Elohim: The Holy Spirit of God's Grace

Before we get into what Genesis actually reports happened "in the beginning," you need to know a few things. The first is that the original Old Testament was written in Biblical Hebrew. In the early to middle part of the Third Century BCE, the first five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were translated into Koine Greek by Jews living in the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Working from these early Hebrew and Greek versions (as well as the Latin Vulgate), a man named William Tyndale first translated the Old Testament into English around 1530. Because his original-source interpretations disagreed with the Vatican's sacrosanct "spin" on the Scriptures, Tyndale was tried, convicted, and executed (through strangulation and burning) as a heretic in 1536.

Tyndale's tragic fate isn't really the point, but it's an interesting piece of history, so I worked it in. What is the point? That when Tyndale translated the Book of Genesis, he replaced the PLURAL Hebrew word ELOHIM with the singular English word GOD.

Thus, the opening lines of Genesis originally read:

In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters.

Tyndale's mistake was understandable, given that many Biblical scholars today, even Jewish ones, still WRONGLY believe Elohim to be an ancient name for God the Father. What Elohim actually means is Divine Grace. That Spirit of Elohim is, therefore, the Creative Force of Divine Will acting as God commanded to repair the perceived separation, rather than to Create (as it does in Heaven). Elohim's function is, in a nutshell, to dissolve the dream of separation over time without stepping too hard on the Sonship's "toes" of free will.

Okay, so ... is Elohim the Holy Spirit Jesus speaks of in the Bible and the Course? Based on my current understanding, what we conceive of as the Holy Spirit encompasses many ASPECTS and ATTRIBUTES of Divine Grace, but is not the Spirit of Elohim in and of itself. As Jesus explains in the Course, the Holy Spirit is our own Higher Self, guiding us back the way we came into the dream (and already exited in the Holy Instant). He or she is, therefore, the individual Soul-consciousness in each of us -- the fragment of the Christ Mind that's moving through the body's serial adventures within the "me-self" we  perceive ourselves to be in each dream-life. 

Before we move on, let me say that the traditional Christian concept of the Holy Trinity (as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is limiting to those seeking to master the atonement curriculum. And, because the Course borrows that construct, it, too, confines our understanding of how things really work. This is one reason Jesus tells us (in the epilogue to the Workbook for Students) that the Course is "a beginning, not an end."

To go "the rest of the way" to Knowledge, we must let the Holy Spirit (our own Soul-Self) expand our understanding of Higher Truth beyond the parameters of traditional Christian teachings. We expand our understanding by shedding, layer by layer, the deceptive "skin" of beliefs that no longer serve the goal of spiritual healing. Stated another way, we expand our understanding of Higher Truth by opening our minds to the possibility that what we presume to be "true" might be working against, rather than for, our deliverance.

We must, in other words, question EVERY belief we hold in the Light of Truth provided by our indwelling Holy Self, Soul, or Spirit.

Having said all that, let me now say this: The patriarchal Holy Trinity, as depicted in Christianity, doesn't exist -- on earth OR in Heaven -- because the Christian model erroneously intermingles the Triune Powers of Perfect Creation and the Triune Powers of At-one-ment.

The Triune Powers of Perfect Creation (the Holy Trinity in Heaven) are these:

1. God, the Father = Causal Creative Mind or Originating Source of Agape-Thought
2. God, the Son = Effect and Co-Generator of Agape-Thought
3. God, the Creative Force = Shared Will that extends Agape-Thought/Creation

The Triune Powers of Atonement (the Holy Trinity in the dream-realm) are these:

1. The Shared Will: The Creative Force directed by Father and Son to heal the separation
2. The Shared Word: The Christ Presence, empowered by the Father to redeem the Separated Ones
3. The Shared Light: The Holy Spirit as the truth-revealing Light and Life of the Father in the Son

A more abbreviated way to describe the Atonement Trinity would be this: 

1. God the Son as Father/Mother, the restorer of Shared Creative Will and Divine Law
2. God the Son as Christ/Redeemer, the restorer of Wholeness/Unity
3. God the Son as Holy Spirit/Illuminator, the restorer of right-minded understanding of Self, Truth, and Purpose

As Jesus states in the Course, the Father aspect of God never entered our dreaming minds. As he also explains, God projected the Holy Spirit into the dream through the Christ Mind. He further states that the Christ Mind knows and shares the Father's Will for the salvation of His Separated and, therefore, "blocked" Sons or Agape-extensions. Somewhere in the Course, Jesus also says that the Christ (Mind) is the highest Divine Authority in the dream-realm. Presumably, this is why Christ, rather than God or the Holy Spirit, is in charge of the Atonement (which he undertook to begin through the persona of Jesus of Nazareth). 

