The Great Projection

Now that we’ve established a baseline understanding of God and Creation, let’s turn our attention to the samsara-maya that mortal existence actually is. How did the dream begin? Why did we choose material unreality, separation, and miscreation over Divine Reality, Oneness, and Perfect Creation? And, more importantly, how do we reverse that insane decision and wake up? To answer that monumental hat-trick of questions, let’s begin at the beginning, when God willed into "being" another Creative Mind like His own.

To perform that miraculous feat, our Heavenly Father simply held in His Mind the Divine Idea that His Creation would be as pure and holy as He was. He then used the proverbial "magic word" to activate the Creative Force of Divine Will and "make it so."

That "magic word," btw, is "Amen," which means "So Be It," among other things we'll get to later. 

Deeming what He’d created as “good,” God then projected onto His new “Son” all His own Creative Powers and Will.

Through this process, “God the Father” created “God the Son” in “his own image," the real meaning of which Jesus clarifies in the following passage from the Course's URText:

“God created man in his own image and likeness” is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if “image” is understood to mean “thought,” and “likeness” is taken as “of a like quality.” God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else.

That "thought" and "like-quality" are Agape -- the only concept-packet, state of being, and/or creative power that exists in Divine Reality.

Because God made His Son "in his image," the Son also received the Father's free and loving creative will. Without it, the Son couldn't fulfill his purpose of creating like the Father through loving extension or generational replication.

Or, as Jesus says in the Course:

The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly.

Giving the Son free will before he could be trusted not to abuse it was a gamble, but the Father chose to take that risk, knowing all would be well in the end (because it already was, owing to the Alpha to Omega nature of Perfect Creation). 

To give the Son a chance to practice creating, the Father established a "kingdom" for this purpose within the larger God-Mind Bubble. In that "kingdom," the Son could play around with ideas all he wanted, but he couldn't "flip the switch" to create anything REAL and ETERNAL without sharing the Father's Creative Will or following the established protocols for Perfect Creation.

To create anything REAL and ETERNAL the Son's will had to be "in tune" with the Father's. It had to, in other words, vibrate at the frequency of Perfect Love emitted by the Spirit of Creative Will within the God-Mind Bubble.

When the Sonship entered its "kingdom," the Father divided the one into many. How, why, or when this occurred isn’t explained in the Course or any other source I’ve consulted. Jesus does, however, specify that there were no “orders” of Souls at this point in Timeless Eternity. There was, in other words, no designation between humans, animals, birds, insects, single-cell organisms, or plants. There was only “one continuous line of creation” proceeding from God to His Souls, and then onward to their creations.

Okay, so ... to guide their experimentation, God gave His Souls assignments to complete. The first and foremost of these “assignments” (not commandments, according to Jesus) was to love, honor, and value their Creator more than the effects of their creative experiments. The second most important was to love and treat each other as they would wish to be loved and treated themselves, because the other Souls were all their “brothers” in the Sonship.

This second directive is known by various names, including the Golden Rule, the Law of Love, the Ethic of Reciprocity, and the Law of Giving and Receiving. While Jesus discusses this incredibly important rule in the Course and the New Testament, the ethos of treating others as we wish to be treated is not exclusive to Christianity. The same idea has, in fact, been articulated in almost every religion and culture since the beginning of recorded history.

The Golden Rule isn’t just about playing nice with other people -- although that’s certainly a major goal of this sacred maxim. God exhorted His Souls to follow the Golden Rule because breaking it could have disastrous consequences FOR THEM.

How so? I answered that question in part when I briefly discussed the Law of Love in my last post. To recap, the Golden Rule or Law of Love mandates that we receive (manifest for ourselves) what we give to others at the level of thoughts and ideas. Like God, we create with our minds, which never lose their creative power, even when we’re dreaming we’re somewhere other than Heaven (which we aren't). Also like God, the actuating force we extend or project to manifest our desires is WILL -- or, more specifically, the Spirit of Creative Will. In accordance with the Law of Love, we activate that Force of Will -- or flip the "Amen" switch, so to speak -- by giving to another what we desire for ourselves.

As I said before, we communicate our desire to have what we gave through every thought-gift we give to a brother. And, according to Jesus, the Great Amen, Spirit of Creative Will, or Holy Spirit ALWAYS replies, "Thy will be done."

We get what we give, in other words -- quid pro quo -- because that's how God engineered the creative process to work.

We’ll talk more about this later. For now, just KNOW that our minds create according to God’s Laws, even in the dream-realm -- whether or not we’re aware of this unassailable FACT. What we desire for others, we receive in kind, because that’s what we willed to have under the Law of Love. What we don’t receive right away goes down in the Karmic Ledger, to be delivered sometime in the dream-future. That time might be a day, week, month, year, century, or millennium from now -- but our thought-gifts WILL return to us eventually (unless we clear them from the Record first through True Forgiveness).

Okay, so ... understanding and following the Golden Rule/Law of Love is a colossally big deal. So colossal, in fact, that breaking or reversing the Golden Rule is, according to Jesus, one of the first errors that imprisoned us in the Ego Mind's Kingdom of Darkness. As I'll explain later, we reversed that rule when we began to cherish our miscreated possessions more than our brothers in Christ.

While the Souls obeyed God’s Laws, Heaven was a happy and peaceful domain. This was when we lived in the allegorical Garden of Eden, which wasn’t a garden or a place at all. Eden was “paradise” because the Souls enjoyed the Perfect Peace, Joy, Love, Harmony, Abundance, and Knowledge God “bequeathed” them when He created the Sonship.

