What is God? (Part 3)

God is Love
We’ve all heard the expression “God is Love,” but what does this statement really mean? Well, it means this: God, being the Causal Source of Perfect Love, extended His Mind-Self -- through the Creative Force of Perfect Love -- to create more Perfect Love. God is, therefore, the Causal Mind or Generating Source of the Divine Idea of Perfect Love, the Creative Force is the Absolute Divine Will through which God extends or projects that Divine Idea, and the Sonship or Christ-Mind is the Creation, Effect, or end result of that three-party creative process.

Being the Father's thought-creation, the Son must and will remain forever in the mind of its Source. Being an extension of the God-Mind, the Son also shares its Father's creative powers. The Son also can, therefore, expand Creation by extending its "Mind-Self" -- the created effect of God's first extension. God's Son or Effect can NOT, however, extend its "Mind-Self" unless it 1) shares the Father's Will and 2) obeys the Father's established laws for Perfect Creation.

Before we get into what the Father's Will and Laws dictate, let's clarify what Jesus means by the phrase "Perfect Love." For starters, he means a kind of love that is not of this world and, therefore, incomprehensible to our concrete human intellects. What the world calls "love" is NOT what love really is, he repeatedly points out in the Course. What the world calls "love" is fear disguised as love. It is, in fact, the imaginary opposite the Ego Mind devised to block our memories of Perfect Love.

Or, as Jesus explains:
 

No law the world obeys can help you grasp love’s meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love’s meaning, and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well. Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear Love’s Voice.

Satan's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing version of "love" is what Jesus refers to in the Course as "special love." This deceptive replacement for God's Perfect Love includes self-love, familial-love, and romantic-love, all of which promote exclusivity, separation, and ego/body-self identification, rather than inclusiveness, unity, and Christ/Soul-Self Identification.

In future posts, I'll say more about "special love," "special relationships," and "specialness" in general. For now, just know that "special love," being a form of fear, prevents Perfect Love from entering our dreaming minds. To open our hearts to God's Presence again, we must give up our desire for and/or attachment to "special love" in all its deceptive guises. The level of ego/body-self surrender (not sacrifice!) this entails is difficult for most people to imagine, let alone achieve. But achieve it we MUST if we wish to liberate our Souls from Satan's silky cocoon.  

Because these two conceptions of "love" are, in fact, opposed, let's set the genuine article apart by calling it not "love" or Perfect Love, but Agape -- the Greek word for Divine Love. Understanding what Agape is and how superior it is to the Great Deceiver's pathetic substitutions is vitally important, so let me walk you through the differences.

Let's start with Agape's etymological origins. As a noun, the word first appeared in the mid-3rd Century BCE in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Agape’s use a a verb dates back as far as Homer, the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Homer’s time (8^th Century BCE), however, Agape was understood to be synonymous with affection.

In the New Testament's First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, Agape is more accurately described as arising “out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” Elsewhere in the original Greek New Testament, Agape also referred to the “covenant of love” existing between God and Creation. That “covenant” is reciprocal, all-encompassing, and all-inclusive. God loves the Souls comprising the Sonship, and those Souls love Him right back. Being part of the God Mind, those Souls also love their fellow God-Creations and their own (real) Creations as much as they love their Creator.

 

When Jesus uses the word “Love” in the Course -- and in English translations of the New Testament -- he often means Agape, which is, in fact, the word he originally used. Actually, he probably said Hooba, the Aramaic word for Divine Love. In case you don't know, Aramaic is the language Jesus spoke when he walked the earth in a body. As an educated Jewish rabbi who grew up in Egypt (where his family fled to avoid the Massacre of the Innocents), Jesus also would have spoken Hebrew, Coptic, Greek (the common language of trade and literacy in his day), and probably some Latin (the language of the Romans who ruled Judea). But, by all accounts, Jesus delivered his sermons in Aramaic, the spoken language of the common people of Nazareth, Galilee, and Jerusalem in those days.

