Gladden Ourselves–for Jesus Is with Us

“I offer far more than partial guidance, although you do not ask for more. The uneven quality of your skill in both asking and following my direction is due to the alternations you experience between ego- and miracle-oriented perception. This is a strain, but fortunately one which can be overcome along with the rest. There will never be a time when I do not will to try again. You might be gladdened by remembering that.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.IX.10:1-5)

Jesus is once again speaking just to Helen (and maybe Bill) in this reassurance that he offers continual guidance. But if we ask, he will do the same for us. In these early words, he has not yet solidified the Holy Spirit in A Course in Miracles. Soon he will ask that all of us turn immediately to the Holy Spirit when confronted with a dilemma. The Holy Spirit connects us to God, but not in a threatened way. At this point in our progress, we are still too fearful of God to approach Him directly.

Jesus points out the strain that we under. He seems particularly aware of this strain, as we seek to mediate between hell and heaven, the ego and love. Heaven and love are the only things that we truly can want, once we have let the magnitude of our mistakes sink in. Our attempt to create unlike God, something that is actually “making” rather than “creating,” has produced all of the chaos in which we live. We need to get beyond this. We need to recognize that our attempt to create something beyond God has just failed miserably. There IS nothing beyond Him except illusion.

Jesus constantly looks for reasons that we might gladden ourselves, for he knows that we are usually morose when caught in the vines of the ego. We need just to kick those vines away from ourselves, away from our feet (as Pat Rodeway’s Emmanuel says), and be on about our business. Jesus will untangle any egoic vines that won’t automatically disengage from our toes.

Suffering

“One of the more horrible examples of inverted or upside-down thinking (and history is full of horrible examples of this) was the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution.’ I shed many tears over this, but it is by no means the only time I said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.43.8:1-2)

In this passage from the complete edition of A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us personally what type of reaction he has had and continues to have over the terrible deeds of humankind and the suffering these deeds have wrought for ordinary people. He specifically refers to unspeakable crimes against Jewish people during World War II. Jesus responds with an appeal to the Father, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

His reaction is to be our own when we consider awful occurrences of human against human in this world. Jesus says that he has repeated his prayer with many incidents. We must do the same.

In this world, we cannot ever understand the “why” of suffering that innocent human beings undergo. Pat Rodegast’s Emmanuel says this. Perhaps an incomplete answer would be that it is enough for us to recognize in our own suffering that, when it is passed, we comprehend more; we may never understand, but we can realize that through it all, God was with us, and we have grown. I do not mean to say that the end justifies the means. We simply can’t with our little minds wrap around the awful things that people go through. It is a mystery.

But God does not “cause” our suffering. And it is never right, Jesus tells us in A Course of Love, to blame the victim. Jesus indicates that we are to have compassion, not heartlessness. Love is the healer of suffering, the end in sight. Jesus indicates this also elsewhere in A Course of Love. In “The Way of the Heart” (from The Way of Mastery), Jesus even affirms, “There is no suffering.” Of course we can’t know fully what he means.

If we believe that God is living through us, then He is experiencing right along with us. His Presence makes all the difference when we are confronted with eternal questions that seem to have no answer. Especially when that eternal question is the “why” of suffering.

God and We Together Chose Our Rebellion

“Yet your rebellion was not with God, although you came to see it as such. Your rebellion was not allowed, it was mutually chosen. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 8.11)”

1 – Ruth Montgomery

This concept from A Course of Love is at least relatively new; I have not read of it before, but of course there are many New Age writings of which I am unaware. There is a hint of the idea in Ruth Montgomery’s The Search for the Truth. She, an early psychic who received information by automatic writing from “Guides,” says that we were sparks sent out from God, gradually to find our way back. And some went farther than others, and needed more time and help to return. In ACOL, Jesus is saying that our rebellion from God was chosen mutually by Him and us.

2 – God

Certainly this concept makes sense in light of the surrounding passages, most of which are presented in this blog. God is the divine spark within, and our real will is the same as His Will (an ACIM tenet). So God could set the limits on our bent to miscreate, particularly in that we cannot destroy ourselves (and this is the “why” of the limits).