Then, something changed. One or more of the Souls entertained a fleeting thought they didn’t share with the others or God. That thought was a seemingly innocuous rumination along the lines of, “What would happen if we left Heaven and tried creating on our own for a while?”

This was the "tiny mad idea," Jesus refers to in the following excerpt from the Course:

Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God forgot to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects.

As ludicrous as this inclination was, the idea could still accomplish what the Souls wished. They did not, however, have the power to usurp God’s Will, change His Laws, or alter their reality or destiny in the slightest way (because of Milta). Had they laughed the notion off, all would have remained as it was. But rather than dismiss the idea, the Souls gave it serious consideration. This split their mind, because only by PERCEIVING or IMAGINING themselves as separate from God could they manifest such an impossible idea. This “tiny, mad idea” was the “original error” or “first substitution” that brought the dream of separation into being, as Jesus explains below:

You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship which you have ever made is PART of it.

Desiring to leave Heaven may have been sheer madness, but it was still an idea with creative potential. And because God gave His Souls free will, He wouldn’t stop them from manifesting their desires. He did, however, try to warn them that, being His Milta, they couldn’t really leave His Mind. They could only imagine they’d left, by projecting a non-existent part of their mind into a realm of nothingness wherein everything they perceived would be the reverse of what was Real and True.

Or, as Jesus says,

The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it would rest upon contingency, but there IS nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union, and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-LIMITING.

Since the idea that spawned “perception” was both insane and UNreal, so was the thought-system supporting it. That thought-system had an equally insane and UNreal “voice.” That voice belonged to the Ego Mind, the architect of separation, fear, guilt, and the God-opposing ideas of “fear,” “sin,” and “evil.”

“The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can,” Jesus explains in the Course. “But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can. That is why the question ‘What DO you want?’ must be answered. You ARE answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything BUT ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically UNTIL THE DECISION IS CHANGED. This is a redundant statement, because you have NOT learned it. But again, any decision can be UNmade as well as made.”

As the Great Deceiver of humankind, the Ego Mind is the symbolic serpent in the Old Testament allegory of Adam and Eve. The first lie the serpent told to “tempt” the Souls into leaving paradise went something like this:

You’ve ruined Creation, my friends. You’ve sinned against God. And if you think God will forgive what you’ve done, you’re more insane than I am. God pretends to be a loving father, but it’s only an act. He’s actually wrathful and punishing. If you stay, He’ll make you pay for what you’ve done—and dearly.

Believing the serpent's fear-inducing manipulations, the rebel Souls experienced such harrowing shame and guilt their only perceived hope was to run away and hide somewhere God couldn’t find them. Capitalizing on their terror, the Evil One offered them the perfect way out:

Project yourself out of this sphere into a universe of your own making. If you make it without your Father, He can’t see it, or see you in it. You’ll be safe there—and also free to do whatever you want. Plus, if you make your own world, you can be “special.” You can be your own person, make your own decisions, and experience your own individual glory, instead of always having to share everything with everything.

Desperate to escape their guilt and avoid God’s non-existent wrath -- and also intrigued by the idea of experiencing themselves as “special” -- the Souls chose to listen to the serpent and ignore God, who did NOT cast them out of Heaven, as the story of Adam and Eve erroneously reports; they left Heaven of their own free will -- by CHOOSING miscreation, personal autonomy, perception, and separation over Perfect Creation, Loving Cooperation, Knowledge, and Oneness.

What they chose was "concupiesence," which the Catholic Church correctly identifies as "the original sin." The Vatican errs by defining "concupiesence" as "sexual lust" or "worldly desires." These definitions aren't wrong, per se; they just don't quite hit the nail on the head. What "concupiesence" actually means is the desire for self-creation -- or, more specifically, the desire to create a "self-identity" apart from the God-created Christ-Self.

Or, as Jesus explains:

Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the “self-concept,” a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself. Its fear aspect is usually ascribed to the “father figure,” a particularly interesting idea, in view of the fact that nobody means the physical father by the term. It refers to an IMAGE of a father in relation to an IMAGE of the self.

When the Souls made this insane choice, the Ego Mind hurled the split-off image-projecting part of their minds into a “void” of its own making -- a dream-realm of time, space, and matter over which it would rule as their "father" or “creator.” The Souls only appeared to be in this new realm, however, because they couldn’t really leave the God-Mind Bubble or withdraw from God's Eternal and Unchanging Covenant of Agape. By joining with the Prince of Darkness, the errant Souls simply manifested a new and illusory level of mind called "consciousness" or “perception.” 

In this new perceived "reality," the Souls could experience themselves as separate beings with separate minds and interests. This wasn't the case, of course, but it seemed very real to "the Separated Ones." This is because, as Jesus explains, whenever the mind divides, its new condition becomes real to it -- and the former condition is forgotten.

Psychologists call these habits of mind repression, dissociation, and denial. Remember this, because the process also works in reverse and is, in fact, the key to waking up from the Dream of Duality.

The “great projection” or “detour into fear” was, according to Jesus, violently explosive and lasted millions of years. It would, he told Helen Schucman (his scribe for the Course), take as long to undo as it did to evolve. 

The Tower card in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck strikingly illustrates our explosive (yet imaginary) projection out of Heaven or Superconsciousness. The blown-off crown at the top symbolizes the choice to forfeit our status as the Prince of Heaven. The figures on the card also depict the formerly genderless Souls dividing into male and female bodies as they plummet from the Heavenly "tower" of Higher Mind to the solid bedrock of material existence.

