“To live in relationship is to accept all that is happening in the present as your present reality, and as a call to be in relationship with it. It is the willingness to set aside judgment so that you are not contemplating what “should” be happening rather than what is happening. It looks past percep¬tion of “others” to relationship and wholeness. To live in relationship is to live in harmony even with conflict. It is an understanding that if conflict arises in your present there is something to be learned from your relation¬ship with conflict.” (ACOL, C:27.14)
This quotation enlarges on the concept of relationship, a concept that is given great play in A Course of Love. We are to be in relationship with what happens in our world as well as with the people in that world. And even if we encounter conflict, we are to know that there is something in conflict for us to learn from. Later on in ACOL, we are taught that our learning is to come from observation of the people and things in our outer world, no longer from books of the past, what people have told us about experience. We are to experience directly through this observation.
We don’t need to argue with our experiences. We don’t need to place “should’s” and “ought’s” on what is going on around us. If something that we don’t like is going on, there is still something for us to learn from this lamentable set of circumstances. And, likewise, if there is something that we like going on, we can relax in the joy and derive pleasure from our surroundings as well.
We don’t need to get in tangles with our world. We simply, directly, observe our surroundings, just as we simply and directly observe our reactions to our surroundings. Don’t make life more complicated than it truly is. Take life by the smooth handle. Relax and be happy, joyous. The way home is not a struggle, and if we insist on struggling, we will miss the mark. The only way home is through, not around, but that “through” is not meant to be a mire. We walk smoothly and easily, along a smooth pathway. And if we find briars where we thought that we would find smoothness, if we trip and fall, we just need to pick ourselves up and try again. The briars are of our own making.
Find wholeness today in our relationship with others and with God. We are a part of that wholeness, and the wholeness is all positive—if we don’t get lot in ruminations of making things different from what they are. We take life at face value, simply and peacefully.
Then we know that we have found the right route through and beyond our troubles.
Dear Father/Mother,
I find myself in conflict from time to time, and I wonder if this is a pattern, in memory, from egoic living. I know that we don’t have to remain in conflict, because turning to You will ease our way, and turning to You will ease our way immediately. Thank You for being there, deep within me, embodying the Self who is my inner Christ. This Self is my little part of You, and knowing that this little Self is part of the All is reassuring in the extreme.
Be with us today. Thank You for the good morning that I had, and may the rest of the day unfold in just such a good manner.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 
Thankyou Celia for touching on this important subject from A Course of Love: relationships. I remember reviewing this topic as well and the meaning given to ‘relationship’ in A Course of Love moves way beyond an egoic meaning. I remember Jesus saying that we ‘are’ relationship itself; that relationship is part and parcel of being. I understand relationship now as Christ-consciousness.
Christ-consciousness !!! Chardin’s philosophy is that the world is evolving into the Body of Christ… through this Christ consciousness. When you put these lenses on .. everything does seem so different, takes on new meaning.
Great post Celia. Unravels lots of the complications we weave into our lives 🙂 .
Inspiring!
God bless!
This post really hits home in a synchronistic way for me.
You see, by most accounts in First World terms, I’ve had two pretty bad days.
A beautiful to-see-the-sunrise bike ride had its story change into a flat-tire-long-walk-in-the-hot-sun morning yesterday and today my new-in-February PC died out of the blue..and several hours of painstakingly trying to fix it resulted in the same condition.
Yet I believe I’ve done a pretty good job framing it in a “learning experience” perspective, by accepting it and not fighting against it from a victim mindset. Perhaps we can change “Why is this happening to me?” to “Why is this happening FOR me?”
For I do believe these challenges are lessons and I can’t say I always pass mine (in fact, losing my cool in public over recently lost car keys was one such failure).
Anyway, great post! Love how you frame this issue!