Sean Reagan

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Lesson 180 of A Course in Miracles teaches that we are not alone because we are never truly separated from our source. We remain forever connected in Creation to our Creator. What God creates can neither die nor be injured nor become sick.

Thus, “God is but Love, and therefore so am I” is a declaration of freedom. All life depends on it.

The truth of our lived experience is that we often feel lost and alone; we feel disconnected from others and from God. Our spiritual search may feel empty or hollow, it may ground out in despair, and appear bereft of purpose or function. And yet – because we cannot logically be apart from God – these feelings are basically illusions. They obscure what is true; they are not true themselves.

Thus, this lesson – like all the lessons in this review period – gently but insistently confirms that our true nature is Love, and that there are not many loves but One Love, and that the sooner we remember this, the sooner we can get on with the joy of living. We are united with all that is, because “all that is” in its wholeness, reflects God. Only our belief in separation causes us to feel isolated and disconnected from our brothers and sisters and from God.

Again, the belief in separation is an illusion. It is not grounded in fact but rather in the ego’s interpretation of perception. We are free to choose to ignore the ego – its arguments, its pleas, its threats and empty promises. We are not victims of circumstance, as ego suggests, but rather minds that can choose – again and again and again as necessary – to remember they are not separate from the Mind which brings them forth as thought itself.

Please remember: this remembering does not change the world – our job does not suddenly become a permanent vacation, our hearts do not suddenly turn into prisms that know nothing but Light. But we do experience the world through a lens of joy and peace, which is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us. And this experience is both vastly relaxing and deeply creative.

There is no healing unto which we are not equal.

Thus, Lesson 180 reminds us to look beyond the surface of experience, beyond the endless appearances that comprise the world, and to see instead the Truth beyond all of it – which Truth is the truth of our own being, perfectly reflecting our capacity to choose to remember only Love.

We are not separate beings, each struggling to survive in a harsh and unforgiving world, forever set against one another in desperate combat and competition. Rather, we are all connected in the Mind of God which forever extends itself in us.

Our function is to awaken to the truth of our being, and to remember our divine nature. As the Course puts it, we remember that we are called to accept the atonement for ourselves (T-2.V.5:1) and in that way become capable of loving in a loveless place (T-14.IV.4:10).

Lesson 180 reminds us that every moment is ripe with possibility. We can choose to see the world through the lens of separation, or ego, or we can choose to see the world through Christ Vision, which is the lens of Love, which is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us.

When we choose to see through the Divine Lens of Love, we open ourselves up to the miracles that are present in each and every moment. We become vessels of love and light, and our healing cannot be limited to a body or relationship. The absence of exceptions is what Love is.

←Lesson 179
Lesson 181→

I will be still an instant and go home.

This lesson of A Course in Miracles conveys the idea that the world we seem to live in is not our true home. We are alien here. Yet in the recess of our mind, we know this. The memory of our true home haunts us, as if we were being called to return to a childhood home.

Critically, return is possible.

The challenge is, we do not recognize the voice nor what it reminds us of. That is why the lesson uses the word “haunt.” We are confused and our confusion scares us. This feeling of exile comes and goes – becomes faint or strong – but it never actually leaves us. It’s like a permanent feature of the interior landscape. We miss our home in the same way we miss our identity.

Indeed, it is almost the same problem.

Stillness is the means by which we remember both our identity and the way home. It cannot be accomplished by anything in the physical world or in our bodily experiences in that world. The experience of Heaven transcends all that. It is in essence – because of its fundamental innocence – a childlike experience.

. . . there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows that he is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground (W-pI.182.4:3-5).

The holiness of this Child – who is not separate from us – literally lights up Heaven,” which in turn reminds us that there can be “no substitute for Heaven” (W-pI.182.3:6). In other words, our ultimate peace and happiness can only be found in relationship with God, and with all our brothers and sisters who, collectively, share Creation with us.

In this way, we go beyond the superficial and temporary pleasures of the world in order to cultivate the interior stillness in which we might care for this inner Child, who is both home in us (W-pI.182.5:5) and in Heaven (WpI.182.5:7). He is our vital link both to remembering what we are in truth and what our actual home is.

The Child is a symbol of the innocence and purity that we all share because we share in God’s Creation. It is a truth in us that remains untouched by the illusions of the world propogated by ego. As those barriers are undone, we remember with increasingly clarity that “Christ is reborn as but a little child each time a wanderer would leave his home” (W-pI.182.10:1).

