Love is Closer When God Falls Away
I’ve had some questions and discussions that indicate I need to clarify what I was trying to convey in last week’s article.
Although the idea of God has fallen away here with ego, my mystical experiences (transcendent love and oneness) as well as my experiences of an internal, loving guide, teacher, and therapist when ego was here were real (as far as consciousness is concerned). I simply understand now that they were the experience of pure consciousness, not of a higher power of some kind. Ego’s denial and opposition to pure consciousness turns the ordinary into something extraordinary, making it seem distant and lofty and special—making it into a god.
My message is that the experiences of universal love and oneness and wholeness that you seek are right here, beyond and surrounding ego in your experience. This is not a new message at all, but I no longer feel that those experiences warrant special terms like God, Holy Spirit, Christ, etc., as they are simply what consciousness is, and nothing more. Pure consciousness is as close and ordinary as the oxygen in the air, and those terms have connotations that are not warranted. There is no distant, authoritative, or parent-like power anywhere. And while I had always said that for me, the term God simply referred to What is rather than an authority or power, that What is was a conflation of what I now know is pure consciousness and the Absolute, Which is beyond consciousness. This conflation elevated the experiences (transcendent love and oneness) of pure consciousness in my mind into something more than they were and it brought the Absolute into consciousness where It never is. Those experiences were only pure consciousness, not an extension (Christ, Spirit) of the Absolute into consciousness. So, without ego, without this conflation, the term God does not seem applicable to either pure consciousness or the Absolute. Certainly, neither should be worshipped.
About the Absolute—just forget
about It! It was conflated here with pure consciousness because of early
experiences where the Absolute was revealed around the same time pure consciousness
was experienced. But the most startling aspect of the revelation was how the Absolute
is completely unlike anything in consciousness, not just in magnitude, but in quality,
in characteristics (for lack of a better way to put it). And nothing in
consciousness was in the Absolute. The Absolute is not love, although It is indescribably
glorious. The Absolute is not source or creator—it is not a god. And since It
does not enter into consciousness (which is all relative), unless you
experience a revelation of It (rare), there is no reason to think about It. In
fact, even if you do, there is not much you can think about It!
What I want to convey is that
the experiences that you have been seeking are closer and more accessible than my
earlier teachings made them seem by saying they came from outside of
consciousness. Pure love and oneness are what consciousness is before ego and
the material world appear, so they are the very stuff that ego and the material
world and ego appear in. Pure consciousness—pure love and oneness—are right
here just beyond and surrounding appearances that are no more substantial than
veils. This is what I feel A Course in Miracles conveys under its lofty
language and elaborate Christian symbols.
>>>>
If you have a question the answer to which you
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Comments
The Course says we need to think in terms of releasing everything we have ever learned (see chapter 31). Concepts are creations of the personal mind (ego). Acim says we must let go of concepts we have learned.
Some Concepts:
Our self, personality, body.
God, Holy Spirit, Christ (originally from religion).
Sin...
I'm not going to list them all.
"We" have to let go of everything. All the Course asks of us is to be willing. Higher Power does the rest.
It's a lot more than I signed on for.
This is not something you ruminate on or debate. You read Chapter 31 and see what it says to you.
You are NOT being asked to give up belief in anything. We have a human understanding of God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit. We are being asked to give up our human ideas of Them and know Them as THEY want us to.