Lesson 67: Love created me like itself.
St. Teresa of Calcutta once remarked: “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”
That’s how this lesson makes me feel. If Love created me like Itself, then that means I am made of nothing but Love, which is a HUGE responsibility to live up to. A responsibility I don’t think I asked for and if I did, I can’t fathom how to actually live up to such a high expectation. That’s, of course, what my ego wants me to believe. It’s easy to believe the ego, since it’s got all the proof that the last thing you were created like was Love.
This lesson assures us that all of the qualities God has – Love, joy, compassion, justice, acceptance – all reside within us as well, since we are created from that pure Love that is God. The ego scoffs at this. As evidence, it dredges up the old religious traditions of my childhood that warned you not to get above your raisin’ which most definitely means don’t go comparing yourself to God. God is God and you are you and never the twain shall meet.
My religious background taught me that I was made in God’s image – but I am a mere reflection of the qualities of God. I do not actually possess those qualities and to think that I do is to think more highly of myself than I ought.
A Course in Miracles is clear on this point. I am not a reflection of God’s attributes. I share those attributes because I am a Child of God – a Thought eternally contained in the mind of God. I swim in a sea of God – a sea that is created by Love and is part of my very being. My task in this world is simply to remember that. To refute the ego’s quick evidence that tells me it’s arrogant to equate myself to God in any fashion.
The Course recommends we do this lesson repeatedly, to drown out the ego’s insistence that we are nothing like God and it’s ridiculous – and blasphemous – to think that we are. The ego will remind us that we are a “stinking bag of worms,” as Martin Luther proclaimed, and we’re just damn lucky God’s grace covers us.
When those thoughts begin to take over our mind, this lesson recommends that we get specific about our shared attributes with our Creator. We tell ourselves:
Holiness created me holy.
Kindness
created me kind.
Helpfulness
created me helpful.
Perfection
created me perfect.
When we understand the true magnificence that we were created to be in this world, all suffering ceases and we can embrace the fact that Love created us like itself – a light that shines in eternity waiting to be brought into this world through us. It is not arrogant to believe we are the light of the world. It is humbling. It means God trusts us with the ability to save the world and end the separation.
Hafiz puts it this way:
Parallel the care the dancer takes
on her finest step,
you need to feel the craving for that unison
you need to know all the
longing the great ones had to suffer
Before God said to them, “Here I am,
yours to do with whatever you like.”
And when will the Beloved say such
a sublime thing to you, give you all that power?
A prerequisite is: when all you touch,
you touch as if it were sacred.
That will bring your mind to a standstill
The space between you and any object
Will then open up into a sea of radiance,
where you can drown for a second, drown,
and taste me.
Photo by Mayur Gala on Unsplash