The now moment is the only time that exists.
05/14/2017 by John SmallmanSaul Audio Blog for Sunday May 14th
“On Earth as it is in Heaven!” That is what humanity is aiming for. In the book A Course in Miracles Jesus talks about the “happy dream,” the place or state from which God will draw you home to Oneness with Him.
Humanity’s
awakening, your personal awakening, is the entry into that state where
perfect peace prevails in the divine field of Love that is All That
Exists. In that state all that is not in complete alignment with Love
has dissolved because none of it is Real, and only what is Real exists.
What is Real is eternal, without beginning or end. What you experience
as humans, while seeming intensely real, is just a dream, often a nightmare, filled with pain and suffering, from which you will awaken because it is impossible to remain lost in sleep and dreaming indefinitely.
As
a human the time when you sleep is a time to rest your physical vehicle
and restore the energy that physical or mental activity demands and has
used. While the body sleeps the eternal you, the You that is One, is
where it always is, at peace in the Oneness that is God.
The egoic self is a very small but very loud and vociferous concept of what separation would be like were such a state possible. It is like a split off part of the Self with a life and mind of its own. It, like the body, needs to rest because the concept of separation is very energy intensive and it uses the body’s energy for the games in which it engages.
The main game is “I am alone and afraid, and I need to be loved and protected,” and that game is played out in an innumerable variety of ways as a person attempts to find within the illusion what it lost by choosing to hide from Reality. But Reality is unaware of what is unreal. The simplest analogy is that of small children playing games with imaginary characters that they perceive as real, and being upset because their parents cannot see them or hear them and therefore refuse to believe in them. The parents may pretend to believe in them, but the children see through that façade instantly because the parental responses are quite inappropriate due to their inability to see or enter into the children’s imaginary world.
As the children grow they leave behind that imaginary world and enter their parent’s “real world,” the larger illusion that replaces their small individualized one. Often the child’s world retained very faint memories of Reality which they were reluctant to let go of, but which, for the most part, they had to discard as they grew older in order to operate in and engage with the illusion, their parent’s “real world.” All who incarnate as humans have chosen to experience the intense and frightening sense of separation it provides for lessons they have chosen to learn, along with their main task, which is to assist humanity to awaken. But, as we have noted here before, the illusion, once one is embodied within it as a human, is experienced as intensely real, so real in fact that remembering one’s vital main task frequently becomes impossible.
The main point here is that the human experience is unreal, even though it does seem very real, because the pain and suffering, the exciting adventures, or falling in love bring into your conscious awareness extremely intense feelings, feelings so intense that most people identify with them as being themselves, or at least as an essential and inseparable part of themselves. Without feelings most think of themselves as lacking a valid identity, and so feelings are very highly valued. But really, although often extremely intense, feelings and emotions are like the weather, temporary states that come and go but do not last. Nevertheless, they can be, and often are, held onto in order to prolong sensations, either pleasurable or painful. In the latter case it is often in an attempt to place blame on another who is thought or believed to have caused you pain or suffering.
Others do not cause your feelings, your feelings are merely reflections of how you see yourselves, and what others do is bring awareness of those feelings to the forefront of your consciousness. If they are deeply painful and shameful you may deny them and project them outwards, away from yourselves, out of your awareness, and onto another or others. When you hold onto feelings you can then keep reliving the intensity of pleasure or pain that arose the first time you experienced them. They can make what has passed and gone appear to be happening again in the present moment as you relive them in your mind. If something occurs that requires your immediate attention in this present moment, for instance while driving your car, the memory you were reliving fades out so that you can focus on the now moment.
The now moment is the only time that exists, and in the now moment you are constantly being renewed as the perfect child of God in the ongoing moment of eternal creation where you are always perfect because that is how God created you, and what He creates never changes. Change is of the illusion, and within the illusion it is constant because it is always attempting to move you away from Reality. On the other hand Reality is always calling you to return Home, to your natural state of eternal joy, where you are fully and eternally alive.