 

Like Agape, Hooba describes an overflowing, unconditional love that seeks nothing in return. The Divine Idea we ARE and always will be in God's Mind, Hooba and Agape have nothing to do with ardent affection or passionate desire; rather, they describe a general feeling of goodwill, loving kindness, and/or charity toward our fellow creatures. What we think of as “Christmas Spirit” or "brotherly love" embodies the general idea. Inherent in the definition is devotion, loyalty, and service to God, other Souls (not other people's egos!), and the spiritual aspects of life.

As an aside, when I say "charity," I mean wishing only the best or highest good for others; NOT giving to the "less fortunate" at the level of form. To perceive anyone as "less fortunate" -- or "less" ANYTHING -- is to see them through the Ego Mind's truth-distorting Dark Veil of separation, scarcity, and comparison. The only REAL charity we can give anyone, Jesus says in the Course, is to open their mind to Spiritual Truth. He also says we can only help others in this way if 1) we are awake or "healed" ourselves, 2) if the person is receptive, and 3) if we are the "teacher" assigned to this "pupil" in the Atonement Plan.

How do we know if someone we meet is receptive and/or one of our pupils? Jesus will tell us when both parties are ready to begin their teaching-learning partnership. He will also tell us exactly how we are to help them. Because anything we attempt to do without his direction can prove detrimental to the curricular progress and/or well-being of both people, we should NOT attempt to help others on our own.

Okay, yes. What I'm saying SEEMS to go against everything the world defines as "charity" -- and that's the point. How the world defines "charity" is as big a trap as how the world defines "love." To give "charity" or "love" as God defines these "ideas," we must give them to all at the level of shared mind and thought, NOT at the level of separate bodies and material objects or money. What we give in this manner -- in meditation and prayer -- we will receive quid pro quo.

Rightly understood, these charitable exchanges of loving thought are the "miracles" the Course prepares us to perform. These reciprocal thought-transactions are, Jesus tells us, the only real way to heal anyone of separation-mindedness. And separation-mindedness, he also explains, is the root cause of EVERY problem we face in the world.

Before we can perform these mutual mind-healing "miracles," we have to 1) hear the Holy Sprit's "Voice" with our inner-ears and 2) view everyone with the perfect equanimity of Christ's Vision. We can NOT, in other words, perceive ANYONE as "more," "less," "different," or "separate" than we are by any comparative measure the Ego Mind contrived to blind us to our SAMENESS or ONENESS with everything God created.

Stated more simply: To help or heal anyone in the true sense of the word, we must perceive and love everyone as the God-created Souls they really are -- NOT as the insane ego-body "characters" they play in the dream-world.

I'll say more about miracles, how they work, and how we do them in future posts. For now, let's get back to our definition of Perfect Love or Agape. Jesus affirms some of what I've already explained in the following excerpt from the Course's original dictations:

Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergences and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son. 

Elsewhere, he just as affirmingly says:

Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit IS its meaning. It is COMPLETELY impartial in its giving, encompassing ONLY to preserve and KEEP COMPLETE what it would give. In your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on Love to enter? Look at the desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy that Love would bring to it, from where IT comes, and where it would return WITH you. 

In Workbook Lesson 127 (There is no love but God’s), Jesus also tells us: 

Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God’s and all of Love is His. There is no other principle that rules where Love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them Both forever as the same. No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference in what you really are and what Love is. Love’s meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.

In the Workbook for Students, the word “Love” appears in the title affirmations of sixteen lessons:

Lesson 46: God is the Love in which I forgive.

Lesson 50: I am sustained by the Love of God.

Lesson 67: Love created me like Itself.

Lesson 68: Love holds no grievances.

Lesson 127: There is no love but God’s.

Lesson 189: I feel the Love of God within me now.

Lesson 195: Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

Lesson 229: Love, Which created me, is what I am.

Lesson 246: To love my Father is to love His Son.

Lesson 264: I am surrounded by the Love of God.

Lesson 274: Today belongs to Love. Let me not fear.

Lesson 293: All fear is past, and only love is here.

