Reopening Our Spiritual Eye

“When the ‘lies of the serpent’ were introduced, they were called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. You do not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless you choose to do so. All of your miscreations can disappear in the well-known ‘twinkling of an eye,’ because they are a visual misperception. Your spiritual eye can sleep, but remember, a sleeping eye can still see.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.II.13:1-5)

The “lies of the serpent” were, I believe, egoic lies that we told ourselves and each other when we fell into separation from God. Certainly many times we equate the ego with the “devil,” and this is not always a bad analogy. Our spiritual eyes, so long as we are trapped by the ego, are “asleep.” As Jesus says elsewhere, when Adam was put in a deep sleep in the Genesis story, an analogy, there is no recorded evidence of his awakening. This is what awaits all of us, though, when we choose to heal the separation from God. And the Holy Spirit will show us how to reestablish our relationship with God. (In A Course of Love, our relationship with God is “direct,” and the inner Christ-Self does the work for us of healing.)

We have miscreated when we fall into anger and attack, isolation and rejection, bad temper and assorted other troubles that signal a disconnect from Love. We have also miscreated material objects in our world, fashioning chemicals that pollute our environment, and weapons of war that destroy the lives of others and sometimes ourselves. Of course, we think that we have no choice but to defend ourselves, but we need to give Love a chance. There is no telling what progress could be made if all of us were to turn to a more harmonious interaction with our fellowman and woman.

Even an ordinary person makes a difference when he chooses harmony rather than discord. All of us are included in creating a better world, and actually none of us should be discounted as unimportant to that endeavor.