I don’t believe there is any greater power than that of an idea, deeply held, and slowly it is becoming clear to me that all we behold is the product of these generative seeds. In the three books of A Course of Love, Jesus speaks frequently about ideas, and in a passage that I love he says, “Giving ideas life is the role of creatorship.” This statement comes in a section of the Dialogues– the third book of the set– in which Jesus is speaking about the ease with which a new heaven and a new earth may be created.
Ease?
Did he just say ease?
Well, no– to be fair, he did not. But I’m a big fan of synonyms. Gives me that feeling of being on the team, you know? Consider the following passage, “When you are fully aware of your oneness of being and begin to create in unity and relationship, you will do so simply by being who you are being, just as you have ‘created’ during your time of separation by being who you have thought yourself to be.”
See what I mean? He did say simply.
He also preceded that passage with these words, “You are called to nothing short of creating a new heaven and a new earth. This does not entail specificity any more than does the miracle. It does not entail choice. It is a way of being.”
So, basically, by being who we know ourselves to be, the world is remade. Without the power of ideas– the creative power bestowed upon and within and as us– this would be a much more difficult proposition to entertain. What strikes me most about this passage, and one of the avenues through which I’m able to relate to it immediately, is the notion that we’ve been doing this all along. The world we experience is the expression of the ideas we carry around inside, and it always has been. How difficult could this be if we’ve been succeeding straight along?
The elephant in the room is so massive, however, we overlook it. Our minds tend to think in terms of specifics and so we make the simple complex… We muddy the waters. Yes, there are many ideas at play, but ultimately there is but one idea at the core of every thought system. A core idea at work in this realm for a long, long time has been separation. Every experience of lack or limitation, every disease, every doubt and fear, every act of violence, regardless of its form or seemingly obvious chains of proximate cause, is the effect of or related to the idea of separation. Without it, these would simply not exist in physical expression. We did all that without even knowing “how”, and once we wrap our minds around that one it becomes obvious that we can do so again… With true ideas this time…
This relates to a premise developed in A Course in Miracles that there is in truth only one “problem” that we experience in myriad forms– that problem being our adoption of a mistaken identity. That was an idea, too. One bad idea and– poof!– it crops up in every facet of our experience. Such is their power. Consider what would become of the idea of one having more or less, in the absence of separation. Consider what the benefit of violence or attack would be, in the absence of separation. What would be the meaning derived from cheating or engaging in deliberate deception, in the absence of separation? Would anyone feel the need to “spin” the meaning of events or circumstances, without the idea of separation? One idea… Kazaam.
Ideas have power. Do any of you remember taking classes down at the community college and spending hours and hours of rehearsal time on trying to coax that false idea into spinning off all these various and sundry effects? Here is a question that makes me laugh: could one of us really be any better at this than another, at getting ideas to play ball? Would practice make a difference?
No. Practice cannot make a rock better at being a rock, or you and I any better at being who we are. Water cannot be any more or less watery. We are idea wombs. Walking creative incubators. Pop an idea in, let us absorb it through our acceptance of it, and it is given life. This is the ease with which power works through us. Replace a false idea with a true one, and live by it, and everything is remade.
It is astonishing (and joyous) to consider that the greatest transformation will come not from willful, pre-meditated acts, but the quiet acceptance of Love by one heart after another. Choice, as Jesus said, is irrelevant in this process. He asks, “How can you choose when what you create is everything?”
Embracing Forever 
I am God, and so are you. We create our reality, we at the least co-create. If we could analyze our negativity, I think it would all be fear based. Get rid of fear and only love is left.
LikeLike
Hipmonkey, I tend to agree with you that the negativity is fear-based. The seeming polarity of fear and love is one of those memes that has infiltrated the collective awareness pretty far, but I have had difficulty personally in waving a wand and dismissing fear. Fear I have come to realize, is a symptom of a deeper choice, of this condition we call separation, and so I think that trying to choose love while retaining the choice for separation is an uphill climb of endless duration.
While love and fear seem to be opposite poles, I think this is an illusion, and I don’t think they stand as equals. Love has no opposite, no opposing force of equal merit, and so as you say, eliminate fear and Love remains. It is this elimination of fear, though, that I have found to require a deeper dive into what is taking place. Taking on fear is not like pulling a crayon out of the box because we like it’s color- it is the inevitable side effect of choosing to be a god unto oneself.
Thanks for your note-
Michael
LikeLike
Well, I never said get rid of fear like you’d throw out the trash. When you have negative emotions you will inevitably find they are fear based. Getting rid of fear requires deep analysis, long meditation, seeing oneself as not separate from the Whole, and that god is within you as you are in god, we are all one, including the power some call god. One must not be overly literal when discussing these kind of things. Words are but a limited tool of symbols to try to convey thoughts and often fall short. Words are like an allegory. So yes, Love cannot go against it’s own nature and have an opposite, yet the opposite of love is still fear. Get rid of fear, love increases. By getting rid of fear, the illusion of separation, egotistical desires, we become more aware of our Divinity, we respect others more, all these things we all want are right here. It may take a lifetime, or 100s but we will see the nature Reality as it truly is. As far as saying I am God and so are you, it is not quite making sense to you, you seem to react as if that’s heresy, but it was the original mystery teaching. the Divine Spark of God is within us, evolving with us, not separate from us. We are all One, I AM, you are too.
