The Great Projection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, as Jesus says in the Course:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, as Jesus says,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, as Jesus explains:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those thought-errors are:

Past = Sin
Present = Guilt
Future = Fear

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

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

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

As Jesus says in the Course:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, as Jesus explains:

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

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

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

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

What is God? (Part 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 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. 

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.