Okay, so ... just as in Heaven, these three-in-one aspects of the Christ Mind work together in our dreaming minds as one healing force Jesus refers to generically as the Holy Spirit.

Or, as expressed in Chapter 5 of the Course's Text:

The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something "separate," apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "If I go I will send you another comforter, and He will abide with you."  

That the Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity "which is symbolic" tells us that He/She is the only part of the REAL Trinity working in the dream-realm, as an aspect of the Creative Force of Agape. The REAL God and Christ Minds are still in Heaven, co-creating in blissful partnership. What we understand to be the Presence of God and Christ in the dream are only manifestations of the Holy Spirit, Spirit of Grace, or Elohim. That Spirit, Jesus tells us, is the progenitor of everything OF GOD in the dream-realm -- EXCEPT the Eternal Light and Life of God in all body-clad lifeforms.

In Divine Reality, that Light and Life are shared by the single entity, being, Divine Idea, or Logos that IS Creation/Christ. In the dream, that indwelling Light and Life helps restore our memory of the shared ONENESS or WHOLENESS that makes Perfect Creation possible.  

Does that make sense? If not, maybe this will help: In the dream, the Holy Spirit isn't merely the third amorphous aspect of the Holy Trinity. As the "Spirit" or "Mind" of the Atonement, She plays all three roles as the "healing" aspect of the Divine Will shared eternally by the Father and Son. And, since we share God's Will at the unconscious level of our Souls, we agreed in advance to everything the Holy Spirit will both "do" and "undo" in the illusion of ego enthrallment.    

It might help to think of Grace as Agape with training-wheels. With the support of Grace, we relearn how to ride the big two-wheeler of Perfect Creation we fell off when we entered the Ego Mind's (Rotten) Egg of Guilt and Fear.

Or, as Jesus exhorts in Chapter 11 of the Course's Text:

Do the Holy Spirit's work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth.

Isn't that more or less what I just said?

Let's now turn to Grace. What Jesus says about this healing power at the start of Workbook Lesson 169 (By grace I live. By grace I am released) further affirms much of what I've just explained:

Grace is an aspect of the Love of God [Agape] which is most like the state prevailing in the unity of truth. It is the world's most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely. It is past learning yet the goal of learning, for grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance. Grace become inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received, an altar clean and holy for the gift.

Why did God use Grace instead of Agape to end the dream? Because, unlike the full force of Divine Will, Grace could end the dream without 1) revoking the free will of the Separated Ones, 2) scaring the bejesus out of the dreaming Souls, and 3) bringing a bunch of disruptive malcontents back into Heaven. Using Agape to end the dream would have had two other undesirable consequences. The first is that blasting Agape into our dreaming minds would have made perception/consciousness REAL and, therefore, ETERNAL. The second, which is related to the first, is that Agape's presence would have made Perfect Creation possible in partnership with the Ego Mind.

And God wasn't about to let ANY of those terrible things happen to His dearly beloved Creations.

Okay, so ... before I say more about the Spirit of Grace, let me clarify that before the Great Projection there was only one plane of mind. That plane was Superconsciousness, Omniscience, Knowledge, or “mind awake” -- the shared state of being experienced by everything inside the God-Mind Bubble. This is the only state of being/cognition that's REAL -- i.e., created and/or recognized by God.

When the Separated Ones projected the split-off part of their mind into the "dark void," they experienced "mind asleep," consciousness, or perception. Once this happened, it seemed as if there were two minds sharing thoughts with them, rather than just God's. Because their perception of reality was, in fact, upside-down, they also experienced the Ego's deceptive voice as their own inner-dialog. God's Voice, meanwhile, seemed to be an alien "other" or background noise threatening their safety and sanity.

