Lesson 176

Review 5: God is but love, and therefore so am I.

Practice Instructions

Commentary

Paragraph 8 of the review introduction:

Our practicing somehow releases Christ to the world. Opening our minds to the Holy Spirit makes us available as channels to those around us. The Holy Spirit, of course, is “Him Who sees your bitter need and knows the answer God has given Him” (8:1). One of the things that makes the Course so unique, I think, is the way in which it both acknowledges our “bitter need” and yet affirms that in reality we have no needs. It is as if He is saying to us, “I know that the world of pain and loss is only an illusion and nothing to be disturbed about, but I also know that, to you, it is very, very real, and I am ready to work with you on that basis.”

Quite clearly, we are being encouraged to develop a relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We review “together” (8:2). We devote our time and effort to these review thoughts “together” (8:3). We are not simply individuals practicing some kind of mind manipulation; we are engaging in a relationship, a collaborative venture:

Rehabilitation does not come from anyone else. You can have guidance from without, but you must accept it from within. The guidance must become what you want, or else it will be meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I know what to do. (T-8.III.6:5-9)

So we are reviewing these thoughts with him. We are not just mulling them over by ourselves, but listening to that guidance from within as we do so.

“And together we will teach them to our brothers” (8:4). Have you noticed how nearly every time the Course talks about the process we are going through, it ends up with some aspect of sharing or extension, some kind of giving what we have received to our brothers? The Course is not a personal path of salvation. Indeed it teaches there is no such thing as individual salvation, because “individual” is an illusion. We are not alone. We are not separate individuals who can be individually saved. We are part of a whole, and when we begin to receive what the Holy Spirit has to teach, we must share it, because sharing is what He is teaching. We teach “by actions or thought, in words or soundlessly, in any language or in no language, in any place or time or manner” (M-1.3:6).

We share precisely because the whole is not whole until everyone is included. As Jesus is incomplete without us, we are incomplete without our brothers. We, like Jesus, may recognize the wholeness in ourselves and in so doing, recognize it in our brothers. The wholeness is already there, but unacknowledged and unrecognized: “I am as God created me,” as one of our thoughts for review reminds us. Our “ancient home” is being “kept unchanged by time, immaculate and safe” (8:8). We cannot lose it, but we have lost awareness of it, and that awareness is what we share with each other.

As we begin to accept our own wholeness we become reminders to the world of the wholeness that is also theirs, and that we share with them. There is no “preaching” quality, no spiritual elite telling the rest of the world “how it is.” It is the happy communication that “You are whole, as I am. I am as God created me, and you are as God created you.” We come to our brothers not as superiors, but asking their blessing on us, acknowledging them as the holy Son of God, along with us: “Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.”

Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you. (W-37.3:1-2)