3 – Edgar Cayce

Believing that our rebellion was a way to experience the all, we can see that we are, like Ruth Montgomery’s Guides say, sparks of the divine that were sent out from the Center (a paraphrase, and also a metaphor of the Guides). Some strayed farther than others, and, as Edgar Cayce said, some became entrapped in matter on this earth.

4 – Edgar Cayce, Cont.

Cayce says that these entrapped souls, the Daughters of Men, needed the Sons of Light to save them. So souls, led by Jesus, came to earth to rescue those who could not have risen above matter unless others came to their aid. In a similar fashion, Jesus says in ACIM that he stands at the end, to help us, when we have gone as far as we can toward Awakening. Then God reaches “down” and rescues us; He takes the final step (an ACIM tenet). In ACOL this beatific moment is called “Christ-consciousness.”

5 – Rebellion

“Your rebellion against the constraints of your nature in form thus became part of the pattern of creation because it was the created’s response. It was your response, and since God is both the Creator and the Created, it was God’s response as well. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 8.12)”

6 – Part of God

Why is this statement, this quotation, true? We are a part of God. It is that simple. So our choice was one of His as well.

7 – The Separation

This wholly benign way of viewing the separation is a blessing to us, another reason that we don’t have to feel guilty anymore. God and we chose the separation, when we were impatient to experience, when we hadn’t learned all that we need to know to live well in form. This lack of understanding produced a warp, so to speak, which we call the ego. And it was the egoic misstep that has caused all of our problems in form in this world.

8 – Elevated Self of Form

Now, seeing the elevated Self of form, will provide the new learning that we needed at the beginning of life in form. We will know how to manipulate our environment for the good only. And we will know how to live in form. No ego. No suffering. No pain.

9 – Enrichment

“What other purpose would God ever have had for wanting to express the Love that is Himself in form, if it were not for the expansion and enrichment it would add to His being? What purpose is behind your own desire to do thus? (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 8.13)”

10 – Form

We want to experience, in form, and with limited vision, what God Himself wants to experience. We and He are in this together. All of us are attached to living in physical form in a way that perhaps angels don’t understand. We like the rough-and-tumble life on earth. We are a courageous sort, as the series of books by Pat Rodegast, scribing Emmanuel, has said. We know what it is to risk a challenge. And we ought not to denounce ourselves for the mistakes that we have made along the way. Mistakes are not over, but we will learn how to turn aside from them and walk another way, a better way.

11 – Ego

“It was only the ego that made this desire seem to be for anything other than the purpose of expansion and enrichment of your being. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 8.14)”

12 – Satan

Here is the ego again. Yes, the enemy. We used to call it the devil, or Satan. But we are living in new times, and our understanding has greatly increased. We don’t have to personify evil by giving it a name. There is no “sin,” only mistakes. And all will get to Heaven ultimately. We are all children of God, and He neglects nobody. We will be guided home.

13 – God

“God could not be the only being in all of creation who remains static and unchanging! How could this possibly be said of one whose name and identity is synonymous with creation? (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 8.14)”

14 – Truth

There are parts of God that are unchanging, also according to A Course of Love. Truth remains unchanged, the whole truth. But God seems to be growing and changing with his creations, with us. We can know how much our companionship means to God when we know that we are a part of Him. As the Self, we are back in strong communication, communication that was disrupted when we were asleep, when the channels of communication were not open to God.

15 – Lonely

Let us return quickly to the fold. God needs a good day, and if all His children are not communicating with Him, we are told by Jesus that God Himself is lonely.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to assimilate all of these writings about our ultimate reality into a coherent whole. There have been hints before that the separation, though illusory, has had effects that have hurt our little selves. May I leave behind that hurt today; my real Self has not been hurt at all.

May I recognize that, just as God and I chose the separation, together He and I can mend the separation so that we are One again. My real will is the same as His. May I use my real will today to accommodate to God’s Will.

Help me to turn around a difficult day into something much, much better. I need only to acknowledge that a mistake has been made, resolve to drop that behavior from my repertoire of behaviors, and all will be well again. This day can yet become a harbinger of grand and glorious moments learned under God’s Shadow.

Amen.