I had spent much of my life truly believing I was in opposition to everything around me.
In this case alone,
Battling incomprehensible injustice and feeling victimized by forces outside myself,
I was raised in a very traditional Catholic family and I had a strong belief in God as the loving source of my existence.
But clearly,
I did not believe in the presence of that loving source being literally within me.
And I had no awareness of an unchanging spiritual identity beyond my physical self,
My true self,
Guiding and supporting me with the limitless resources of that love.
The realization and acceptance of our unalterable union with love is the catalyst for the transformation each of us is destined to experience.
We are not victims.
Our nature is loving,
Powerful,
And completely deserving because of the love that created us.
The experience of victimization comes from the belief that we're separate from the loving source of our own being,
That we're not powerful,
And we cannot manifest what we desire.
The inner self knows that we cannot separate from the love that created us.
It will stay with us using its immense power to guide us back to the reality of our oneness with love and with all living things.
So today,
We're going to look at what happened to cause us to believe that we're actually separate from love,
Accepting as real a little self in place of the majesty we're created to be,
And bring us the suffering that has robbed us of our joyous heritage.
We were created by the reality of love that flows through all living things.
Our very essence is the pure creative power of love.
Because of its inexhaustible beneficence,
We share all the unlimited attributes of love,
And our true nature is joyous and free.
In our exuberant creative freedom,
We suddenly,
Innocently wondered what it would be like to be the opposite of our joyous,
Unlimited selves.
Much like children who dress up pretending to be someone else,
We simply wanted to expand our knowledge of ourselves.
We decided to step away from our inner self for just a moment.
But unlike playful children,
Our desire carried indescribable imaginative power,
And at our command,
A terrifying new world emerged from that innocent wish to know ourselves as the reverse of who we are.
This is what happened when we were born in this world.
Still conscious of our true inner self,
We felt an irresistible desire to be something else.
We split away from our inner,
Non-physical reality and came into the physical world,
In the words of the poet Wordsworth,
Trailing clouds of glory.
But with each passing day,
The memory of the joyous creativity,
The deep peace,
And the security of the love we knew began to fade.
Suddenly believing ourselves to be cut off from the inner self,
We felt utterly alone,
With no consciousness that what seemed to be happening to us was the result of our choice.
What was supposed to be an innocent imaginative exercise suddenly became a terrifying experience as we stepped away from our loving reality and our limitless freedom into a world of deepest limitation,
Fear,
And chaos.
The inner self knows that we cannot change the reality of love,
But we still have the absolute freedom to create an imaginative personal experience of a world that is the opposite of love in every way.
It sees the fear and chaos we experience in the physical world and knows it is a nightmare we need to be awakened from.
As our champion,
It will prove to us that the madness we've created is the result of our limitless imaginative freedom.
It reflects the choice we made to experience ourselves and our world without the reality of love.
Although we made a terrible mistake that has brought us incredible suffering,
We still have the freedom now to make another choice.
We can return to the consciousness of our loving reality and the inner champion is determined to help us make this choice.
Here's a meditation.
Find a comfortable position and close your eyes and take a few deep relaxing breaths.
Ask your inner self to open your heart and let you feel these beautiful words from A Course in Miracles.
Deep within you is everything that is perfect,
Ready to radiate through you and out into the world.
It will cure all sorrow and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real and suffered out of its allegiance to them.
Then open your eyes and carry this beautiful awareness with you throughout your day.
