Going Deeper part 18

Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited to bring clarification to certain points of the dialogue and for easier readability. For this reason, it does not match the corresponding audio mp3 word-for-word. However, the overall content and the expressed ideas remain unchanged.

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Dissolving the Projected God

Speaker: What we talk about today relates to our talk about the construct; the self concept. Everything you’re identified with externally is part of that construct; personhood, world, country, sexuality; male/female, skills, attributes etc.

Participant: And this is saying that even my idea of God is just part of a construct.

Speaker: Yes, the deceived mind has a projected God. It can be a God of the Old Testament for example, anthropomorphic, given human qualities, a God that’s being angry at times, punitive at times, and loving at other times. This is a projected God, a God of the future; God will come and will someday save mankind. It’s like a hologram. It’s like the mind has a hologram of time and space around it, to protect it from love, and it has to give up the investment and the belief in the hologram, before it can spring into awareness.

Participant: So it even has to give up its belief in God?

Speaker: Yes, the belief in a projected God.

Participant: And that is the belief the mind holds; a belief in a projected God.

Speaker: Yes.

Participant: So part of the undoing and unlearning is giving up the belief in God as the deceived mind holds it.

Speaker: Yes. On the surface it might sound like we’re getting in to blasphemy here, someone might think we’re telling them to give up their belief in God. A passage we can use is on page 360 in the workbook, the first sentence: “Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is.” There it is, very clearly stated in A Course in Miracles of laying aside all thoughts about what you are and what God is. “Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and of all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold on to nothing.” This relates to the passage on page 390 in the Textbook: “Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself.” There is nothing outside the Son of God. There is nothing else than God and Creation and the Son’s Creations.

In a sense of abstract light and infinity is truth. Truth has existence and nothing else does. So this kind of rules out the cosmos. “The body cannot know and while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there.” So this rules out the immortality of the body as an idea. “Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom where God can enter not.” And as we close this reading from the Course we can jump to the end of next page, 391: “Do not accept this little fenced-off aspect as yourself”. And the beginning of the next paragraph: “Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning.”

So this really paints a picture for us of the abstractness of the infinite nature of love, and of God, and really lays it out that there is no reconciliation between the body, the world and God. That God did not create the body and God did not create the world. That these are temporal, fleeting, changing and in the ultimate sense therefore have no existence because what God creates is eternal, changeless and limitless.

Participant: And only what God created exists.

Speaker: Yes.

Participant: So you made some references to the Creations of the Son of God. Let’s talk about my creations. That comes up repeatedly in the Course and I notice it seems pretty vague to me and I guess it would because the creations are abstract and the creations are not known to the deceived mind. It’s only when the deceived mind is no longer deceived that the Creations will be recognized and experienced?

Speaker: An awake mind that knows what Creation is and knows what creativity is, is aware of that which has come from its extension.

Participant: So creativity has nothing to do with what might be thought of as creativity in terms of a very creative, artistic, imaginative mind that expresses itself?

Speaker: Creativity has absolutely nothing to do with imagination. In a sense one could even say that ACIM is a very creative expression, pages and pages of Shakespearian blank verse, iambic pentameter, of very poetic verses. And in that sense ACIM is something being very expressive of something much higher. This is often the sense of creativity in this world, but Creation and true creativity have nothing at all to do with this world; have nothing at all to do with the symbols and the forms and images of the world. That’s imagination. Creation involves extension, which is another word for it, which in a sense is Spirit begetting Spirit. There is increase involved but not a quantifiable increase. It’s not like in this world; one, two, three, four and more, in a quantifiable sense. But we read about increase, that the Kingdom of Heaven; God and His Creations, are always increasing.

Participant: What does that mean, increase but not in a quantifiable sense?

Speaker: Well, this is expansive, yet without the concept of size. It’s difficult to conceptualize that. But revelation is not transferrable in a conceptual sense - in terms of words, which is precisely the point. We speak in words of concepts and try to convey it. But revelation is an experience beyond concepts. Creation, creativity in the sense we’re speaking of is able to be experienced but it is not transferable in the conceptual sense. It can’t be transferred through words but it’s a highly personal experience as the Course tells us in the early part of the text; so even attempt to explain these things is in a sense missing the mark.

