Let me remember I am one with God
Let Me Remember I Am One With God
Remembering this is often hard. Not only hard, but impossible as long as I am fixated on remembering I am one with my ego mind! From our earliest days, our focus is directed toward the care and maintenance of the personal self - its safety, needs, requirements for self-promotion. As we are reminded in the Course, we have made gods of the self-concepts contrived as we “mature,” and do indeed, worship at their altars. A wonderful quote from ACIM - “And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting place and no encounter. One do you perceive outside yourself, your own beloved son. The other rests within, His Father’s Son, within your brother as he is in you. Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor even what they do. They have a different purpose. “
So naturally, our “own beloved sons” command our respect and allegiance. The problem is that those “sons” can’t deliver happiness, peace, security, or connection, although they search mightily and endlessly for them. It is considering the body/mind/personality as the primary identity and sending it off in search of peace of mind that guarantees it won’t be found.
So why is the ego (body/mind/personality) so uniformly unsuccessful at permanently finding what it wants, remaining endlessly on the hunt? Because the ego is fictitious - a collection of programs and conditions, mostly installed very early in life. And this will forever be the case, so we must look elsewhere for happiness, which everyone in the world seeks.
If the ego is not my primary identity, although I behave as though it were, then what is? Early on in our earthly life, we begin to confuse primary and secondary identities, lose track of reality, and the trouble begins. Our primary identity is, of course, life, spirit, the invisible light and presence, the extension/creation of God. But how do we know and relate to that presence on a familiar daily basis when I am singularly involved with my “own beloved son?” To make that point - here is a sentence: “I am going to work.” Here, the I AM, or sense of primary identity, is ascribed to the body/mind. But what if I say, “I am noticing that I am working too many hours.” Now we have two “I AMs in the sentence and they are not the same. To what does the first one refer? What’s doing the noticing that the body/mind is overworking - this something that is preceding the body/mind and able to regard it as an object, and about which it can make commentary? It is being, conscious awareness, the real I AM, and this I must remember I AM! This is my primary identity, able to observe the ego - the secondary identity.
Notice the characteristics of conscious awareness right now as you read - limitless, clear, empty, boundless, constant, eternal, non-judgmental, non-resistance, completely accepting, and more. Does this not sound like our description of God? How about the characteristics of the body/mind? The 50 trillion cells in the body are made of molecules and atoms, endlessly being replaced so the body itself is never constant from one second to the next. What about that mind, made up of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions? We know, without doubt, that all of these change every second or less. Talk about an unstable concoction! This should be wonderful news to realize that I actually am (and we all are collectively) right now this presence with the amazing characteristics. Who would want a small, constantly changing, unpredictable, unhappy, ineffective invention that can’t deliver the goods to be our primary identity? We would have to be insane, which the Course assures us we are.
So we are called upon to remember we are always one with conscious awareness that is omnipresent. There is never an instant when it disappears. Now that’s stable and count-on-able! So we are asked to return our ATTENTON from the ego to conscious awareness, to practice being in the witness position, watching what the body/mind/ego is doing, thinking, and wanting. And the more we observe what the ego is up to, rather than closely identifying with the ego itself, the calmer and more peaceful we feel.
Isn’t peace of mind our stated goal? Isn’t it more peaceful to watch what my ego is doing, demanding, worrying about rather than actually identifying with it? The Course would refer to that as being “above the battleground.” Am I not remembering I am one with God as I pay attention to this peace? And as we become more conscientious and motivated to stay in this place of primary identity, observing the ego rather than getting so tangled up in it, we discover something wonderful. More and more we discover, to our delight, that this conscious awareness is also the home of love, tranquility, brilliance, light, and happiness as well as peace. And it’s all right here, constantly and safely, for our choosing.
Lesson 132 states, “ --- and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.” So let us daily remember we are always one with causeless, eternal, loving conscious awareness right here and now. Nothing to do about it, nothing to learn. It’s happily an unavoidable circumstance and we are only asked to pay attention, to shift our allegiance. Regardless of what we believe, we are always at home, always beloved and asked only to choose to remember that for deepest peace and happiness guaranteed beyond measure.
Blessings,
Carol
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