This Christmas, Simplify

          “Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.” (M-24.6)

 

I did not know that the spiritual symbols that remained here were ego until they collapsed. I just went along with whatever understanding unfolded here, and the symbols of God, Christ, and Holy Spirit remained. In fact, in many ways returned, because before the shift in consciousness, I preferred the words Truth, Extension of Truth, and Teacher of Truth. As I’ve shared, after the ontological ego fell away in a moment, the psychological ego has been in a process of falling away, rising fully to conscious awareness as it does so. I had no idea that those symbols returning were part of that. They were part of ego’s sense of specialness for Liz. So, it is with wonder that I watch the whole spiritual apparatus here deflate.

Father (God), Son (Christ)…long ago I came to understand these terms as Whole and Part of the Whole. This is how I translated these ideas into plain language in The Message of A Course in Miracles. I could even now simply say the Father-Whole is pure consciousness and the Son-Part is the part of pure consciousness in your mind. But why have special words that seem to make it something more than it is? Very simply, everything appearing—the material world, thoughts feelings, the ego—appear in consciousness. Before those appearances arise, pure consciousness is an experience that we describe as transcendence, peace, love, wholeness, oneness, bliss, etc. Is that a Father-God? Is that a god of any kind? No. It simply is what consciousness is. You can even take drugs or have a stroke or a brain tumor that reveal this other experience of consciousness without ego.

Ego inflates what is simply the space in which it appears into something powerful, lofty, distant. Maybe the sense of distance is just the effect of its denial of pure consciousness. But by inflating what simply is into a god, ego inflates itself, too. How mundane to resist the simple and ordinary. Much more self-important to resist a god! Typical ego bloat. For it to seem lofty and powerful, it must make what it opposes lofty and powerful.

Religions and spiritualities are based on sensing, and even experiences of, pure consciousness. But these are picked up by ego and bloated and distorted into ideas that serve it. Even when ego’s symbols are softened, they serve ego. A loving god is still a god.

So, maybe this Christmas play with deflating the lofty ideas this holiday presents. Behind the symbols and stories is the very simple fact that pure consciousness, which is all around and everywhere, as present and ordinary as the oxygen in the air, is the love, and peace, and wholeness that you seek. You don’t have to reach for it. Just be open to it. It is right here.

 

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