Relationship as a Reflection of Love

. . . on learning to see the other as God does.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are, and takes us as near to happiness and peace as we are willing and able to go. It is a way of being in the world that looks on everything as an opportunity to heal the mind that believes it is separate and projects a separate self that stands against and apart from God.

What does this look like in practice?

Fundamentally, it is a recognition that life is relationship - relationship with people, animals, trees, weather, time. It is a recognition that relationships can be lifelong or a moment in passing, deep or shallow, impactful or not, and it is the willingness to refuse to judge any of them as more valuable than another.

Our practice of A Course in Miracles teaches us to allow each and every relationship to be a reflection of Love by refusing what appears to be different about them, and embracing what is the same.

do you see yourself?

In order to "allow" a relationship to become a reflection of Love, we have to be willing to see the relationship as holy, which means to see it as God would see it and to not see it as God would not see it. “Judgement is not an attribute of God” (T-2.VIII.2:3).

We have to be willing. It is the willingness for which we are responsible, not the actual seeing. Focus on whether you are willing to see the relationship as God sees it, and the actual seeing will sort itself out accordingly.

Sometimes people push the envelope. But how do I become willing?

The law is, we cannot judge our brother or sister. The law is, we cannot bring the past into the relationship. The law is, we cannot bring our self into the relationship.

True relationship exists apart from all that - all that merely clouds and constrains relationship.

Therefore, notice when you are judging the other. Notice, too, that judgment means bringing past learning to the relationship. Finally, notice that "past learning" is your learning, and your learning is what got you into this mess in the first place.

If you can notice this, then you will eventually let it go because it is not worth the pain and suffering. We study and practice the Course because - even if at a level we cannot yet perceive - we want to be happy, joyous and free. The psychological and spiritual jail cell we have assigned ourselves is totally optional (W-pI.200.4:5).

When we become willing to give up judgment, we rediscover our capacity for curiosity. More than that, we rediscover our capacity for devotion. We are no longer clouded by fear.

We can ask then: what is the relationship before I interpret it? What is it before I notice it? What energies bring it forth? What energies does it extend? What is its function?

These questions arise from and ground out in care, which is simply devotion in a specific context (which context will exist exactly as long as we prefer separation to oneness, fear to love, and perception to knowledge).

Care about the other. Take care of the other and allow them to care for you in turn. What are they thinking and feeling? Is there anything you can do to be helpful - any judgment you can release? Any interpretation you can soften? Is there any gift you can give? Which, by the way, often means being willing to accept a gift?

When we care for the other this way - when we give attention this way - when we are in relationship this way - we naturally forgive the other. We become willing to see them as God sees them. Which means, in time, that we will remember that seeing this way is how God sees us.

That is, we begin to understand that our capacity for care in the world is a faint hint of how God loves us in eternity, and we begin to surrender to that Love. We give ourselves to it. We say yes to it. We realize the depths of our emptiness, the vastness of it, and rather than fill it with our own effort, we simply give it all to God, and God fills it, the way light fills darkness.

True happiness is knowing ourselves as God knows us. We remember what we are in truth. It is a peace that cannot be broken, a song that cannot be unsung. What was forgotten is remembered, to be forgotten no more.

And then each relationship is a reflection of Love, because it is a reflection of our own self, which is Love, which is One Self, extending Itself through Creation forever.

~ Sean