We are all aliens here, until we remember that we cannot actually be separate from Creation, or Heaven. What is true can be ignored or denied but it cannot be undone. Truth is true. This is the essence of Christ Consciousness – the notion that a universal principle of divine love and wisdom permeates the cosmos, transcending our limited ideas of time and space, identity and home.

Today’s lesson urges us to adopt a nonviolent stance in our practice. Rather than go to war with ego in a futile effort to defeat what is not real, we simply lay down the spear and the sword we raised against an enemy with no existence (W-pI.182.11:1) and rest in Christ, whose cry for help is our own cry, which only we can answer.

Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely. He comes as does a little child . . . (W-pI.182.11:2-4).

In stillness today, we recollect our innocence, and we care for it as we would a child, trusting that our efforts will reveal both the way and the journey’s end (e.g., W-pI.182.12:8). In stillness, we are home.

←Lesson 181
Lesson 183→

The introduction to the next sequence of lessons makes clear that we are yet beginners. The goal is to reinforce our willingness to commit to A Course in Miracles, and to bring our “scattered goals” into unified intent, by recognizing what we truly value.

Inner peace and contentment arise because of this unified commitment. This matters! The Course is not asking us to be successful students but rather committed ones – that will bring us peace. That will make us happy.

It is as if the critical detail is our willingness to engage in the process of learning, rather than on measuring or judging the quality of that learning.

There are still nontrivial blocks to our learning; this group of lessons is going to attempt to lift them, even briefly, so that we might experience “the sense of liberation their lifting brings” (Wi181-200.2:3), which relief and rest is beyond language.

We are going to sample a sense of joy and freedom to which we are as yet (perhaps) unaccustomed, and this taste will inspire our practice. The total commitment to which we are being guided becomes desirable because we can now see the final effect of our study and practice.

It is worth repeating: all the lessons ever ask of us is a little willingness. We are going to pratice going beyond all our defenses for a little while – not permanently, not totally, not forever. Just for a little while. Not more than this is needed because our little willingness is the surety that more will come in time.

We cannot fail. So long as we persist, learning will occur, and we will experience their benefits.

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

It is not possible to be separated from God. But it is possible to deny our oneness with God. We can ignore grace but we cannot undo it. We cannot make what is true false. Our happiness and peace depend on a right understanding of what we are in truth and on our willingness to accept that reality, rather than resist it.

This lesson begins with four questions, each of which is aimed at revealing the depth and intensity of our self-denial. They are leading questions – each supposing a variation of the answer “I am doing this to myself” (T-27.VIII.10:1).

So this lesson basically has two parts: remind us that we are not – because we cannot be – separate from God and, to the extent we feel we are separate from God, to remember that we are the ones driving that separation and that there is – thank Christ there is – another way.

Deny not Heaven. It is yours today, but for the asking . . . Ask to receive, and it is given you (W-pI.165.4:1-2, 4).

What tends to stand in the way of accepting Heaven is doubt. We don’t believe that we’re worthy. Or we believe that God is capricious and unreliable. Or we’re on the wrong spiritual path and the right one will make everything easier. All of these concerns are forms of doubt, which in turn are forms of fear.

Doubt brings forth the idea of sacrifice and makes it appear meaningful. Doubt begets a personal sense of suffering because doubt always arises as confusion about what we are which, in turn, means that we are confused about joy and pain (e.g. T-7.X.3:6-7).

Conviction lies within [Heaven]. Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow (W-pI.165.4:5-8).

The end of doubt is certainty, but certainy comes when we ask for it with real desire, and then accept without condition or qualification what is given in response. Do you want the peace of God? Then the peace of God is there, by virtue of your desire for it. It is not God’s intention that we should go without the sure knowledge of our identity.

Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God’s sustaining Love and from his home (W-pI.165.6:5-6).

The suggestion is that we lean not our own certainty – which is feeble and compromised at best – but rather on God’s. Where God abides, truth abides, and where truth abides there can be no doubt. Hence the injunction to not deny the Thought of God but rather to accept that it cannot be absent from us (W-pI.165.7:2-3-5, 8:1). Even if we think or feel otherwise, we cannot be absent from God.

Our willingness to practice in this way is what matters. The gift has already been given; God’s grace is already our only reality and thus our only identity. We merely open our minds to remember what is already inherent in them. Beyond fear and hate, beyond doubt and anger, is the quiet stillness of Love in which all dreams end, including the happy dream of being host to that which is all-encompassing and eternal. Today we let a few beams of divine light in to warm us and show the way forward to the peace that – for a little while longer yet – surpasses understanding.

←Lesson 164
Lesson 166→