LESSON 177
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
1 (163) There is no death. The Son of God is free.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2 (164) Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
I think these two lessons go together very well. When we consider that death is the ego and the knowledge that we are not the ego sets us free, that makes it possible to know that we are one with our Source. It can be no other way. We cannot know we are one with God while we believe we are the ego. We cannot know we are Life while we still believe in death.
How does one let go of the belief in death? Find a path out of the belief and stick to it. Study it, practice it, be vigilant for it.
Relax in it, letting faith and trust smooth your way through it. Question every thought discarding those that don’t reflect truth. Never judge yourself or others. Never allow guilt to enter into the process. Never give up.
Keep your mind open and receptive to a Higher Source. Quickly discard your own plans when that Source moves you to another better plan. Be surrendered to your Guide so that you can be easily moved.
Before you know it, you will become aware of your Self living you. Even if it is only briefly, it is enough to create a strong desire to allow awakening to that way of living. At least this has been my experience so far. It is becoming more and more consistent as I practice it.
Manual for Teachers
3. WHAT ARE THE LEVELS OF TEACHING? Paragraph 2
2 The simplest level of teaching appears to be quite superficial. It consists of what seem to be very casual encounters; a “chance” meeting of two apparent strangers in an elevator, a child who is not looking where he is going running into an adult “by chance,” two students “happening” to walk home together. These are not chance encounters. Each of them has the potential for becoming a teaching-learning situation. Perhaps the seeming strangers in the elevator will smile to one another; perhaps the adult will not scold the child for bumping into him; perhaps the students will become friends. Even at the level of the most casual encounter, it is possible for two people to lose sight of separate interests, if only for a moment. That moment will be enough. Salvation has come.
I have become hyper-aware of those simple moments that offer a chance for salvation. Like most people, I used to think that they were unimportant and that they meant little. Now, I understand that salvation lies in many small moments linked together. Sometimes the other isn’t even there with me but I don’t see that it matters.
Yesterday, I watched one granddaughter in a parade and the other granddaughter scrambling to pick up the candy thrown to the children. Eleanor would stop once in a while to eat a piece of the candy and would drop the wrapper on the ground next to our chairs. When it was time to go, I gathered all the papers to throw away.
If I had not done this, someone else would have and I didn’t want to add to that person’s workload. This was a moment in which I did not lose sight of our separate interests so it was a moment of salvation. The papers were sticky and I was looking for something to put them in to carry back to the car.
A family next to us had a roll of paper towels so I asked if I could have one. I explained that I hated sticky fingers and we smiled at each other and shared a moment in which we were on the same page with no interests that separated us. It was a holy encounter, one more link in the chain of the Atonement that is taking us home.
Text
XI. Christmas as the End of Sacrifice P 4
T-15.XI.4. You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. 2 For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. 3 Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. 4 Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. 5 Through peace you invite them back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be. 6 What you exclude from yourself seems fearful, for you endow it with fear and try to cast it out, though it is part of you. 7 Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? 8 And who can try to resolve the “conflict” of Heaven and hell in him by casting Heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell, without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely?
Journal
I used to believe that love demanded sacrifice and lived that belief. This showed up in so many ways. My husbands were supposed to sacrifice their desire to be with others, to spend time away from me, to spend money on frivolous things rather than the family, just to name a few. I called this love.
This desire to control and manipulate for my own desires above theirs’s caused me to feel guilty without really even understanding where the guilt came from. And when they failed to comply, I made them guilty of not loving me enough or not living up to the unspoken agreement. I’m sure they had their own list of sacrifices they expected from me in the name of love.
Living like this, believing that love is sacrifice inevitably leads to war. Sometimes it is a quiet little war that eats away at the relationship a nibble at a time until there is no sign of the original impulse to love and connect. Sometimes a concord is established between them in an attempt to bring peace and harmony back to the relationship. This is a pale reflection of the love that is actually desired, and is unstable because the seeds of conflict remain in the heart.
I watch my mind very closely now for signs that I am asking for sacrifice. Even the merest desire that someone give of themselves in order to make me happy is undone as soon as it forms. I want no guilt in my relationships because guilt is the destroyer of relationships. It can be something as simple as wishing my daughter would invite me to supper.
I question that thought relentlessly until I get to the truth that my happiness is not my daughter’s job and that to think so is to ask for separation and suffering. You can’t really love someone you push away with guilt. Agreements in which sacrifices are traded is not love and will only erode the existing love.
Love has expanded in my life since I decided to join rather than separate at every opportunity. Union, not separation is love. If I need something, I give it to myself rather than asking someone else to do it for me. Actually, if possible, I give what I want to receive. So instead of resenting not being invited for dinner, I have invited someone to come eat with me.
When I used to be in resentment, I made the other party guilty and pushed them away. This was the making of a hell in which I felt incomplete and lonely. When I learned differently, and I took responsibility for my own happiness, I felt compelled to share that happiness and so included others and that is the making of a heavenly life in which I am joined with many and this feeling of completion is experienced in relation to God as well.
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