The two works, ACIM and ACOL, have a continuity, though.  The elevation is actually an elevation “beyond form,” and that is the state that is described more frequently in ACIM.  We are told that we will experience the real world only briefly (but we are not told what “briefly” means) before God will reach down and lift us up in Awakening.  Awakening in ACOL is called Christ-consciousness, but the concept is the same.  And we are let in ACOL to see that we can live Christ-consciousness on this plane as the elevated Self of form.

3 – The Body

What a blessing this is!  We are all too happy with our physical bodies, and we are not so sure that we want heaven if we have to give them up.  (There are exceptions to this idea among human beings.)

4 – We Create the Change

We are told that we must create this changed state.  We do not wait for something to happen to us, but we are conscious co-creators with God in welcoming the elevated Self.  In ACIM, the word is that we wait, quietly, for God to act.  There appears to be a change, possibly because of our evolution, in what ACOL teaches.  We are needed to hold ourselves in readiness, but we are also to act when we see what we are to do.  And Jesus is spelling out what we are to do in the subsequent pages of the trilogy of A Course of Love (including the Treatises and the Dialogues).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would create the elevated Self of form sooner rather than later.  I realize that perhaps I can do something, that because of progress in time with A Course of Love, I am able to effect some change.  Help me to understand if I am, instead, to leave everything to You.

Be with me today as I walk through this world.  The elevated Self of form will heal me from anything that is currently wrong.  Thank You in advance for this blessing.

Amen.