Love, Peace, and Joy as Effects
Sometimes students tell me they want to reach a state of
bliss or to be joyful all the time. What they do not understand is if they
attained these states they would not experience them as bliss or joy because
their new state would become the “new normal”. Bliss and joy are really only
felt in contrast to unhappiness. Peace is only felt in contrast to conflict.
Love, or wholeness, is only felt in contrast to lack. They are all personal experiences.
And they are only the flipside of the experiences that they are set up to
replace.
I could say that Truth is the absence of all feelings and
experiences. But really It is not even that. Truth is not defined by an absence
of any kind. It cannot be understood in contrast to anything. Truth is beyond
all comparisons or contrasts because It is beyond all duality.
That which experiences pain and seeks to be out of pain are
the same. So to seek to feel “good” is to seek for only the flip-side of
feeling “bad”. They are the same coin and nothing real is accomplished by
changing feelings. Real change is to be aware of That Which is so beyond all feelings
that It is not even the absence of feelings. Feelings were never There.
If you’ve read my earlier writing you know that for a long
time I pursued love and peace and joy. I even defined Truth as the experience
of lasting love and peace and joy. Now I see that these experiences are not
Truth Itself but only the effects of an awareness of Truth. This is why they
can be experienced through other sources. For example, you hear of people who have
taken certain drugs or who have had a stroke who have “transcendent”
experiences where they feel an expansion of their being and/or boundless love
or peace or joy. They have experiences of “light” or they see the illusion of
form or the interconnectedness of all things. Those experiences are only effects of chemical changes in the brain
brought on by drugs or a stroke or an awareness of Truth. (When the experience
is caused by the latter I call it a “higher miracle” because of its source). These
experiences are only meaningful in contrast to what had been accepted as
reality. But neither the experience one has before and after the “transcendent”
experience nor the “transcendent” experience itself is Reality.
This awareness clarifies for me the experience of my last
Revelation in September ’07. There was the Revelation, Which is beyond
description. And, as always, what follows is a higher miracle full of lessons
for me. In that case what I experienced on the “way back” from the Revelation
was so much joy that I felt that if I felt any more I’d be the joy. Then
I swung all the way into the darkest terror of the ego (personal thought
system): the fear of not existing. At the time, and for long after, I saw my
mind as split between the joy and the terror. Now I see those were in the same
place in my mind. The Revelation was the Thing apart. The joy/terror was only
the effect of experiencing the Revelation.
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Learn about the books The ACIM Mentor Articles, The Plain Language A Course in Miracles, 4 Habits for Inner Peace, and Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace at www.acimmentor.com.
Comments
If you can could you tell us what you were thinking/experiencing in "the fear of not existing." What was the terror about? Did you think you were going to die or is it something completely differently.
You don't have to pacify the fear. In fact, you cannot because the ego can never be without fear. And trying to only increases your feelings of fear by making fear real to you. The fear of non-existence is not your own. It is the ego's fear. When you let go of the ego you let go of its fear as though it was your own. And you will let go of the ego when you know that only the Truth is true.
I am a student of ACIM and I have been receiving and reading with great interest your newsletter for a while now and I want to thank you for graciously sharing your wisdom with us.
Like many others, I guess, I am struggling.
Take for example your newsletter of March 18 where you quote “T-17.I.1” (“The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his “sins” are but his own imaginings”). I find this upsetting as I interpret it as if I could go about killing, torturing, maiming, hurting while claiming it’s not Real, it’s only illusions. It would not make for a very nice society would it?
You’re going to tell me that it is because I see myself as a body but am I not in the world of form right now as I write this? Indeed, I need to dis-identify from the body but until I get there I am lost as to how handle things.
Would you mind shedding some light on my confusion?
Respectfully,
Guy
Furthermore, killing, maiming, etc. is evidence that one already believes in guilt. One may do these things to fill a sense of lack. Or one may do these things because they've projected their guilt onto others and they want to kill the guilt in themselves by killing it in another. When you know there is no guilt and sin you have no reason for these harmful actions. Again, all this is gone into in much detail in RGIP.
boyd
if 'my presence will be felt within the dream, but not my reality' then the greatest maintainable experience is awareness of truth right? which would HAVE to involve the cessation of striving for truth .. a deep acceptance of the 'limitations of experience'?? accepting what the higher miracle SHOWS us.. 'we' do not exist outside of a dream, and that this is not terrifying but pure joy.. in 'truer' perception, haha!
it would seem to me (though obviously i have not 'experienced' revelation) that the greatest gift revelation could then offer would be to stop trying to reach for the unreachable, and just accept that 'Love Is'. oh.. isnt that what the course says? stop trying to bring Love to not love? just know Thyself? the act of striving for truth, would seem to be helpful to a certain point, then become unhelpful after that point.
oh.. i understand my 'aloha 626' glowing hearts and light experience clearer now, the golden light shining from within me.. know Thyself! ok.. while i still feel pain around the idea that i cannot be truly seen by another.. i can SEE that the mourning period for that idea just got much shorter!
"These experiences are only meaningful in contrast to what had been accepted as reality"
'my mind' must contain beauty and joy (and non acceptance (not-beauty/joy) also) because 'my mind' must contain perception. whereas what Mind 'contains' cannot be held or chosen by perception, being beyond it???