Lesson 84: Review
Lesson 67: Love created me like itself, and
Lesson 68: Love holds no grievances
I have often remarked, at my spiritual community, that I preach the same sermon every week, just with different examples. The underlying theme of every message is how we can end the separation and remember who we are as beings of light and Love.
A Course in Miracles is no different. It’s an entire book that repeats the same message in every sentence. If we could just fully comprehend one sentence of this book, and allow it to lead to our enlightenment, all the other words become unnecessary. We all learn in different ways and at a different pace from one another, so the Course presents the same idea over and over again, with different words and examples.
I know that if I could fully integrate these two lessons in my own heart and mind, enlightenment would descend upon me in a flash. However, being the recalcitrant bodily form that I am, still firmly ruled by ego, I have to read the words again and again and practice them constantly to even give me a moment of insight into what the Course is teaching.
You see, my ego LOVES grievance. Even about the little things, like finding I am missing one ingredient from my pantry for a planned dinner dish. The grievances against myself begin:
“Why didn’t you read the recipe first
and go the store?”
“Why did you choose this recipe when you have plenty of ingredients to make
something else?”
“Why are you so stupid?”
These are the grievances that play in my head all day, every day, and rob me of my joy. Last night when I discovered I was down one ingredient for the casserole I had my stomach set on, I let go of the grievances, said to myself, “Oh, well,” and carried on without that one ingredient. The end result was a little bit soupier than if I had included the missing ingredient, but it was still amazingly delicious.
Without my grievances rattling around in my head, I was able to let go of the imperfection of the recipe and enjoy a delightful, if runny, casserole. It was a miracle.
When we think of grievances, we often think of the big stuff, like our complaints about politics, world leaders or social matters – but just as there is no order of difficulty in miracles, there’s no scale of grievances. Tiny grievances ward off miracles just as easily as massive ones.
Love created us like itself – to create miracles in every moment. To do that it lets go of all grievances – any and all complaints about what we perceive to be the state of the world both around us and within us.
When we truly embrace that idea that Love created us like itself, we will realize as St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote: “We cannot be what God is not.”
All are having a relationship with God.
A pear taken from a limb and
set in a bowl,
surely it is talking to its Lord,
and happy that it is being honored for its life,
and somehow knowing
that soon it will be
returning to Him.
We use words like “returning.”
Think about that. Inherent in that word is
separation.
and separation from God is never
really possible.
What can you be that God is not?
“You cannot be what I am not,”
my Lord once said to me.
Photo by Jonathan Pielmayer on Unsplash