With this plunge into fear-inspired fantasies came the illusion-supporting perceptions of space and time. Like most other things in the dream-universe, both are symbols of separation. Space represents the false dualistic constructs of subject/object, opposites, and polarities, while time symbolizes the three predominant thought-errors that block the memories of God and Heaven.

Those thought-errors are:

Past = Sin
Present = Guilt
Future = Fear

More specifically, the past represents the “sin” the Separated Ones believed they committed against God by choosing to usurp His Will and Laws; the present represents the deep, unconscious guilt they felt (and projected outward) for what they imagined they did (but really didn’t); and the future represents the ego-inspired fear of the Divine Wrath and Punishment they feared they would incur if God ever discovered their hiding place.

The Souls also needed “bodies” of some sort to experience the dream as if it were real. Encasing the Souls in gross physical bodies was, in fact, the Ego Mind’s crowning achievement. Why? Because it affirmed the pretense they were separate from God and each other.

More importantly, having bodies allowed them to project the fearful concepts of sin, guilt, and fear onto other bodies. They then could perceive these projections as EXTERAL threats to defend themselves against, rather than the deceptive God-blocking thoughts and beliefs they actually were. The body was, however, just as UNreal as everything else NOT OF GOD in the Ego Mind’s dream-universe.

As Jesus says in the Course:

The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in it made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion.

Like the Souls themselves, these first “bodies” were genderless and, therefore, non-reproductive. These first bodies still received God's direct transmissions, however, until the Ego Mind manifested the first pair of material opposites. Those first two opposites were, according to Jesus, fire and ice.

Thereafter, the Separated Souls received ONLY the Ego Mind’s transmissions, through which he tricked them into flinging the unconscious fear, guilt, and hatred they felt toward themselves (for leaving Heaven) onto their brothers, where it could NEVER be healed or defeated. As long as they perceived "the enemy" as outside their "bodies" (rather than inside their own minds), they would keep fighting battles they could never win and remain under Satan's evil sleeping spell.

“Not being in their Right Minds, they turned their defenses from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely,” Jesus explains in the Course.

Bewitched by the Evil One's lies, the Souls soon forgot God’s Laws, forgot they were supposed to love and help each other, and forgot that God’s Abundance provided more than enough for all of them to thrive. Erroneously perceiving scarcity and lack, they grew competitive, envious, and covetous. They horded resources and formed “special” ego-body relationships as allies and enemies. They also made possessions and currency -- meaningless miscreations they valued more than God and their brothers. By and by, they started fighting and killing each other to protect these UNreal and, therefore, WORTHLESS false-idols.

The Biblical allegory of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel symbolizes this period in the dream-drama. When we kill anyone or anything, we are killing a brother because we are all brothers in the Christ Mind.

Up to this point, God tolerated what was happening. But, according to Jesus, murder He could NOT abide. Something had to be done, but how to intervene without limiting free will?

“Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the Separated Ones but they could not withstand the strength of the attack, and had to be brought back,” Jesus says of God’s first attempts to fix the problem. “Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated Ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced.”

Things only got worse. Forming into tribes, the Separated Ones began making war on each other to gain greater personal power and territory, committing murder en masse, sometimes (insanely) in the name of God. All these destructive thought-projections turned the dream into a seemingly inescapable nightmare of adversity, suffering, and death.

To address the problem, God needed a split-proof device that could be used ONLY to heal. The solution had to be optional (within limits), because the Separated Ones still had free will, which He would neither oppose nor revoke.

“It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses which man can choose to use constructively or destructively were not enough to save him,” Jesus explains in the URText. “It was therefore decided that he needed a defense which was so splendid that he could not misuse it, although he COULD refuse it. His will could not turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of all other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only defense which was NOT a two-edged sword.”

The only defense which was NOT a two-edged sword was GRACE -- or, more specifically, Saving Grace -- a slightly less potent "aspect" of the Creative Force of Divine Will. Had God projected the pure vibratory power of Agape into the dream-dimension, He would have healed the separation right then and there. He also would have acted against the wishes of the Separated Ones, thereby retracting the free will He gave the whole Sonship. And without free will, the Souls comprising the Christ Mind could not expand Creation as God had already divined.

It was, in fact, the mother of all conundrums. To solve it, God hatched a plan that was at once ingenious and foolproof. Our Heavenly Father then projected the vibratory force of Grace, which He gave a teaching function, into the dream-dimension to implement the Great Reawakening Plan in stages over time. That Force of Grace is what Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, the Mind of the Atonement, the Comforter and Guide, the Teacher, and the Holy Guest, among other descriptors.

The first thing the Holy Spirit did was to change the dream-world's purpose from insanely perceiving our selves and our brothers as sinful and separate to sanely perceiving the holiness and creative will we shared with each other and God. 

Or, as Jesus explains:

Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seem to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are ALL projections made. For it is the projection which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.

The Spirit of Grace then played out the dream to its happy conclusion in a Holy Instant, recorded everything that went down, dropped us into a virtual-reality training simulator, and pressed the replay button. And that's what we experience as earthly life -- the instant replay or memory of a dream that both never happened and ended long ago.

But let's not talk about all that just yet. Let's talk instead about the infrastructure the Spirit of Grace and her pals installed in our dreaming minds to guarantee the Atonement Plan would reach its foregone conclusion in the time-warp memory earthly existence actually is. The construction of this atonement infrastructure is, in fact, what the opening chapter of the Old Testament Book of Genesis describes -- NOT the creation of Heaven and Earth by God.

