The Name of God is my inheritance.
In the previous lesson, we learned about the power of God’s Name and how it is also our own. Remembering this fact becomes a means of remembering our underlying oneness. Lesson 184 of A Course in Miracles reinforces these ideas by making clear that our oneness is not a choice on our part or God’s but is rather established in Creation itself. How else could it be our inheritance?
The foundation of our ACIM practice rests on the premise that there is but one Creation; God has “but one Son” (T-2.VII.6:1). If the Name of God is my inheritance, it must also be yours. Therefore, our onenes with God is not a thread between us and God but more like an inclusive space gathering all of Creation – people, animals, quasars, dark matter. Nothing can be excluded. Total and perfect inclusion is what Love is.
It is by remembering – not once but eternally – what Love is that we can finally release false beliefs, ego-based thoughts and erroneous perception and thus experience actual inner peace.
A Course in Miracles teaches us that we live by symbols (W-pI.184.1:1). This process of symbolization inevitably fragments reality by separating one aspect of it from another. Symbols can be helpful in sharing ideas and facilitating understanding at the level of the body but they cannot adequately capture the full essence of wholeness.
We cannot be persuaded of oneness and we cannot be sold oneness. We can only realize oneness for our own selves.
In this way, the Course neatly harmonizes with other nondual traditions which consider the fundamental unity of reality or the ultimate truth to be largely beyond the limitations of language or even pictorial symbols. In the Hindu tradition, the concept of Brahman, the ultimate reality, is generally considered to be beyond description or comprehension. There is no prohibition on the word but there is a recognition of its ultimate futility.
So while symbols can point us in the direction of the unity of reality, they are inherently limited by their separative nature, as they break down the whole into parts or concepts. To truly grasp the unity of reality, we need to leave “the sum of the inheritance the world bestows” (W-pI.184.6:1), the “teachig of the world” (W-pI.184.7:1) and discover that “what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming” (W-pI.184.8:3).
Fear and its myriad forms – confusion, anxiety, distraction, conflict – are merely effects of taking literally our capacity to symbolize, believing it can do more than what in truth it can.
There is – because there is always another way.
. . . what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name which God has given you; the one Identity which all things share; the one acknowledgement of what is true (W-pI.184.10:1-2).
In truth, God has no name (W-pI.184.12:1). But this does not denote emptiness or nothingness. On the contrary.
And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. All names are unified; all space is filled with truth’s reflection. Every gap is closed, and separation healed (W-pI.184.12:2-4).
We begin by accepting the limitations of language, and by recognizing how the way in which it functions naturally brings forth the appearance of separation. After that recognition we can become responsible for how we use language. We can use it to ground our practice in silence and stillness and thus decline to reinforce the underlying fragmentation.
This is the essence of the beautiful prayer at the end of the lesson. It is words but not words that force us into a posture of reliance, substituting yet another interpretation for truth. By approaching this prayer in humility and willingness, we easily remember that we can use words and other symbols such that “all foolish separations disppear which kept us blind” (W-pI.184.14:3).
Let us pray and in our prayer remember that the Vision of Christ is our inheritance. Indeed, it is the active tense of God’s Name.