Lesson 298: I love You, Father, and I love Your Son.

Lesson 310: In fearlessness and love I spend today.

Lesson 344: Today I learn the law of love; that what I give my brother is my gift to me.

Lesson 350: Miracles mirror God’s Eternal Love. To offer them is to remember Him, and through His memory to save the world.

Lesson 352: Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the Other comes the peace of God Himself.

 

Notice that when used as a noun, the word "Love" is usually capitalized. Only when used as a verb is "love" lower-case. Christ's treatment of the word as a proper noun supports my assertion that he means Agape in these lessons, rather than the changeable emotion the Ego Mind defines as "love."  If you're still in doubt, read Workbook Lesson 127: There is no Love but God's.

Because there is no English equivalent for Agape or Hooba, Jesus substituted “Perfect Love,” “Eternal Love,” "Divine Love," or just plain “Love” for the same idea when he dictated the Course. Whichever word Jesus may use, he makes his meaning abundantly clear by reminding us -- in the Bible AND the Course -- that God's two GREATEST commandments, rules, or laws are these:

1)   Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your Soul, and with all your mind; and

2)  Love your neighbor as yourself (because your neighbor IS part of your Christ-Self and also, at the Soul level, God’s Holy Creation).

These two directives underpin the Law of Love so often mentioned in the Course. Jesus spells out what that Holy Law decrees in Workbook Lesson 344 (Today I learn the Law of Love; that what I give my brother is my gift to me). In the text of this lesson, he says the following:

This is Your law, my Father, not my own. I have not understood what giving means, and thought to save what I desired for myself alone. And as I looked upon the treasure that I thought I had, I found an empty place where nothing ever was or is or will be. Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts beyond the worth of anything on earth. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with Heaven’s treasures, which alone are real. Thus is the Law of Love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You.

Elsewhere in the Course, Jesus drives home the point that giving and receiving are "one in Truth." Part of what he means is this: Anything we "give" to other people and/or the world in general (through the thought-system or mind we choose to interpret reality for us) we will receive in kind as manifested or ideated form. To receive the love we all crave so much, we must love God with all our hearts and minds by thinking ONLY kind and loving thoughts about everyone and everything.

Is this a tall order? Hell, yes. Is it possible to achieve? Yes, with time, practice, focused effort, and abundant willingness.

What Jesus also means (which took me until this week to figure out) is that, when we focus our attention on the Holy Spirit's "tone" in our minds, we are giving and receiving healing miracles simultaneously. That "tone" is the vibratory echo of the Creative Force of Grace ringing inside the Higher Mind channel through which God communicates with His dreaming Souls. This "tone" is what Jesus calls the Voice for God, the Song of Heaven, the ever-present echo, the Holy Spirit, and the Atonement, among other similar phrases.

This same tone is what Hindus, Yogis, and Buddhists (among others) call the Om or Aum vibration.

Being the Holy Spirit, this "tone," "echo," or "song" is the BRIDGE back to Eternity, Heaven, or Sanity. As that Bridge, this "tone," "echo," or "song" transports us from the lower levels of consciousness through the higher three levels of restored sanity, before God lifts us out of the dream altogether.

At various points in the Course, Jesus says it's the job of God's Teachers to 1) teach those who can't hear the Holy Spirit's Voice, 2) get their assigned pupils to the Bridge, and 3) teach themselves out of a job.

To that -- and to you -- let me say this: At least half of the Course's Text and Workbook are devoted to getting us to the Bridge, while the other half discusses what to do to go "the rest of the way." And yet, nothing I've read about the Course -- by Marianne Williamson, Ken Wapnick, Jerald Jampolsky, Gary Renard, Beverly Hutchinson Neff, or any other self-styled ACIM teacher -- says ONE WORD about any of this. These so-called teachers also do little more than pay lip service to the foundational tenet that the world is an ILLUSION we must GIVE UP to master the at-one-ment curriculum.

