Our concerns determine the quality of our presence in the world,
and thus shape our individual destinies. Thomas Hora
Back of you is the Infinite Source of Life, Health, and Strength. ECH
Man suffers from insufficient
understanding of Reality. Enlightened
man
views life as a dream from which he has awakened. While others around him are
still involved in the dream, he
himself is just a nonparticipating observer.
Or,
let us put it this way: enlightened
man
is like someone who sits in a movie and, while others around him are fully
absorbed in experiencing the actions on the screen, he himself remains
unaffected by the plot or by the behavior of others around him. He is just a
nonparticipating observing presence. He can walk out of the cinema at any time,
whereas unenlightened man gets sucked into the movie and
experiences the scenes on the screen as if they were happening to him. Enlightened man is
not interested in entertainment; he is unimpressed by the lure of personal
experiencing.
Unenlightened
life is just a movie. Everyone is dreaming
the dream of life as personal selfhood. We are all dreaming that we are
physical personalities interacting with one another, positively or negatively.
And we are very serious about this because we do not know that we are dreaming,
and so our experiences are very important to us.
"Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians
5:14). This
sentence actually affirms the fact that human experience is a dream and unenlightened man a dreamer, oblivious of Reality.
When we understand that the dream creates
the dreamer, for instance, that Marxist ideas create communists and not the
other way around, we can suddenly understand compassion. Compassion is not
synonymous with sympathy, or with empathy, or with pity or sentimentality.
Compassion is a transcendental form of love which says: "Father forgive them; for they know not what they
do" (Luke 23:34).
Compassion sees that the human condition is a state of hypnotic
counterfeit existence, and the evils of this world are vicious dreams appearing
in the form of evil dreamers, acting singly or collectively. The history of the
Nazi movement in Germany was one vicious dream engulfing an entire nation and
expressing itself as the Second World War. It was a horrendous tidal wave of
the "sea of mental garbage" sweeping over the world.
Compassion cannot be willed. It is existential. Man can decide
to be sympathetic. He can make himself concerned and sad. He can will himself
to feel pity. But true compassion is possible only when consciousness has
awakened to the faculty of spiritual discernment of the difference between
Reality and dream.
“I am what God is.”
God is not a person — I am not a person.
God is Mind — I am intelligent.
God is Love — I am non-personally, non-conditionally benevolent.
God is Perfection — I am healthy.
God is infinite Mercy — I am compassionate.
God is Humor — I am laughter.
God is Peace — I am peaceful.
God is Life — I am vitality.
God is Goodness — I am generous
(in thought as well as in deed).
God is Infinite — I am non-dimensional spirit.
God is Joy — I am joyful.
God is divine Parent — I am assured forever.
God is Eternity — I am “never born, never dying.”
There is no reason for you to care and fear lest you should not
be provided for. The less you take anxious thought the more success you will
have. Hear this thought in the soul: "Cast all your care on God." ECH
Remember:
An arguer never knows.
An arguer never knows.
He’s
trying to convince himself that he does, and it never works. VH
To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew,
shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and
love. It offers you its flowers and its snow, in thankfulness for your
benevolence. You will look upon that which you feel within. If hatred finds a
place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in
death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers. If you feel the Love of God within you,
you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what
God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold
about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or
false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of
which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the
past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget
this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be. Lesson 189
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