Life is eternal, unceasing, endless. Therefore you never cease to live. Human death, the laying down of a human body, is but a change of state, moving out of the illusion back to Reality, which you have never left. Another analogy: you watch a movie, go to the theater, or read a book and get totally caught up in the story that unfolds – emotions arise, thoughts arise, judgments arise that concern the story – then the story ends and you are back with your own life and story which is quite different from the one in which you were temporarily enfolded and felt a part of.
Your human life is a little like that but, because it lasts for years instead of the couple of hours in which a movie unfolds, it is hard for you to know and understand that it is just a story. You will awaken into Reality when the story no longer fascinates you, when you decide that you have learnt all the lessons that it has to offer. You all know someone who seems to inhabit a different world from the ordinary everyday one that most humans experience. Well understand that that person has just chosen to undergo a more individualized life experience within the illusion than you have.
Your collective more “normal” experience is really not much different from the individualized “abnormal” one of that other person, but because you share it with others it appears more real to you than does the experience that other is undergoing, which you perceive as unreal or insane. And, in the illusion, where you feel so separate despite your collective and similar experiences, it is comforting to belong to a group of like-minded individuals. And groups, like people, tend to judge other groups as less valid, less good, or less valuable than their own one. Within the illusion you could say that there are just varying levels of insanity.
Most of you have had experiences or been presented with lessons that have drastically altered your perception of life and of yourselves. It could have been meeting and interacting with someone whose beliefs were very different from your own, or having a serious accident or illness, or even a Near Death Experience. And as a result you have altered your approach to life and to other people because it has in effect been a major “wake-up call” within yourself that has demanded this change. Normally when that kind of experience arises it is initially very unsettling. However, as time passes, and acceptance grows of your “new” life perception, you come to find yourselves more at peace with yourselves, better able to “be” yourselves, and no longer seeking the approval or positive encouragement of others by attempting to be other than who you are. Realization has dawned that who you are is who you are meant to be, and you know that that is just fine, and unchangeable.
You are all, without any exceptions, the beloved and perfect children of God, infinitely loved and completely accepted just as you are, just as God created you, forever One with Him, unchanged and unchanging. Rejoice then in the certain knowledge that you are always One with your Source which is, of course, also You. Oneness means Oneness, that there is only Oneness, and that therefore separation is impossible, unreal, totally illusory. You will awaken into Reality because that is where you are eternally, you had just nodded of for a moment.
The egoic self is a very small but very loud and vociferous concept of what separation would be like were such a state possible. It is like a split off part of the Self with a life and mind of its own. It, like the body, needs to rest because the concept of separation is very energy intensive and it uses the body’s energy for the games in which it engages.
The main game is “I am alone and afraid, and I need to be loved and protected,” and that game is played out in an innumerable variety of ways as a person attempts to find within the illusion what it lost by choosing to hide from Reality. But Reality is unaware of what is unreal. The simplest analogy is that of small children playing games with imaginary characters that they perceive as real, and being upset because their parents cannot see them or hear them and therefore refuse to believe in them. The parents may pretend to believe in them, but the children see through that façade instantly because the parental responses are quite inappropriate due to their inability to see or enter into the children’s imaginary world.
As the children grow they leave behind that imaginary world and enter their parent’s “real world,” the larger illusion that replaces their small individualized one. Often the child’s world retained very faint memories of Reality which they were reluctant to let go of, but which, for the most part, they had to discard as they grew older in order to operate in and engage with the illusion, their parent’s “real world.” All who incarnate as humans have chosen to experience the intense and frightening sense of separation it provides for lessons they have chosen to learn, along with their main task, which is to assist humanity to awaken. But, as we have noted here before, the illusion, once one is embodied within it as a human, is experienced as intensely real, so real in fact that remembering one’s vital main task frequently becomes impossible.