Well ... I'm sure there's a good reason for all of this in God's Great Plan, so I won't judge or condemn any of these well-meaning brothers in Christ. What I will say is this: I'm going to tell you how to get to the Bridge. You might not like what you hear -- or be willing to meet the requirements -- but I'm going to tell you anyway ... because that's the job Jesus gave me.

I can't, however, tell you everything you need to know today. What I can share at present is that our concrete human intellects can't comprehend how we can save ourselves and the world just by listening to this ringing sound in the silence of deep and focused meditation. Our Souls do, however, understand and also greatly benefit from the time devoted to concentrating on this healing tone. Like an internal tuning-fork, this tone reminds us of the Higher Truth we forgot, and also enables us to fulfill our assigned forgiveness and teaching functions.

This is essentially what Jesus means when he says, in Workbook Lesson 169 (By grace I live. By grace I am released), "As you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God."

Elsewhere in the Course, when Jesus says, "We need do nothing" (except sit and wait for the Holy Spirit to come), this is also what he's talking about. We must, however, prepare ourselves to hear the Holy Spirit's Voice -- and that's where a good human teacher comes in handy. At the risk of overstating the obvious, a good teacher will 1) hear the Holy Spirit's Voice themselves and 2) want to teach their students how to hear it, too -- so they'll no longer need a human teacher. 

I heard the inner-ringing as a child, but forgot all about it until I started hearing it again two or three years ago -- while doing Self-Realization Fellowship's nine-month correspondence course. SRF wasn't my path, but Paramahansa Yogananda knew of what he spoke -- for the most part, anyway. What he got wrong, I'll strive to get right as we roll along.

Let's get back to the Law of Love, which Jesus describes in Workbook Lesson 344. The first thing he says is that the Law of Love is God's, not ours. He then says that, when in league with the Ego Mind, we try to acquire the worldly "treasures" we desire on our own, rather than in the giving-receiving partnerships mandated by the Law of Love. We strive, in other words, to appease our avarice for Satan's temptations (i.e., money, possessions, worldly power, sexual lust and gratification, "special love," etc.) through taking, buying, or self-interested willing, rather than by GIVING the THINGS OF GOD -- all of which are mental -- to our fellow Souls or brothers in Christ. Since Satan's "treasures" are only worthless vapor, all we gain in this unholy bargain is a longer sentence in hell.

The Law of Love is also known as the Law of Giving and Receiving and the Law of Karma. Karma is NOT, as commonly misperceived, a product of the Law of Cause and Effect. Why? Because, as I've explained, there is no CAUSAL MIND in the dream-world. We excluded God and the Creative Force of Agape, remember? It is the Law of Love -- not the Law of Cause and Effect -- that makes it SEEM as if we can generate real effects in the dream-desert. What we actually "manifest" are the "thought-gifts" we give over time to ourselves and others.

The good news is that we can expunge these unreal effects through the practice of True Forgiveness. True Forgiveness is, in fact, the ONLY way to clear the Karmic Record, short of having everything done to us we've done to others since the dream began. As Hindus and Buddhists have understood for centuries, that Karmic Record binds our Souls to the Wheel of Rebirth. 

That Wheel is depicted on the Wheel of Fortune card in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Take a moment to study the symbols in the image above, because every little "doodle" tells us something about how the Dream of Separation works. The four yellow figures, for example, are what I like to call the Holy Spirit's Rays of Atonement. In the Bible, these same Holy Powers are known as the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's only the Ego Mind's fearful interpretation of these HELPFUL powers that makes them seem menacing.

The books the winged creatures are reading are the Karmic Ledgers each helps us clear through their prescribed lessons in True Forgiveness. The jackal is the Great Deceiver, whose thought-system binds us to the wheel, and the snake represents the Creative Force of Divine Will uncoiling over many dream-lifetimes. Hindus and Yogis call that serpentine force of God's Will "kundalini."