LikeLike
I love your line “I never said get rid of fear like you’d throw out the trash.” I wish it were so simple some days! I know you didn’t say that; I just felt the desire to expound on your note. Words as you say are limited tools, and I enjoy the art of describing the same thing in countless different ways until I feel as though I truly understand it. Bear with me…
I don’t believe I responded directly to your comment about your and my being God, but to clarify I don’t have any major misgivings about the notion. I am personally, in my present awareness, more comfortable saying that we are one in being with God, and one in being with one another, but again these are just words. I agree with your main point, which I take to be that God and man, God and you and I, are not separate. To say, “I am God” without a few qualifications is something I would probably not do much of at the present, but only because for me the word God conjures up a sacred totality far greater in extent, depth, and reach than I am as a man, and yet I agree wholeheartedly I am, as we all are, an extension of that very Life. I’m with you on the spark of God being within us, as us. Not separate from, but integral to.
Words in this realm are like poorly crafted space shuttle tiles attempting re-entry. They just burn up and fail to serve us as we would like. We are left with an inner richness of feeling, which this exchange has offered me, and for which I thank you.
Michael
LikeLike
Words, especially without a face and body language, can often fall short of the writers intent. I’ll let your comment sum this all up. It was beautifully written.
LikeLike
I like that wish you say about separation. I also think that when we perceive ourselves to be separate, to be different, or sometimes even above other people (or life forms) we are in danger of starting to behave in a way that will surly endanger the planet and humanity. We start living from our egos and not our souls, because our soul is teaching us about the unity of all life. Vedic philosophy speaks about this illusion of separation from the world as Maya, and it teaches us about the duality of the soul and the ego, and how, to live peacefully we have to anchor ourselves in the soul and not the ego. I think this makes a lot of sense. I feel that I often see cruel people using de-humanisation as an “excuse” for treating people meanly. Just like they did when they stole and captured slaves, they excused their cruelty be claiming that these slaves were not quite human, at least not as human as them. I see this a lot in India with the Caste system, this way of organizing humans in a hierarchy, it is really horrible, and it is strange since this is happening in the country where the ideas of maya and ego/soul were born. Thank you for this post Michael, it made me think, and it is always good to think! 🙂
LikeLike
Thanks for your reply, Line. I agree with what you have written. Separation allows us to deal in images and concepts rather than authentic realities, and so many of these images are the product of false perceptions- the world through the “ego’s” glasses. Once we see ourselves as separate, it is so hard not to judge and compare, to be above or below, or to allow false perceptions to serve illusory and destructive ends.
From the view inside of separation though, it is all that one knows… It seems so real. It is hard to break through this shell and into the “real world” of unity and relationships. Your examples are so true it seems, and at the same time they are somewhat obvious and I am struck by the fact that the real front lines of this difficulty are closer to home, and so often less obvious. If the issue were only slavery, many could agree on the need to end the vantage point of separation, but separation persists even after slavery, after women’s rights, after racial equality… Separation exists within families, within churches even, even within a single breath.
It exists as an element of our every experience, until we give it up. We are like addicts in this regard. Thanks for sharing and for your writing, which is a lovely voice helping to illuminate this darkness…
Michael
LikeLike
Oh this is so timely, and succinct and simple. Thank you! So elegantly expressed, I was able to hear the ‘easy’ and the ‘simple’ Thank you! For so long I’ve been trying to switch allegiance from identifying as the ‘separate’ me to the ‘oneness’, to simple awareness. Some revelations and recognitions over the past few days have put an end to that questing. There is only this. No separation. No striving. But what you’ve given me it the so simple clarity of it all – stop believing in the idea of separation. And, no surprise, right when I am able to hear it. Thank you!
There’s not the quiet acceptance of Love. It is even more simple than that. Love arises.
LikeLike
Wonderful! Love arises. This is natural and commonplace when we give up our dreams to the contrary. I am so glad the words here were timely and resonant. I like the notion of honing it even further, boiling this down to the simplest possible expression… Love arises. We breathe. A thought we never had before lands on our shoulder like a dove. Time rolls up into a knot and disappears. It is time go get the groceries.
Michael
LikeLike
one sentence; by being who we are, the world is remade.
To have worked so hard against that, water struggling against being watery, so funny! – and for it to all be so organically rising even so, what is there but laughter – deep belly laughter!
LikeLike
I know it. It is so simple in its true nature, and so joyous when its simplicity is understood. Still, I have to keep reminding myself who we are. Our conditioning has been very strong. Obi Wan !@$%ed us. Some part of me remains convinced that efforting should keep a hand in the game somewhere, just to cover all the bases, you know… until we at least see some leading indicators of change…
Meanwhile, a crazy beautiful Hafiz-Jesus consortium being has been talking me through this over the in(n)ercom– showing me how the data is always irrelevant. She has been showing me how you can take any chart or graph ever made, and use it to tell a true story about Eternity. This is my joyous rehabilitation. Glad you went straight for the laughter!
Michael
LikeLike