The Quest for Right Relationships

“Your quest for what is missing thus becomes the race you run against death. You seek it here, you seek it there, and scurry on to the next thing and the next. Each person runs this race alone, with hope only of victory for himself. You realize not that if you were to stop and take your brother’s hand, the racecourse would become a valley full of lilies, and you would find yourself on the other side of the finish line, able at last to rest.” (ACOL, C:9.40)

“If you were to stop and take your brother’s hand.” Yes! Here A Course of Love is saying the same thing that A Course in Miracles does. In ACIM, we are encouraged to realize that our way home is in a holy relationship with our brother. And this method, for Jesus, has not changed. We find our way back to God by loving our brother (or sister).

We are constantly looking for salvation alone, fruitlessly. But even Ruth Montgomery’s Guides said that we have to take our brother’s hand, that we cannot find our way back to God in a solitary and lonely search. Yet we still try, and it is such a pity! We need only acknowledge our relationship, in sharing, in joining with all, to know the ultimate in salvation, the enlightenment process itself.

Jesus’s language in this passage is so very beautiful. “The racecourse would become a valley full of lilies.” He invoked herein the same image as A Course in Miracles as well. Jesus likes lilies, and we do, too. Our Easter lilies are a case in point.

So what do we do now? We simply and humbly make a decision that we will join with our brothers and sisters in the walk homeward. We will no longer seek to be solitary seekers. Our seeking does have an end, we will learn in A Course of Love, but in the Course proper, we are not yet at that point.

Join today with the significant others in your life. Let their turmoil and troubles be your own as well, but not to disturb your peace, for this turmoil is illusory. Never forget that this world is an illusion—at least until we reach the real world toward which we are heading. And then, it is very likely that the real is intangible, being of God, Who has no form.

The best thing that we can do today is to determine that we are One with our brothers and sisters as well as One with God. God, being within, is always available for our communion with Him. He never does forsake us, as traditional Christianity has often said. Be humble today. Ask what we should do next. And it is very likely that that next action will be a gift to our brothers and sisters, the others in our world. There is no better way to spend a day, for giving and receiving are one, and what we give to others is returned to us many times over.

Changing Form Is Part of Life-Everlasting

“Changing form is part of the pattern of life-everlasting. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 4.8)”

1 – Life after Death

This passage echoes a previous reflection on life after death. We are not meant, according to A Course of Love, to hope for new discoveries in science that will give us an eternal physical life on earth. Would we really want such a thing, if it were possible?

2 – The Same Form?

Some early writings on A Course in Miracles thought that a passage in those volumes promised that eternal physical life would be not only possible, but to be expected. This has not been upheld by more recent writings, and ACOL now comments on this hypothesis.

3 – Death

We may be threatened by death, in that it is the one thing that we cannot control. The control freaks among us may be especially threatened. We do not know exactly what form our body will take in the afterlife. Even careful readings of psychic commentary do not make this finally clear. But of one thing we can be certain: Life after death is not to be feared. We will change form, but we will know life everlasting. And we can hope that the death itself, as Ruth Montgomery’s Guides said, will be like “walking through an open door.”
4 – Reincarnation

Is reincarnation? Is this the changing form that is meant? It would not be wise for students/teachers of ACIM and ACOL to take any definite stand, outside the confines of close personal friends. All of us need to be as helpful as possible to all those we encounter, not to introduce tenets of controversy that would limit our usefulness. This attitude is a paraphrase of ideas in the Manual of A Course in Miracles.

5 – Afterlife

While changing form may suggest another form in the afterlife, and then a reintroduction of ourselves to form in this world, we do not know that for sure. Jesus’s words in ACIM can be read in two ways, and students/teachers of ACIM have differed on the point of reincarnation. But we do need to realize that in the grand scheme, we do change form, for our worn-out bodies need to be replaced. We cannot live indefinitely in these bodies. To change form is natural, nothing to be feared. It is, I believe, as Ruth Montgomery’s Guides told her (and us) “like walking through an open door.” That is what death really is.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know in the depth of my being that death is not the end, that I only change form. I do not, therefore, have to fear death.

As time goes by, and pain comes to me through health changes, may I not suffer any more than would happen when I finally make the transition to life everlasting, life after death.

Amen.