Lesson 70: My salvation comes from me.
Oh, man, my ego really, really doesn’t like today’s lesson at all. It flies in the face of the religious tradition in which I was raised. If I had said to my religious teachers of my childhood, “My salvation comes from me,” they would have strung me up immediately as a heretic. Pearls would be clutched. Collective gasps would be gasped. The world would implode.
The arrogance of such a statement would render them all aghast. Salvation, I was taught, comes only from one man – that Jesus guy – dying on a cross for your sins, and don’t you forget it, buster. “You’re a filthy sinner who deserves hell and the only reason – hear me, now – the ONLY reason you’re not going straight to hell this minute is because Jesus died for your sins, you terrible, wretched, worm of a soul,” they all said to me.
Those old tapes of fire and brimstone still play their top hits when lessons like this pop up in the workbook, promising me that I have gone far afield from the faith of my childhood. Thank God I have, because those old tapes no longer make any sense to me – they don’t have a beat that’s easy to dance to – and for good reason. Dancing is of the devil anyway.
To even think that we create the universe we inhabit is a special kind of heresy. Only God creates – we inhabit whatever gets created. The Course says we have it all backward – we create by extension just as God does. When we extend love, whatever we create is holy, just as God creates in love. Our problem is we believe we can create without love. That is the product of our split mind. The good news is, whatever we create without love doesn’t really exist – it’s all an illusion we use to forget who we truly are. It is all just clouds passing over the sky of our infinite, innocent Reality.
When we go beyond those clouds of this egoic illusion, we find that we have never left the mind of God – we remain in unity with God and with one another. We can bring that Reality back into this little “r” reality by realizing we have the power to change this dream – to make it a happy one and ultimately allow God to awaken us into the joy, peace and Love that we truly are. In this way, we are, indeed, the source of our own salvation – because we are the Holy having a bodily experience. Salvation is just one good awakening away.
Hafiz compares our awakening to all the mouths he saw in this certain city:
They were happier, all the mouths I saw in a certain city.
For they all woke up one day and mostly forgot
what they were for besides…just kissing.
And in between their rounds of sweet romantic
play,
they – all those mouths,
Appeared to have few lingering
impulses,
except for a little food.
That is – talking, everyone
came to realize,
was basically useless.
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash