Ancient Hatreds/Present Loves
Ancient Hatreds/Present Loves
It has been said that, "The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love." (T-26.IX. 7:4) Would it not be wonderful if all prejudice, all hatred, could end in just such a manner.
Are we our brother's keeper? Are we morally responsible for another? Would it not be enough that we be responsible for ourselves and those we have taken into our lives as a responsibility? Well, how should one answer? Is there a simple answer, or is this a dilemma?
If we explore for answers to such questions we can find much diverse reasoning, however, I believe we will find just two points of view. We are either responsible (morally) for others, or we are not. On the other hand, if we explore the real source of the issue, we just might find contextual use of the term, "responsibility", misleading. Perhaps the real issue is not our responsibility for our brother, but to our brother?
Is whether we love our brother, unconditionally, even as we love ourselves, of prime consideration? If it is, does this mean that the blanket of forgiveness is for evermore wrapped around our relationships; sewn with the golden threads of that holiness we call love. Or, perhaps another experience awaits us.
If we do not demonstrate this love, then might our consideration toward our brother be solely of an earthly nature; becoming as diverse as the stars and opening the door to what we know in this world as fear. If so, then what follows is not love, but attack - what we have come to know as a pervasive out-crying for love, churned up from our hollow pits of perceived despair. The loneliness of mistakeness . . . a common folly in a world of duality.
So, then . . . what are the lessons of life in this plane of space and time that we call planet earth? Is it a karmic balancing act of cause and effect, where a score card follows us from life experience to life experience? Should we be seekers of, "the truth" and explore the many diverse or similar paths to that which we call the Almighty? Do we enter the monasteries of our mind and deny the experience of life? Or, perhaps, we should plunge our egos to the hilt, tasting the passions of hedonism along the way and say there are no lessons beyond pleasure to be learned today. Does it matter? Are there, any lessons to be learned?
Let us think of this notion called, God! No matter what our background, even that of atheist, we have all made a judgement about the divine. All concepts start somewhere. It has been said that if there was no God, we would have invented one. Perhaps we just have a need to explain the unexplainable so we may lay our fears at the feet of a supreme being, and thereby evade much of our own responsibility. Or, perhaps, we have witnessed phenomena that cannot be explained in the rational course of experience so we attribute this to a source outside of ourselves. Accordingly, we then give it identity and power so that one minute we may cast blame upon it and in the next, ask favors of it.
A line from, "A Course in Miracles", states: "Ideas leave not their source . . .", which alludes to the cause and effect of God, God's Creation-The Christ, and the oneness of both. While this makes sense - that the existence of God and His Creation are made of the same "stuff", why does the acknowledgment of a child of God become necessary? One might suggest, since we are apparently not God, we must be someone else. So, perhaps, we are that child! Otherwise, we might place man in the same seeming position as other animals; little more than purposeless pleasures - a trophy sport in some scheme that scars the imagination, leaving us begging for justice and mercy as thinking people. This scenario, of course, can be found in almost any religious circle that we know today, i.e., that we are some errant creature apart from being true children of God. However, this role goes begging for suitable conclusions when trying to judge the Almighty by human ethics.
By God acknowledging us as His children, we at once compromise His lack of mercy to strange little creatures with a presence of love for His own kind, thus maturing him as our Father in the eyes of a hostile world, and endearing Him to us as one endears parental compassion. Then, what might this "stuff" be called that creates effect from cause? We could say with simplicity, thought; an idea, an idea in the Mind of God! And, this idea, we could call - Spirit!
So now, let us think of the absence of this notion we call, God! If we imply that our origin grew from chaos, as some grand accident, then the pathway we choose to travel through life is of no consequence. As such, would concepts, such as hope, faith, and a willingness to believe in a tomorrow that is bigger and better than our meager capabilities to make it so, have any real meaning to us? Would it matter? Wouldn't we do so anyway? Perhaps, but with a difference - through God we believe in the content of justice and mercy, of an endurance of the spirit that transcends even the belief we have in ourselves. This conviction demonstrates belief beyond our beliefs in natural cause, and thus creates hope beyond hope. Purpose before the all-seeing eye that sees everything.
Now, for the moment, let's indulge something we might call a hybrid of thought. Let us imagine for the moment that certain "natural" laws, or forces, are at work in this place we call the Universe. Not just those we know about and observe in this experience we call the physical world, but those that we sense in one form or another as present, - yet outside of what we call the natural forces. Those forces of intervention not understood by man within the natural boundries of common day expectation, but conceptualized through some sense of original superstition we could call magic.
Magic, as we know it, implies supernatural intervention in our affairs and is relegated to an "adept", i.e., one who knows the secrets of the "supernatural world" and can employ them in the physical world. These people have been accorded many titles, such as: magicians, wizards, witches, and, even priests - just to name but a few. We have held them in awe, exalted them and feared them. Many times we have even worshiped them - or their source of power. Now, we know that much of this action has been dispelled by the illumination of ignorance, yet some still remains. Some is found in the metaphysics of mind - a meeting place where ancient ignorance is given up to the present light of uncovered truths.
And, with that thought, we stand at the threshold of our journey - a journey not of distance, nor even of endurance, but a journey within a continuum called, THE MIND.
