A TIME TO BE LOVE

In our dream, we think we have actually successfully separated from our SELF as the Christ and God in Heaven. We have forgotten that What we are is ONENESS in Christ and God.

So here we are in our made-up world, as proud as a PEACOCK of being independent and special. I can do it myself. I don't need God to be me or to tell me what to do or who I am. But WAIT! It's frightening to be alone, and besides I feel GUILTY for having committed the SIN of SEPARATING and having left GOD and my SELF behind. I feel very uneasy, and think I really deserve some kind of punishment for having left Home.

Thinking about the matter, I know what I will do. I will devise a grand plan in which I make bodies and a "world" to "live" in. Now there are lots of me. The plan is, I will separate myself from the other parts of me that I will call you. You can be all the parts of me whose fault my plight is. You are the VULTURE just waiting to kill and devour me. I am the LAMB, the INNOCENT VICTIM who never did anything wrong, expecting YOU to do it to me again!

You are all the many aspects I see as the VILLAIN, THE VICTIMIZER. You take as many forms as I need you to be. You may be authority figures, such as GOD, my parents, teachers, priests, or my other brother responsible for my situation. Then there is that other villain, my own SICK and SUFFERING BODY. Just look what it has done to me! Poverty, depression and lack all get into my act as well as I wait and say, "Behold me brother, at your hand I die."

I can now feel justified, victimized and above all, not responsible for what I see around me. Of course, my pain, loneliness and suffering is not much better than it was, but at least I am not responsible for it! I have "successfully" projected off what I subconsciously know to be only my own "fault", onto you where I can see it, judge it, and hate it. In the words of the vaudeville chorus girls song from another generation, "You made me what I am today, I hope your sat-is-fied!"

Everywhere I look, I can see poverty, sickness, war, starvation, injustice and infinite "innocent victims." Nobody chose it, and nobody is responsible for it! All this goes on continuously as I tremble and wait for the Great Avenger to strike and take away the "little life" I stole from Him in the first place. So I continue in my GREAT AMNESIA rather than AWAKEN to the TRUTH.

But there is no sense in trying to "fix" an insane dream. The way we leave the dream, is to WAKE UP from it. Look up. See the sun and life itself through the Vision of Christ (which we all are) in the ONENESS of God's Heaven. It is there we live and have our Being. The dream has never been, except in our own sleeping imagination. It has not been life we chose, but death.

We cannot wake up by ourself. We have been "so long" in the dream, we have forgotten how to wake up. But God has given us His Guide, our Holy Spirit to show us how, when we are ready, to get totally still and listen for His Answer. Holy Spirit can not do it for us but He can show us how to do it. That takes our total willingness to be shown. He can begin to show us TODAY, if we ASK. He can not come into our dream and meet us there. We must take all our illusions and lay them before Him for Him to remove and give us instead His Love and Peace. This is our first step in our return home.

And how do we begin this process of looking with the Vision of Christ? Why with one BROTHER, of course! That one closest to us and biggest in our view. With the help of Holy Spirit, we look at him anew with the purpose and intention of seeing only the Child of God, the Christ, in him. This is FORGIVENESS. We do not forgive him for what we thought he had done to us, rather we forgive ourself for what we had seen and judged in him, making it impossible to see the Christ in him. "If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him." FORGIVENESS is an intention of the heart, a conscious choice and a collaborative venture. We say, "Help me to see this one as God created him, and help me to see I am that also." Then as we see all darkness lifted, we look up and see the shining Light of God's Love and say the last words we will ever say, "OH MY!"

The Real World

The real world is a "place" in mind where we can be aware of our ONENESS until we can return to that ONENESS. The real world is itself an illusion, being in mind just below Heaven where it was placed for us by Holy Spirit. It is the illusion that ends all illusions where we realize the ONENESS of Heaven as we wait to go there. Forgiveness brings us to the real world and is there laid down as it is no longer required in a totally forgiven world. "The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin (separation) and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps."

In the real world we have gone beyond time and form and but wait for God to take the last step in our return and lift us Home. Once in Heaven, when we meet our SELF "face-to-face," we know our original Innocence and remember our Identity and our Creator. The real world is the goal of "A Course In Miracles©," the dream over, when we remember our Atonement, our SELF as part of the Christ and full awareness of the Peace of God at last.

The real world is beyond time so it matters not if we are there for a few seconds or a few thousand years until all our brothers have joined us there and we are lifted back again to Heaven as ONE. We "left Heaven" as one thought, so it is as one thought we return!

THE SECOND COMING

The FIRST COMING was the Original Creation in Which God extended Himself and created His One Son, the Christ. The SECOND COMING is when all of us who think of ourselves as separated Sons of God remember what we are and return as ONE to the Mind of God, Which thought us. The Second Coming depends not upon Jesus or the Holy Spirit but upon us. True, Jesus and Holy Spirit are our Guides who direct us back to Christ, but we are the ones who have to do it. That is why Jesus tell us that He can't "get back" 'till we do, as we all must return together, as ONE. We separated as ONE thought, so we must return as ONE also. So our Holy Spirit has provided a "place" in our minds to be His "real world" where we can all go one-by-one as Atonement is accepted until we are all there together. At that time God Himself will "reach down" and "lift us back to Heaven," making the SECOND COMING complete.