This perception of God as "outside" or "other" is what philosophers and metaphysicians call "duality," "dualism," or "dualistic" perception. According to the two Ascended Masters who dictated Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe, there are four degrees of dualism. Those degrees are, from most wrong-minded to most right-minded:

1) Dualism (we are separate from God -- if He exists -- and the material world, over which we have no control);

2) Semi-Non-Dualism (God is a concept, such as "love" or "mind," which we share at some level, but we are still separate from the material world, over which we have no control);

3) Non-Dualism (God is our Creator, and He gave us the world to reawaken us to our True Identity and Creative Will); 

4) Pure Non-Dualism (God created and encompasses All That Is, and we are part of that Great Inclusive and Expanding ALL).

Masters Pursah and Arten also told Renard (and us, through him) that these four stages of "dualism" comprise the rungs on the ladder back to Heaven. Personally, I find this confusing -- and I'm pretty smart -- so, for greater clarity and cohesion, I've linked these four stages of perceptual dualism to those mentioned in my earlier post about the life of Jesus. The correspondences are as follows:

Step 7: Pure Non-Dualism = God-Realization or "Resurrection (pre-Ascension)"
Step 6: Non-Dualism = Christ-Realization, True Perception, or "Transfiguration"
Step 5: Semi-Non-Dualism = Soul-Realization or "Baptism"
Steps 1 - 4: Dualism = Ego Identification or wandering in the desert, alone and Agape-starved

Congratulations. You now have a rough outline of the ladder or stairway back to Heaven.

Okay, so ... when the Separated Ones first bailed out of Heaven, they landed on Step 7, where their Souls remained in their natural States of Grace. As their perception of duality magnified, they "fell" to the Sixth Step, where they weren't altogether pure-minded, but they still correctly perceived themselves as fellow fragments of the Christ Mind. For a time, they also still created according to the Law of Love. When that semi-sane state of awareness further eroded, the Separated Souls dropped to the Fifth Step, where they (wrongly) perceived themselves as individual Souls or Selves, rather than (rightly) seeing they still belonged to the same Greater Soul or Self.

With each downward step, the thought vibrations emanating from the Separated Souls increasingly slowed. The slower their thoughts vibrated, the heavier/denser they became. Soon enough, they descended again -- this time into the "dark void” of miscreated nothingness. That void is (I'm relatively certain) what's known as the Cosmic or Auric Egg.

Just so we're clear, all seven steps or planes are housed within the little basket riding on the outer membrane of the God-Mind Bubble. God doesn't absorb us back into the Bubble until we reach the Seventh Plane -- the purified State of Grace we briefly experience after the Elohim powers complete the dualism-repairing at-one-ment process.

Compare what I've just explained to what Jesus says below (from Chapter 13):

When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you and stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. For what He knows not cannot be and therefore cannot be given. Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to FORGIVE and restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes real and visible to them that USE it. On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you WANT to learn.

Okay, so ... correctly conceived, the seven planes of consciousness are ALL remedial or corrective steps on the return journey to Superconsciousness, Knowledge, Heaven, Spiritual Sanity, or Pure Non-Dualism. We descended into the lower sector or "Ego Egg" when our thought-vibrations slowed from fifth-level to fourth-level misperceiving or duality. When that happened, we could no longer hear God's Voice (the Agape vibration) or remember our reality as His Holy Creations.

Having forgotten our shared mind and origins, we began to insanely attack and kill our own thought-projections. Deciding at this point that something had to be done, God devised the Atonement Plan. Owing to the Alpha-to-Omega dynamic of God's Ideations, the dream actually ended right then -- in a gentle, grace-induced Holy Instant. Like Sleeping Beauty in the allegorical fairy tale, we all awoke in our Father's Heavenly Kingdom, where we'd always been, safe, sound, and healed of the mad desire to experience individuality or "specialness."

If this is NOT our current reality, it's because our Soul-Self exercised the free-will option of keeping part of our mind "asleep" in the dream-recording. That option isn't indefinite, however, because the dream already reached a happy conclusion in Timeless Eternity. Those who choose to remain in the dream are, therefore, simply living through the recorded memories of all that happened in the Holy Instant in which God healed the separation with our assent through the Divine Force of Grace.

Confusing, I know ... but bear with me, even if it seems like I'm over-explaining or repeating myself.