As I keep saying, most things in the Bible are allegories that can only be understood through the gift of illumination. To interpret these allegories literally, is to misconstrue their meaning entirely. In the case of the first book of Genesis, the meaning of the so-called "story of creation" has been further eroded and obscured by multiple mistranslations and the evolution of various word-meanings over time. Up next, I'm going to cut through all that obfuscating crap and explain what Genesis actually says happened "in the beginning" -- of the DREAM, my dozing brother, NOT when God created the material universe (because He didn't).

What is God? (Part 4)

God is the Spirit of Divine Will 

that actuates Perfect Creation

Are you enjoying my rather ambitious series explaining what God is (and is not)? I hope so, because compiling this information was no small undertaking -- and one I definitely could NOT have tackled alone. Up to this point in the series, we've established that God is 1) the Causal and Cognitive Creator of All That Is, 2) the invisible mind-bubble that houses Creation in harmonious Oneness, and 3) the Cause, Effect, and Creative Force of Agape -- the end-all, be-all of All That Is in Divine Reality. 

Along the way, we've also touched on the Law of Love, the Karmic Record, and the Ego Mind's God-blocking Dark Veil, Etheric Web, or Auric Shell. What I have yet to explain -- vis-à-vis God's various attributes -- is how Perfect Creation works.

To set the stage, let's review my definition of Agape. As you may recall, I described this Divine Concept or Covenant of All-Inclusive LOVE as the essence, ethereal substance, or mental vibration of All That Is, Has Ever Been, or Will Ever Be (inside the God-Mind Bubble). Agape is, therefore, the Cause (Father), Effect (Son), and Creative Force (Actuating Spirit) through which Cause wills Effect into being. Stated another way, God is Agape, God's Creative Will is Agape, God's Creations are Agape, Christ's Creations are Agape, and the Creative Will those Creations (be they God's or Christ's) share with their Creator also is Agape.

If it helps clarify the concept, imagine the multi-generational process of Perfect Creation as ripples on a pond, extending outward from the center. In this simple metaphor, God is the pond, the ripples on the pond, and the force that caused the ripples to radiate outward in concentric circles. To set this eternal process in motion, God metaphorically spoke "the Word," as described in the preamble to the New Testament gospel of "John." In the King James version, John 1:1-4 reads as follows: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Is this description accurate? Yes, more or less, if we correctly interpret the symbols. Stated without metaphor, God (the Supreme Causal Mind) spoke (activated the Creative Force) to bring the Word (the Divine Idea of the Sonship) into being.

Pretty clear, right? What isn't clear is who the "him" in John 1:2 - 4 is supposed to be. Is this "him" the Word or God? Most Christians believe "him" refers to the Word, the Son of God "made flesh" in the person of Jesus Christ. This all-too-common interpretation is, I believe, inaccurate on more than one level. First of all, the "him" to which John refers HAS to be God, the generative source or "creator" of all things, and without whom nothing real can be made. Second of all, "the Word" is the originating Divine Idea behind the whole Sonship or Christ Mind, not just Jesus.

In the Course, Jesus states this FACT emphatically. He is our brother in the Christ Mind, not the "only begotten Son of God." He also spells out that the Divine Idea or "Word" God willed into being was the Sonship. He further explains that the Divine Idea or abstract concept God willed into being as the Sonship was "My Son is as Perfect and Holy as my Self."  That idea, Jesus also tells us, is how God still KNOWS His ONE Holy Creation. God does not, in other words, recognize sin, guilt, fear, separation, or imperfection as a legitimate idea, let alone as an achievable state of being.

Got it? Good. 

Let's revisit John 1:1-4 with the word God inserted where I believe it belongs:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by God; and without God was not any thing made that was made. In God was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 

Makes more sense this way, doesn't it?

Okay, so ... now that we better understand the process of Perfect Creation, let's examine more closely the various components or "aspects" of Agape involved. As I see it, those "aspects" are these:

A) God = Causal Source of Agape (the Pond)

B) Creative Force = Divine Will of Agape (the force introduced to activate the rippling)

C) Creation I (Son of God) = Created Effect (the first set of ripples)

D) Creation II - Infinity (Grandson of God, etc.) = Created Effect of Christ (the subsequent ripples, ring by ring)

Okay, so ... the keys to Perfect Creation are A and B -- the Causal Source and Actuating Force of the ripples (C and D). The ripples, being the effects or products of A and B's inseparable union, can't make more ripples on their own. To keep the process going, the ripples must join the fixed union or partnership of the Source and and actuating Will of Agape. They must, in other words, SHARE their Father's Will to create ONLY the Divine Idea of Perfect Love. To take the metaphor one step farther, the ripples can't even BE what they are without the pond and the actuating force that brought them into being.

To help you visualize what I'm talking about, let's crack open the God-Mind Bubble. The layers we'd find within are remarkably similar to those seen in the cross-section of Planet Earth below. 

The correspondences are, I believe, as follows:

Inner Core = God + Creative Force of Divine Will

Outer Core = God's Creations (first generation)

Mantle = Christ's Creations (second generation)

Crust = God-Mind Membrane

As in my pond-ripple example, the rings of Creation extend outward, generationally, into timeless and spaceless infinity.

Or, as Jesus explains in the Course's "original" edition (not original dictations):

A co-creator with the Father must have a son. Yet must this son have been created like himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from -- not born of size nor weight nor time nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.

Does that help? I hope so, because this stuff is a bitch to understand, let alone explain.

