The Call of Perfect Love

Remembering our shared home in Creation . . .

Everything that exists does so in order to remind us of our perfection. Creation is not flawed. From the relative stance it may appear more or less desirable - who wants to be an antelope in a lion's jaws - but as a whole, Creation has no stance. It unfolds perfectly, from spiral galaxy to grain of sand.

Sitting by the garden at dawn or dusk - when the light is soft, and every living thing luminous - is like a family reunion. Every plant, insect, fruit and vegetable - every breeze, every faint star, every breath - testifies that you are home by reminding you what you are. When you live this way, it is not possible to walk away or become lost. Your awareness of your home in Creation is the light in which everything is revealed as home. It goes with you everywhere and it excludes nothing.

For as you were created, you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid (W-pI.197.8:2-5).

We are the site of divine love; our heart holds the Heart of God and beats in perfect rhythm with it. We love the way our Creator loves. We create the way our Creator creates - extending love to all things, without exception. Our gratitude is boundless.

Give thanks as you receive it. Be you free of all ingratitude to anyone who makes your Self complete. And from this Self is no one left outside (W-pI.197.9:1-3).

Nothing we do - from a glancing thought about the weather to the construction of vast cities and temples - occurs outside or without the Love of God.

Are we ready to remember this?

The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still . . . in that instant is God's memory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Child of God, for whom they have been kept (T-28.I.11:1, 12:2).

Our willingness to remember who we are and, by extension, the Love that is our Creator, is essential to our freedom from guilt and suffering. Nothing is kept from us, save by our own decision. We have to see how we conspire and work against our own happiness, by projecting a world which is the cause of suffering. We have to see that we do this, and then decide to stop doing it. Only then will we remember the Heart of God in our heart; only then will our blood bear the light of Heaven in its endless cycle of Creation.

You might ask: why do we do project a world that hurts us? And why do we then forget we projected it, thus falling for the lie that we can suffer and deserve to suffer?

We do this is because we are scared and we hate what we fear. We are scared of God and scared of Love and our fear fills us with hate which we cannot bear and thus project outward. In a way, it is understandable. Who wants to look at their hatred of God? Who wants to see that hating God means hating their own self? Who wants to be responsible for the viciousness and injustice that obscures the pristine stillness of creation?

Love invites us to look at hatred and fear and to trust we will not be abandoned when we do. Love asks us to look clearly at the external hellscape, no matter how trivial or dramatic it appears. It promises us that hate and fear will not kill us - it insists they are not real - but we have to trust it. We have to trust Love.

And we don't. We don't trust Love.

In the end, that is the hardest thing to see - and here, to "see" means to "accept." And truly, if we were left to our own devices, we'd never do it.

This is why ACIM teaches us that willingness is the only step for which "we" are responsible (T-6.V.A.6:1-2). And even then we only have to start lifting our foot. Even just commit to lifting your foot and you are joined to Christ through the Holy Spirit and Jesus, thus ensuring a happy outcome.

The Holy Spirit and Jesus - together the Mind of Christ, which is our mind too - allow us to get a clear look at self-hatred and its roots in fear. This look inaugurates the journey back to self-love and inner peace. This can take a long time! Sometimes we remember how to love ourselves in very small doses, healing one memory at a time. It's okay. It's more than okay.

I say this because at some point in the journey we realize that we do love ourselves, and that this self-love utterly transcends our previous understanding of both self and love. We realize we are not in charge of love at all because the love is so perfect and stable and true. It couldn't possible come from us. It can only be a gift.

So who - or what - is doing the loving?

When we look at this love - when we see how it arises from beyond us, carries us beyond the world, and takes all our brothers and sisters with us - we are looking at both ourselves and God. And our self and God look back and are well-pleased.

It is God who loves, because God is Love.

Perhaps it is like sitting in the garden, watching the light fade, swallows circling the sky a last time before returning to their nests. The raspberries shadowed, the corn stalks tall and strong, the bell-shaped flowers of squash plants glowing in the dusk. You can hear the river; you can see the first stars glistening.

All this is you and you are all of this. In the calm rays of attention, you both accept and extend the perfection of Creation. You contain the Heart of God. Creation lives in you and extends itself through you.

How happy we are when we remember this! How grateful we are for our brothers and sisters, all patiently reflecting the divine Love of Creation in order that we might remember again nothing is missing in our shared Heaven. What else could Heaven be?

Thank you, as always, for reminding me.

Sean