Okay, so ... to bring all this about, God projected Elohim into the dreaming part of the Christ Mind. As explained, that "spirit" is the Creative Force of Divine Will recalibrated to serve the functions of teaching, healing, or atonement/forgiveness (rather than Perfect Creation). To preserve the Sonship's free-will, the Spirit of Grace brought into the dream the Holy Will shared by Father and Son, rather than the Father's Absolute Will and Power. She then divided that shared will into two parts. The "active" part she "married" to the Christ aspect of her powers on the Sixth Plane. The passive part she "parked" in each Soul's lowest memory chamber, where it would "sleep" until awakened at the pre-selected moment in time. 

We rouse that sleeping "willingness" by requesting the intercession of the Holy Spirit or Christ powers (as we perceive them) in the mess we've made of our worldly lives. Rightly understood, both those powers are aspects of our own Higher Self in different stages of awakening.

Makes sense, right?

Actually, this all makes more sense in the Hindu model, if we can get around the hash of deific personifications the Ego Mind has made of that ancient and beautiful religion. For this very reason, we're going to explore Hinduism (and Yoga) in more depth in future posts. For now just know that Hinduism is not, in fact, a polytheistic religion. Like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, there is only ONE Supreme Creator in Hinduism. And, as the Course accurately teaches, that Supreme Creator is absent or outside the universe of maya created by Brahma, the Hindu equivalent of the Ego Mind. Also, as the Course and Hinduism both correctly teach, the objective reality the Supreme Creator would have us see is present even here, but hidden beneath the illusion manifested by Brahma. 

Okay, so ... what does the "active" part of the Shared Will do while waiting for its sleeping counterpart to awaken? The short answer is: It sings into the Inner-Instrument or Temple from the Sixth Plane of the Spiritual Triad. What it "sings" is the Cosmic Vibration of Grace, which Jesus calls the Song of Heaven in the Course. That "song" is both a magnetic Call to Awaken and a healing frequency or "tuning fork" for healing the mind.

As I understand it, that "tone" changes frequency as it travels downward through the Temple or Spiritual Body. As we retune our minds to these frequencies, we move back up the ladder. To rise or return to our Soul's natural State of Grace, we must think/vibrate at the same frequency as the Creative Force of Grace -- the highest thought-vibration possible in the dream of perception. We vibrate at that frequency when we reach the Seventh Plane (or vice-versa). Because that frequency is close to the Agape vibration, God can easily reach across the little gap between the two tones and "lift" our mostly-purified minds back into the Creation Bubble.

Awake in Heaven, we hear the ever-present Agape tone of Divine Will calling us to join together to create as God intended. Asleep on earth, we hear the ever-present Grace vibration calling us to join in forgiving our wrong-minded use of free will -- but only after we've "set the table" to receive this "gift" (i.e., have corrected our perception of the world and its purpose enough to open the inner "eyes" and "ears" of our Souls). 

To end the dream, Jesus tells us, every Soul must join its "voice" to that Heavenly Chorus. We join that Cosmic Choir, he also explains, simply by listening to the tone or echo in our minds. Because our minds are joined in the Christ-Self, we "give" and "receive" God's Saving Grace as we focus on the tone in meditation. This is, in fact, how we communicate with God and our own Creations in Heaven. On earth, listening to that tone is how we exchange the impersonal "Miracles of Grace" that heal us and others at the same time. Once we are healed, redeemed, or "enlightened," we return to the world periodically to perform specific miracles, as assigned by the Christ aspect of Elohim.   

Pretty cool, right?

That song of which I speak isn't completely foreign to Christianity. It is, in fact, referenced in the very popular hymn "Amazing Grace." In case you don't know the relevant lyrics, they are:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

These lyrics are right on the money, because, as I've said, Grace (like Agape) is a vibrational frequency we HEAR with the "inner-ears" of our Souls. 

Throughout the Course, Jesus encourages us to turn inward and listen to the ever-present echo of God's Voice in the deep silence of meditation. From my experience, we don't really "get" what he's talking about until we reach what he calls "the branch in the road." As I currently understand things, that "branch" is the fork in the path via which we exit the Cosmic Egg. Stated more plainly, it is the crossroads between the material world the Ego Mind projects and the light-filled world of spirit we perceive through Christ's Vision. Once we reach this "fork," Jesus tells us, we can't go back. We can only choose between going forward (into the "upper waters" of mind) or staying where we are, thereby delaying or deferring our inevitable reawakening.

