XI: The State of Grace
- The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing that is easy, because it is not of this world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace.
- Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment that he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make.
- Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself.
- I call upon you to remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. There are no exceptions to the lesson because the lack of exceptions is the lesson. Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect teacher, because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit.
- When a mind has only light, it knows only light. Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. The Majesty of God is there, for you to recognize and appreciate and know. Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equality. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. This is the recognition that is immediate, clear, and natural. You have trained yourself not to recognize it, and this has been very difficult for you.
- Out of your natural environment you may well ask, “What is truth?” since truth is the environment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourself, because you do not know your Creator. You do not know your creations because you do not know your brothers, who created them with you. I have already said that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with God, because only the whole Sonship can create like Him. Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative power, and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you.
- You cannot deny part of truth. You do not know your creations because you do not know their creator. You do not know yourself because you do not know yours. Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than you can establish God’s. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created, to know what they have shared. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation.[1]
As I read this first paragraph and then stopped to read it again and then again, I was filled with such deep appreciation for A Course in Miracles which speaks of God’s Kingdom and the Holy Spirit in the love and generosity of spirit which is our real spiritual nature. It is easy to follow the Holy Spirit! There are not a long list of do’s and don’ts. There are not curses attached to it. There are no threats or punishments. It is joyful; it is loving; it is benevolent and kind – always. Not just some of the time. Not just when everybody is acting a certain way. Not just when people are bowing and offering sacrifices and singing praises and telling God how big and wonderful He is. All of the time – joyful, loving, benevolent, and kind. This is our God in Whom we can really trust. This is our God in which we can be certain. We can talk about Him without any guilt or shame. For He is not responsible for the atrocities of this world because He did not make this world or anything in it except the minds that were ensnared by their own fiction.
When we follow Holy Spirit and learn how natural it is to be joyful, to be loving, to share of our true essence and therefore engage in a process which does not come at all to the ego, we will perform miracles. One act of love and joy and benevolence is no more and no less than another act because love and joy and benevolence is the state of grace in which we dwell. Only as we begin to demonstrate this in our daily lives, to practice this state of grace, to offer what we are to others in the form of love, joy, benevolence and all the other attributes of God which are our attributes as well because He created us to be like Him, will we realize how natural and easy it is to accept our true selves, to let them out instead of keeping them hidden inside, to stop being afraid of our true selves. We live in a state of grace. We know we can never be lost. We know Who and What we belong to and we have demonstrated to ourselves that certainty through our practice of loving, appreciative, benevolent thought for all of Creation.
This is one of most benevolent spiritual teachings in the world. It is not for some, but for all. It has not absolved God of His responsibility toward His Creations, because God did not make creations which were beneath Him but beside Him. Because we are His Sons we cannot be lost forever; we cannot be trapped in an illusion that has no end; ensnared in tales of death. We have within each one of us a homing device, the Voice for God, which calls us back to our real Selves, to our Father, to see past what seems to be an ongoing, unending stream of bad news to the state of grace, which reminds us of our worth, which reminds us where we really belong, which reminds us that our joy and certainty and bliss is in God Who has never abandoned us and never will.
In paragraph three, Jesus ask us to consider the kingdom we have made. Do we keep the Creations of God safe, secure, calm, and loving? Do we keep the creations of God happy to give always of their true and benevolent natures without fear of loss, of extortion, of spite? Does this world teach that giving is joyful and that God Himself thanks us for sharing, for extending, to advancing our selves through giving? Jesus tells us that this is in the only way in which we can be happy for this is the Kingdom which was created for us and for which we were created.
Until we get past our humanity and the alternate kingdom in which we find ourselves, we will not be able to fathom the Kingdom of God for this kingdom is the opposite of God’s Kingdom.
This kingdom denies our happiness. This kingdom makes us work very hard and sacrifice much to have only stabs at happiness. This kingdom teaches us to hoard, to be selfish, to be suspicious of hidden agendas and ulterior motives when people profess love or express a compliment or practice benevolence.
Jesus calls upon us to teach God’s Kingdom to the Kingdom with no exception. We withhold ourselves from nobody; we extend it to all. The very lack of exception is the lesson. We will hear no gospel which saves some and leaves the rest behind. When we realize what we are in God’s Kingdom, we can never turn our backs on the world for we are the attributes of God Himself. Losing any part of God’s Creation would distress and torment all. We return to the Kingdom only with this truth in our heart, because we are not bringing our humanity to God’s Kingdom, brothers. We are not there to practice lust, hoard blessings, or climb ladders of success so we can look down upon those who are lower and crane our necks to see who is ahead. We are in no competition here for one is for all and all are for one. Holy Spirit teaches us this lesson and to become the perfect teacher, we must learn it.
When we begin to recognize the Majesty of God in one another, we begin to recognize and appreciate and know our own inheritance. When we see the equality of God and recognize His gifts in others we recognize our own worth, we realize what God has given us. It is so easy to recognize this truth because it is immediately clear, and it comes naturally to us. We have trained ourselves to adjust to the artificial environment of this world where we create walls and barriers in which to guard us from love, acceptance, and appreciation for one another. Building walls and maintaining guards is stressful and fills us with strain and sorrow. We think we are protecting ourselves from each other, but what we are doing is driving each other insane. For we are made of love, of joy, of peace. We are made to be complete in one another. As long as I see you as separate from me, I cannot know you and to know you is the only way I can love you. However, when I can see you not as flesh and blood, but as one with me in Spirit, we begin to remember what we really are and the barriers we have made to obscure the truth come tumbling down.
In the realm of separateness we can never find truth because this is not the place which was created for us or for which we were created. This is an alternate kingdom which is built on lies, on illusions, on fear, and on that which cannot last. Our flesh eyes see a perceptual world. Our physical senses experience a physical world. As long as we identify ourselves with our bodies, we will not know God, we will not know ourselves, and we will not know our creations because we will fail to recognize our brothers who created them with us. When I asked Jesus to explain to me what He meant by our “creations,” He told me that our creations are our extensions of love, our sharing of joy, our acts of benevolence, and other holy encounters with others. These extensions literally create more love, more joy, more benevolence, more holy encounters that last forever. These creations are obscured to us in the flesh because we cannot taste them, we cannot hold them in our hands, we cannot brag about them or strut about with little pieces of gems and metals attached to our clothing to signify what great creators we are. Easily discounted by the ego, these creations are the only thing that makes us happy, truly pleases God, and increases His Kingdom.
As long as we deny any part of truth we will not know our creations because we will not know God and we will not know our Selves. Our decision about our creations and God Himself have no bearing on the truth. However we can know the truth. It all boils down to sharing, to get over the idea that our tribe, our culture, our religion, our this or our that holds the keys to the kingdom alone, to get over the us-against-them mentality that keeps us trapped in an alternate state of reality which obscures the truth of God’s Kingdom.
God shared His Being with us so we can know Him. To know Him we must know each other, we must know all creation, we must know all that was shared. We must appreciate the whole package – His Sons and all they have created which are also Sons of God. In your personal devotional habit today – ask Holy Spirit to reveal to you the meaning of this text in a way that will show you how to demonstrate the state of grace in which all of Creation is restored to God’s Kingdom. Ask Holy Spirit to show your creations to you – to express to your mind the benevolence and thankfulness that God Himself extends to you for your thoughts of appreciation, mercy, kindness, love, and joy that you share with Creation.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 7 The gifts of the kingdom XI The state of grace. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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