You are the Light of the World

. . . in You I remember salvation.

I experience you as luminous, as both the path away from fear and towards Love and the light in which that path is revealed. And I know this applies to everyone, including those in whom I do not yet see the light. I know that failure to perceive the other as my savior reflects an error in my seeing, not the light in you and everyone else, which is pure and bright and life-giving.

Our study and practice revolves around learning to see this light in all brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include chickadees, starfish and passing clouds). It is the absence of exceptions - and our willingness there be no exceptions - that makes it love.

Critically, A Course in Miracles does not teach us how love our brothers and sisters, for that love is already perfectly accomplished. Rather, it teaches us how to notice when blocks to that perfect love arise, and what to about them.

Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are, or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know (T-14.IV.9:3-5).

This is important! We don't have to learn how to love because we already do that perfectly as a condition of what we are. But we do have to notice the blocks, because they obscure our awareness of our true self and the real world, and thus stop the free flow of Love from God, through us, to all our brothers and sisters.

These blocks take two general forms, each with apparently countless sub-forms. The first form is psychological blocks and the second is external circumstantial blocks. An example of the first would be anger issues. An example of the second would be war.

Obviously the two overlap and inter-relate. In time, in fact, we will learn that they are one thing. But at this stage of our practice, we perceive both inner and outer blocks to our awareness of our identity as Love. That is what appears and so it is to that which we respond.

The way these blocks are undone is by giving them to the Holy Spirit. However, this is not an offering like giving flowers to a friend or telling a therapist about your issues with our father.

Rather, it is sitting quietly with the block and not resisting it. We don't project it onto anybody. We don't hide from it. We don't argue with it or try to change it. We don't even ignore it. We just sit with it.

Boss unfair to you at work so you're seething with anger? War in the Ukraine causing existential angst around nuclear war? Spouse forget to keep their end of some agreement so now you're feeling hurt and ignored?

Sit with the feelings. Call them demons and then refuse to demonize them. Practice nonviolence resistance unto every last aspect of whatever hell you encounter. I make you a promise: when you no longer fight these feelings, these demons, the Holy Spirit will gently dissolve them as if they had never existed.

How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer . . . See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return . . . (T-19.IV.9:1-2, 4).

It is the same with the blocks posed by the world as well. The seeming big stuff like wars and starvation, and the smaller, more personal stuff like mortgage payments and pets dying. Resist nothing; welcome it all. Our refusal to go to war with life - even when war seems justified as a form of self-defense or righteous offense - becomes the light of Christ in which all suffering is undone.

There is no war, but we do not learn this until we lay down our sword and say to our so-called enemy: “forgive me, brother.” What happens then?

The sight of Christ is all there is to see. The song of Christ is all there is to hear. The hand of Christ is all there is to hold. There is no journey but to walk with Him (T-24.V.7:7-10).

In this way - doing nothing but allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in the ways of nonvioleance and love - we become saviors. Where there is confusion, we bring clarity. Where there is conflict, we bring peace. Where there is fear, we bring love.

We are not heroes! We are not spiritual giants. We are more like servants. Seeing the light in all, and knowing that the only way to see the light is to see it in all, we happily become the last and the least, in order that we might see the light of Christ in everyone and so remember it is in us as well.

Healing is a form of service, always.

This is our practice as students of A Course in Miracles. It is not easy. Ego does not go quietly. It will fight to death rather than consent to be undone. It will drag us to depths of existential horror that we wouldn't wish on anyone. It will threaten to drop us into the void where we will suffer eternally.

And yet.

We do not face those depths alone. Indeed we face nothing alone, for a brother or sister is always there, asking for our help and offering theirs. Notice how this is so! We undo the blocks to the awareness of our inheritance of Love together, for there is no other way to remember Love.

Thus, in the end, we teach the other to become our savior, naturally extending the teaching that they offer us. You are the light in which I remember that separation is an illusion. Together we bring peace to every heart and this is not an idle promise.

Thank you, as always, for sharing this path with me. Truly, I would be lost without you.

Love,
Sean