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October-December, 2012

What Lies Beyond

by Rev. Sherry Jonckheere, O.M.C.

Who are we? At the surface we are a conglomeration of feelings, emotions, experiences and unexplainable coincidences. Day by day we move through a world rocketing back and forth between an assortment of thoughts and feelings. Fear and love; life and death; God and ego. Fear thoughts bring us to those places within us that say, “Stop — do not go any further!” These are instantaneous glimpses at the death of the ego. The ego shrouds this fact with a worldly fear of some kind, but when I take it to truth, it is revealed that a fear thought is nothing more than the ego’s survival mechanism — it says, “This is too scary for you. Only I know what’s best for you. I’ll take control here and tell you what to believe and keep you safe.”

But if we are willing to take a non-judgmental look at the fear thought and feel the feelings that arise in us, truth would be revealed and “the jig would be up” for the ego. The light of truth would expose this experience to be nothing more than an illusory signal from the ego.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” -Justice Louis Brandeis

When we find ourselves at the edge of fear, we have so many rote responses that the ego has habituated in us that we don’t even think — we believe the thought, react and flee back into the darkness from whence we came. But what if in that instant of panic we stop and become willing to look at what is really going on? What if we consciously choose to slow down the process and our response to fear and look again, and then choose again? What if at the edge of the abyss we just keep walking forward and move beyond? What if?

If we are willing to see that the dark frightening place we find ourselves in is not that scary after all but merely a thin veil of darkness that is blocking the light of truth, then we open ourselves to another possibility. Beyond the blackness is a place the ego ceases to exist. The ego knows this and gives you every scary bodily sensation and dark thought to keep you from moving into the light and past its scope of reasoning and control.

“Yet God can bring you there, if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there. For it is not His purpose to frighten you, but only yours. You are severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear, but He would lead you safely through and far beyond.” (ACIM T-18.IX.3:7-9)

So what happens when we move beyond the edge of darkness and find ourselves in the light of truth? Do we let Love reign or get sucked back into the ego’s game?

If we choose the journey of awakening, then the responsibility is ours. The onus is on us to stay open in every moment and become consciously aware of our thoughts and feelings, and what we are choosing to believe about the experiences that come up in our day to day lives. We have a responsibility to believe in ourselves and learn to love ourselves through anything.

If we don’t know how, we can start by loving those parts of us that we are trying to keep in the dark. We can love ourselves for hating ourselves. We can love ourselves for losing a job and love ourselves for feeling like a failure. We can love ourselves for feeling ugly and unwanted. We do this by simply saying, “I love myself for not knowing how to love myself” or whatever we find we are dealing with in the moment. Own it and love it. See it and shine light on it.

When we resist experiences that bring up feelings of fear, insecurity, or anger we close down and these feelings become trapped and hardened in our reality. We play these stuck feelings out over and over again — bringing the past into the present — until we can look on them with awareness and love them and let them go.

Linear time allows us to learn, to experience and to awaken to truth. If we try to avoid the pitfalls and seeming prickly places of life, we find that our road is a long, winding, terrifying ego ride that never ends. We will ironically find that around the next corner is another terrorizing experience that looks very similar to the difficulty we thought we had just escaped. There it sits — the hardened, immovable, reoccurring boulder in the middle of the road — and the opportunity to choose again. So go for it! Love the boulder. Love the journey. Love your temporary amnesia, and love your remembering and your reawakening to truth once more. What was once a boulder but now given space, acceptance and love is now in reality only a speck of dust, and easily dissolved in the light of truth and let go.

When we own our experiences and become willing to open our hearts and free our minds from what we thought was, we come to know ourselves and see “what is.” We feel the infinite moment and come Home again. And, every time we forget and find ourselves back in the dark, we only need love ourselves for forgetting, and then love ourselves for remembering again.

“When you approach the edges you feel insecurity, jealousy, fear, or self-consciousness. You pull back, and if you are like most people, you stop trying. Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying. Spirituality is the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes. It’s an infinite journey based upon going beyond yourself every minute of every day for the rest of your life. If you’re truly going beyond, you are always at your limits. You’re never back in the comfort zone. A spiritual being feels as though they are always against that edge, and they are constantly being pushed through it.”
—The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer

Our function is to awaken to Love, to share Love’s Presence and come Home. Living in the world while waking up takes linear steps, and we will find that the first, second, and even third step is a doozy. But having the courage to stay open, try again, keep walking through, and remember to love ourselves along the way while we laugh, play and dance makes the journey a joyful one, and ultimately reveals to us that we are, in fact, already at our destination. We are Home — safe and sound, as always.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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