In the Course's original dictations, Jesus mentions the Record, karmic debts, and reincarnation several times. Unfortunately, these informative references were cut from the Foundation for Inner Peace's "Standard Edition" prior to publication by a presumptuous editor. Other advanced teachings were also altered or removed, as I'll explain in future posts. For now, just know that anyone seeking enlightenment, at-one-ment, or Soul-purification through the Course should study the URText, rather than the "Standard" or "Original" editions. Why? Because (among other reasons) the URText is the ONLY version still containing Christ's critical teachings about sex and sexual desire.

Why do Christ's teachings about sex matter? Because, as Yogis and Buddhists have understood for centuries, we can't hear the Aum vibration as long as we seek to "join" with others at the level of the body.

And on that piquant note, let's close today's post before it gets even longer. In the next, I'll describe in more detail how God creates and why we can't create anything real in the Dream of Separation. 

What is God? (Part 2)

God is invisible

Despite what most people believe, God did NOT create the world we perceive through our physical senses. Everything we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is ego-conjured fantasy. It’s all samsara-maya, my dreaming brother, pure and simple. 

If this is news to you, take a moment to consider what this means. If God did NOT create anything with material form, He did NOT create trees, flowers, grass, rivers, oceans, mountains, or anything else in nature; He did NOT create the bodies we and other lifeforms appear to inhabit; and He did NOT create planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, or universes.

All of these things are, in fact, elaborate hoaxes the Great Deceiver devised to replace God as the Creator of All That Exists. All of these oft-touted “miracles of creation” are no more than deceitful palls dreamed up by the Devil to hide God’s ONE True Creation: The eternal and perfect Divine Idea underneath the form.

That Divine Idea is the ONE HOLY SON God willed into being "in the beginning." That ONE HOLY SON is Creation -- and also God, as Jesus attempts to explain in the passage below from Workbook Lesson 169 (By grace I live. By grace I am released.):

Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say "God is," and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them and no part of the mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. It has united with its Source, and like its Source Itself, it merely is.

Are you getting the idea? I hope so, because this isn't easy stuff to wrap our heads around. To help with that, I want you to imagine God as an intelligent and invisible balloon or bubble encompassing the sum total of ALL THAT IS (in a space smaller than a subatomic particle). Nothing outside this God-Bubble exists, and inside it there is no separation or sense of “other.” Nothing begins or ends. There is only pure, perfect, joyful, all-inclusive, never-ending Perfect Love and Oneness. There is only ecstatic interconnectedness and cooperation. There is only Perfect Love, surrounding, enveloping, filling, sustaining, and harmonizing everything that exists.

Inside the God-Bubble, the Sonship creates like the Father, by extending or projecting the Creative Force of Perfect Love. Being the Creative Force of Divine Will, Perfect Love has no form or substance, nor does anything else inside the God-Bubble. God, being the Supreme Superconscious Causal Mind, has no form, nor, as I’ve explained, does He create form of any kind. God creates ONLY Eternal Thoughts and Ideas, fully and perfectly accomplished to completion the moment He thinks, "Let my will be done."

The concrete human intellect can’t fathom how God could create anew what has always been, with no beginning and no end. And yet, this is indeed the abstractly infinite, timeless, and spaceless nature of God and Creation, as Jesus affirms in the excerpt below from the Course's original dictations or URText (the purest and most complete form of the teachings):   

The Kingdom is forever extending, because it is in the Mind of God. YOU do not know your joy because you do not know your own [S]elf-fullness. Exclude ANY part of the Kingdom FROM your [S]elf, and you are NOT whole. A split mind CANNOT perceive its fullness, and needs the miracle OF its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This reawakens its wholeness IN it and restores it to the Kingdom because of its ACCEPTANCE of wholeness. The full appreciation of its [S]elf-fullness makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable. That is why there is perfect peace in the Kingdom. Every Soul IS fulfilling its function, and ONLY complete fulfillment IS peace.

