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The Grand Dilemma

To Hold Out for Hope or to Let Go and Trust for Peace

By Raj Miles

 

Over the past ten years or so as I have witnessed my own growth along the spiritual pathway I have seen and experienced many aspects of the metaphysical that have expanded my consciousness and brought me to a place where Trust in God for the unfolding of my life has become paramount. As I look around me I begin to see some of the reasons I lingered so long, some of the distractions that took me nearly a lifetime to overcome and one in particular jumps out at me.

It is time to take a hard look at what for eons has been perpetuated as mankind's fallback, that hope springs eternal from the human breast, this virtue they tell us is a gift. Perhaps it is time for us to see 'Hope' for what it truly is – mankind's greatest folly and mankind's greatest distraction in the field of opportunity for raising the individual and collective consciousness to our God source.

Christianity has long upheld the power of its three favorite virtues – Faith, Hope and Charity as being the qualities that will transform our experience and deepen our relationship to God, providing a solution to the ills affecting people on both a personal and collective level. I believe that offering Hope is not only a perversion of the truth, it is now and has been for a long time a blatant effort to manipulate the mind and prevent the natural and evolutionary flow of the Love of God into the heart of Man.

It is a great wonder that this primary influence in our day to day lives, Hope has not attracted closer attention. Few of us in the Western world would have a minute pass by that we are not entertaining the 'hope' that something will or will not transpire. We are waiting for an outcome that will project us into a better future, gambling our choices away on a dream that may never come. Few of us even consider that the energy associated with and generated by this choice is the very energy that literally propels the sovereign creative power of our God selves from us in the opposite direction. We blindly go on in 'faith' believing that a magical and mysterious source of all our lacks and requirements will be made manifest if we 'Hope' that they do.

The very nature of the word 'Hope' implies that we have given over our power to another source and have become dependent on that source working in our favor, that we have relinquished our sovereign right to take responsibility for the outcome of our circumstances, no matter how they may appear. Effectively we have turned away from God. One of my all time favorite messages comes from Jeshua/Jesus who tells us in the Way of the Heart material that "The world is diametrically opposed to the Kingdom". The diametrical opposite aspect of 'Hope' is Trust. On the one hand we give our power away, on the other we empower ourselves by the very strength of our conviction. Essentially, we are either at the effect of circumstance, the world of form or held in the palm of God, the Kingdom. In a nutshell, in Fear or Love.

"for in Truth, the mind that trusts the Source of its creation allows all things, trusts all things, embraces all things and transcends all things”, Jeshua, Way of the Heart 1997.

Hope then is the result of a fear that we lack something and that it may be made 'right', Trust comes from the knowing that all is in Divine Order – Love. That the world is unfolding in perfection even it appears from our myopic perspective that it is not so. There is no Freedom in Hope only continued imprisonment in a perpetual wheel of life that cannot find an escape.

The perpetuation of Hope becomes, in our every moment, the choice point of resistance to allowing God to be the power in our lives and it's time for us each to 'weed out' wherever Hope has taken root and become the blockage to our transcendence, to freedom and to the very purpose in this life, that of becoming One with the Creator and the birthing of the Christ in each of us.

"As long as there is a trace within you in which you are striving to get from any perceived thing or object around you what you are sure that you lack inside yourself, you cannot know the love of Self. And you cannot experience freedom. Happiness is an inside job." Jeshua, Way of the Heart 1997.

Raj lives with his partner, Suzanne in the Hinterland of Australia's Gold Coast - together they are dedicated creators of 'contexts' by which the Family of Christ Mind may join and find Itself. Through a myriad of activities, Way of the Heart brings opportunities with spiritual tours, events, workshops, publications and membership for the awakening into Consciousness.  raj@elohim.com   www.wayoftheheart.net

Specialness – A Disguised Gift of Fear

By

Tomas Vieira

When ever we try to be special, to get something from someone, or harbor an attachment to an outcome or thing, we will experience pain and suffering and usually cruelty towards the other party and self.

Recently, I was trying to make myself 'special' to someone when I realized that the more I tried, the worst I felt. Trying to be special always involves seeing yourself and the other as individuals, different; more special than others. This immediately produces fear because the hidden belief behind specialness is that we are alone and need to get and protect what we want, though this agenda is often hidden beneath the driving desire to win over the other. The exhilarating emotions of trying to be special, the fantasies that play-out in the mind all disguise a growing fear of loss.

This growing fear eventually surfaces as a need to defend against that fear. The ego being insane and working from its mantra of seek and do not find then begins to subtly judge (or attack) the other in the absurd notion that finding fault in him/her will somehow protect them from the very fear that began within their own ego mind.

Typical of the ego, it makes up a fear and then sees (projects) it outside in the other and justifies attack as a means of defending a potential loss. This can manifest as seeing fault in another and trying to correct them. So back to my story, I was actually trying to hurt someone I cared deeply for. Is this madness or what??

There is no way out of here. The paradigm is now a closed circle. We (ego) begin by seeing the fault outside, then by making it real in the mind, we followed by attack which leads to defence from the other which seemingly confirms the initial fear and generates more fear and round and round we go! The internal altar of worship to God has been displaced by the idol of fear.

A Course in Miracles in Lesson 170, titled 'There is no cruelty in God and none in me' clearly explains this mistaken belief.

1. "No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defence, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion from fear.

How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped."

The lesson goes on to explain the ultimate fear behind this is the fear of God Himself; the fear of a God of vengeance who is after us for our 'sins'. We still believe that we are guilty and conscious or not, every time we attack or defend, we generate guilt and believe God will persecute us. This of course is ridiculous as this seeming life is just a dream, one that is over already. All we have to do is wake up to who we are to see that we are already home, safe, beloved.

I only discovered my mistake when I came to my knees begging for the peace of God. I was so over myself and prayed for right-mindedness. I prayed for the correct perception so that I could return to peace. Having turned my life over to the Peace of God, I was shocked to find that here was the ego again, trying to hurt me.

And then I saw it clearly! I saw how the ego in its deception used the desire for specialness to make up fantasies which, if followed through, would have turned out to be conditions for a future generation of pain, suffering and sacrifice.

Love is free and limitless, given freely without restriction or expectation. We all know sexual love and emotional love but know nothing of Conscious Love; the Love that is given solely to mirror back the perfection of the other. Conscious Love is about practicing giving is receiving; and can only be known experientially. There is no room for 'getting' here. Conscious love does not see error and abandon a brother. It seeks not to correct error thereby compounding the mistaken belief that we are separate individuals. Conscious Love does not judge and does not seek to place limits on self or others. In the mirroring back of the perfection of the other is our memory of who and what we are restored.

Having already learnt and practiced this with Nouk, I was dumbstruck to find myself lapsing back into specialness. I supposedly teach this stuff!!

When we lapse into specialness, we are unable to see the beauty and perfection of our brother, thereby increasing the fear in us that we are alone and isolated, with a vengeful God after us.

As the Course states, at any instant we can be reborn and given life again. All we need do is forgive ourselves for the mistake we made and ask the Universal Inspiration (Holy Spirit) to shine away what was never there! Here’s to the end of specialness.