I’m sorry for not getting this summary up quicker (and now I discover I forgot to categorize it, making it basically invisible!). Because of Rich Murray’s very kind offer to produce a transcript of the class, I’ll just summarize my major points. Discussion, as always, is invited and appreciated.
Heaven is reality. The physical world has no place in God’s picture of what is real.
The separation happened when we chose to identify with a self that seeks to set itself above all else. This means being the most special (above our brothers) and the sole authority (above God).
The physical world, rather than our God-created home, is a fiction made by us. It is our illusory projection of this notion of self, designed to make it seem real.
We never really did it. We never actually left God or changed our identity. We are “at home in God, dreaming of exile” (T-10.I.2:1).
God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, has gone with us into our dream, making sure that in each moment:
• We are shown the pain of choosing separation
• We are shown the happiness of choosing love instead
• It is within our reach to do so
• We are given guidance to do so
We learned the lesson instantly, and we are therefore already back. Our seeming presence inside the dream is just a case of reviewing mentally something that is actually past.
In summary: There is nothing redeeming in the impulse to separate, but separation has no power.
The world is the opposite of Heaven, but the world has no power.
All the power is in God and His Love.
Education of the will
I have come to believe that several of the key questions about the separation can be solved by a concept I think of as “the education of the will,” which can be seen in the following points:
• Because of free will, we could conceive of and choose something (separation) that is not real. The choosing of it need not indicate a lack in Heaven.
• Because separation was completely foreign to our experience, we did not appreciate what was really entailed in it.
• The result of choosing it was an educational process (the journey through time) in which we gradually learn what’s really entailed in separation. We gradually learn that separation is not our will to have.
• Each and every situation in time (including this one) is designed to teach us the pain of separation and the joy of union.
• When we fully learn that lesson, we awaken in Heaven.
• In truth, we learned that lesson the instant we chose separation. In that instant, we experienced trillions of simultaneous scenarios, each designed to impart to us that one lesson.
• Having fully learned that separation is not our will and that union is, there would naturally seem to be no possibility of choosing separation again.
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
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