Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do.
In her book, A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”
Today’s lesson tries to help us wrap our mind around this concept that our greatest fear is that we are “powerful beyond measure.” We, honestly, don’t want to be that powerful, because with power comes great responsibility. We prefer to play small because that way, while we may lose the adulation of the world, we will definitely escape its scorn if things go sideways.
If we actually embraced the Reality of our holiness, we could transform the world. Our holiness, this lesson says, “is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind.”
Who we really are isn’t limited by time, or space, or anything we see in this outside world. Instead, the lesson says, “Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone because it is equal in its power to save anyone.”
Some people take this idea and turn it into a magic trick – a “Secret” kind of manifesting where they wish for cars, money, prestige or power. The Law of Attraction does work and it can bring you earthly possessions and wealth, but that’s just an outward manifestation of power. What the Course is talking about, especially in this lesson, is creating something not quantifiable out here in the world – but instead manifesting in this world the only thing that is real – love.
Cars, houses, power, prestige all wither and die in the world at some point. Love, the only thing that is real, never grows old, never decreases in value and never dies. It is the only thing that brings true and lasting peace to the world. If we understood this – if we understood our true power lies beyond manifesting material things – then we would be very careful and deliberate in how we thought, lived and moved in this world.
In Acts, Chapter 17, the Apostle Paul argues before the Athenians that God cannot be found in the outward signs of wealth and power in the world, nor does God live in our ego-created institutions, be they religious or secular. Indeed, God is the very energy in which we “live and move and have our being,” Paul observed. We are “offspring” of the Holy, he said, and as such, “we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.”
Instead, both Paul and the Course argue that the Holy is within us – where we live and move and have our being – and if that is true, then there is nothing our holiness cannot do.
Instead of shrinking in fear at the powerful holiness we possess, this lesson invites us to step into that power, apply it to some situations you’re currently facing, and see what it feels like to live and move and have your very being in the holiness of God.
Hafiz imagines it this way:
The tide of my love has risen so high,
let me flood over you.
Close your eyes for a moment
and maybe all your fears and fantasies
will end.
If that happened God would become
an infant in your arms
and you would find you could
nurse all creation.
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