IV. Your Function in the Atonement, P 8
8 Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourself away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourself. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothing except giving?
Journal
My task is not to make reality and thank goodness for that. I have enough trouble simply accepting it. And why is that? Why cannot I accept that God loves me and I have nothing to fear? Why is it so hard to accept that this world is not real and that Reality waits for my return? I think the answer lies in this paragraph. I cannot imagine the kind of love that Jesus speaks of here.
I cannot imagine perfect love. When I try to imagine perfect love, I think of my children. I love them with love as perfect as I can achieve. And yet, I still judge them and project onto them. I have moments of anger and resentment with them. I have expectations of them and can be disappointed when those expectations are not met. I don’t stop loving them, but that could hardly be thought of as a perfect love.
The love I have for my children is the highest form of love I can imagine and even so, it is a flawed love. Jesus is right when he says that there is nothing on earth that will parallel God’s love for me and so how do I relate to that love? What happens is that I project onto God the love that I can imagine. I expect Him to be disappointed because I do not meet His expectations. I expect Him to judge me and to be angry with me because this is how I understand love. So I am afraid of Him at least as much as I love Him.
On a conscious level, I don’t think about this a lot, and I push the fear of God away by telling myself that I believe what I have learned from A Course in Miracles. But I must be afraid of God’s love; otherwise, I would be with Him now. How can I imagine One Who gives forever, and knows of nothing except giving? And yet, this love must be in my mind, because I am created like God.
So here is what I am doing. I am accepting my Brother’s word on this. There is a love that is perfect and unconditional, and that love is mine. God, the Creator of All That Is, is that Love. I have blocked that love with my ego but I am removing those blocks now, and this unimaginable love is flowing back into my mind. Well, the flow might be an exaggeration, but it is trickling in. My desire to know God is making this possible.
And as this trickle becomes stronger, I am experiencing the effects. I am happier and less fearful in my story. I don’t get worried and upset over each perceived danger. I think of God more often. My love has become less conditional. When I notice I am putting conditions on it, I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me. My love for others is more gentle now, with less judgment and fewer expectations.
It seems that it was more effective to accept the Atonement for myself and allow this healing to express through me than it was to try to be better at loving. When I was trying to be a better person by correcting my behavior, I wasn’t making a lot of headway. But as I allow my mind to be healed, the expression of that healed mind is naturally closer to perfect love. As I begin to experience that something closer to a perfect expression, I become more open to the possibility of a God Who can love perfectly and I begin to believe that I have nothing to fear from this God.
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