Participant: To explain the creations?

Speaker: Yes, to explain the Creations. Jesus kind of takes a theoretical stab at it, explaining in the text Creations being extensions. We can talk about cause and effect, God being the Cause and God’s Creation, Christ being His Effect. And the Son has creative ability and is a co Creator in the sense of having the power of God and having the ability to extend that. That’s what Creation is, to extend, to increase. So the Creations are the Effect of the Son of God.

Participant: What comes through to me in various places in the Course, about the Son’s Creations, is that there’s much joy associated with them. Even though it seems at this point I’m not recognizing what those creations are, and I can’t talk about them. But they do exist and there’s much joy associated with my Creations.

Speaker: Yes. In a sense the Creations exist, in the ultimate sense, and the veil, within the framework of the dream, is drawn between my Creations and my awareness of my Creations. In a sense when the veil is lifted there is a full awareness. It’s just a state of being one with my Creations.

Participant: Are there things in the world that in some way reflect my creations?

Speaker: Well the things in the world are part of the veil and literally block the awareness of Creation. The deceived mind projects out separate things that are seen as separate and apart from the fabric; trees, caterpillars, birds, butterflies, bears, rainbows, bodies and so on. And this is the veil being seen. This is perception. The Creations are part of an experience, of a union, that literally, when the veil is lifted, is experienced, and in that sense there are no things in this world that are reflections. There is a way of looking upon the world, that is a reflection. If we said that the specifics, for example butterflies are reflections of my Creations or of God or Heaven we get back into the idea of seeing God in specifics, in the world, which can’t be so since God knows not form.

There are two lessons in the Course; God is in everything I see, followed by God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. And in this sense we’re talking about a way of looking, or a vision of the Holy Spirit. Not ordering the world into a hierarchy of illusions. But with that vision, seeing the false as false, seeing instead of separate objects but just a mosaic or a blanket of forgiveness, covering all of the seeming perceived, separate objects in the world. Or to get to our discussion of ending the duality of subject and object, from that state of unity which the Holy Spirit is, or true perception, there is the reflection that is the reflection of love. It still involves perception so it’s not love itself but it’s a new purpose given to the projected world.

Participant: So it’s kind of an experience of that unity, of that oneness, that can be said is a reflection, just like the unity or the oneness, that in a sense comes through in a Holy relationship, can be said to be a reflection of the oneness, the only oneness that there is?

Speaker: Yes, the Holy relationship in this world is a learning accomplishment, and it’s literally unlearning the false ideas and beliefs, and learning true perception. And in that sense it’s a reflection of unity, and a reflection of oneness. But in the ultimate sense union or oneness is abstract, is knowledge or Heaven. So any time we speak of the perceptual realm we can speak of the reflection of love or the reflection of union.

Participant: We’re always somewhat removed from the whole roam of revelation, when we’re talking about anything that has a perceptual component in it. That’s what you’re saying?

Speaker: Yes. Knowledge – even words don’t just even come close to it. To say God is.

There’s a part in the workbook where Jesus says; we say ‘God is’ and then seize to speak. And that is a metaphor of a state of being, that just is. And it’s pretty much left at that. There are other passages where Jesus will even begin to speak a bit and then saying ‘I cannot speak of this; there is no point in speaking further’.

We’ve got work to do in the sense of training your perception and of looking at the false ideas and concepts in your mind and disidentifying from those. Too much work to do along those lines than to be spending our time trying to describe the indescribable.

Participant: Is it in the Absence from Felicity that one section ends where Jesus is saying: and of this I cannot speak, or something?

Speaker: Yes, in a section called: ‘Was there a physical resurrection’, that section speaks about what you’re talking about.

Participant: And he’s speaking about what’s beyond the body, what’s beyond the resurrection.

Speaker: Yes.

Continue to Part 19

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