Hero’s Journey Is Our Journey

As you know yourself to be, you are the effect of God’s desire to extend Love.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 43)

Yes, we are the extension of the Godhead as Love. We just fell into separation, wanting to explore how we might be different if we “forgot” that we are Love. We didn’t know what a magnificent entity we could be if we remained in Love. Yet God chose this pathway for us, along with us. It was a mutual decision. We will return to Him, ready to be embraced by Love, much more knowledgeable and much more mature than new souls who had previously not embarked on any journey.

This is the “hero’s” journey. Ultimately, we return to where we have been. And there, T. S. Eliot, the poet, says, “to know the place for the first time.” This is what life is all about, to explore, to make mistakes in our ignorance of the whole picture, to finally know that God is all we want. Jesus says this elsewhere in WOM (Christ Mind Trilogy), that he is still constantly wanting to know more and more of God, still progressing as an entity. He encourages us to move fast if we want to be where he is, because his place in the universe is not static. He will yet be farther along than we, if we hesitate.

God created us as a way to extend Love. His Love acted in the cosmos to individuate portions of His Self so that He could truly experience existence. Neale Donald Walsch, in his conversation with God series, describes this well. Neale goes on to say that God in His totality would be as unknowable as “nothing,” if He did not differentiate His Self into component parts. Yet we may believe that, like a hologram, each part (each entity) contains the Whole. So we can reach deep within, and intuitively, just “know.” This knowing takes us a very long way on our pathway back home.

Little Wisp of Melody

The Course speaks of a “little wisp of melody” (T-21.I.6:2) that will remind us of an ancient state of Oneness with God, a state of Oneness which calls us to return to our real Home. T. S. Eliot expressed this need to return perhaps more perfectly than anyone else when he said,

“We will not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.” –“Little Gidding,” Four Quartets, V: 26-29

This is a fitting description of the expulsion from Eden as the “fortunate” fall. But we do not have to agree that our detour into madness was “fortunate” to derive meaning and benefit from Eliot’s concept. In our own world, though, it is not uncommon for those individuals who recover fully from madness to feel, in retrospect, that their experiences, however wrenching, were worthwhile. If the people labeled “mentally ill” by our culture can see value in their dreamlike experiences, do we really have to doubt that our mass hallucination–our mass dream–is a valuable teaching tool as well?

In the final analysis, the two may be remarkably alike. Just as many mentally ill people refuse to believe that they are ill, so too do most people of the world. Our egos are seen as valuable and, above all, real–hardly the illusion that miracles would have us recognize.

Make a New Choice for Unity/Union

“Make a new choice! The choice that your heart yearns to make for you and that your mind is finding increasingly difficult to deny. When you choose unity over separation, you choose reality over illusion. You end opposition by choosing harmony. You end conflict by choosing peace.” (ACOL, 6.5)

This series of quotations emphasize that reality is union or unity. We are One. We are part of God, Who is One. Our heart knows this, and it is only our mind that has doubts. Our mind will find it increasingly difficult to deny this new reality—a reality of harmony and peace, ending opposition and conflict.

—

“You are creating the state of unity as a new reality for your Self even though it is actually a return to what has always been.” (ACOL, 6.9)

We are leaving illusion behind now that we have come to unity. And we are returning to what has actually been true all along, a “return to what has always been.” We have never actually been in illusion; we just imagined ourselves to be in that state, a state that we thought was separate from God. Our desire to experience separation from the whole drove us to make the ego, which accentuated the divorce, presumed, between God and ourselves.
Now we know that we are returning to the true reality. We are returning to God, to “know the place for the first time” (T. S. Eliot).

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“When you have felt the reality of union, you have felt the place in which no want exists. You felt this through the responsiveness of the relationship that is unity.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 3, 3.39)

We have need for nothing when we are in the state of unity, knowingly. We don’t pretend to be able to go it alone. We don’t even try. And we want for nothing as a result. Our needs are met by the union in which we reside.

Others reach out to us, others with whom we are in relationship. This is the “responsiveness” of the relationship that is unity. Others know that we cannot provide everything that we need for ourselves. And as we reach out to others, they reciprocate. There is only unity, a Oneness that ensures that no want will long exist for anybody. We meet each other’s needs. And all is well.

—

“This somewhere else we have defined as your true reality, the reality of union. Living in this reality, the reality of certainty, is the only key to abundance.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 3, 3.47)

In union, we are certain—no longer afraid, no longer alone and lonely, adrift with needs that seemingly have no solutions. We are abundant, for we have found the key to abundance. We live in the reality of union with our brothers and sisters, and with God, and with our Self, and we know peace for the first time. We have every need met at the point of articulating that need. Indeed, no need is not met.
What more could we ask to experience?

—

“It is the world of unity, the true reality, through which your desires are responded to.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 3, 3.42)

Our desires are also answered (not just needs), as this quotation makes clear, when we live in the world of unity. Unity is the true reality, the place that we have been longing to find but without knowing where to look.

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“In unity, perfection is the reality. Your reality is union. Thus no striving for either unity or perfection is necessary. The ‘answer’ for those in need of challenges, is the challenge presented in the call to reside in unity and to express the divinity of their nature through sharing in union and relationship.” (ACOL, Addendum, A.25)

We are perfect in this new world. Oh, we may not recognize our perfection. We may even think it scandalous to say that we are “perfect.” If we get angry often, we can turn aside from this. If we attack often, we can turn aside from this. Jesus shows us the way to the innocence in which we were born, the same innocence that newborn babies exude.

We do not have to look for challenges beyond the simple fact of living in unity with our brothers and sisters, distinct from us and therefore possible of knowing in relationship. We have a divinity that has eluded us until now. We are meant to share, and share we will. This sharing, Jesus says, will satisfy the yearnings of our heart to have more challenges.

The ego set such challenges before us. Unfathomable challenges. But that way of life is behind us now, and we can celebrate. It is enough to know that we will stay in unity with others, that we are no longer alone in a cruel and dark world. The day will brighten as we see the truth of these statements. As we share, we are given. As we love, we see God’s mission accomplished through the tasks that we assume that are meant just for us.