Our true nature is loving, peaceful and joyful. It is quiet and gentle and the presence of love just is. It seems impossible to experience such a state in the world we live in of hustle, bustle, fear, war, stress, sickness and death. Yet the hunger that is within each of us to experience love permeates everything. This pain and suffering is a direct reflection of the perception that no matter where we look or what we experience in life love can not be found. It seems illusive. Movie after movie created in Hollywood and song after song is about love, wanting find love, yet love as most people experience it is a mixed bag of happiness followed by sorrow or loss if the love relationships does not work out the way that it is expected. What is missing? Can a love ever be found that lasts?
Our drive to find and experience a lasting love, our true identity, can not and will not be denied. A loving God could never deny this love to His Sons, his creations. The one Son. Thus, the voice within that some have called our higher selves and the Course refers to as the Holy Spirit uses every experience we have to teach us the way back to the recognition of our true nature, when we choose to listen. In ACIM this recognition of our true nature is the Holy Instant.
T-15.II.1.6 An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. 7 In the blessed instant you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace.
Listening is being open to what is arising in present experience and look at it through the eyes of God- the eyes of love and innocence. It is seeing without judgment every experience that arises in its presence. When we do not listen the pain intensifies, because to deny true love is to deny the truth of who we are. It is the call to love. It is a call to awakening in recognition of our true nature.
I didn’t know about love or forgiveness or innocence when I entered a physical prison. In my mind people were convicted and found guilty and then sent to a place of punishment. And if the purpose was not punishment, it would be a place that would protect others from “them” = those people who I might call dangerous.
On closer inspection, this was a reflection of the beliefs I had about myself. I had convicted myself to life on earth and it felt like punishment. It was a place for me to protect what I thought was a separate self, from myself. I had felt for years that somehow I was hiding out and what I was hiding out from was God, even though I had no idea what God was. Yet behind even that I thought I was a victim of a cruel world. The ACIM text suggests otherwise. I have the power to choose to open the gates of the mind.
W-57.1. (31) I am not the victim of the world I see.
2 How can I be the victim of a world that can be completely undone if I so choose? 3 My chains are loosened. 4 I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. 5 The prison door is open. 6 I can leave simply by walking out. 7 Nothing holds me in this world. 8 Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. 9 I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last.
Everyone has a deep desire for the experience of love. Love is interpreted by ego or the deceived mind as a concept that requires some kind of give and take to be recognized and made special. Yet despite all of this somehow it feels empty. We don’t know what is wrong and at the same time, something always seems amiss. I thought love was something based on what I did; how I treated others. In other words my interpretation was that love was to be earned. Just like heaven was to be earned if I was “good”, and that meant living up to the expectations that others had for me. The indicators of love were how I perceived others treated me. If they treated me well I felt love. Treating me well had a number of definitions- acknowledge that I had good information to share (knowledgeable) and helpful. If I perceived they were not treating me well I felt rejected, sad, and lonely.
W-57.2. (32) I have invented the world I see.
2 I made up the prison in which I see myself. 3 All I need do is recognize this and I am free. 4 I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. 5 I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. 6 The Son of God must be forever free. 7 He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him. 8 He is where God would have him be, and not where I thought to hold him prisoner.
So deep in my mind I had a hunger for love and felt that love was missing, yet all the rules and ideas I had about how to “get it” (the ideas the ego has about love) prevented me from experiencing what I wanted most. Deep down I felt that if I could just do something more I could prove that I was loveable. I could prove that I did deserve heaven. One way that I was going to “show” I had something was going into prison. I just didn’t realize how effectively the Holy Spirit could use the desire of the ego- the need to prove something to win love- to help set me free from the concepts I had about love and the sense of a separate self.
T-13.I.5. You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. 2 He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. 3 For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. 4 Being in him, he has found it. 5 When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. 6 For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God’s Mind. 7 God’s Son will always be as he was created. 8 Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.
I’d walk out of that physical prison thinking, Oh, I’m lucky to be free, while my mind was still in prison. Occasionally I still choose prison of the mind – fear. And then thank goodness the Holy Spirit reminds me of the experience in the physical prison. And every time I look with openness that precious Holy Instant is there, waiting quietly and with sweet grace. Today the Holy Spirit reminded me of how this trust and faith even in the darkest of the the dark of a physical prison led to such experience of love and complete joy beyond my wildest imagination. He pointed again to Trust and Join with Him who Knows so that the power of love will shine through any remaining perceived darkness- and the light of just the thought of even more love and joy fills the mind. Amen.
T-15.II.2. 6 His teaching is for you because His joy is yours. 7 Through Him you stand before God’s altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. 8 For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be.
With love and gratitude,
Cay
