Being Real

Being real.

In Bartholomew's book “I come as a Brother” is raised the question:

"As love is our true nature, can it be that we have already experienced it, but misidentified it?"

It is intentionally a question that illumines its own answer. We are already experiencing our True Nature - but are actively misidentifying.

The nature of our capacity to misidentify is something that we automatically tend to keep hidden - and would seem to us to be normal survival activity. But no matter how we try to protect our 'self', we are constantly meeting conditions that we feel unsafe in, struggle in and defend ourselves against. We tend to want a 'miracle' to enable our defences to prevail, rather than to illuminate a Greater Safety that our defences have hidden from view.

Outside of or apart from such a connected feeling and relational appreciation of life - is a ‘manually operated existence’ that rides upon utter dependence on life - and yet presents itself as much - and for as long as it can - as an independence of will. And may even attempt to die in clinging to this will rather than surrender into a Greater Life than its 'own'.

Being unreal is an imaginative exercise - yet one that is fleshed out in the full gamut of human experience - and suffered as if it happens at the will or direction of an Other.

Where is the answer to an imaginary but really-experienced problem of a struggling conflicted self to be found but in its arising?

In this sense I feel that being real - in terms of our human existence - is of listening within and without at the same time - as our ongoing honesty of being. It is the desisting from, and the undoing of, a 'mind' that distracts its attention by externalising everything and interpreting it in terms of division and control.

This is NOT our true mind or true nature - and the wish for it must be uncovered and seen directly for what it is - BEFORE it is used as a basis for perception, conception and identification. Because once we 'take the ride' we experience everything awry.

At the prospect of looking within, at our own thought - rather than through its lens, we may fear that we will uncover our own damnation - that is - our own rejection. We may feel 'safer' at least temporarily to see what we reject or hate - projected as if outside ourselves.


When writing something recently of the Call of our times for a true and grounded Sanity, I looked up the list of attributes that a ‘teacher of God’ must acquire in the Manual of A Course in Miracles, and found that trust was placed first, with all others following on. I had thought that honesty was going to be first - but that is because I personally now have that initial trust and presumed it of my brothers when it may not always yet be so.

Trust ...
Once that has been achieved, the others cannot fail to follow.
Only the trusting can afford honesty, for only they can see its value.
~ Manual for teachers: A Course in Miracles

There then follows a greater exposition of honesty than our surface notions of telling the truth; of honesty as congruency and consistency of desire, thought and deed.

I came to such an active trust as a result of experiencing of a kind of paralysis from its opposite. That is - from the exposure of the nature of the 'mind' or 'self' to a Prior Awareness. It could be said that at its most fundamental level, it ran out of time - of support - of allegiance - of meaning. It was replaced - not in time, but before time, with a Gift. A 'Yes" that replaces the "no". The “no” being the stringing together of the refusal of Life in 'mutual agreements' - which makes the experience of  'life' that an unconscious denial gives makes real.

Synchronous with timelessness is all that we experience 'in time' as a linear construct of events. Unfinished 'business' in time will not allow the eternal embrace of a loving communion in peace - for the energetic habits of refusal express as a will to make reality for oneself - that in turn creates and maintains a sense of lack, limitation - and a need to 'manage' a life within such a drama of self.

But with the Gift of trust offered to our being - there is now a clear sense of dissonance in using "no" as a means of getting - and feels continuing the old pattern to be anathema. Se find that in the willingness and the prompt of NOT USING our "no" - we become the receptive space in which and through which a "Yes" activates by no power or virtue of our own thinking.

And so in time and over time, we uncover that the "Yes" is our true Mind and Nature - not to be wielded or used in or by the 'old patternings of mind' - but is itself preparing and ‘making straight the way’ of Its Own Dawning.

For God 'takes the last step' - that is - The Movement of Being Is freely and fully welcomed in a like Spirit.

The essential shift is a reversal of identity. Not a linear reversal in time - but of an upside down and inside out-ness, released as the core or basis of existence itself.

What does this mean in the love that you are - and share?
This question and its discovery is the life that replaced the life expressed by the old question, "what does this mean in the world for me".

When changes of a fundamental nature are unfolding to us - we are actively called to bring attention present. Which is to release it of its habitual routines or wanderings. Alignment with our True nature will open a joyous pathway - which itself is foundational to the new life. But the "no" of persisting in our own sense of command and control - will increasingly bring us out of accord with everything- and we suffer to be dragged kicking and screaming into a Life in which we have yet to find our true Foundation.

But Truth is of Itself and must be simply available to a willingness to receive - in Its terms. It is humanly a matter of willingness.

The Gift, which replaces what we thought to place upon the altar of our heart, is the Holy Spirit. Our Holy Spirit.

None can accept this for themselves alone - for its acceptance is the absence of any thought of separation from Love.

What is love but the willingness and capacity to overlook everything that does not matter and attend fully to that which does? Of a unified will, and in a unified appreciation.

The 'mind' must become the opportunity for release and forgiveness - in place of the re-enactment of the separation. Even as it seems to be acted out.

Great fears call on great willingness. It is true that in joining is strength - but pause to feel and know that our joining is first of a wholeness within - or we give strength to the mind of lack and weaken our capacity to hear the Guide and feel the Support and Surety of Being.

WE must trust beyond the 'reality' of our outer senses and turn within them back towards their source - or ‘being real’ will simply mean struggling and dying a life of empty and failing promises.

All has its true root in You, Whole. But the sense of oneself gained in the world, seems to be a 'separated' or independent 'whole' - over and against others of a like separateness. The mind in the world has an impossible task, but its loyalty to your will is unswerving. Awakening to your own will is the release of using story as a mask for a secret will. If you cannot ask for it in the Light - let it go as something that keeps you in the dark. You can ask for what is in your heart in Light, and the truth of what is moving in you will be revealed to your honesty. Truth is Lovely because it is congruent, whole and without conflicting parts. The Holy Spirit discerns us truly - because Holiness cannot 'leave truth' to play in 'stories'.

Our Holy Spirit is our bridge from an unreality to a true sanity, because in Holy Spirit we are revealed and healed of a suggestion that seems to split our mind - and project its split ... as the world.

What would the world be to a healed and unified heart and mind?

Please show me the way for such is my desire.



in Gratitude

Brian

PS: Holy Spirit as a term for a Function of Teacher, Guide and Revealer is Universally inclusive of all agencies of help through the events, relationships, teachings, promptings and intuitive openings of our life. An Intimacy free of any constraints or definitions the mind or world might put upon them - and by our willingness, using all things to guide us to release a misidentification by which we suffer.