Holy Relationships vs. Special Relationships

“Your natural state is one of union, and each joining that you do in holy relationship returns a little of the memory of union to you.  This memory of your divinity is what you seek in truth from each special relationship you enter into, but your true quest is hidden by the concept of use that gets in its way.  While your heart seeks for union, your separated self seeks for what it can use to fill the emptiness and ease the terror of its separation.  (A Course of Love, 9.36)”

Affirmation:  “holy relationship = union”

Reflections:

1 – ACIM vs. ACOL

The concept of “use” is new in A Course of Love,  not mentioned at all in A Course in Miracles.  But the other concepts in this paragraph are reminiscent of ACIM and follow precisely some of the familiar terminology.

2 – The Gap

A holy relationship does seek union as its goal, but special relationships are first sought to fill a gap that we might sense in ourselves.  Yet gaps cannot be filled by special relationships, because the special can so quickly turn to unpleasantness and even hatred.  Holy relationships are not seen as always romantic relationships, though romantic relationships are certainly not excluded.  We need to change the goal of our special relationships from a focus on finding what we lack to sharing what we both have.  We don’t gain by taking from the other, something that we seek to do when the relationship is only a special one.

3 – “Using” Another

We use the other person when we seek to find in him or her something that we lack.  We are seeing to be made whole through the other person.  And our secular psychology has even made clear that it takes two whole people to form a new whole in a relationship that will seek to be permanent.  In special relationships, we may think that our “half” added to the other’s “half” is enough to form a bond that will be a whole.  This is a fallacy, though, and most individuals who have formed special bonds with another, over time, come to see the fallacy of this sort of thinking.

4 – Transform the Special Relationship

So seek to make of your special relationships a holiness that will stand the test of time.  The Holy Spirit (re ACIM) will not snatch our special relationships from us, but will seek to transform them into the holy.  At this point, many relationships are broken off, but the greatest blessings await those that survive this change in focus to the holy.  And then we will know truly what it means to love unconditionally another person.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would seek to turn all of my special relationships into holy ones, excluding no one.  Thank You for the holy relationships that I have known.  And thank You for the ones that have endured, as well as the ones that have not.  Be with me as I seek to live the life that You intended for me.

May we all turn our special relationships into holy ones, for special relationships, we find, hold much pain.  When the pain is realized as inevitable, eventually, we will know that there is something better awaiting.  And that something better is a holy relationship.

Amen.

Bridge the Distance between Heaven and Hell

“Yet you will not become the bridge.  You refuse to recognize that the Christ in you provides the bridge that you need only walk across to bridge the distance between heaven and hell, between your separated self and union with God and all your brothers and sisters.  (A Course of Love, P.20)”

Affirmation:  “bridge the distance between heaven and hell”

Reflections:

1 – The Bridge

We are not the bridge that will save us.  But the Christ in us does provide the bridge.  We think too much of ourselves, even though we are children of God, when we think that we are the bridge.  The Christ in us, as I read this, has been waiting patiently for recognition, and the time is now for us to so recognize Him/Her.

2 – Union

We walk into heaven, even while living on earth, in this world, when we unite with God in our own knowing, as well as unite with our brothers and sisters.  This is our way out of hell.  A Course in Miracles also offers advice about what is our way out of hell.  The two discussions seem to my mind to be a unity in and of themselves.  We might think of A Course of Love as Jesus’s additional commentary to help us, for many of us stay “stuck” in A Course in Miracles, doing the Workbook over and over, and frustrated that we don’t seem to know Awakening, even after all of our trying.  We are to cease being our own teacher; Jesus is our elder brother, who teaches us for a time, and then, by the conclusion of the third volume in the trilogy of A Course of Love, even he has resigned as our teacher.  He presents himself at that point as our equal.  But he never deserts us, and for that we can be very, very grateful.  Indeed, the gratitude may help to make the truth of this interpretation from Jesus, the truth for us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May we unite with God and with our brothers and sisters.  This is the only way for us to realize our inheritance from God, the inheritance of joy and peace and harmony that is meant for us as children of God.

May we know heaven on earth.  May our neuroses fade away even as our ego withers.

Amen.