When John says "without God was not any thing made that was made," he means that nothing real can be created without God's Creative Force of Divine Will. When John says "In God was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not," he's telling us that the only thing OF GOD in the Kingdom of Darkness is the Divine Spark of Eternal Life that is our Soul. When we perceive the world through the Ego Mind's dark lens, we can't "comprehend" that God-created Spark, Soul, or Christ-Self light-fragment in ourselves and others. To see that inner light or "face of Christ" in ourselves and our brothers, we have to strip away the Ego Mind's Dark Veil, layer by layer.

In the Course, Jesus tells us that God placed that Divine Spark or Christ-Self fragment at the center of what he calls the "Inner-Altar" or "God's Altar" within us. As I understand it, this metaphorical "altar" can be found on the uppermost/innermost plane of the "separated" or "dreaming" Christ Mind, which butts up against the God-Mind Bubble. As we advance through the Holy Spirit's at-one-ment, purification, undoing, forgiveness, or salvation process, we begin to see that "altar" through the inward-looking Spiritual Eye. The image below offers a rough idea of what we might see in meditation as we approach that Inner-Altar.

In the Dream of Darkness, that bright "spark" or "star" shining down from Heaven is the only created effect of Agape. As such, it is the source of our Eternal Life and Divinity -- the only part of us that's actually real or alive. It also is the only part of us that's recognized by and still connected to God.

Or, to quote Jesus:

There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God Created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true.

John tries to tell us this but, like many things in the Bible, his message has been obscured by unilluminated interpreters. When luminously interpreted, John's gospel also imparts something else of vital importance. That something else is that neither God (A) nor the Creative Force of Agape (B) are present in the Dream of Separation.

Without these conjoined components of Perfect Creation, we can't create anything REAL or ETERNAL. With our puny, separate wills, we can only conjure fantasies that will break our hearts when they crumble into dust and blow away. Anything and everything we produce in partnership with the Ego Mind is, in fact, MISCREATION. It's all smoke and mirrors, my dreaming brother, and nothing more. The instant we wake up, the world and universe -- and everything they appear to contain -- will vanish into thin air.

What I've explained so far raises some important questions. The first is: Why are God and the Creative Force absent from the dream-dimension? The answer is: Because we wanted to experience what it would be like not to always share everything with everything. We wanted to be "special," in other words, instead of the same as everything else in Creation. When God refused to indulge this insane "whim," we bailed out of Heaven -- by splitting part of the Christ Mind away from the God Mind. In so doing, we manifested the realm of perception -- the little basket hanging under the God-Mind Bubble in another dimension. In that dimension, our understanding of reality is completely upside-down.

Another question we might ask is: How did we exclude God and His Creative Spirit from the split-off dream-dimension? The short answer is: When we asked the Ego Mind to manifest a sphere of mind in which we could perceive ourselves as separate, our new creative partner wove the silken threads of fear into a web to block God's transmissions of Agape. That web didn't only block God and His Creative Will; it also trapped us in the dream-realm it manifested OUTSIDE the God-Mind Bubble. Once we were caught, it wound those same threads around our Soul-memories to bind us within its Agape-starved Dark Kingdom.

In the Course, Jesus tells us that Agape and fear, being antithetical to each other, can't co-exist in the same sphere of mind. He also tells us fear isn't real because God didn't create it. Fear does NOT, therefore, exist within the God-Mind Bubble.

Stated another way, we can't experience fear in the Sphere of Superconsciousness or Knowledge we share with God. We can only experience fear in the split-off Sphere of Consciousness we projected part of our mind into to hide from God in shame and guilt. As the product of the unreal ideas (fear and separation), the Sphere of Consciousness doesn't actually exist. It's only a dream or alternate-reality we keep in place as long as we value anything it appears to offer more than the Truth about what and where we really are. Stated another way, the dream won't dissolve until we choose the priceless virtues of right-minded creating over the worthless vices of wrong-minded miscreating.

Okay, so ... another big question we might ask is this one: If God is All-Powerful, couldn't He just throw a lightning bolt through the Ego's Web of Fear and blow the whole dream-world to smithereens? The answer is: He could, but 1) God doesn't throw lightning bolts because we're inside His Mind and 2) having given us free will, He won't do anything to override or revoke it (within reason). Thus, we have to choose to end the dream of our own accord. We are not, however, on our own in this regard. After the dream went south, God sent the Holy Spirit into the Sphere of Consciousness to help us choose right.

In future posts, I'll describe how the Holy Spirit helps us "see the Light." For now, let's jump back to the gospel of John. To comprehend the preamble's full meaning vis-à-vis God's creative powers, we must know a few facts of history. The first of these FACTS is that the four gospels chosen for the New Testament were written accounts of oral narratives of what Jesus did and said. These four gospels were originally written in Greek, the common language of trade and higher learning in Judea in the time of Jesus.

The second FACT is that the surviving disciples of Jesus, all of whom spoke Aramaic, were the original sources of these narratives. The third FACT is that the early followers of Jesus were hunted down, stoned to death, crucified, beheaded, burnt alive, and fed to lions, among other atrocities. To escape persecution, torture, and death, they met in secret and shared their stories orally for at least a century before these narratives were written down. Except for the gospels composed by the disciples themselves (including John, James, Mary, Philip, and Thomas) these passed-down narratives were recorded by various unknown scribes in several languages, including Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, and Hebrew. 