One method of demonstrating our presently known experience as human beings in a world of seeming chaos, i.e., unpredictable occurrences, albeit with predictable results, is to look at this life on mother earth as reality - with or without any supernatural intelligence in the background. We could simply look at this life as most of us have been taught to do, believing the physical world is "real" and that our five physical senses are as necessary to exploring this reality as our sixth sense is to that part of "reality" we don't quite understand yet. We could move through this medium made of space and time with or without a belief system that extends these properties beyond life on earth and into an obscure world known as the, "after-life". Many of us do, and not for any frivolous reason, either.
We have the experience of being born. We have the experience of early childhood, where lessons are learned and growth takes place within and without. We are taught the lessons as they are brought to us by our contemporaries in the human experience - and at some point, in what we believe is our future, advance that which we learn, thereby extending ourselves a little further than perhaps those throngs that surround us. Ancient truths lay naked before progress and the whimper of dying ideas fall before advancing ideas that bring yet new truths. And then, in the sometimes loneliness that separates our worldly experiences from that of others we question even "reality", relegating the form to that we call, abstract thought.
It has been said that abstract thought is what separates us from other animals. But, what about that property we call thought, itself? Is thought real? If so, it must not be part of the physical world where our five physical senses bring it under examination. And, if thought is an intangible reality, without form - yet with content, then perhaps it transcends the physical world; even standing alone in our world as the only reality. And, if that were so, what do we then call the physical world we have learned to identify with as, "reality".
Since we seem to be what we call, conscious, thinking beings, then any acknowledgment of thought as reality is easier than denying its existence. And, if this powerful medium where we seem to dwell is "life", then the physical world serves little more than to be the form of creation that offers challenge to the process of thought. That would further mean that the body provides a form of locomotion and interaction with the physical environment and for no other purpose.
And, if thought transcends the brain, i.e., is independent of the brain, the next logical step is where this process is coming from. If we call its origination point, the Mind, and can see a link between those many "minds" of mortals, then perhaps a universal mind may exist and is the fountainhead for all real thought of an unlimited nature. If this is so, the next logical step would be to designate this process with an awe inspiring title. God, perhaps?
If we can make a case for thought as reality, then is the physical world a part of that reality? Or, is the physical world a temporary manifestation of the universal mind and therefore unnecessary in the long-run, or even, at all, to those things produced by thought. If this is so, we must either justify useless baggage, or we look upon the physical world, including our bodies, as a figment of the mind's imagination - what we have come to acknowledge as illusion. Either way, we can make a case for thought as the interpreter of reality and the presence or absence of physical properties as simply defined within the life experience, as we know it.
First, let us look to the definition of the physical world. Webster looks at this concept as occupation within space, while employing those five senses that perceive the physical world we spoke of earlier. As an antithesis to this we find the concept of spiritual life forces. Interestingly, such a contrast between these two "worlds" seems to exist since the presence of one seems to block access by the other.
With the setting of this stage, let's take a look at a world set in spiritual garb as one might do when considering forces paralleling a physical world; working independently of it. If thoughts have manifestation properties, or the ability to be cause as well as effect, then it takes but a little imagination to place these properties at the center of what we could call the spiritual world. If we are born of the spirit and this is a process of Mind, then mental process is the force to be engaged. We might call this force an energy force, because it would seem to be dynamic, yet without the properties we have come to know as physical properties.
At the helm of such a world as this we might find a prime cause which we might call, God. For the moment, let's not assign any theological dogma to such an entity, but simply assume it to be prime cause. Now, if we are spirit, what is our purpose? "To Be or Not to Be", is more than a question, it is for us, at this time, a thought that not only interrogates the beginning of life, it defines it.
We obviously assume life, and further, that we are part of it or we would not posture such a position that there is such a thing. So, let us move right to the core of the issue: Are we spirit, believing we are having a human, i.e., physical experience - yet somehow are able to discriminate between the two? Or, are we purely part and parcel to a physical world, and delusional about all the rest?
A Course in Miracles gives us some help to guide us. Reality, says the course, is God. God is simply defined as, Formless, Changeless and Eternal. GOD IS! If we apply this definition to the physical world we can at once see that: It has form; it changes, and is anything but eternal. Further, it says that, "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." Thus, if we can accept this brief concept of God's attributes and the maxim that follows, we can set the stage for, Reality Vs. Illusion.
More evidence seems to exist to support a physical world position of reality, but, lest we jump to conclusions too hastily we might ponder for just a bit. If we believe this to be our reality, appearing as it does, to unfold all about us, permeating our senses, then therein lies the rub. Our senses tell us so, but can we trust our senses? If our belief system mirrors unreality as reality; giving us the illusion of a world that is unfamiliar to us from our very first entry to it and continues reinforcing doubt forevermore as we move through the experience, in what do we trust?
Illusion can appear to be very real indeed, especially when reinforced over and over by scenarios filled with "actors", scripts, and props that would please the most discriminating producers among us. We believe we are people having a human experience because our consciousness tells us so. Yet, sometimes we sense something else - another "reality" that competes for attention, yet suffers on the obverse of a world in the wings; a world waiting to take center-stage. What if we are really spirit, created in the likeness of God, simply having a "human" experience?
A spiritual world, filled with reality awaits us once we cast no more illusions on the screen we call life. This, a world created out of love, will shatter the one we made from fear, and the light from a core now uncovered will shine forevermore upon my brother - for if this be truth, I am he.
posted by Thresholdman | 6:30 AM
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