Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
Lesson 84 These are the ideas for today’s review:
- (67) Love created me like Itself. I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concept to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself.
- You might find these specific forms helpful in applying the idea: Let me not see an illusion of myself in this. As I look on this, let me remember my Creator. My Creator did not create this as I see it.
- (68) Love holds no grievances. Grievances are completely alien to love. Grievances attack love and keep its light obscure. If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. I am determined not to attack my Self today, so that I can remember Who I am.
- These specific forms for applying this idea would be helpful: This is no justification for denying my Self. I will not use this to attack love. Let this not tempt me to attack myself.[1]
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 84…Foundation of Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). P. 149.
Notes and Personal Application: Fifteen-minute morning meditation reviewing lesson idea 67: Love created me like Itself. Join with me as I meditate upon and write the thoughts and ideas that come from accepting the concept that Love created me like Itself, or God created me like Himself. Love created me to be Love. God is love and God created me to be one with Him.
God did not create me to be fearful that others may not like me. God did not create anyone or anything that He loves more than me or less than me. There are no hierarchies in Love. When God created me like Himself, He created me to love everybody and have no favorites. If I want the best for my family; I want the best for your family. I want nothing to happen to your family that I would not want to happen to my family! In God’s sight, there are no such things as special privileges. There is no black privilege or white privilege. This is a thing of the ego that would cause negativity and fear between people of different skin tones and genetic backgrounds. In God’s world differences like this do not exist. God did not create this world. God is Whole and He creates in Wholeness, not in splintered parts that cannot get along and bear ill will and longstanding grudges against the other. We are whole because we are one. There is nothing that can keep us apart in our spirit and we are spirit and we are one. Love created us like Itself.
In undoing the way we see things now; we must realize that what we have read in the Bible cannot be true about God. God does not have a favorite people whom He gives license to commit genocide on others. God does not require blood and meat to be burned with fire – God is a Spirit. God is Love. This world is separation from God. Even our religions have made up God to be more like a devil than the loving, caring Father spirit that He is. We must be careful not to pray to this god who would smite our enemies and then turn around and smite us as well when we would trespass against his boorish, jealous, demanding nature. If we pray to this kind of god we will think it is acceptable to be like it, instead of Love.
Our God Who is Love, does not dwell in special, manmade buildings or require statues that fade over time or worship from slavish pets. We must be careful to wipe this concept of God from our minds because we do not want to be a manipulated Manipulator who lives for the praise and sacrifice of others and justify our materialistic cravings under the guise of spirituality.
God is love. God created us like Himself. We are love. To return to God is to return to who and what we really are. We are to become love and love is to become us. This is not a process anywhere but in time. Time is the place we came when we removed ourselves from our Source. In that it is not in eternity and the everlasting, it is an illusion no matter how real it may feel. Our bodies seem real to us, but we are not our bodies. No body could ever look like or be like God! God does not have a penis and testicles and vestigial nipples. He does not have a vagina, or breasts, or eyes or ears. He does not have whiskers or bushy eyebrows or moles, pimples, or age spots. He is not made of flesh, muscle, corpuscles, or blood, and when He brought us into being, He made us like Him – an everlasting, ever-loving, ever-holy spirit.
There is nothing greater than love and never can be. Love is everlasting life and everlasting laughter. Love is everlasting extension. Love is everywhere, always. The only place that there is anything that is not love is in folds of eternity called time – the world of shadows, of fear, of hatred, of violence, struggles for power and control.
We come to these worlds by allowing our minds to be corrupted by that which is not Love. Picture a tall glass of cold water, clear and pure – contaminated by one little plop of poop or drop of pee. Our contaminated minds make worlds of war and strife, viruses and bacteria, hierarchies, subversions, lust, guilt, shame, sorrow, blemishes, betrayals, selfishness, greed, sickness, grudges, variances, racism, sexism – the world of opposites. A world of bodies. A world of the walking, talking, breathing dead. We call hatred love and we teach each other to fear the Love that would save us!
Yet none of this exists in Love. And Love created me like Itself. I will worship not the substitutes for God that our religions and holy books offer! I will not believe the world of lies that would make me fear to love the God who calls to me. I will not believe that God would ever make me into a body that is born to bring more of my own kind into the world, to suffer, and to die. Love created me like Itself! I will not believe that I am a body. As I look on what happens in this world of illusion, let me remember who and what I really am and the God who created me. My Creator did not create these bodies with their infections and lust and drives which separate us and make us afraid of each other. Love created me like Itself!
