Giving Our Relationships to God

. . . we don't know what we're doing with them anyway

All relationships are special when perceived through the ego's lens, which makes everything personal and thus vulnerable. Yet all relationships can be recreated as holy when given to the Holy Spirit, who replaces our goal for the relationship with Its own, which it shares with God.

It is - because it always is - a question of what the relationship is for (e.g. W-pI.25.1:3). Relationship can reinforce the separation or it can become a site of separation's undoing. It can be a site of conflict or of peace, but never both. And the choice is ours.

The choice is not to make the relationship more or less special or holy; that is outside our power. The choice is to give the relationship entirely to the Holy Spirit as an act of submission to Love, which is to consent to know the other only as God knows them.

When we do this truly we become co-creators with the Holy Spirit, where "creation" is effectively remembering - by seeing clearly - what is already created perfectly by God.

This is not experienced right away as peaceful and holy. The radical shift in purpose - which always accompanies any true offering to the Holy Spirit - often appears at first to be destabilizing and even dangerous. Never underestimate ego's ability to call you from the brink of Love back to its cheap imitations.

But also, do not underestimate your ability to remember what you are in truth and to trust accordingly the wisdom of your choice.

This is the time for faith. You let this goal be set for you. That was an act of faith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of faith are being introduced (T-17.V.6:1-4).

What does this look like in practice?

For me, it is a question of my willingness to no longer indulge fantasy. Fantasy always reflects a story I am telling myself in which you are a prop or character whose sole function is to advance my story. Your function is always subordinate to my salvation, my happiness, my safety and comfort.

Typically, this manifests as a form of attention. I want to be seen and heard, honored and celebrated, dismissed and desecrated on terms that I set. I am brilliant, spiritual, attractive, helpful, a light in the darkness. Or I am broken, damaged, damned beyond salvation, a shadow against which no light can prevail. The form of the narrative doesn’t really matter, so long as I am its main character. The form will always be whatever I think will maximize your attention.

These self-narratives might be very subtle - they also might not be - but they are operative in all of us who believe we are separated from God and Creation, who believe the body's fate is our fate, and who like saying "God is Love" but are secretly wracked with doubt and fear.

Therefore, when I give a relationship to the Holy Spirit, what I am really giving away are my claims to attention - specifically, my claim to set the terms of attention. I am saying that I will no longer use you for my own sick purposes, nor will I project any new purpose.

Instead, I will learn the new purpose from the Teacher of God and accept that new purpose in place of any I might set on my own.

To let go of any claim to a certain outcome is to value the relationship not as a means to an end conditional on my judgment of what’s holy but rather as a gift that I can offer God without keeping any part for myself. When I do this enough, and do it sustainably, I eventually learn that the relationship was always God's anyway. I was confused when I thought it belonged to me.

You are very new in the ways of salvation . . . In your newness, remember that you and your brother have started again, together . . . For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was never absent (T-17.V.9:1, 3, 6).

A Course in Miracles can be thought of as a course in learning how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, who is the Teacher of God in this vale of tears, this shrine to chaos, and this lonesome-and-getting-lonesomer valley. To cooperate is to share, without condition or qualification. "Here is a relationship, Holy Spirit - help me remember what it is for. I have forgotten."

And the Holy Spirit gently teaches us, over and over, in whatever form is most helpful, that all relationships are given so that we might "ascend in peace together" unto the relationship's Creator (T-17.IV.16:2).

The whole reality of your relationship with God lies in our relationship to one another . . . For here is only healing, already complete and perfect. For here is God, and where He is only the perfect and complete can be (T-17.IV.16:7, 9-10).

It takes time and practice to learn this. We make mistakes and begin again. It's okay. This particular form of the spiritual curriculum is not for experts or geniuses but for people like you and me, who are ready to be gentle and kind with each other and to not leave each other alone on the way. The way is relationship.

I am here because you are here, and together we are a light that makes the next step towards peace and happiness possible. It is enough.

Thank you, always, for your patience and forgiveness.

Love,
Sean