UNIT 11
The Fall from Grace
It is your nature to feel compassion for yourself and others. It is natural for you to reach out and comfort a friend. Why then is your experience of unconditional love so rare?
The answer lies in an old story that still lives in the human heart and mind.
In the beginning, you were one with God and shared in the omnipotent power of His love. Nothing was impossible for you. But then you began to wonder what would happen if you created apart from God. You wanted to be creative like God, but you wondered “what if something goes wrong?”
This doubt was just separation anxiety, but it gave rise to many other fearful thoughts. Among these thoughts was the thought, “If I make a mess of things, God might be mad at me and withdraw his love from me.” And for some of you that thought was the clincher.
It didn’t take long for you to go from that thought to the experience of feeling guilty and cut off from God’s loving presence. Now this separation was artificial and self-imposed, but it felt real to you. You believed it.
And so all that you created after that was the result of the belief: “I am not worthy of God’s love.” In your own mind you “fell from grace.” You went from sharing in the omnipotent power of God’s love to being afraid of God’s wrath.
Still others of you became enamored of your new-found freedom to create and brushed God aside. You exercised your creative power energetically and without restraint. In the process, you trespassed on your brothers and sisters.
This brought in a new dynamic. Now, instead of being afraid of God’s wrath, you became afraid of your brother’s capacity to retaliate against you.
Either way, you fell from far from Grace. You were either afraid of God, or afraid of your brother, or perhaps you were afraid of both.
So deciding to test the water and be a Creator like God did not go very well. It led to separation and alienation. You lost the connection to love.
In other words, you turned reality inside out. You made love fearful.
When you are feeling separate, it’s hard to remember what it was like before separation occurred. Yet that seems to be your peculiar dilemma.
And to find your way back to God, you must retrace your steps and realize that the “separation” was a choice that you made.
God did not kick you out of the Garden. You left of your own will.
You must also realize that you chose to separate from your brother.
Cain slew Able out of his jealousy and fear that God loved Able more than He loved him Of course, it wasn’t true. But it created a new wave of separation that pitted brother against brother.
So this is the world you created. It was a brash and inevitably foolish attempt to leave the Unity, where you were one with God and with your brother. Now you must forgive your mistake, correct it and find your way back home.
The Awakening Heart
God has never withdrawn His love from you, regardless of all the mistakes you have made. He knows that eventually you will re-connect with the spark of Love that he placed within your heart.
Until you re-discover that spark within, you will continue to believe that God no longer loves you. That is the original neurotic idea that has given rise to your world of fear and shame.
While you inhabit this dark and dreary world, you will continue to chew on the same apple that Adam and Eve picked from the tree of Knowledge. But once you re-connect with God, your dream of separation will come to an end.
The Tree of Knowledge
The question of evil does not arise until you doubt your worthiness to give and receive love.
The question is: “Are you going to correct your original faulty assumption, or are you going to accept this assumption as truth and build your life on its foundation?
Your spiritual life on earth does not begin until you answer that question. It does not matter what religion you believe in. It does not matter what your social or economic standing is.
Each one of you will come to a point in your life when you are ready to challenge your false beliefs and assumptions. And that will be the beginning of your healing, and the restoration of your power and purpose.
The doubting of your own doubt, the negating of your own negativity is the turning point, the end of the descent into matter and the beginning of the ascent into heaven. It is the renewal of your partnership with God, the new Covenant.
You can’t be a partner with God so long as you see yourself or anyone else as a hapless victim. The new Covenant asks you to recognize the Kingdom of God in your own heart. That is another way of saying that you reject the idea that God is separate from you. You reject the idea that you are unlovable or that your brother is unlovable. You reject the idea of evil as an idea created in fear.
The new Covenant is the acceptance of God’s answer to the question “what if?” It is the beginning of your own personal salvation and the beginning of human reception of the Kingdom of God on earth.
When you accept God back into your life, your whole experience of the world and all the beings in it changes. You are a father and a mother to every child who approaches you, a son or daughter to every elderly person. You are a friend to friend and friendless alike. And you are a blessing to the one who remembers he is loved and to the one who has forgotten.
Drinking from the Well
There is no place where your loving presence is not needed. Once you drink from the well, many would drink from the cup that quenched your thirst.
Of course, you do not turn them away. But you don’t try to fill all of the cups that are waved before you. You lead them to the well and show them how to use the pump.
No one can force another person to drink. So do not proselytize or look for believers. Simply wait at the well for the thirsty to come.
No one can force another to awaken. Each person experiences the futility of giving and receiving conditional love when s/he is ready. The pain threshold is different for each individual, but everyone crosses it in the end.
Salvation belongs to those who choose it. But do not judge others who are not ready to make this choice, for it is not for you to judge. Those who come later into the lap of God’s love are not less worthy than those who come sooner.
The Tree of Life
As the heart awakens, this sojourn into the dream comes to an end.
The power of God’s love cannot be uncreated. It can be rejected, denied, or hidden. But all rejection, denial, and secret guilt have limits.
Truth can be distorted but it can never be completely eradicated or denied. A tiny light always remains in the deepest darkness. And that light will always be found when the desire to find it arises.
The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grows in your own mind. And it is in your own mind that it will be transformed into the Tree of Life.
You, my friend, are the hero of your own dream. You are the dreamer of the darkness and the one who brings the light. You are tempter and savior rolled in one. This you will come to know if you do not know it already.
