‘Nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.’ A Course in Miracles
You are a child of God. You were created in a blinding flash of creativity, a primal thought when God extended Himself in love. Everything you've added on since is useless.
When Michelangelo was asked how he created a piece of sculpture, he answered that the statue already existed within the marble. God Himself had created the Pieta, David, Moses. Michelangelo’s job, as he saw it, was to get rid of the excess marble that surrounded God’s creation.
So it is with you. The perfect you isn’t something you need to create, because God already created it. The perfect you is the love within you. Your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to remove the fearful thinking that surrounds your perfect self, just as excess marble surrounded Michelangelo’s perfect statue.
To remember that you are part of God, that you are loved and lovable, is not arrogant. It’s humble. To think you are anything else is arrogant, because it implies you're something other than a creation of God.
Love is changeless and therefore so are you. Nothing that you have ever done or will ever do can mar your perfection in the eyes of God. You’re deserving in His eyes because of what you are, not because of what you do. What you do or don’t do is not what determines your essential value. That’s why God is totally approving and accepting of you, exactly as you are. What’s not to like? You were not created in sin; you were created in love.
The Divine Mind
‘God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His Light because His Light is what your mind is.’ A Course in Miracles
Psychologist Carl Jung posited the notion of the ‘collective unconscious’, an innate mental structure encompassing the universal thought forms of all humanity. His idea was that if you went deeply enough into your mind, and deeply enough into mine, there is a level we all share. The Course goes ones step further; if you go deeply enough into your mind, and deeply enough into mine, we have the same mind. The concept of a divine, or ‘Christ’ mind, is the idea that, at our core, we are not just identical, but actually the same being. ‘There is only one begotten Son’ doesn’t mean that someone else was it, and we’re not. It means we’re all it. There’s only one of us here.
We’re like the spokes on a wheel, all radiating out from the same centre. If you define us according to our position on the rim, we seem separate and distinct from one another. But if you define us according to our starting point, our source – the centre of the wheel – we’re a shared identity. If you dig deep enough into your mind, and deep enough into mine, the picture is the same: at the bottom of it all, what we are is love.
The word Christ is a psychological term. No religion has a monopoly on the truth. Christ refers to the common thread of divine love that is the core and essence of every human mind.
The love in one of us is the love in all of us. ‘There's actually no place where God stops and you start’, and no place where you stop and I start. Love is energy, an infinite continuum. Your mind extends into mine and into everyone else’s. It doesn’t stay enclosed within your body.
A Course in Miracles likens us to ‘sunbeams’ thinking we’re separate from the sun, or waves thinking we’re separate from the ocean. Just as a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean, we can’t separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind. This truth of who we really are doesn’t change; we just forget it. We identify with the notion of a small, separate self, instead of the idea of a reality we share with everyone.
You aren’t who you think you are. Aren’t you glad? You're not your grades, or your credentials, your resumes, or your house. We aren't those things at all. We are holy beings, individual cells in the body of Christ. A Course in Miracles reminds us that the sun continues to shine and the ocean continues to swell, oblivious to the fact that a fraction of their identity has forgotten what it is. We are who God created us to be. We are all one, we are love itself. ‘Accepting the Christ’ is merely a shift in self-perception. We awaken from the dream that we are finite, isolated creatures, and recognize that we are glorious, infinitely creative spirits. ‘We awaken from the dream that we are weak, and accept that the power of the universe is within us.’
Today's most common psychological orientation is to analyze the darkness in order to reach the light, thinking that if we focus on our neuroses – their origins and dynamics – then we will move beyond them. Eastern religions tell us that if we go for God, all that is not authentically ourselves will drop. Go for the light and darkness will disappear. Focus on Christ means focus on the goodness and power that lie latent within us, in order to invoke them into realization and expression. We get in life that which we focus on. Continual focus on darkness leads us, as individuals and as a society, further into darkness. Focus on the light brings us into the light.
‘I accept the Christ within’ means, ‘I accept the beauty within me as who I really am. I am not my weakness. I am not my anger. I am not my small-mindedness. I am much, much more. And I am willing to be reminded of who I really am.’
From A Return to Love, copyright by Marianne Williamson, 1992, 1996, published by HarperCollins.
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