To go forward, we must "give up" the material world entirely. We must, in other words, break every chain binding us to the illusion of separation by foreswearing ALL the egoic ideas, beliefs, attractions, judgments, and attachments that block our awareness of what's Real and True -- not through SACRIFICE, but through the willing SURRENDER of all the Ego Mind's worthless God-blocking deceptions. As I'm learning rather painfully at present, those deceptions include ALL our guilt-sustaining judgments, interests, and ego-body relationships.

As I'm learning more joyfully at present, there's an ancient mantra we can chant to "prostrate" or "surrender" ourselves to the two-part "deity" known in Hinduism as Vasudeva. Vasudeva comprises both Vishnu and Krishna. Rightly perceived, Vishnu personifies the Atman, Soul, or Holy Spirit aspect of the Hindu Trimurti, while Krishna is an "avatar" or "state of being" experienced by Vishnu (the Soul-Self). As I understand it (and I'm no expert), Krishna represents the Soul in its Christ-Realized state of being, whereas Shiva personifies the Christ-as-Redeemer aspect of the Trimurti.

Known as Dvadasakshari, this powerful twelve-syllable mantra is said to burn away the maya that blocks the Soul's memories of Divine Reality. I've spelled out the mantra below, and linked it to Deva Premal's beautiful rendition of the Dvadasakshari on YouTube.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya

Okay, so ... having said all that, let me now say this: The Elohim of Genesis comprise the Spirit of Grace and her various Atonement Powers. How many are there? Most spiritual teachings identify seven "rays" or "graces," while others say there are eight, ten, or even twelve. In the Course, Jesus mentions the Great Rays several times, but never specifies their number.

After considerable study, prayer, and contemplation, I have come to believe there are FIVE actual Elohim powers: the Trinity aspects described above, as well as TWO "Great Rays." These two "rays" were dormant until Jesus completed his part in the Atonement Plan. These two powers, which we'll discuss later in the series, are in the Holy Spirit's "tool-box." Once we ask for His/Her help, these Great Rays work in partnership with the "passive" aspect of the Shared Will to guide our Souls back to the Sixth Plane of Consciousness (where Krishna calls to Vishnu with the song of his flute).

In future installments of my "Who or What is Elohim?" series, I'll discuss all of these powers in more detail. Up next, we'll explore what the Book of Genesis says the Elohim powers did "in the beginning" to change the purpose of the dream.

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).

Epiphanies, great and small

 

Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds,which come with nothing
to find everything and claim it as their own.

—Jesus Christ, A Course in Miracles

When A Course in Miracles first came to me, through an undeniable act of Spirit, I remember thinking two things. The first was that the teachings DEFINITELY came from Jesus Christ -- not Helen Schucman, the clinical psychologist who scribed this "metaphysical masterpiece." In no way could an ordinary human-being have conceived the perception-reversing pedagogy this extraordinary book presents. My second thought was that the elevated mindset the Course promotes seemed nearly impossible to apply on a daily basis.

These many years later, I’m not yet enlightened, but I do feel the presence of Christ burning in my heart, I can hear the ever-present echo of God’s Saving Grace in my head, and I absolutely perceive the world and its purpose very differently than I did before starting the Course back in 1997.

My point is this: The Course delivers what it promises if we interpret the teachings correctly and do our part in the ego-undoing process. We must read and reflect on the mind-bending concepts presented in the Text; we must do the daily lessons that enable us to apply those ideas; and we must strive to see the world not as our egos would have it be, but as the Soul-liberating learning-simulator it actually is.

I can’t tell you how often I try to impress this upon my fellow Course students - and how stubbornly they resist doing the work that will free them from the pain and suffering caused by their own wrong-minded thinking. They’re miserable, poor Souls, yet they persist in choosing hell over Heaven day after day. When I grow frustrated with their Truth-blocking obstinance, the Holy Spirit gently reminds me that my earthly ministry is NOT OF ME.

I am only HIS messenger.

The same is true of this blog. I’m not writing all this to make money or attract devotees. My only desire is to be truly helpful to those, like myself, who seek Spiritual Truth through A Course in Miracles. Whether my readers are three or 3,000 in number makes no difference to me. Many or few, they are parts of my Self – the Higher, Christ-Self I am and always have been in Divine Reality.