The fourth FACT is that the gospels written by the surviving disciples were not only excluded from the New Testament canon, they also were condemned as heretical by the men who chose the four New Testament gospels. The author of "John" is NOT, therefore, John, the alleged "beloved disciple" of Jesus -- but the men who commissioned that gospel to promote their own ends wanted people to believe it was.

What's my point? I have three, actually, which are: 1) More than a century passed before the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written down; 2) Those four gospels were recorded in Greek, rather than the original spoken Aramaic; and 3) The men who chose those four gospels OVER the writings of the surviving disciples did so because these four best told the story of Jesus the way they wanted it told.

As we move forward, I'll explain the history in more detail. For now, just know that the New Testament canon was chosen by men with ego-motivated agendas. Some of their primary aims were to 1) dictate what Jesus was and taught, 2) unite and institutionalize the various "Christian" sects under a flagship "catholic" church whose authority couldn't be questioned by anyone claiming to have direct illumination from the Holy Spirit.

To achieve their aims, the leaders of the "catholic" movement condemned as heretical anyone promoting conflicting interpretations of what Jesus was and/or taught, as well as anyone claiming to have received contradictory "inner-knowing" from the Holy Spirit. To fuel the fire of their condemnation, these "catholic" leaders attached to both these groups the loaded label "gnostic," a word THEY made synonymous with "heretic" or "blasphemer." Stripped of this contrived negative "frame," the word "gnostic" simply means "inner-knowing." 

Let's pause here for a moment, because I want to point out that the New Testament and the Course say pretty much the same things when both are interpreted correctly. The Course does, however, present a more thorough and modern explanation of the process and requirements of salvation than does the New Testament. As stated earlier, this is because the men who selected the New Testament canon wanted the last word on what Jesus was, taught, and did. Because they were virulently anti-illumination and anti-gnostic (inner-knowing), they excluded the teachings about accessing the Holy Spirit directly and seeking the Kingdom of Heaven within our minds.

Jesus DID, in fact, teach these truths and techniques during his earthly life. How do I know this? Because the gospels of Thomas, Mary, Philip, John, and James (among others) say as much. Not only were the gospels of these five Apostles of Christ destroyed by the "catholic" authorities, their legitimate authors were also systematically and mendaciously discredited as heretics, imposters, and/or hypocrites. To slur Mary -- who was both the "beloved" disciple and wedded wife of Jesus -- one of the early Popes went so far as to identify her as the demon-possessed prostitute "saved" by Jesus in Luke 8:1-3. That this mischaracterization of Mary the Magdala (NOT Mary Magdalene) was a slanderous fallacy wasn't openly acknowledged by the Vatican until very recently.

Had these and other equally illuminating so-called "gnostic" gospels not been found in the Jordan Desert in 1945, the world would never know of their existence.

Despite all this, I still consider the Holy Bible (when accurately interpreted) to be a credible source of Higher Truth. Not the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, perhaps, but certainly credible enough to warrant deep and careful study. Like the Course (as Jesus makes clear), the New Testament is a beginning, not an end. To go "the rest of the way" (to Transfiguration and Ascension), we have to switch the radio-receiver in our hearts and heads from the Ego Mind's blaring, chaotic, and fear-mongering channel to the Holy Spirit's quiet, ordered, and love-mongering one.

(Is it just me, or does it also strike you as strange that the word "mongering" is only ever linked with a negative word like "fear" or "rumor"? The word mongering simply means "the act or practice of promoting, spreading, or trading in a specified thing." So, what do you say to joining me in doing a whole lot more love-mongering in the world?)

Okay, so ... the point I'm trying to make is this: To dismiss the Course, the Bible, or any sacred text or teaching as wrong, inferior, heathen, or blasphemous is, therefore, a narrow-minded (ego-inspired) judgment rather than an open-minded (spirit-inspired) assessment. All such teachings serve a purpose in God's Great Awakening Plan, and ALL -- including the Course and the Bible -- have fallen prey to the dirty tricks the Ego Mind uses to block out Higher Truth. Some of those sneaky tactics are literal and fearful interpretation, inaccurate translation, agenda-driven redaction, "form-over-content" ritualization, and charlatanism, both deliberate and well-intentioned.

What's all this got to do with the preamble to the New Testament gospel of "John"? I'm glad you asked, because the answer is: The real meaning was lost in translation. When the oral Jesus-narratives were written down in Greek, the Aramaic word Milta was changed to Logos. Why? Because there is no Greek word that conveys the full scope of Milta's meaning. Around 1,500 years later, when the New Testament was translated into English, Logos was changed to "the Word" because there is no English equivalent for Logos.

Let's now explore the subtle-yet-illuminating differences in meaning between these three terms. "Word" just means, more or less, "a name humankind has attached to the physical form of an idea." Logos, meanwhile, cuts away a layer by referring directly to the idea. Logos also communicates that the idea to which it refers is Divine, rather than a product of human intelligence. Milta also translates, more or less, as "Divine Thought or Idea," but the Aramaic word also captures the way God's Mind works. Unlike Logos, Milta encapsulates the whole Alpha-to-Omega gamut of the Divine Idea referenced.

Because the God Mind operates inside the ever-repeating now-moment of Superconscious Eternity, the Creative Force of Perfect Love doesn't just bring a Divine Idea into being the moment God thinks "So Be It" or "Let My Will be done."

Yes, well ... it does and it doesn't.

In actuality, the Creative Force plays out everything that Divine Idea will do and become the same now-moment God divines the idea into being. This is, in fact, how God creates and also why His Creations can neither usurp His Supreme Creative Will and Laws nor change their True Identities or destinies in the slightest way. Stated another way, the perfect completion of the Sonship was a done-deal the Holy Instant God first said "So Be It."

