Wholeness in Diversity

“Wholeness cannot be achieved without joining, thus the commonly known injunction of “where two or more are joined together.” If you would think of this in terms of “God” or the state of “Wholeness” or “Beingness” separating into more than one in order to know Itself, you would see that knower and known are one. You would see that two or more are needed in order for knowing to occur. To not know wholeness would be to be in a state of nothingness. Thus the joining of two or more are needed in order for wholeness to be known and thus to exist as a state of conscious awareness.” (ACOL, D:Day30.4)

This is the theology of A Course of Love. It is saying that God could not know Himself until He differentiated, or individuated, Himself into parts, and those parts included entities, souls, such as us. We can understand this best with the example that we have here, of two or more joined together, a biblical reference. God is in our midst when two or more of us join in supplication to Him. Jesus says the same thing about himself. It is reassuring to know that A Course in Miracles and ACOL are direct outgrowths of biblical knowledge imparted many, many years ago.

We would be in a state of nothingness if we didn’t have diversity in our wholeness. And it is Wholeness that we seek to know now. This Wholeness is the Essence of God.

We don’t have to “do” much; it will come to us when we are in relationship with our brothers and sisters. Then we can rest easy, knowing that all things come to them that wait. And waiting for Christ-consciousness to descend upon us is certainly one of the best ways to spend our time.

If we don’t wait patiently, we will have missed much of the blessing in waiting. So: wait patiently, pacing ourselves in activities that we know will bring God closer to our mind and heart. Then and only then are we primed for the good that will come.

Dear God,

I would know wholeness today, wholeness manifested in diversity. When I am patient, I can see the value of waiting until all is prepared for Your descent, Your descent to lift me up to You, wrapping me in Your Arms.

I offer myself to You, completely and totally. May this re-surrender, which I do often, be the very action that You most desire from me.

Amen.

Every Day Better in Every Way as We Walk into Wholeness

“This change is predicated on all the changes that have come before it, including, and most particularly, on that which was most recently spoke of, that of apprehending the new reality of wholeness. It is not wholeness that is new, but the reality of wholeness that is new. The reality of being able to experience the variability of separation from within the state of wholeness is what is new.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 18, 28.8)

Have we really left separation behind? Yes, we have, though in the beginning of sensing wholeness, we will still know some of what is in the house of illusion, and that is the “variability of separation.” A Course of Love indicates that we are in the house of truth, but outside the house of illusion—because the house of truth encompasses the All, the house of illusion as well. We don’t try to go back in and pull out those who are still trapped within the house of illusion; that is not our task, our role. We witness from the house of truth. And that is all.

Wholeness is a blessing that ought to be sought, for our sight is much keener when we are seeing the whole. What does wholeness mean? It seems to me to be the last step on the pathway to Christ-consciousness, surely the greatest wholeness of all. If we see in totality, we see accurately, but this does not mean that we are still always lost in illusions of what true reality really means. We have moved beyond that, and we have indeed made great progress to have done so.

We are after true reality, and the reality of wholeness is new to us. This creation of the new is a major theme of A Course of Love. We would leave behind our leaden feet as we walk sprightly on, with Jesus holding our hand. He will do so, though no one on earth can imagine how that might be. Perhaps he clones himself; perhaps souls that are very advanced can do such things. Seeing and sensing Jesus have been reported by many in traditional Christianity, and so this assertion (which occurred in A Course in Miracles) does seem more plausible than not.

The means are there for us. We need only ask for help. And then the reality of wholeness will be a surety for us. We will not wander, aimless and alone, in a forest of malcontent. Every day will get better, an improvement over the one before.

Unlimited Choices of Internally Directed Experiences

1 – Day 28

“The unlimited choices of internally directed experience are what you must begin to face as we begin our descent from the mountain top. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 28)”

2 – Intuition

Certainly we can intuit that to make decisions from within is a better way than to be thrown about, willy-nilly, by every external wind that comes along. And we have often chosen previously to let those external winds tell us what to do.

3 – Previously

It started in a large way when we were growing up. We had to listen to our families, and then we wanted to listen to our peers. We let the external take precedence in making decisions, often choosing the same route that others took, even though their pathway wasn’t all that smooth (and we could see this!).

4 – Giving Up External Direction

Now we are being asked to give up externally-guided decision-making. It doesn’t mean that we will be oblivious to the needs of others, but it does mean that we will take into account their needs from a new place inside of ourselves. We will observe what needs to be done externally, looking outward, but we will make the decision of what to do by looking internally. This means that what we do will have the stamp of our own authenticity. And this is as it should be. As it should have been all along.