Launching THE HOLY MEETING PLACE on the Feast of the Epiphany wasn’t accidental – nor was it strictly my idea. When guided (in meditation) to launch the blog on this date, I knew that January 6 marked the arrival of the three Wise Men in Bethlehem. I also knew the event was symbolic, rather than historical, as are most things in the Holy Bible. What does the Adoration of the Magi represent? News of the Savior's birth reaching the "gentile" or non-Jewish peoples of "the Orient," the vast region comprising India, Arabia, and the Far East.

Through subsequent research I learned that the Feast of the Epiphany is observed on a different date in regions still using the Julian calendar. Christian churches in these eastern regions celebrate Epiphany on January 19, which just happens to be my body-birthday.

Happy accident or a carefully orchestrated part of God’s Great and Perfect Plan? The answer is ALWAYS the latter, as Jesus attests in the Course.

Noteworthily, the later Feast Day commemorates the baptism of Jesus, rather than the arrival of the Three Kings in Bethlehem. Why is this noteworthy? Before I answer that, let me explain that the word "epiphany" predominately means "the revelation or incarnation of God in the world." In Christianity, the word is mainly applied to the incarnation or manifestation of God in the world as the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Western Christians, believing Jesus was God-incarnate from birth, celebrate the Epiphany when the news of that presumed incarnation spread to the "gentiles" in India, Arabia, and the Far East. Eastern Christians, conversely, believe Jesus attained, realized, or remembered his inner-divinity (i.e., embodied only the Christ-Self) through the ritual purification of baptism.

In actuality, Jesus first wholly embodied the Pure State of Grace that IS Christ Consciousness not at birth or through baptism, but at the event described in Mark 9:2-13, Matthew 17:1-13, and Luke 9:28-36. He experienced this TRANSFIGURATION from Son of Man (lower-self body-ego identification) to Son of God (Higher-Self Christ-Spirit identification) AFTER and as a desirable effect of his forty-day ordeal in the "desert" or "wilderness." As explained in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus was repeatedly harassed by Satan during an extended period of isolation and fasting. During that time, according to the Epistle of the Hebrews, the Evil One tempted Jesus "in every way that we are, except without sin."

We'll discuss the accuracy of that statement another time. For now, just know that Satan departed in defeat only after Jesus resisted EVERY offered temptation. Shortly thereafter, Jesus went into the mountains, where he experienced what Christians RIGHTLY understand to be, "the revelation of the eternal glory of the second person of the Trinity" (as per Britannica.com).

In case you don't know, the second "person" -- or, more accurately, ASPECT -- of the Holy Trinity is the Son of God, Sonship, or Christ Mind. Having been reborn as the Son of God (through Transfiguration or Christ-Realization), Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his three-year ministry in the world.

As I said, almost everything in the Bible is symbolic or allegorical, rather than literal or historical. This is, in fact, true of all scriptural texts, including the Course (despite what one prominent ACIM teacher would have us believe). When it comes to sacred texts, "literal" is code for "unilluminated." The deeper meaning of these teachings is revealed by the Holy Spirit through illumination. Without the luminosity ONLY God's Spirit can provide, we can NOT interpret the Higher Truths these texts impart with any degree of accuracy.

Unfortunately, many unilluminated teachers, preachers, and self-proclaimed "authorities" have tried to tell us what these stories mean down the ages -- and erroneously believe they've succeeded. All they've really succeeded in doing is twisting the Higher Truths these texts contain into contradictory and fear-inducing hogwash that obscures rather than clarifies their meaning.

Having been gifted with scriptural illumination, I will shed much-needed light on the teachings of Jesus Christ, as presented in the Course, the New Testament, and other scriptural texts. In this post, I will de-code the two allegories mentioned above: the Last Temptation and the Transfiguration. Let's start with the story of the Last Temptation, in which Jesus goes alone into a "desert" or "wilderness," where he passes forty trying days fasting and resisting Satan's many temptations.

Okay, so ... did Jesus really do this? Probably, but that's not the point. The point is that he was acting out a script for the rest of us to follow. That script was written by the Holy Spirit, to show us the way out of the Dream of Separation.

As in most allegories, the elements in the story of the Last Temptation have deeper symbolic meaning than a literal reading can reveal. Jesus isn't Jesus-the-man exclusively, for example; his character in the story represents the Soul or Son of God WE ALL ARE in Divine Reality. Likewise, the "desert" or "wilderness" isn't a specific physical locale; the "desert" or "wilderness" in the story symbolizes the illusion of physical existence we only THINK is real. That illusion takes place in the imaginary "world" we PERCEIVE through our lower-mind bodily senses. 