This is partly what the Burning Bush meant when it said to Moses, "I Am that I Am." Dialed back to the original Hebrew, "I Am that I Am" means, more or less,  "I Am what always was, what is now, and what will be again." What Milta expresses also is partly what the author of Ecclesiastes meant when he or she wrote: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

I say "partly"  in both instances because the Old Testament bush and scribe also meant that the dream of earthly existence is both already over and never happened ... but let's table that mind-bending Truth until another time.

The point I'm trying to make NOW is that "the Word" wasn't an actual word because God doesn't communicate in words. God thinks and communicates abstractly, as do (according to Jesus) the Souls He created. More specifically, God communicates directly (telepathically) with His Thought-Creations through "concept-packets."

Being ONE with everything, God also has a one-track mind; meaning He only ever thinks, communicates, and creates ONE all-encompassing and ever-extending "concept packet." That "concept packet" expresses Perfect Love in all its Divine Attributes, which include glory, joy, peace, comfort, devotion, mercy, abundance, generosity, goodness, loving kindness, fraternity, charity, sharing, eternal being, and grace (among others).

Unfortunately, by substituting "Word" for Logos, the men who translated the New Testament into English perpetuated the FALLACY that God looks, speaks, and behaves like a human being. In actuality, our Heavenly Father has NOTHING in common with our ego-authored self-concepts -- our humanness, in other words. Despite what the Bible appears to say, God did NOT create "man" in His physical likeness. God, being CAUSAL SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND, is invisible, and so are His Creations.

What God created in His own likeness (meaning "of a like quality," according to Jesus) is the Divine Idea or Sonship that IS Creation. That Sonship is God's clone or twin in every respect but one. Being the Causeless Cause, the God Mind existed before the Christ Mind, which the God Mind ideated into existence by extending the Creative Force of Perfect Love. The God Mind is, therefore, the CAUSE of the Christ Mind, while the Christ Mind is the EFFECT of the God Mind.

This may seem like a minor distinction, but it's actually of vital importance. Why? Because, as Jesus explains in the Course (and John explains at the start of his gospel), nothing real can be created without the Force of Divine Will through which God and His Creations expand the Divine Idea, "concept-packet," "pond" or "bubble" of Perfect Love that GOD IS.

In the Course, Jesus says something else of monumental importance pertaining to the relationship between creative mind and thought. What does he say? That ideas can't leave their source. Part of his meaning is this: Being God's Divine Idea, we're still safe at home in the God Mind, only dreaming we're in exile on Planet Earth. And if nothing we do in God-excluding dreams can have any real effects, then nothing we do on Planet Earth can change anything in Creation.

Let's take this idea one step further: If nothing we do changes anything REAL, God has no reason to get mad or punish us when we screw up in our dream-lives. Not that anger, wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or damnation are Divine Attributes. They are, in fact, unreal opposites invented by the Ego Mind to fool us into agreeing to live in its God-less "desert." The Great Deceiver also uses our BELIEF in these unreal opposites to 1) keep its love-blocking Web of Fear strong in our minds and 2) use the anger, guilt, and condemnation we project onto others to both punish our dream-selves and chain our Souls to the Karmic Wheel of Rebirth.

What we THINK in the dream can't create anything real, but our ego-generated thoughts can and DO generate their like at the level of form. As explained, this is because the Divine Law of Love dictates that we receive (at the level of effect/form) what we give (at the level of mind/will). And Divine Law still governs how thought manifests, even in the Kingdom of Darkness. It is, however, our belief in sin, guilt, and karma that chains us to the Ego Mind's Wheel of Rebirth. To liberate our Souls, we need only forgive ourselves and others for wrongly believing in these dream-imprisoning deceptions.

Is this a tall order? Hell, yes. Can it be achieved? Not until we fully accept that the world we perceive is a dream in which nothing real actually happens. Because our acceptance of this FACT is the key to the karma-busting practice of True Forgiveness, we must strive with every fiber of our being to 1) see the world as the thought-projection it actually is and 2) correct the wrong-minded thoughts and beliefs blocking our memories of God and Heaven.

My job is to help you achieve both objectives, so keep reading.

What is God? (Part 1)

God is Causal Mind

Contrary to what many of us have been duped into believing, God is NOT a bearded old man looking down on the world from a big shiny throne up in Heaven. Our Heavenly Father is NOT, in fact, a person at all, nor is Heaven an actual place. Rightly understood, God is the Supreme Creative Mind or Causeless Cause that, "in the beginning" extended and/or projected the Creative Thought Force that brought into being all that is, has ever been, or ever will be. 

All that is, has ever been, or ever will be is, therefore, God's creative EFFECT. This effect is known by various names, some of which are the Son of God or Sonship, Creation, Christ, the Christ Mind, and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Oh, yes, my sleeping brother. All of these terms are synonyms for the Christ-Self, Holy Mind, or Superconscious Sphere our Souls comprise in Divine Reality. Because God's "Sonship" includes everything the Father created "in the beginning," its membership extends to the Souls within ALL lifeforms, not just human Souls -- and certainly NOT only Jesus.

Think about this the next time you order a hamburger -- or step on a cockroach.