5 – New

“Now something new awaits you. It is a choice so different and a means so revolutionary that it will take some getting used to. This change is predicated on all the changes that have come before it, including, and most particularly, on that which was most recently spoken of, that of apprehending the new reality of wholeness. It is not wholeness that is new, but the reality of wholeness that is new. The reality of being able to experience the variability of separation from within the state of wholeness is what is new. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 202)”

6 – Whole

We are now said to be “whole,” now that we have walked this far along Jesus’s way, our pathway as he has pointed out. Wholeness is not new, but we have never experienced it before, and so its reality is new, its coming into existence in a meaningful way in our lives. We will still see separation in our world, but we will also see that this separation of one from another, of ourselves from our innermost being, is an aspect of individualization, is part of a Whole that we have been oblivious to previously. We are to embody the elevated Self of form, and so our forms will be separate, but our reality will be One, because the Self is One.

7 – Getting Used To

This will take some getting used to, indeed. We won’t know what to do with ourselves as we make live in a new world, a world of wholeness with God and Everything else.

8 – Different People Now

On Day Twenty Eight of our Forty Days and Forty Nights, we begin to experience what it will be like when we have descended from the mountain top back to level ground. We will be different people, for Jesus does not wish that we make this journey to the mountain top repeatedly; we need to realize that we are ready for all that he has held out to us. (He does say elsewhere, though, that if we wish to go to the mountain top repeated times, that this too is open to us, but not what he would choose for us.)

9 – Experience of Life

On this day, Jesus recounts the experience of life as many of us have lived through it: schooling, career, marriage, and family. Others, he notes, have pursued dreams or adventures. But all of these choices have been externally directed, and he would have us move to internally directed choices that, nevertheless, in the manner of wholeness, retain the external focus as a part of the whole. He notes that in the past we may have chosen our pathway through much inner reflection, but the fact remains that the direction of the various choices was primarily external. Now we are bade to move to wholeness, both internal and external, not in separation, but in wholeness..

10 – Two Ways of Living

Jesus recounts the two primary ways that we have lived our lives. We have believed that we took what life had to give, if our focus was upon money or career. We have believed that God determined the circumstances of our lives if relationships have been our focus. We now must move beyond these two ways of thinking and living.

11 – Transformation

As we transform, new conditions will apply. We have had access to two levels of experience–the experience of wholeness and the experience of separation. Now we are seeking just an experience of being–a new state of being. This is the spacious Self that will define our future roles in our world, internally and externally, through Wholeness.

12 – Time Outside of Time

“Our ‘time’ on the mountain would be more rightly described as ‘time outside of time.’

“ ‘Time outside of time’ by itself will not cause the shift that needs to occur, however. What will create the shift is the ability to experience ‘time outside of time’ and ‘time’ simultaneously. Thus is the ‘wholeness’ of time, or eternity, experienced and made real. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 28)”

13 – Duality

We are over coming duality so that it becomes One. “Time outside of time” and “time” means the mountain top and level ground, simultaneously. We will have our head in the clouds, and our feet on the ground. We will be living in eternity, aware that there is no end to our experience, for we are eternal beings—though beings living in a physical world (and so we need our feet on the ground).

14 – Eternity

Would you not like to be aware today that we live in a time that is never-ending? That the promise of eternal life starts now—with our awareness of it? That nothing in the future will disturb our focused awareness of time that stretches forward and backward always, that always is eternity, and that we will be experiencing beings in that eternity forevermore?

15 – Two Threads

“Presently it is as if you follow two threads, the thread that has led you to the mountain and the thread of the life you have not removed yourself from. Now you must begin to weave these two threads together into the tapestry of your new life. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 28)”

16 – New Life

This is where we are thinking of being, and where we will be after the 40 days and 40 nights have concluded. We will have a new life, if we can follow Jesus’s dictates, and not be tempted to think that we must make repeated trips to the mountain top. Jesus does not intend repeated trips for us; he wants us to be ready to encompass eternity now, right now.

17 – Jesus’s Wish for Us

Not all of us, realistically, will experience Christ-consciousness at the conclusion of these 40 days and 40 nights, but such an experience of Christ-consciousness (Awakening) is what Jesus would wish for us. If we can believe him, we know enough already to make a decision of Oneness, Wholeness. We can decide, knowing that we are making a decision to leave behind judging and fear thoughts forever. Can we do this? It is God’s grace that we can, but even He must have our willingness, for He will never take free will away from us.

18 – God’s Way

So if we think that we are not ready, we won’t be. But we can know that He wills for us to choose His Way, to choose the eternity of Wholeness that He is pointing out to us, with Jesus’s help.

19 – Glimpses

The way is not long. It affords glimpses along the way, all the time. But Jesus wants us to do what nobody previously has done, to sustain this Christ-consciousness. Sustainability is what it is all about.

20 – The World

And nothing less will satisfy an eager world that knows not what it really wants.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

All of us have lived in separation for eons. Now we are bade to come to understand what living in Wholeness will hold out to us. This is a transformation that all have longed for, even when we have not know for what to ask.

