VI. The Treasure of God
2 The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself.
Clearly, I can accept what I experience with the body’s senses as true, or I can accept that Jesus is right and this is an illusion. I can accept that I am spirit, that I am the Son of God and all that implies, or I can accept the ego version of myself as the real me. It is up to me. Those are the only two choices I have and the one I choose will not change anything God created, but it will determine my experience.
How do I stop beholding the world? That seems impossible at first, but this is what I understand about it now. I behold the world when I see guilt, when I am afraid, when I feel confused, alone or unhappy. I see the world when I look with the body’s eyes and believe what I see is the truth. I stop seeing the world as I realize my error and ask that my mind be healed. Then what I “see” will be different.
The circumstances may or may not change, but how I see them will change. For instance, I used to think that when my grown children didn’t call me or come to see me it was because they didn’t love me. I thought they judged me for not being a very good mother, and that they held my mistakes against me. I would feel sad and lonely and hopeless because I couldn’t imagine how to fix this. Every problem they had seemed to be my fault because I had not done a better job raising them. I constantly looked for reassurance from them that I was loved and forgiven by them.
Slowly, over time, my mind was healed and I began to see things differently. When they fail to call or come see me, I assume they are busy living their lives and that makes me happy. I have forgiven myself and so I don’t see their actions as a condemnation. I don’t feel guilty so I don’t perceive their actions as proof of my guilt. Now when I notice I miss them, I call them or invite them over. If they are busy then I do something else. It is the same circumstance, but my experience of it is completely different.
Before when I believed in my guilt I saw the world the ego made, and it was painful. Now that more guilt has been removed from my mind, I see the love that was there all the time. I see more of the real world than I did before. I guess you could say that the veil is thinner now. I see the ego world but I also see through it to the truth. What if they really did hold my mistakes against me and resented me? I could still see through their behavior to the truth.
When someone is living an ego belief in blame and guilt they are suffering. They are suffering because they are confused and cannot see that they are loved. If my kids blamed me and thought I was the cause of their unhappiness I could see it as if they were punishing me, or I could see it as the call for love it is. I could also remember that this is all just a story and that when the soul sheds the body, it sheds the story as well. Behind the story are beautiful souls. We are not really against each other, but for each other. We are living the life that will help us all wake up and that is all that is happening here.
The perception that leaves me feeling bereft of love and guilty for my mistakes is beholding the world. The perception that leaves me feeling grateful and compassionate is beholding the truth. When I behold the world, I lose sight of God. When I believe in the world of the ego, I believe that God is like the ego and so I no longer know God. But God didn’t change and He didn’t go anywhere. As my mind heals and I see the real world more clearly, I also draw closer to God.
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