In the dream-desert, Jesus SYMBOLIZES the Christ-Self we all comprise in Divine Reality. That Christ-Self is the "loaf," and our individual Souls are the torn-off pieces or fragments of that greater "body." This is the idea Jesus tried to get across to his disciples at the Last Supper, when he urged them to break the symbolic bread "in remembrance of me." He meant, "Break bread on occasion to remember that you are all parts of the Christ-Self, as am I." He did NOT mean, "Imagine consuming my flesh as a wafer to remember how I died for your sins."

As a symbol of the Christ-Self, Jesus represents the purified State of Grace all human beings must attain before returning to or -- more accurately -- REMEMBERING their True Identities as the Perfect and Eternal Idea the God-Mind willed into being "in the beginning." When he says (in John 14:6), "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," he means, "I am the WAY because it is I who will guide you along the path back to Christ-Realization; I am the TRUTH because it is I who helps you see through the Great Deceiver's illusions; and I am the LIFE because it is I who symbolizes the immortal Christ-Self we all are deep-down in the core of our beings."

Got it? Good, because our Savior's message is lost on those who erroneously insist Jesus was God's "only begotten Son."

As Jesus himself explains in the Manual for Teachers, The Christ, Christ-Self, or Christ Mind still abides "within the Mind that is His Source." That Mind -- the God Mind -- is our Holy Home, now and forever. In that Holy Home, Jesus tells us, we (as Souls) are still as perfect and innocent as God created us "in the beginning."

The God-Mind in which we dwell eternally is a Superconscious Sphere of Knowledge or Omniscience. The part we occupy is called Heaven or the Kingdom of Heaven. Contrary to what many religions teach, our Souls do NOT go to Heaven when they drop the maya-perceiving instruments their physical bodies actually are. Rightly understood, Heaven is the natural state of Omniscience or Knowledge our Souls share with their Creator. Heaven is NOT, therefore, a reward Souls receive for repenting or being "good"; it's the All-Knowing state-of-being to which they return by remembering what they really are, where they really are, and how they really think and will.

WHAT they are is God's Holy Son; WHERE they are is inside the God-Mind, safe, sound, and impervious to anything Satan can dream up to deceive them into believing otherwise; and HOW they think and will is the same way God thinks and wills.

Jesus affirms much of what I've just explained in the following excerpt from Lesson 45 (God is the Mind with which I think) of the Course's Workbook for Students:

You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind. To share is to make alike, or to make one. Nor do the thoughts you think with the Mind of God leave your mind, because thoughts do not leave their source. Therefore, your thoughts are in the Mind of God, as you are. They are in your mind as well, where He is. As you are part of His Mind, so are your thoughts part of His Mind.

To summarize: Only the thoughts we share with the God Mind are REAL and TRUE. Everything else is smoke and mirrors conjured by the Ego Mind -- the Anti-Christ, Devil, Great Deceiver, or Alien-Mind that broadcasts the Dream of Separation into our sleeping minds. Rightly understood, the Ego Mind weaves a Dark Veil, Etheric Web, or Auric Shell around our Higher Minds to block our memories of God, Heaven, and our True Identities.

This "egg" is the cocoon in which we see ourselves as earthbound caterpillars. It's also the Cosmic Egg or Womb in which we prepare for rebirth as the Sons of God we really are. Rightly understood, the Cosmic Egg is a purification chamber, rather than an evolutionary environment.

In Heaven, all thoughts are shared (telepathically) between Father and Son. Everybody knows everything there is to know, so there's no need for words or language. Behind the Ego Mind's Soul-memory barricade, Dark Veil, Etheric Web, or Auric Shell, we can't hear God's direct transmissions, but we ARE still connected to His Mind. And, thanks to Jesus, we CAN hear the Holy Spirit, who "speaks," "sings," or intones on God's behalf through the Christ Mind.

Technically speaking, Heaven isn't just the Holy Home of the Christ Mind. Being the spaceless sphere the Christ Mind occupies within the God Mind, the Kingdom of Heaven IS the Christ Mind. We don't just live there, in other words; we make up that shared Superconscious "kingdom," sphere, or realm. This is the Great Truth Jesus attempts to impart when he says things like "You are the Kingdom of Heaven" and "The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out upon the earth, but men do not see it."

The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out on the earth as the Soul or Divine Spark within all living things. That indwelling Holy Light is the only part of this world created by God "in the beginning." It is, therefore, the only part that's Real and/or Eternal. We don't see that Spark as long as we perceive the world and our fellow creatures through the Dark Veil of ego-manifested opposites and grievances. 

To behold the Kingdom of Heaven all around us, we must look inward -- deep into the Higher Mind memory "banks" of our Souls. Those ethereal storage units are the chakras, which are blocked by the Ego Mind's unreal opposites, unloving thoughts, fear-conditioning, and grievances. The at-one-ment apparatus that enables our inner-sight or Holy Vision is the Spiritual Eye or nous -- the intuitive "eye of the heart." Only by opening this symbolic "single eye" can we look through the Dark Veil into the chakras. And only through this "single-eye" -- as Jesus explains in the Bible AND the Course -- can we perceive the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

Why must we turn our focus inward? Because the TRUTH is in our minds, NOT in the forms we perceive as outside and unconnected to us. What we perceive "out there" is merely our fearful thoughts and beliefs, projected outward in material form. More specifically, what we perceive with the body's senses are materialized symbols of the wrong-minded errors that blind us to the inner-Truth. To correct those errors, we have to forgive ourselves and everybody else for being duped into believing what happens in the external world is not only REAL, but also consequential.

I'll revisit these and other Great Truths in future posts. Up next, we're going to talk more about how the God Mind thinks, wills, and creates, so be sure to read on or come back.