I would like to walk this pathway to the top of the mountain this time only. I would like to give up judging, give up fearful thoughts, and be at home in You. I know You will make this decision for me as soon as I am ready, but the readiness is partially within my decision—not totally, for You need to give Your stamp of approval. May I do my part, knowing that Christ-consciousness is Your will for me and everyone. You want us to live naturally, and this is natural living at its most profound—a living that is here and now, but with one step into eternity. Help me to be patient as I seek to cease judging and cease thinking fearfully. My anxiety has been such a burden to me; likewise, my propensity to judge people and events. I know what it is like to give up such foolishness, for I have done so—but it didn’t last. May it last this time, this time when You reach down and lift me up. And may this prayer be for all of my brothers and sisters as well. When all of us are ready, we can take our places on the Heaven on earth that You mean this world to be.

Thank You for sending Jesus’s message to me now. I need to experience all that Wholeness would promise, and I ask for this blessing this day.

Amen.

We Are Wholeness / This We Accept

1 – Acceptance

“Acceptance is necessary because escape is not possible. Everything that is, is with us, which is why we are the accomplished as well as the void, the healed as well as the sick, the chaos and the peace. Thus we heal now by calling on wholeness, accepting the healed self’s ability to be chosen while not encountering resistance or any attempts at rejection of the sick or wounded self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

2 – Spacious Self

This quotation aims at saying that the spacious Self encompasses all parts of the Self, especially including, we must learn, the parts of the self that we would like to disown. The little or personal self is fraught with error, even when we have advanced far along the pathway. We may find ourselves still getting angry, still attacking, still being defensive. If we don’t like these aspects of our personality, we don’t resist, for resistance would make the force field stronger. We simply turn aside from less-desirable personality traits, giving them no energy. This “no energy” is our way to reach toward perfection.

3 – Perfection

Remember, though, that Jesus indicates that we don’t have to be perfect to be Christ-conscious. Eventually, we will know a kind of perfection, because in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus says that he stands at the end, the correct the mistakes that we ourselves cannot correct. If he stands at the end, we still have some mistakes now. But we can do our part, as well as seeing Jesus do his. We can turn aside from those traits that are negative, turning instead to the light that is within all of us.

4 – Light of the World

We are the “light of the world.” This is declared in the New Testament as well as in A Course in Miracles. Let us together bring that light to our brothers and sisters who are lost in a damaging world of illusions.

5 – Contrasts

We are the contrasts. This quotation makes this clear. We are the up and the down. Only when we accept that the “down” needs to be enfolded into the spacious Self do we find relief from our discomfort.

6 – Today

Let us do that today, now.

7 – Projection

“The spacious Self realizes that the outer world is a projection and most often a rejection rather than an extension of what is within. Thus, sickness is a rejection of feelings. All that causes fear is rejection of feelings. All that causes loneliness is rejection of feelings. All that causes violence is rejection of feelings. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

8 – Extend

We need to extend what is within. This Self of ours is within, and extension is how we create well. But just now we are still caught in illusions, and for this to be our world, we have been projecting from our minds. Our little minds, the personal self.

9 – Rejection

We have been rejecting our feelings, because we have known unhappiness. In any given day, most of us have times of feeling down. And we tend to reject the feelings rather than to experience them fully; we stuff them downward into our psyches. But we don’t find relief that way.

10 – Relief

The only way to have relief is to welcome ALL feelings—even the negative ones. Welcome them into the spacious Self (by which we mean the all-encompassing Christ Self Who is within all of us), and there, within, see these rejected feelings transformed into something much more positive. We will not be disappointed when we stop trying to overcome negative feelings by rejecting them. Just welcome. And then the low mood will pass.

11 – Others

“It is by holding all feelings of others within the spacious Self, by not forgetting that the one and the many are the same, by willfully remembering that the feelings of the many can be ‘held’ and not projected into the world as sickness, violence, and so on, that acceptance occurs. It is in accepting all feelings as the feelings of the many that the feelings of ‘others’ are accepted as one’s own and held within the spaciousness of the One Self, the whole Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

12 – Turn to Others

We turn to others with this quotation. We need to accept their feelings as well as our own. All others, all brothers and sisters, are part of us, part of the All, the One. So we communicate telepathically all the time, particularly, perhaps, when we are unaware of such communication. We need to accept the negative feelings of others as well as the negative feelings of ourselves. When we accept, we are much more likely to transform. We will transform, in fact. We will not add our discomfort to the discomfort of our brothers and sisters, thereby projecting violence, sickness, and the like upon the world.