The main point here is that the human experience is unreal, even though it does seem very real, because the pain and suffering, the exciting adventures, or falling in love bring into your conscious awareness extremely intense feelings, feelings so intense that most people identify with them as being themselves, or at least as an essential and inseparable part of themselves. Without feelings most think of themselves as lacking a valid identity, and so feelings are very highly valued. But really, although often extremely intense, feelings and emotions are like the weather, temporary states that come and go but do not last. Nevertheless, they can be, and often are, held onto in order to prolong sensations, either pleasurable or painful. In the latter case it is often in an attempt to place blame on another who is thought or believed to have caused you pain or suffering.
Others do not cause your feelings, your feelings are merely reflections of how you see yourselves, and what others do is bring awareness of those feelings to the forefront of your consciousness. If they are deeply painful and shameful you may deny them and project them outwards, away from yourselves, out of your awareness, and onto another or others. When you hold onto feelings you can then keep reliving the intensity of pleasure or pain that arose the first time you experienced them. They can make what has passed and gone appear to be happening again in the present moment as you relive them in your mind. If something occurs that requires your immediate attention in this present moment, for instance while driving your car, the memory you were reliving fades out so that you can focus on the now moment.
The now moment is the only time that exists, and in the now moment you are constantly being renewed as the perfect child of God in the ongoing moment of eternal creation where you are always perfect because that is how God created you, and what He creates never changes. Change is of the illusion, and within the illusion it is constant because it is always attempting to move you away from Reality. On the other hand Reality is always calling you to return Home, to your natural state of eternal joy, where you are fully and eternally alive.
Life is eternal, unceasing, endless. Therefore you never cease to live. Human death, the laying down of a human body, is but a change of state, moving out of the illusion back to Reality, which you have never left. Another analogy: you watch a movie, go to the theater, or read a book and get totally caught up in the story that unfolds – emotions arise, thoughts arise, judgments arise that concern the story – then the story ends and you are back with your own life and story which is quite different from the one in which you were temporarily enfolded and felt a part of.
Your human life is a little like that but, because it lasts for years instead of the couple of hours in which a movie unfolds, it is hard for you to know and understand that it is just a story. You will awaken into Reality when the story no longer fascinates you, when you decide that you have learnt all the lessons that it has to offer. You all know someone who seems to inhabit a different world from the ordinary everyday one that most humans experience. Well understand that that person has just chosen to undergo a more individualized life experience within the illusion than you have.
Your collective more “normal” experience is really not much different from the individualized “abnormal” one of that other person, but because you share it with others it appears more real to you than does the experience that other is undergoing, which you perceive as unreal or insane. And, in the illusion, where you feel so separate despite your collective and similar experiences, it is comforting to belong to a group of like-minded individuals. And groups, like people, tend to judge other groups as less valid, less good, or less valuable than their own one. Within the illusion you could say that there are just varying levels of insanity.
Most of you have had experiences or been presented with lessons that have drastically altered your perception of life and of yourselves. It could have been meeting and interacting with someone whose beliefs were very different from your own, or having a serious accident or illness, or even a Near Death Experience. And as a result you have altered your approach to life and to other people because it has in effect been a major “wake-up call” within yourself that has demanded this change. Normally when that kind of experience arises it is initially very unsettling. However, as time passes, and acceptance grows of your “new” life perception, you come to find yourselves more at peace with yourselves, better able to “be” yourselves, and no longer seeking the approval or positive encouragement of others by attempting to be other than who you are. Realization has dawned that who you are is who you are meant to be, and you know that that is just fine, and unchangeable.
You are all, without any exceptions, the beloved and perfect children of God, infinitely loved and completely accepted just as you are, just as God created you, forever One with Him, unchanged and unchanging. Rejoice then in the certain knowledge that you are always One with your Source which is, of course, also You. Oneness means Oneness, that there is only Oneness, and that therefore separation is impossible, unreal, totally illusory. You will awaken into Reality because that is where you are eternally, you had just nodded of for a moment.
With so very much love, Saul.
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