Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?
Lesson 226 My Home Awaits Me. I Will Hasten There.
- If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death, which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world. If I believe it has value as I see it now, so will it still remain for me. But if I see no value in the world, as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth.
- Father, my home awaits my glad return. Your Arms are open, and I hear Your Voice. What need have I to linger in a place of vain desires and of shattered dreams when Heaven can so easily be mine?1
Notes and Personal Application: When we realize that the world has nothing to offer us, our minds can be released into the mind of Christ. We may still be here in our flesh and blood bodies, but our minds are made one with Christ. No longer do we see the world as having something for us to chase – instead we see the world as our training ground, our university, the place in which we learn all we need to know about our reality in God by experiencing what is not reality in God.
One of my favorite things in the world is ice cream. From my first taste of it as a baby until this very day – ice cream is a real treat to me. When I was a kid going out to get an ice cream cone was a big occasion. One day I was with my dad on the way back from one of his TV repair jobs and he stopped at a local dairy farm store to get us each an ice cream cone. “Do not eat the bottom first,” he said to me when he handed me my chocolate cone. To this day I have no idea why he told me that. It did not even make sense to eat my cone from the bottom, but once he told me not to do it, that pointy little triangle at the bottom of my cone proved irresistible. I kept imagining what it would be like to bite it off, and I just knew that my dad was telling me not to bite it off because he was withholding some wonderful sense of privilege and taste treat from me. So what did I go and do? I bit it off and it was not the tasty little morsel I had imagined it to be. It was just a plain little piece of dry wafer cone. You can probably guess the rest of the story – the ice cream melted in the hot work van and began trickling down my arm and on to the seat faster than I could lick it. Finally my dad grabbed the sticky mess and threw it out the window.
While a big disappointment to me, I could not hold a grudge against my dad. He warned me – he knew that if I attempted to enjoy my ice cream cone by eating it bottom up, I would be in for a rude awakening. The ice cream cone was no good to me dripping down my arm and congealing in waxy puddles on dad’s nice, clean vinyl car seat. As much as I hated missing out of the cold creamy treat, throwing it out the window was the best thing to do.
And that is what Jesus is telling us to do today. He is telling us to throw the illusions about the world out of the window of our minds. He is saying, you thought you would find your happiness by looking at the world as a place you would find your reality, some physical form to fasten upon for identity, worth, and value. But when we perceive the world in any other way than as a facade designed to obscure the Kingdom of God, we fail to get its real meaning.
Heaven can be ours today. We do not have to die to experience the peace and love and joy that come from seeking God. By ridding ourselves of the sticky mess we made of things when we thought the world was something else, we free our minds to experience the bliss and tranquility of heaven right here and right now.
1 A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 226. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992)
Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 