Spring is already
starting where I live in East Tennessee. But it’s only early March – there’s
still more frost coming. This phenomenon will lead to another “Oh! My!” set of
moments wondering if the early-budding trees and shrubs will be able to deal with
another early Spring anomaly.
Well, of course they will!
These plants and trees have forgotten more about
dealing with an early Spring than I’ll ever know. But, since our house is back
on the market and my job is to stop living here and to become, instead, the
groundskeeper and caretaker, I’ve already found myself worrying a tad. I would
love to tell you I’m so spiritually mature that it’s been years since a worry
crossed the threshold of my mind. But I’d be a flaming liar if I told you that.
Why do I worry? About my landscaping? About the
state of our country? About my financial legacy – or lack thereof? About the
utter lack of leadership in our Congress that is willing to – apparently – jeopardize
our Country’s welfare and the integrity of our political institutions for short-term
political goals or for party affiliation?
But the good side of worrying is that it has
proven to be the most reliable feedback mechanism my True (spiritual) Self can
receive informing me that I have relinquished my True Identity for the petty,
false identity of my ego – which I have named Felix.
At a recent AA meeting I had shared that my
serenity depends a lot on which of the two “me’s” is in control: The spiritual
me that is an already-loved eternal spirit currently having a human experience
or the me that believes I am a body inside of which resides an eternal soul. If
I’ve been thinking of myself as a body with a soul, then my serenity is always
pretty shaky. If I am aware of my Self as an already-loved eternal spirit, my
serenity is as secure as Fort Knox.
Following the meeting, a friend asked me if I
really believed that. I said yes, I do. He asked me to explain it. I tried –
but it was harder than I thought. So, I’m trying to sort my thoughts out with
this post.
A Course In Miracles (ACIM) talks about having a
higher and lower mind. It talks about the role of the physical body. It talks
about physical sight (via eyeballs) as opposed to spiritual vision, which only
occurs with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. It talks of REAL life as being
one of the Spirit, but we think of “real” life as that which we can see with
our eyes.
One of the more succinct statements in the ACIM
about this is from the Manual for Teachers, Section 27, What Is Death? The text
reads: “1 Death is the central dream from
which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born,
aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question
before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed,
unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die.
This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to
question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The
cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing
and waning in a certain way upon a certain path – all this is taken as the Will
of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this.
2 In this
perception of the universe as God created it, it would be impossible to think
of Him as loving. For who has decreed that all things [will end] in dust and disappointment and despair can
but be feared. He holds your little life in his hand but by a thread, ready to
break it off without regret or care, perhaps today. Or if he waits, yet is the
ending certain. Who loves such a god knows not of love, because he has denied
that life is real. Death has become life's symbol. His world is now a
battleground, where contradiction reigns and opposites make endless war. Where
there is death is peace impossible.
3 Death is
the symbol of the fear of God… The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it
cannot coexist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God [i.e.,
humankind] in which he is "laid to
rest" in devastation's arms, where worms wait to greet him and to last a
little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be
destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring
is nature's "law of life." [Within this perception of the “real
world] God is insane, and fear alone is
real.
4 The
curious belief that there is part of dying things that may go on apart from
what will die, does not proclaim a loving God nor re-establish any grounds for
trust. If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But
if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible….
God did not make death because He did not make fear. Both are equally
meaningless to Him.
5 The
"reality" of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God's Son [humankind] is a body. And if God created bodies,
death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving. There is no point at
which the contrast between the perception of the real world [Spirit] and that of the world of illusions [my
egoic perceptions] becomes more sharply
evident….”
I am an already-loved eternal spirit. That is
who I am. That is how God made us. Felix sees through my physical eyes and
shows me a world of fear that is illusionary. My worrying is directly
proportional to the degree I let Felix run my life.
As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on
a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking.
The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a
different “I” than the one that says to Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help
me perceive things the way You see them.”
Although these messages are mostly for me,
thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always,
feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those
accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#1 Mar 2017
Copyright 2017
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