Christ's Second Coming is when all His Parts have acknowledged Him as One, completeness is restored and no dream of separation or illusion remains. How long will that take? Just an instant! How long is an instant? As long as it takes! And that journey is one without distance to a place we never left.

Total forgiveness for everything we ever thought about anything brings us to the real world where we remember our Identity. Time and place has ended, and we are ready to return Home. In the ONENESS we recognize there is no separation in God's Creation and that all who thought they could die to life and enter into a body and a world of death were mistaken. The Second Coming is the correction of that mistaken thought and the return to sanity of the mind of the Son of God. In that corrected thought dwell "all living things" as they wait, together, for the final lifting up.

THE CHRIST

In popular theology, Christ is often used synonymously with Jesus. In fact, some religions even go so far as to say that Jesus was God. Certain are they that He was the only Son of God, the rest of us being merely sinners or adopted sons, at best achieved after due observance of church rituals and dogmas. A Course In Miracles© differs with these views by stating that everyone of us, without exception, is a Son of God and part of The Christ.

Therefore, Jesus becomes our elder brother to whom we owe gratitude and respect because he has "gone before us" in our journey back to our SELF. He says that we are not different than He except in time. He has already resurrected, which is still only potential in us. Furthermore, we are the only ones who regard us as "sinners." God knows we never committed a sin. God didn't create sinners. And the part of us that God created (spirit) is the only real part of us. The "separation" never happened. We only dreamed it did and here we are "living" out the dream we are having.

Jesus was the first of us to awaken from the dream and go on ahead to show us the Way to follow.

THE CHRIST is the ONE SON that God created containing all "living things." As "things" can only live within the Heaven of God's Mind, then every "thing" He thinks is a "living thing." Our spirit mind within homo sapiens on planet earth is one of those "living things." God is in our mind and we are in His as no Thought can ever leave the Mind that thinks it. CHRIST, properly speaking, is still in the Heaven of God's Mind, serenely going on creating as God appointed Him to do. While we believe we have split off, separated and we are now a body in a world, we still have the Mind that God created within us waiting for us to re-discover It. We are in Christ in a very real sense, and CHRIST is within GOD. That is our link, our connection back Home to God. Our Holy Spirit is always there to remind us of it. Our one problem is that we think we actually separated. Our one Answer is our Holy Spirit, the Presence of God's Love in our mind. Without Him we can not find our way. Salvation can not be achieved alone. The Christ in us bids us bring all our illusions and dreams to Him that He can shine them all away, leaving our "altar" clean so that we can then see the Love and Truth that has always been there for us.

And so we FORGIVE ourselves for what we thought the world and our brothers were, and see only the Christ in them as well. In this Vision, we know then that we are It also. We can flow out to It (extend the love that we are), join with It, and return together Home to God.

To see Christ's Face is a choice; and it must be our choice. So we must ASK the guidance of Holy Spirit, listen for the direction and then do it. To "do nothing" doesn't mean that we won't do anything, it simply means that our ego mind won't be the one that is guiding us. Holy Spirit is the leader, we are the follower. His direction is sure and His path the shortest back to our SELF in the CHRIST.

HOLY SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit is our sole remaining connecting link between ourselves in our perceived separated state and God. While God knows we never separated, He knows we think we did. He knows this because the FLOW of His Love that He sends to us continually is not being returned to Him by us. He doesn't know what we are thinking (doing) but He does know that His natural communication has been broken. Therefore, He has sent out His Communicator to investigate the situation and re-establish Communication. So Holy Spirit has looked, realized what we are doing is but a dream which we believe is our reality. Holy Spirit knows of God and Heaven, but also understands our mistaken thinking. So He takes us where we think we are and sends His lessons to teach us the difference, and allow us to gently awaken to our true SELF and our Home in Heaven. Holy Spirit is the Bridge between illusion and truth. He the Great Mediator that will allow us to find God.

God's Love continually calls to that same Love in us. Holy Spirit remembers that love for us until we can remember it for ourself.

When we abandon our investment in ego, turn to Holy Spirit and ASK for His guidance, He can then begin to re-establish our flow of communication with God. Although He waits with infinite patience, He can not do anything for us until we are willing and ready. We don't do anything except give up our investment in what we have considered to be our reality. As we cross the bridge to the real world, we bring all our illusions to the truth to be shone away by the Love of God. From the love and light of the real world, the Holy Spirit calls to us to forgive ourself for our illusions and come to Him. This is the call of love for love and is what we have been trying to hear ever since we thought we separated ourself from God's Love.

"I AM ABOUT MY FATHER’S BUSINESS."

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