VI: The Treasure of God
- We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out together and gather in our brothers as we continue together. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer.
- The world can add nothing to the power in the glory of God and His holy Son’s, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. I am come to tell you the choice of which is true is not yours to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself.
- Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom the world has no power. No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal; not because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is worthy of him. What God and His Sons create is eternal, and in this and this only is their joy.
- Listen to the story of the prodigal son and learn what God’s treasure is and yours. This son of a loving father left his home and thought he had squandered everything for nothing of value, although he had not understood its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father because he thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home the father welcomed him with joy, because the son himself was his father’s treasure. He wanted nothing else.
- God wants only His Son because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you any more than you left your Creator, extend your creation as God extended Himself to you. Can the creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the creations of God and those that are created like His? Your creations love you as you love your Father for the gift of creation. There is no other gift that is eternal, and therefore there is no other gift that is true. How, then, can you accept anything else or give anything else, and expect joy in return? And what else but joy would you want? You made neither yourself nor your function. You made only the decision to be unworthy of both. Yet you cannot make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God, and what He values is valuable. There can be no question of its worth because its value lies in God’s sharing Himself with it and establishing its value forever.[1]
To learn the treasure of God meditate upon the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We are the treasure of God Jesus tells us in paragraph five of today’s reading. We bring God’s treasure back to the Father by joining our mind with the mind of Christ. We gather in our brothers as we continue on our journey – we are not here in the world to conquer it, to torture and to kill those who do not believe like us, to fight over limited resources, to bicker over differences in doctrines and tenets of faith. We are not here to build huge tabernacles or make a name for ourselves in the spread of Christianity. We are here to join Christ in the Atonement gospel. This has lost its meaning for so long that most of us have no idea what it means anymore, what it looks like, how the practical application of joining our minds with Christ plays out in our day-to-day, moment-to-moment lives.
It is not a hard gospel. There is nothing heavy about it. While its application is natural and comes easily to our real and holy Selves, the ego cannot understand it, cannot do it, and is terrified of the Atonement gospel for it eradicates all lies, all delusions, all false pretenses, and brings together that which can only be held captive when kept apart.
Practicing the Atonement gospel is simply sharing the whole mind of Christ. Our whole minds in Christ is the acceptance of what we are in Him – the treasure of God, the will of God, we are God’s Son even as Christ is His Son. There is no arrogance in this, no false pride – only deep appreciation and recognition of our true identity as the love of God, as the peace of God, as the joy of God and all the other beautiful virtues and attributes of God which He has bestowed upon us, His Treasure, when He created us as His Son, as His Creation.
When we know this, we can no longer be bound with shame, with guilt, with egocentric thinking or narcissistic concerns. The chaotic state of opposites and opposition has nothing to offer us. The ego has no real substitute for the attributes of God but as those of us who have been taken in by its sorcery, its drives, its lusts, and its temptations – soon come to find out – much like the prodigal son – that we have squandered our selves on that which has no real worth, that which cannot be built upon, that which we cannot take with us on our journey home.
But does that matter? The ego would have us go and waste ourselves on that which brings no lasting happiness, love, or peace and then shame us, guilt us, torment our minds with our wrong decisions, our bad choices, the ways in which instead of extending love and joy and peace, we projected our pride, we projected our lust, we tried to take what belonged to another and call it our own. There is no point thinking that we are any good to God or anybody else in such a state, the ego would tell us. Sink into depression, drown your sorrows and shame in excess, take yourself out of the picture, the ego says. But God says: Come home, My Treasure, My Will, My Son. Come home!
We must never forget this because the world teaches a completely different gospel. The world’s gospel is not good news at all and yet it can blind us to the Atonement gospel of Christ. The world’s gospel is a destructive gospel, twisted by those who fail to understand Christ and would hold Creation spellbound in its world of opposites and opposition to all truth.
We will never find joy in the world because we belong to God and His Kingdom and were created by Love, to be loved, and to be love itself. There is nothing in the world that is worthy of a creation of God for we are created to be eternal and only in the everlasting is our joy.
The gift of creation is given us, God does not keep anything from us, including the Fatherhood itself for we are created to create. When I asked Holy Spirit to show me what this means I was shown that love creates love, joy creates joy, peace creates peace by extending itself. Because we are the attributes of God as His Son, when we extend the attributes that we are to others it creates more love, peace, and joy. When we extend respect to others, respect is created, and it is extended. There is not a one of us who are exempt of the eternal attributes of God. There is not a one of us who cannot create that which created us and thus add to God’s Treasure.
This is not a walk for the ego. The ego always wants to get its picture in the paper for any little crumb it takes and gives to someone else. The ego always wants another star in its crown, another way to insinuate itself into someone else’s story. The ego is sneaky and clever and so we must be very wise to its manipulations and lies.
Holy Spirit on the other hand asks us to be quiet about what we give, what we do for others, and take no glory, or insinuate ourselves into the lives of others. Extending our Selves is a natural process that truly is its own reward. It does not seek the approval of others because what we do as individuals actually belongs to the Sonship. When I set aside the hours each day to meditate upon, receive understanding and inspiration to write this blog for instance, that time is no sacrifice to me and brings me no personal acclaim or glory, for all power and all glory belong to the Sonship of which I am a part. My will is God’s Will for I belong to Him and when I extend what I am, I am adding to His Kingdom. I am not collecting souls to put in my own crown, or to elevate my status in the great beyond. I am adding to the Treasury of God! And when I add to the treasury of God and you add to the treasury of God, both of us are enriched beyond measure.
If I did not understand my function, if I had not accepted my place in the Sonship, I would be tempted to think this was my blog and the result of my efforts. I would have been tempted to overlook the fact that my husband supports this ministry – I do not have to worry about who pays the bills, who pays for the website, who does not mind when the laundry piles up or the dust collects a bit because Eckie is in her office with the door closed praying and writing and doing that thing she does in there! If I did not realize my place in the Sonship and my function, I would be tempted to overlook the fact that the insights of our ACIM group inspires and teaches me what I cannot grasp on my own. I would forget the years that Helen and Bill scribed the Course, looking past their own egos, their own skepticism and unbelief, and just did it because the part of themselves that were real and holy knew that Jesus was answering their request and calling them to enlighten the world. I would forget the efforts of the Foundation of Inner Peace and the Circle of Atonement which made A Course in Miracles available to the world. I would not remember the books I have read, the people who have taught me through positive and negative measures that there must be a better way, or the countless plants, animals, and people who sustain my life here in this realm on a moment-to-moment basis. My ego would have me believe that somehow I do it all on my own and therefore am owed some sort of recompense. This is how the ego operates.
It is imperative that we remember that we did not make ourselves or our function – we are the Will of God just as our function is the Will of God. The only decision that the ego would have us make is to be unworthy of both. But this is impossible! There can be no question of our worth – no matter what kind of hot mess we have made ourselves out to be. Our value lies in God and He has established us as His Treasure forever.
We will stop with paragraph five today and cover paragraphs six through ten in our next blog. In your personal devotions read over or listen to this lesson as many times as you can today and let the words of Jesus rest in the higher realm of your mind. Do not be afraid of the world, of the ego, of your past or present woes and limitations. Make no place in your mind for the illusions of the world and its weird history or its promises that always lead in the opposite direction of our true identity in Christ. Join with our holy Brother that withstood the crucifixion, relinquished the ego, overcame the destruction of the body, and arose from the dead in all power and glory forever by accepting who you are as God’s Treasure today.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 8 The journey back. VI The treasure of God 1-5. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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