Together, We Light the Way

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Study of Text, Chapter 13: VI. Finding the Present, P 1. 8-29-16

VI. Finding the Present, P 1
1 To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own. But for this no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for reality leaves no room for any error. This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him now. His past has no reality in the present, so you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also not there, and if it is to them that you react, you see but an image of him that you made and cherish instead of him. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. If you remember the past as you look upon your brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now.

Journal
I have really been practicing staying in the now and have small success, but I’m not giving up. I keep practicing. Here is another way to practice. I can start to notice my thoughts about the people in my life. Then I can notice if they have anything to do with the person I perceive in front of me at this moment, or if they are just past thoughts carried forward. And that is on the level of form, because if I saw him without any of my projections I would see his Divinity.

I am sometimes jarred from sleeping mind as I realize that I have been cherishing an image of a person rather than the person that they are. For instance, I have suddenly seen one of my children, really seen them, and realized that not only had I fixed in my mind an image of that one, but it was an image of my own making. It was really an image of my thoughts about that one. Those thoughts are no longer relevant, if they ever were, and if I keep cherishing them, I will not ever know this person I love.

As I think about this, the illusion I seem so fond of gets blurry and seems to waver. Could everything I have believed was real and indisputable be just images projected from my mind, just like Jesus has been saying? Ha ha ha. Yep. I was thinking about a friend of mine. There was a “fact” about her that I absolutely believed, and one day she said something that shattered that “truth” about her.

Again, I was startled to realize that I don’t really know this person either. I just know my thoughts and beliefs about her, just like I do with my children. How deep does this go? Is there anything about her that I didn’t make up through my I thoughts? Does everyone she knows have an image of her that is entirely different than mine? I know for sure that some of the people in her life think of her differently than I do. I can almost guarantee that she knows herself differently than I know her. I made her up out of my thoughts and beliefs and she made herself up out of her thoughts and beliefs. Gosh the world I see continues to shimmer in and out of focus.

And so now I have to ask myself if I am courageous enough to let the images go entirely so that I can see what stands behind them, what is actually real and true.

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