Searching for God Correctly

A Course in Miracles teaches us that our lonely journey in search of God will fail because it excludes that which it would find (T-14.X.10:7).

It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it (T-14.X.10:1-2).

The search for God has many names – it is simultaneously a quest for peace, for meaning, for comfort, for order, for grace, for aid, for an end to suffering and pain. It is, in the deepest sense, a longing to be loved and, especially, to know we are loved, to trust we are loved.

Ego interprets this longing in terms of form. The “form” of A Course in Miracles, or the “form” of church, or the “form” of a therapist, or the “form” of a lover, or the “form” of yoga. The form becomes of the object of pursuit; the form becomes all that matters.

To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. Otherwise it will attack the form (T-14.X.8:2-3).

If our spiritual practice can be affected by a shift in form – the church burns down, the text is misplaced, our lover leaves us – then it is not a spiritual practice of healing but rather an active ongoing denial of our responsibility to accept and extend miracles. This is a hard truth that we all have to face at some point. Facing it is what drives us to accept the Holy Spirit and its holy alternative.

The Holy Spirit translates the form of our lived experience (which includes our addiction to form) into relationships, all of which are the same because they are all simply opportunities to remember love by receiving love and to receive love by offering love. This simplicity accelerates healing by making clear that all life is a simultaneously a cry for love and a response to that cry (T-14.X.7:1).

A lot rests on “simulteously.”

When we live this way, then the form our living takes recedes in importance. Eventually it disappears. We accept our role as miracle-workers by accepting our need for miracles. Our one need is for love and our sole function is to join with our brothers and sisters in order to remember love.

Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning (T-14.X.10:5-6).

A Course in Miracles is a course in learning what we are in truth. It undoes the false identity endorsed by the ego and restores to awareness the holiness of all Creation, which is holy because we are not apart from it.

In practice, the Course is an invitation to reframe our lives. We are not really husbands, daughters, lawyers, or alcoholics. We are not really democrats or republicans, or Athenians or Spartans. We are brothers and sisters remembering that our Father in Heaven loves us. This remembering is active; it is our calling and our function. We are participants in it; our cooperation matters.

Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are (T-14.X.12:2-3).

This is but another way of saying that nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).

Therefore, in a nontrivial way, we can set aside the grand search for God – whatever name we have given it, however personal we take it, whatever secret goal it contains – and instead tend to our brothers and sisters. It is possible for us to welcome them home, one and all, without exception, and to allow them in turn to give us welcome.

Truly, there is nothing else to do anymore, and only we can do it.