13 – Feelings

We accept others’ feelings as though they were our own. We are One, remember. So in a very real sense, we don’t see any feelings that are not our own. But we can rise above dishonest, reprehensible feelings by absorbing them into our spacious Self, our inner Christ Self. And they and we will be made much the better for it.

14 – All

“What the spacious Self holds within is the relationship of all to all. Relationship is the invisible reality only expressed through form. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

15 – Form

We see others as occupying form. This is the way that we see our brothers and sisters who are in this world with us. This is relationship in our world. We need the others’ bodies to be able to communicate in this world. And communicate we must.

16 – ACIM

In A Course in Miracles, we are told that Jesus needs our voice, our hands, our feet, to spread salvation. He needs the form that we occupy, for that is how we experience this world. That is how others experience us.

17 – Relationship

Relationship is actually invisible, because our spacious Self is invisible. It is the invisible force field that surrounds our natural bodies. We think that our bodies encompass ourselves, but it is actually the reverse; we are invisible forms that occupy forms that we can see. And we become the elevated Self of form, because we live in this world. It is the way in which we will survive once we reach Christ-consciousness.

18 – Acceptance

“Your acceptance of these words is a form of acceptance of the unknown and as such a means of coming to know. These words are only one means, which is why this is called a dialogue. Realize now that this is but one voice of the many. You have entered into the dialogue with the many as well as the one. This dialogue is going on all around you. Have you been listening to but one voice? Or have you begun to hear the one voice in the many? (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 161)”

19 – Healing

Healing is found in the acceptance of the spacious Self–the Self that we share with all others in unity and in relationship one to another. Earlier we have been tempted many times to reject feelings, and we have thereby been led many times into sickness. Now we are called upon to accept all of our feelings. Our feelings are not unique to each of us individually, but are part of the whole which we all share. Others feel as we do. This concept in itself is comforting, because we are tempted to think that nobody else in our world has ever felt quite as we do when we are feeling down.

20 – Hold Within

We are asked to hold within our feelings in the spacious Self, the Self we share with all others. We are not as likely to feel wounded when we know that others are a part of ourselves. We will not understand all things, but we will hold within not only our spaciousness but also the invisibility of that which we do not comprehend. We do not reject these unknowns; we hold them in our spaciousness. We are accepting of the unexplainable.
Our spacious Self will be a healed Self. We reach out to others, and we accept them in this dialogue. We are not alone on the mountaintop! We accept that others are with us on the same ascension. We then sustain one voice, the many expressing the unity in relationship that we have all needed for eons.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I recognize that in my Self are the others that surround me. I am never alone. My spacious Self includes all.

May I be forgiving of all of those others. May they be healed along with me, as we realize that we are all One.

May this day go well. I am seeking sudden change, so that my withered ego doesn’t have time to adapt to change. May I see that sudden change today. May I enjoy the day, enjoy all others whom I meet. The time for change will be as right as the Answer. Help me to know this internally, in my deepest Self.

Amen.

A Full Heart

“Your heart becomes full only through relationship or union.  A full heart can overshadow a full mind, leaving no room for senseless thoughts but only for what is truly real.  (A Course of Love, 5.19)”

Affirmation:  “May my full heart overshadow my mind today.”

Reflections:

1 – No Senseless Thoughts

Jesus lets us know, right in the beginning of A Course of Love, that we have let the mind run rampant.  We are overshadowed by the mind’s activities in many cases.  This needs to end.  The heart does not need the same “proof” as the mind, in concert with the ego, often seems to require.  The heart and the ego are antithetical to each other.  And so we can safely leave the ego aside, not in a rigid rejection (which would only make things worse, for the ego is strong in strife when resisted).

2 – Wholeheartedness

The heart, according to Jesus in ACOL, is where we come close to the fullness that we need, without interference from the mind.  Later on, we will see that Jesus is not denigrating the mind, because what he really wants is for us to join the mind and heart in “wholeheartedness,” a state of wholeness from which we are to live out our lives.

3 – The Mind Leads Astray

All to often we struggle, when the mind is in ascendancy.  The ego just does not wish us well, and the mind is its home.  When we come from the heart, we are better able to function well.  We don’t get so tangled up.

4 – Mixed-Up Thinking

So often we get lost in the senseless thoughts that this passage indicates.  We worry; we fret; we imagine “what it”–and all for naught.  For what purpose do we get ourselves all mixed up?  It is a waste of our talents, a waste of our lives.

5 – Pray

But we don’t have to remain “stuck” in this mire.  We can find a way out.  Pray from the depths of hearts, and we will know comfort.  We will know joy.  And peace will find a home in our lives once again.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I spend another good day with You.  There is so much to be thankful for in this marvelous world, when we don’t let the ego rule, and we don’t dip into depression because the ego has, once again, misled us.

Be with my significant others today.  May I have the energy and wisdom to do for them what they need to have me do,

Amen.