Journaling Questions
In what ways do you feel disconnected from God’s love?
How and where was the Fall from Grace in your own life?
How have you reconnected with God and recovered your own innocence?
How have you transformed the Tree of Knowledge into the Tree of Life?
UNIT 12
Abundance
Scarcity thinking results from your perception that you are not worthy of love. If you do not feel worthy of love, you will project lack outside of you. You will see the glass as half empty, rather than half full.
If you see the glass as half empty, do not be surprised if before too long there is nothing left in the glass. Lack is the result of negative perception.
Of course, the same principle works in reverse. See the glass as half full and it won’t be long before it is filled to the brim. When you know that you are worthy of love, you tend to interpret the words and actions of others in a loving way. You do not easily take offense.
If someone is rude to you, you consider the possibility that s/he may be having a bad day. You don’t feel victimized or abused.
How you view life depends on whether you feel lovable or unlovable, worthy or unworthy. Either way, you will create an external situation which reinforces your opinion of yourself.
Living in the Past
All preoccupation with supply comes from living in the past. Lack is simply the remembrance of old wounds. These are too easily projected into the future.
To end scarcity thinking you must forgive the past.
Be aware that you are not feeling lovable right now, that you feel unworthy and mistreated. Be aware that you feel scared that the bad things that happened in the past are going to happen again.
Just be aware of how your heart has tensed and tightened and how you have emotionally shut down. And ask yourself if you feel more safe now than you did before?
Emotional honesty is important. You can’t force yourself to think positively, but you can acknowledge your negativity.
Forgiving the past and letting it go sets the stage for choosing differently. No matter how many times you have made the same mistake, you have a fresh opportunity to forgive yourself.
Without forgiveness, it is impossible to move out of scarcity thinking. And to forgive, you must become aware of all the ways in which you are hurting. You must acknowledge the wound. Then you can forgive it.
Hidden wounds have hidden agendas that hold you hostage to the past. Deep wounds may require bandaging at first, but to complete the healing process they must be exposed to air and sunlight. Conscious awareness must be brought to all unconscious beliefs and assumptions.
Recognize scarcity thinking and you learn an important lesson. For every perception of lack in your surroundings mirrors an inner feeling of unworthiness that must be brought into conscious awareness.
The experience of scarcity is not God punishing you. It is you showing yourself a belief that needs to be corrected.
You learn to love yourself by seeing how you withhold love from yourself. And you often learn how you withhold love from yourself by seeing how you withhold it from others.
Abundance comes into your life, not because you have learned to memorize some mumbo jumbo incantation, but because you have learned to bring love to the wounded aspects of your psyche.
Love heals all perception of division and conflict and restores the original perception of wholeness, free of sin or guilt.
When you have seen yourself as you really are, you know that love cannot be taken away from you. Love belongs to you eternally.
The Gifts of God
When something happens that is difficult for you to accept, remind yourself of the fact that God does not give you questionable gifts. Do not be misled by the wrapping on the box. Find out what is inside before you pronounce judgment.
Often you may not know the meaning of the gift until it is put to work in your life. That can be frustrating, but it is inevitable.
The gifts of God do not feed your ego expectations. Their value is of a higher order. They help you open to your true nature and purpose here.
Sometimes they seem to close a door and you don’t understand why. Only when the right door opens do you understand why the wrong door was closed.
Yours is a partnership with the divine Mind. Please do your part by learning to open your heart to Love. When you do that, the Gifts of God flow naturally to you and you experience abundance and prosperity.
Journaling Questions
When have you experienced scarcity thinking? Have you been able to see the feelings of unworthiness that cause you to see the glass as half-empty?
Have you learned to stop seeing through the eyes of fear and open your heart to the Gifts of God that are manifesting in your life?
Gratitude
You cannot mention abundance without also mentioning gratitude. Gratitude stems from worthiness and supports the experience of abundance.
On the other hand, ungratefulness and resentment stem from
unworthiness and reinforce the perception of scarcity. Each is a closed circle.
You enter the circle of grace when you bring love to yourself or another. You enter the circle of fear when you withhold love from yourself or another.
When you stand inside of one circle, the reality of the other circle comes into question. This is why you often have the sense that there are two mutually exclusive worlds in your experience.
The grateful cannot imagine being unjustly treated. The resentful cannot imagine being loved by God. Which world would you inhabit?
In every moment you must decide whether or not to play the role of victim. When you play the victim, you resent the gift and see it as a punishment. When you stop living in victim consciousness, you accept what comes your way knowing that it brings a blessing, even if you cannot see it yet.
Gratitude is the choice to see the love of God in all things.
The choice to appreciate leads to happiness as surely as the choice to depreciate leads to unhappiness and despair. One gesture supports and uplifts. The other devalues and tears down.
If you are living in despair, it is because you are choosing to depreciate the gifts that have been given you.
Each person who walks the earth reaps the results of the thoughts he has sown. And if he would change the nature of next year’s harvest, he must change the thoughts he is thinking today.
The next time you are about to depreciate a gift that is given you, pause a moment and open your heart to receive that gift with gratitude. Then notice how your experience of the gift and relationship with the giver is transformed.
Journaling Questions
How has resentment and lack of gratitude resulted in a struggle to thrive and support yourself?
Have you learned to appreciate what you have, instead of dwelling on what you want and don’t have?
How has gratitude created ease and abundance in your life?