That Jesus was alone during his ordeal in this metaphorical "desert" speaks to the isolation, loneliness, alienation, and abandonment we experience in the dreamscape variously known as the Kingdom of Darkness (Christianity), Brahmanda (Hinduism), and Samsara Maya (Buddhism). That Jesus fasted to the point of starvation while in this emblematic "wilderness" denotes the terrible hunger and/or thirst our Souls feel in the barren wasteland of nothingness this Godless hallucination actually is.

Contrary to popular belief, God did NOT create the illusory Kingdom of Darkness, Cosmic Egg, or Sea of Samsara. Nor, for that matter, did our Father in Heaven make the bodies through which we experience the illusion of physical existence. All visible matter is woven from the fibers of FEAR, a dense thought-substance we produced eons ago to block our memories of God, Heaven, and our True Identities. Fear, Jesus tells us in the Course, is the UNREAL opposite of God's Perfect Love. As such, he also explains, fear "literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread."

The Soul's "daily bread" isn't made from yeast and flour; it's the "manna" that flows from Heaven into our minds in blessed streams of God's Saving Grace. Elsewhere in the synoptic gospels, Jesus describes these Soul-sustaining streams as the "living water" that alleviates our thirst for ALL worldly temptations.

In the Course, Jesus uses the dreamscape-as-desert metaphor several times. In one especially pointed reference, he says, "A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but cannot change it from what it is. It still lacks water, which is why it is a desert. The thing to do with a desert is to leave."

We leave the desert, he tells us in the synoptic gospels, by drinking the mind-purifying "waters" of God's Saving Grace. He does not, however, specify WHERE we find this Holy Water or HOW we drink it. That's because his instructions were removed by unenlightened men who sought to replace the Holy Spirit as God's messenger of Higher Truth in the dreamscape.

In the Course, Jesus DOES disclose the WHERE and HOW. The WHERE is within us and the HOW is listening in deep silence. Why, then, does nobody teaching the Course in the world today (insofar as I'm aware) say as much? The answer is: Because most (if not all) of them are still chasing mirages in the desert at some level. 

We'll talk more about the WHERE and HOW in future posts. For now, let's return to the Last Temptation. In the story, Satan offers Jesus some rocks and says, "Hey, if you're so powerful, turn these stones into bread to sate your hunger." By refusing to perform this little "trick," Jesus is sending us a message. What does he want us to learn? That the Soul he represents in the story can't nourish itself with anything Satan made. To understand the message, we also must understand that Satan -- NOT God -- made the dream-world of time, space, and matter. It was also Satan, and NOT God, who made our bodies and everything we seek to make them more beautiful, wealthy, powerful, healthy, popular, happy, or comfortable.

The story of the Last Temptation also conveys the Great Truth that to leave the desert of earthly existence, we must reject ALL the temptations, false idols, and/or Anti-Christs Satan uses to spin "cocoons of fear" around our Higher Minds. To break free of these amnesic "sleeping sacks," we must remember that we are and always have been God's free-flying butterflies -- not the Great Deceiver's earth-bound caterpillars.

To escape our perceptual pupas, we must empty our hands of possessions, our hearts of grievances, and our minds of every idea the Devil would have us believe and defend. As long as we still desire EVEN ONE of the Evil One's sticky threads of deception, we will remain his web-bound prey.

Let's now turn to the Transfiguration narrative, which is similarly allegorical. In parenthetical shorthand, the story's actual meaning is this: After defeating Satan (the Ego Mind) in the desert (the lower levels of consciousness), Jesus (the Soul) will go into the mountains (of Higher Consciousness), which it will climb until it is purified enough to experience "Transfiguration."

Okay, so ... why am I telling you all of this? The short answer is: Because it matters. I hinted at this earlier, but now I'm going to drive the point home: Everything Jesus did on earth symbolized the journey we all must take to return to God, Heaven, Knowledge, Omniscience, Superconsciousness, or Spiritual Sanity (choose your preferred term). More than just instructive allegories, the events recorded in the synoptic gospels are the milestones the Holy Spirit set in place, through the life of Jesus Christ, to mark the path we all must follow out of the metaphoric "desert" or "wilderness."

