Lesson 279
“Creation\’s freedom promises my own.”
Everyone has been given freedom from illusions. The question is when will we accept this freedom? The Holy Spirit is always there in our minds waiting to free our minds from the limited ideas that keep us in bondage. The Holy Spirit is always right there in our minds to show us that our ideas of limitation and lack are not true. Freedom is always there waiting for acceptance.
But in order for us to accept freedom, we must be willing to let go of the world of separation we think we made. This world is just composed of symbols of separation that in reality mean nothing because they are not true. The symbols of separation found in this world cannot bring us happiness. They only bring us guilt and pain and lack.
All this can be undone if we are willing to take every belief we have, every sense of lack, every uncertainty, every belief in death, every belief in sickness, to the Holy Spirit, where we will be brought to the truth. The Holy Spirit shows us the difference between the unreal and the real. Our freedom lies in allowing ourselves to be shown that these forms of individuality are not real in truth.
While we want these illusions, we can experience them, but they will never bring us freedom. They will never bring us eternal happiness. They will never bring us what we truly long for in our heart of hearts. In truth, we love God. We love our Creator and our return is inevitable. We have been wandering in dreams of separation long enough. There is a better way.
Like the prodigal son, we would return Home and accept our Father\’s welcome. Our Father always sees our innocence and loves us with an unconditional Love that is eternal. Today we would open our minds to be led Home by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would show us that all these dreams of wandering in lands foreign to our Father are not true. We do not have to do battle in these dreams because they simply are not true. We can let our belief in them be undone by the healing touch of the Holy Spirit.
Today we open our minds to the healing Teacher within. We would be at peace a while and let our false ideas be undone. Herein lies our freedom. Today we would accept our freedom and share it with our brother.
To accept Creation\’s freedom as my own, I need to recognize that I really want true freedom. I really want to accept and extend God\’s Love. I really want the joy of oneness. The ego teaches that accepting oneness means I must sacrifice. I must give up my individual identity, which the ego perceives as death. And accepting oneness is death or the end of individuality.
But what does individuality really have to offer? To keep individuality, I cannot know my Creator, Who knows only one unified whole. And if I cannot know my Creator, I cannot know the Self that God created me to be. So the ego\’s teaching that I must sacrifice to know oneness is a projection of the sacrifice the ego believes it made when it chose individuality, when it chose to reject the equal, eternal Love God gave to His Son in His creation.
God is eternal and limitless. To have the experience of individuality, this eternal limitlessness must be denied and replaced with an image of a limited self, separate from everything, with a little kingdom it can call its own. With this choice comes guilt because to have this kingdom I must deny my Creator and this is believed to cause harm to the Creator. In truth our Creator is unaffected by dreams of denial. But in the dream of denial where separation is believed to be real, guilt is inevitable.
This is why I must learn to listen to a different Teacher, a Teacher Who brings the memory of God, of wholeness and limitless Love, to the dreaming mind that thinks it has lost this Love. The words of this Teacher expressed in the Course help me to recognize that the world I made in identification with the ego offers me nothing I want.
As I begin to recognize that what I have been searching for cannot be found in this world, my mind becomes open to receive a new perception, where separation is recognized as unreal. I am then more receptive to the Holy Spirit in my mind.
I open to His inner teaching by building a consistent practice of taking time to go to peace, where I can receive the understanding of the Holy Spirit. With an open mind, I receive the Holy Spirit\’s help to loosen the world from all I thought it was. I open my mind to be taught what is unreal so that I can see past it and recognize the reality of Love everywhere.
I open to this through my willingness to question everything I think I know about the world. I open to this through my willingness to receive a new vision of a forgiven world, in which unreality is recognized as unreal. Thus I let illusions go and Love is then recognized in my mind with Its unity and joy. And once again I remember, "Creation\’s freedom promises my own."