God is Love and Love is Real

When we feel lost, we also feel compelled to do something about it. Maybe retrace our steps. Maybe climb to higher ground and survey the landscape. Maybe try harder or go faster. Maybe cry out for help.

It seems that is the only way to bring about the truth that God is love and love is real.

But doing never undid anything, and the kind of lost we are talking about – the grief that any child of God knows when they believe they are separated from their Creator – cannot be healed through worldly channels. The problem is not out there; it is internal. We are asking the wrong questions and directing them to the wrong party.

A Course in Miracles will not heal you. At best, it is simply the symbol by which you will at last realize that you are already healed, already found, and already home. At best, it will be the illusory means by which you are finally able to ask: is the kingdom I have made worthy of myself, my brothers and sisters, and God? That is when real healing begins.

A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make (T-7.XI.2:6-8).

It is so essential that we see the uselessness of our efforts and the futility of our designs. This is not a question of saying our plan is okay but God’s plan is better. It is a question of releasing our plan altogether. We don’t know what needs to be done and if we did, we wouldn’t know how to do it.

We resist this self-denigration for many reasons – it offends our dignity, it seems impractical and so on. But mostly we cannot accept it because it is terrifying. We are all that we know, and the world we make most certainly seems to be our home.

It seems that if we give up the self and the dismal kingdom made to be its home, that nothing will remain.

Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they lead nowhere, lost their hope (T-31.IV.3:4-5).

But we are not alone. And the self we made and the world we made – as dense and complex and as real as they seem – are simply braids of smoke which, blown away by the lightest of breezes – reveal another Kingdom beyond, one that was always there.

God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourself (T-7.XI.3:9-11).

When we stop judging life and stop forcing our tiny selves on life then life will simply reveal itself as the gift from God it is, and has been, and will always be. It is already there. It was given to us and we simply have to make some space in which to see this.

All A Course in Miracles aims to do is help us remove the blocks which prohibit the recollection of God’s Blessing.

Thus, when we feel lost and bereft – when hopelessness seems the only card left to play – can we be still? Can we be quiet? The moment in which all seems most lost is also the moment of salvation.

For God is merciful, and did not let His Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is your escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can you be found. There is no path that does not lead to Him (T-31.IV.11:4-7).

When you are scared, sit by with it. When you are lonesome or angry or grief-stricken, sit by with it. When you are guilty or vengeful or greedy or jealous, sit by with it. It is an old law, an old truth. When despair is most pervasive, the grounds for hope are nearest at hand. Only stop fighting. Only stop trying to find Heaven yourself. Do nothing and what is will be revealed.