Those milestones are inside us, not "out there" in the physical world. Hindus, Buddhists, and other metaphysical teachers call these internal markers "chakras." In the Course, Jesus refers to them as the Lamps of Heaven or Lamps of God. Using these "lamps," he tells us, the Great Rays light our way back up the metaphorical ladder we climbed down into deeper and denser levels of the illusion of physical existence.

The rungs of that ladder represent the levels of consciousness, perception, or Self-awareness our Souls dropped down over time. To reawaken to or remember who, what, and where we really are (and always have been), we must climb back up those "rungs" in the same order we descended them.

We must, in other words, RETRACE the steps we took, downward and outward, into the "desert" or lower levels of consciousness after the Fall from Grace, Detour into Fear, Great Projection, or Exodus from Eden (again, choose your preferred term).

The ladder I've just described is the same one famously seen by Jacob, in the dream described in the Book of Genesis. Rightly interpreted, our reincarnating Souls are the angels the Biblical patriarch saw moving up and down the rungs (as pictured below).

Understanding the steps, their correct order, and what they actually signify is, therefore, crucial to anyone sincerely seeking to master A Course in Miracles. Ditto for anyone striving to attain enlightenment through another form of the Holy Spirit's at-one-ment curriculum. While there are SEVEN steps in total, the New Testament only describes the higher three: Baptism, Transfiguration, and Ascension. Translated into broader metaphysical terms, the higher three stages of awakening are these:

Fifth Step: Baptism = Self-Realization
Sixth Step: Transfiguration = Christ-Realization
Seventh Step: Ascension = God-Realization

When Jesus says, "Follow me," this is what he means. To return to God, Heaven, Knowledge, Omniscience, Superconsciousness, or Spiritual Sanity, we need to follow the trail he blazed 2,300 years ago. To follow that gentle path, we must strive every hour to empty our hands, hearts, and heads of the Evil One's temptations, unholy opposites, misguided teachings, wrong-minded values, and false beliefs. At the same time, we must strive to open our hearts and minds to the Higher Truths God would have us learn, cherish, and teach. We can't undertake this perception-reversing journey on our own, Jesus tells us. To return to Christ Consciousness, we must step back and allow the Holy Spirit -- our inner guru -- to show us the way to go.

That being the case, we must be clear about 1) what the Holy Spirit is, 2) how God's Spirit speaks to us, 3) what to listen for, 4) what to do (or not do) to hear His Voice, and 5) how His Voice peels away Satan's sticky threads of deception -- not only from our own minds, but also from all the minds connected to ours in the Golden Circle of Creation. Once again, none of the books or blogs I've read about the Course explains any of this accurately (if at all). At best, the authors of these books and blogs offer very limited or elementary explanations of the teachings. At worst, they profess to understand what they do NOT, thereby misleading their readers and followers.

Or, to quote what Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas: "If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a hole." 

I don't mean to be critical or sanctimonious. I'm simply calling it as I see it. To escape the "desert" of pain and suffering, we have to stop chasing mirages and drink ONLY the Living Water of God's Saving Grace. We drink that metaphorical "living water" by going inward in meditation and listening for the ever-present echo of God's Saving Grace. We DO NOT do it by "enjoying" the world's offerings, asking our followers for money or positive reviews, moving to Hawaii or the Himalayas, or by preaching political activism.

The image on the Ace of Cups in the Rider-Waite Tarot beautifully depicts the purifying streams of God's Grace flowing from the Higher Mind "waters" of Christ Consciousness into the polluted lower-mind waters of Ego Consciousness. The symbolism employed in this particular deck is highly illuminating. I will, therefore, discuss the useful symbols on various cards from time to time as we move forward. Like everything else in the Valley of Death this world really is, Tarot cards can be used for the Ego Mind's purposes or for the Holy Spirit's. Also like everything else in the arid wasteland of existence, only the Holy Spirit's interpretations are truly helpful to those seeking enlightenment.

Okay, phew. Let's stop here for today, because I've thrown a lot of information at you and I'm still just clearing my throat. If your head is swimming, don't worry, because I'll explain all of these ideas -- and may more besides -- in greater detail as we move forward.

Up next, I'm going to answer the BIG question "What is God?" in a multi-part series. So, keep reading or, better yet, subscribe or follow THE HOLY MEETING PLACE you don't miss any new illuminations.