Immediately, even perhaps while reading the lesson for today, the option to identify as a body or as mind is a present experience. Yes?
Which is it?
Am I mind? Or do I identify myself as ‘sitting on a chair, housed in a body, reading and contemplating with a brain. Here’s where “setting the goal at the onset,” as the Course, says, reveals itself as crucial. “What is salvation, Father? I do not know. Tell me, that I may understand.” Without this clarification by way of asking for it “Father what is salvation? I want to know”, how can one trust the authenticity of the experience rendered? Here, we set the goal for TRUTH, as the only purpose.
And for truth to come we must meet its conditions… We need to be saved from the lie we now believe about who and what and where we are. The fundamental basis wherein we find the truth is the goal of salvation… And from which, every seeming situation or person or thing must be the means for the accomplishment of the purpose set. Can we have faith in this?
Certainly, we’ve all seen how having set a goal in the physical world focuses the mind to see and employ only that which could be used as a means for it’s accomplishment. So, we have some experience with how the program works.
The question, then, is not whether it will work, but rather in what we want to place our faith in. Where is faith now?
For the longest time, as a student of the Course, I could not really comprehend the experience of “no-body”… Even when my desire to truly understand what was being given to experience through these daily lessons was relatively pure, as single-minded as I could comprehend anyway, I was also aware that I was sort of funneling the awareness for interpretation through a solid construct I identified as myself…
Yet, faith in the goal of truth was somehow the beacon of light I pursued… Gradually, I became more and more aware of the presence of even this limitation: the attempt to direct my learning and experiencing through ‘familiar channels’ in other words, ego basted self constructs. Although I lacked confidence in being able to move beyond it, as my devotion increased, simultaneously, in glimpses, sometimes just teensy instances, a greater awareness essentially began to overcome me. I began to experience little glimpses of pure Spirit; essentially dislodging my mind from the primarily the construct of body-mind.
These glimpses, these holy instances, strung together by faith shined a new perspective light, revealing a new experience of everything present in my life. Identification with body/body-mind began to slip and an essence of limitlessness commenced as the new point of reference in my mind. Progressively, this spirit-mind identification has increased and become more the ‘authenticity’ of my being and the 'reality' of the world than what once seemed an impenetrable construct of limited form…
The pure certainty present within these glimpses where no question exists, but only timelessness, formlessness, and of changeless, perfect peace, however fleeting these glimpses seem to be or how quickly I might discount and defend against them, unveils the Self nonetheless. They reveal the entirety of the whole, in a holographic holy instant of recognition.
Let me be clear, these are not really tiny moments sandwiched in between other moments in time… Time itself is a concept supporting the belief in separation…. Miracles operate outside of the time/space construct.
Another little tidbit to consider, yes?
In Chapter 17 of the text, in the section titled “The Healed relationship”,
So what happens that interferes with this limitless expansion? What brings forgetfulness to what is indisputably present in these glimpses?
Self concepts, that’s what.
It is slipping back into once again identifying as a body amongst other bodies through the ego’s trusted right-hand man: judgment. In other words, holding grievances… Why is the temptation to judge seem so natural to us? It is built into the authority issue at the root of this physical-world dream. It is competition with God for authorship of life. Actually, any definition, I, myself place on anything, including what the Course is saying, is saying, “i know and God does not … I am the boss of my life.” It is a subtle attack on God’s plan for salvation… how sneaky the ego is, eh …
God’s plan but asks that we choose once again, the voice we would hear: Love or fear; host to God or hostage to the ego. We choose with the Holy Spirit, the instant we say: “I don’t know… What is this for?”… God knows… We offer our little willingness to be shown, and to accept the only truth that could be true…
Thank you for joining with me in the One purpose, unified and sure…
We are the salvation of the world through the One Plan that can and will bring about its achievement… We want only our Father’s
Thank you. I love you.
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