Separation from God

Because human beings believe that they are separated from God, we have religion. We have religion and we have psychology. We are always trying to negotiate a solution to the problem of the so-called fall. We believe we are outside of the garden – split off from the perfection of Creation – and thus are condemned to struggle and labor, ever bent on recovering our lost state of grace.

A Course in Miracles teaches that the separation – the fall from grace – never happened. It is an illusion. It was at the outset a slip of a thought, an insane idea briefly entertained, at which we forgot to laugh. Because we take the separation seriously, we give it all the reality it has. A Course in Miracles would end it now. We do not have to suffer.

How liberating this is! Or at least how liberating it can be, if we are willing to practice it, willing to allow ourselves to be healed of it. The separation from God begets fear and guilt, loneliness and sorrow, scarcity and anguish. It is the idea from which all suffering springs. And it can be undone as easily as blowing on a match. What never happened has no reality. And what is not real, cannot have any effects.

Thus, the Course teaches us that we are always at home in Heaven. It teaches us that we do not have to “earn” Heaven through good deeds, that we do not have to perfect the spirit “there” through suffering “here.” There are no conditions and there are no entrance examinations. Heaven is all there is and all there ever was and all that will ever be. Seeing that – accepting that – is our joy not complete? Are we not wholly at peace?

So we have to question the separation. We have to consider it as an idea and we have to see all its effects. Without exception, we must bring all of it up into the light – the light of understanding and clarity, which is all the light of the Holy Spirit – and allow it to be undone. When we learn at last that the separation is an illusion, then we will remember that we are always at home in God. Creation is perfect and eternal. It is impossible for it to be otherwise.

Read again the early lines in the Introduction to the text: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” The peace of God is contained in those lines because they give the lie to the Separation.

This is our practice. This is our one goal. To remember with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit that we have not left God. No other healing is necessary. No other recollection will restore us to the glory of our real Home.