Develop a More Loving Image of God

Even the most loving parent, like unto your most loving image of God, having brought a child into a fearful world, became subject to the tests of time. Thus did the world become a world of effort with all things in it and beyond it, including God, weighed and balanced against the idea of fear.” (ACOL, T4:3.6)

We were raised in a dysfunctional environment—all of us, regardless of how loving our parents tried to be toward us. They too partook of fear, and thus we were nurtured in fear. The world became a place in which we sought the approval of our parents, and this approval became something to earn, something about which we must exert effort.

Our relationships continued from this first one, of parents to children (us). We sought to grow through achievement, our own efforts, and the world became a fairly grim place indeed. We projected this fear upon our image of the God within, though we didn’t know that He was within. Most of us saw God as an external Creator, someone, something like Santa Claus, who knew everything that we thought and did, and weighed it in the balance to decide if we were good little boys and girls.

This is indeed a fearful way to view God, and we imagine that this might indeed hurt Him (if the Creator were to have an ego such as we have, which He doesn’t).

So we grew up, supported by our fearful ideas of this world. Only religious convictions can actually save us from the dilemma in which we find ourselves. And these do not necessarily have to be of a traditional sense. God is God of the secular as well. And He will provide.

We need only ask, though we are apt to forget the asking part when we are fearful. Then, focus our minds on receiving, for all too often, we ask but do not leave plenty of time to thank God for granting our wish, for receiving from Him.

Collapsing the Need for Time

“There is not a period of waiting or a period of time between giving and receiving. There is not a time lapse between the recognition of needs and the meeting of needs. It is accepted that giving and receiving occur in unison, thus further collapsing the need for time. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 7.20)”

Affirmation: “I will all day give and receive.”

Reflections:

1 – Solution Is with the Problem

This passage for today emphasizes a kindred idea in A Course in Miracles: recognizing needs and the meeting of needs (A Course of Love), and the solution is with the problem (ACIM). This idea is particularly encouraging to me, for when I ask, internally, for guidance on anything, most of the time I get an answer within a short time, even immediately upon occasion. The idea comes to me from my own mind and heart, but I would like to think that the personal or “little” self is informed by the larger Self.

2 – Time

It is auspicious to note that time is actually collapsed when we see a need and ask for a solution. Jesus has more to say about time in other parts of the texts. He indicates that he will arrange time to allow us to perform miracles. Nobody here understands how this is possible, but we can listen with the heart and not seek for intellectual confirmation. The heart knows when the mind balks. The malleability of time is a law of physics. And religion and physics seem to be coming close together in recent years.

3 – Needs Met

If we have a need, and we ask for the meeting of that need, we will normally be reassured. The answer may not come in the form that we expect (or even that we want), but it will come, and the answer will be even better than what we thought we wanted. I know this from personal experience. The ways of God do not have to stay mysterious. We can know much of the mind of God from internal searching of our own heart and Self.

4 – Giving and Receiving

If we give, we will receive in kind. This means often that the Golden Rule to do unto others what you would have them do unto you is a very good response. In addition, the laws of karma are triggered here. Cause and effect still reigns. But grace can mitigate the worst results of wrong thoughts and actions.

5 – Grace

We do not hear much about grace in ACIM and ACOL. The word itself is not important, but the idea is. We are saved from ourselves by God Himself (a personal interpretation), and we can then reach out to aid others. We do not have to wait to do a good deed or to spread kindness. Our days will blossom into truly desirable hours if we follow the recommendation from Jesus that we give and receive, allowing time to collapse. It is important to let time collapse, because our brothers and sisters, along with ourselves, are caught in this world now. And the world winds on wearily, and suffering continues. Jesus would change all of this, and we are his hands and feet to do so.

6 – Reach Out

Reach out to just one other person today, and test the truth of giving and receiving as one.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for the fact that time will collapse if I recognize a need and find the need met. This is such good news in this weary world. It helps us to live in a world of dreams–still–but happy dreams. I long, though, for reality to filter through. And I ask for more glimpses of the real world today. May I do nothing to hinder the real world’s emergence.

I ask for Your presence in my life. May I feel You with me. And thank You that I sense You right now.

Amen

Receiving Does Not Imply Lack

“You who are beginning to realize that you have much to give, realize that you have as much to receive and that receiving does not imply that you are lacking! (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition<, 7.18)”

Affirmation: “I do both give and receive today.”

Reflections:

1 – Trite Expression?
Giving and receiving as one has been so much talked about and written about as to be almost trite. Yet giving and receiving are very profound terms, which we must understand if we are to walk the path to salvation. Especially with A Course of Love. We are told repeatedly that we are in unity and relationship in this world, whether or not our ego still reigns. (And we are told that the ego’s reign for us is well nigh over.) Being in unity as one, but in relationship to the many, mean that giving and receiving occur naturally. It is what we are meant to do constantly in our world.

2 – Give More?

We often think that we ought to give more than we receive, though we pay lip service to the concept that giving and receiving are equal. And in today’s passage, Jesus reminds us that to receive does not mean that we are lacking. He even uses an exclamation point at the close of the sentence to emphasize his point!

3 – Lacking?

Why do we fear that we are lacking? What is the fear of being in lack so threatening to us? I think it is because of our own guilt that somehow we don’t measure up. This is an error, as we are still as God created us (from A Course in Miracles). But we are prone to disbelieve this assertion that ACIM makes, primarily because we can see, internally, so many mistakes and so much lack–as we perceive lack.

4 – An Ego-Driven Thought

All of this second guessing is ego-driven. And we are told in ACOL that we are turning aside from the ego. So we need to accept the truth that guilt is not honest, that we are not being honest with ourselves when we struggle with this complex of ours. We need to take Jesus’s word that we are not lacking! He has even told us that we are The Accomplished, though I doubt that many of us yet believe this. Any vestige of ego could not believe it, and that vestige thinks that we are wrong to contemplate such a joy! Keep in mind that the ego does not mean us well, even though we made it and we have been told that it will not be destroyed (from ACIM).

5 – Joy

We need to think today of ways that giving and receiving can be joyously felt. We need to offer our service to others, even as we accept what others do for us.

6 – Unity

Therein are our brothers and sisters one with us, in unity.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for being with me today, as the day has not particularly begun well. I would start anew and make the whole better. Thank You for the guidance in A Course in Miracles that tells me that I can start a day over just anytime.

May I give at least as much as I receive, though I think I recognize that there may be differences in giving vs. receiving on any given day. Be with me today to let me do for others what they need. And may I especially touch my significant others. I would offer to them the comfort and solace that they need, and I would strive not to be overly needy myself.

Amen