With Christ's permission, I have tweaked the above slightly to clarify the difference between the upper-case Self or God-Created Christ-Self and the lower-case self or ego-authored body-persona self. Clearly, Christ's scribe was unclear on the difference at the time he dictated the Course. Two millennia ago, the disciples of Jesus and/or their eventual scribes were equally confused about the important distinction between the terms "Son of Man" (the ego-authored, body-clad, or lower "self") and "Son of God" (the God-Created Higher-Self) Consequently, the two terms are erroneously (and confusingly) used interchangeably in some of the early "Christian" gospels, both canonical and non-canonical.

Time, space, and matter are Ego Mind constructions. In the God-Bubble, the only time is NOW (an ever-repeating present-moment), and the only place is HERE (an indefinable, non-spatial location where everything overlaps). Physicists and mathematicians call what I’ve described a “singularity.” And it was from just such a singularity, they hypothesize, that the visible universe emerged. I’ll explain what really happened in another post. 

While we’re on the subject of physics, I want to share something I came across AFTER I wrote my description of the God Mind as an ever-expanding (yet non-expanding) bubble. While searching the Internet one day, I was amazed to discover that a team of physicists at Uppsala University in Sweden recently came up with a remarkably similar model of the universe.

The original paper explaining their theory was published in December 2018 in Physical Review Letters (PRL), the American Physical Society’s flagship publication. By way of background, PRL publishes seminal research by Nobel Prize-winning and other distinguished researchers in all fields of physics. It is, therefore, a scholarly journal for physicists, rather than a homogenized popular-science periodical aimed at the general public.

This Uppsala team’s new “structural concept” conceived the material universe as riding on an expanding bubble in another dimension. A 2018 report on their research in Science Daily stated the following:

 

The whole Universe is accommodated on the edge of this expanding bubble. All existing matter in the Universe corresponds to the ends of strings that extend out into the extra dimension. The researchers also show that expanding bubbles of this kind can come into existence within the framework of string theory. It is conceivable that there are more bubbles than ours, corresponding to other universes.

The image above, which accompanied the Science Daily report, should help you visualize the universe's parent-bubble (as conceived by the Uppsala team). Basically, this is what God would look like, if He could be seen by us.

Okay, so ... I know squat about string theory -- or physics, for that matter. But I can tell you this: There are NOT more bubbles; but there ARE more dream-universes in dimensions overlapping ours. And even ours operates in multiple time-space dimensions. The "strings" shooting out of the bubble are, I believe, the Great Rays, reaching into those other universes we can't see.

 

How do I know this? I just do. How did I come up with the God-Bubble concept? It popped into my head one day while I was writing. Unlike the Swedish cosmogonists, I understood what the “expanding bubble” was. Typically, when I’m shown symbolic images, an abstract understanding of their meaning accompanies the vision.

 

In this particular case, I also understood why Jesus projected this "concept-packet" into my mind. His purpose was three-fold: First, the packet clarified how the dream-dimension coexists with the God-Bubble (which I’d asked about in prayer); second, it allowed me to explain the idea in simple terms to my readers; and third, it demonstrated that our minds are, in fact, joined at a higher level than we’re aware of in perceptual UNreality.

Did the Swedes also receive a concept-packet from Jesus, to help humankind understand that the dream-universe operated outside the God-Bubble? I wouldn't put it past him. 

In closing, I want to share something remarkably similar from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), the  India-born guru who started Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles in 1920. In the chapter titled “The Resurrection of Sri Yuktaswar,” Yogananda chronicles what he learned about Divine Reality when his recently deceased guru paid him a visit. Among many other fascinating facts about how things works, Sri Yuktaswar compared the material universe to a tiny basket hanging under the giant balloon of the rest of Creation.

 

In that tiny basket, we perceive everything upside-down. God sent the Holy Spirit into that "extra dimension" to help us turn our perception right-side-up again. How does the Holy Spirit turn our perception around? The short answer is: Through the Great Rays and the Aum vibration. For the longer answer, keep reading my posts. 

Up next, I'll explain the real meaning of the phrase "God is Love," discuss Perfect Creation in more detail, and also explore how Divine Love differs from fear-based egoic or "special" love. 

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.