Fifteen-minute evening meditation reviewing lesson idea 68: Love holds no grievances. Grievances have no place in love! When we have cause to build a grudge against our brothers and sisters, we are given yet another opportunity for growth, for forgiveness, for a miracle. We can take this opportunity to reflect the nature of our true Self, to turn our backs upon the false selves in which our ego is based. When our brother does not respect our boundaries, instead of getting angry at him, and telling other people how we feel, we can tell him and trust that he is kind enough, big-hearted enough, smart enough, and loving enough to understand.
When we talk trash about our brother to others, we are not being true to God or to our God-created Self. Instead we are serving an alien concept of ourselves which leads to disintegration and derailment. If he still doesn’t respect our boundaries, we have even more reason to reflect God’s love and forgiveness. It doesn’t mean we have to tax ourselves unnecessarily to let him usurp control of our lives, but it does mean that we refuse to hold a grievance. We refuse to attack. When we attack, we are attacking God Who is Love; we are attacking ourselves, who are made in His likeness. Doing this, we teach ourselves to know a poisoned version of ourselves and we teach others to know a poisoned version of themselves. We lose sight of who and what we really are to each other and years go by in time (thankfully not in eternity) where instead of loving and enjoying our beloved brother, if we talk at all, we communicate in only the politest and most superficial way to avoid conflict.
Grievances are aliens to Love. Grievances thrive on fear. Grievances scare us into things rather than draw us by their love. Grievances demand apologies and thrive on punishing and humiliating others. Grievances avoid meaningful conversations and true communication. Grievances are a form of punishment. While Love says, “Let us discuss what makes us both feel good and draw up a plan that will make us both happy,” grievances say, “We won’t talk about the real issue. I will only focus on my own feelings, and what you did against me. We will then focus on what you have to do to get back in my good graces. And in the meantime, I will keep you at a distance, so you never hurt me again.”
Honest communication offers us opportunities for growth, Self-actualization, and healing separation; holding grievances keeps us bound in ignorance and despair. They say, “Because you did this, I will do this.” In other words, instead of teaching kindness and forgiveness, they teach that one person can be an even bigger ass than the other. While Jesus tells us that there is never justification for holding a grievance, some people cherish them. For those who cherish grievances, we offer love and forgiveness, but we cannot join with them in their grudge holding. We must shut our ears to it and close off our minds.
It used to be that I cherished grievances for decades, never losing sight of slights, injustices, or infringements that others made upon me. While time’s passing should have naturally dulled the sense of pain and shame that had blighted my childhood, it would always be something that triggered the negative memories and refreshed them in my mind. Psychologically I would give myself credit for surviving without going stark raving mad. I would also use grievances to excuse the bad choices or wrong decisions that I made. In other words, I chose to let the past continue to hurt me and inflict suffering on others by not learning how to forgive it.
Add to that the grievances that others poured into my consciousness. I not only had my own list of gripes, but I took on the grudges of my parents, relatives, friends, sister, brothers, nieces and nephews, son and daughters. Watching the news and reading the paper added more. Fictionalized stories and dramatizations of wrongdoing and crimes against humanity grieved me further. Studying history increased my sense of injustice against past political figures, slave traders, and animal abusers.
One thing that has especially caused me indignation and sense of grudge-worthiness is when someone would get me all spun up against an unfaithful husband, a thieving friend, a lying coworker one day and then the next day would be back to buddy-buddy while I was still reeling from all the grievances they had blathered about to me! How dare they, I would write in my journal. Now I am stuck with all that hatred and resentment, never feel the same way about so-and-so again, and they are back to lovey-dovey, kissy-kissy! I just hate them, I would rant in my personal writing.
While the ego bombards us with multiple, ridiculous reasons of varying degrees and form to hold on to them, Jesus reminds us that Love holds no grievances. There is never any justification to attack who and what we are in Love, Jesus tells us. There is no grievance too big or too small that mean more to us than God or who we are in Christ! When we take a firm stand for Love by refusing to cherish grievances or be a garbage bin for those who would dump them upon us, we teach others the joy and freedom of letting them go. This is how we are saved, this is how the world is saved, by freeing our mind of unforgiveness and remembering who and what we really are in Love.
the friar patch 