ILLUSION OF FORM
“This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you, and also the only one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side, and nothing at all is here. It is impossible not to make the natural decision as this is realized.” A Course in Miracles 21-1
“God said: Everything on Earth certainly seems real. It is accepted as real. How would you manage on Earth without credence to the fiction that is called real yet is not? To go somewhere, you have to take a direction. How would you find 3rd Street unless you paid attention? Directions are given, and recipes are followed, and all is fiction at the same time as fiction’s beauty is real and love is real and so much of the non-reality stirs within you remembrance of Me.” HL 4728
“It is your soul’s only desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation. I [God] have been speculating about Myself for a long time. Longer than you and I could collectively remember. Longer than the age of this universe times the age of the universe. You see, then, how young is — how new is — My experience of Myself!” Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God, Book I, Kindle ed.
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Why live illusion?
It is inevitable that the question of the reality or unreality of the world will head to the surface along the process of our recalibration. In fact, recalibration is the process of solving this enigma: finding the exit of the labyrinth where reality and illusion seem to blend perfectly in a gallery of mirrors. As well as we long for the full realization and empowerment of what we are, we know at the same time that a deep resistance keeps us from letting ourself go completely towards that realization.
One source of this resistance is the belief in sacrifice. Do we have to sacrifice the world to become holy, that is, wholly? Christ used to say that in order to be able to follow him, one had to sell all that he possessed. Of course, this utterance was subjected to many varying interpretations.
But one thing is sure: our belief in the idea of sacrifice rests upon the belief in the REALITY of the world. How could we sacrifice or renounce something we know is not real? Yet, as spiritually awaken beings, we know that different realities can only be illusions because Reality must be One. Reality, as Truth, cannot be incidental. It does not change with mood, weather, or chance. It is because Reality does not change that it is real. Even so, what we see in the relative world is constant change. A changing reality is what is called illusion. And only an illusion can be undone. We can undo only unreality.
So, finally, we resist sacrificing something that we know is an illusion. This is what de-calibrates us, and this is what has to be undone and healed in order to recalibrate ourself. But do we have the choice to live or not to live illusion?
The difference between knowing and experiencing Oneself
“In the beginning, that which Is is all there was, and there was nothing else. Yet All That Is could not know itself — because All That Is is all there was, and there was nothing else…” ACIM, Book I:
Now All That Is knew it was all there was — but this was not enough, for it could only know its utter magnificence conceptually, not experientially. Yet the experience of itself is that for which it longed, for it wanted to know what it felt like to be so magnificent… All That Is could not know what it felt like to be magnificent unless that which is not showed up. In the absence of that which is not, that which IS, is not.” N.D. Walsh, Conversations with God, Book 1.
What follows is deeply inspired and condensed from this excerpt and its development in Conversations with God.
So much has been said about separation, yet so much can still be said about it, because separation is paradoxically the key to our freedom and empowerment. We think we are free precisely because we think we are separate while the reality is the other way around. Only in oneness is there freedom.
Could God ever have the thought of separation? Among the infinite possibilities, the possibility of separation must be one of them — at least as a thought —, but it is the only possibility that proved to be impossible. And, yet, it is the very impossibility of separation that allowed God to create us in His image!
As an Infinite Being, God has always known the magnificence and love of His Being. But He wanted something more than only knowing His magnificence, love and Being. He wanted to experience what it feels like to be a magnificent and loving God.
How could God experience what He Is outside of knowing Who He Is? How could He do that? Only through virtual separation — since real separation is impossible — this could be accomplished. In order to experience something, you need its exact opposite to exist as well because to experience means to CHOOSE. God could only experience what it feels like to be God through the negation of what He is so He could choose experientially again what He wanted to be: what He really is. God is creating or re-creating Himself through His projection in us. We are God knowing AND experiencing what it feels like to be God! This is the story of our trip into the world of illusion!
It is impossible to experience anything if there are no opposites even if we know that opposites don’t exist in the Reality One. How could we experience love if there was not its perfect opposite: fear? And since separation is impossible, opposites don’t really exist at the level of Truth; hence illusion is the sine qua non condition of experience. Without illusion, no experience is possible. This answers our question: why live illusion(?).
In other terms, duality is the necessary and sufficient condition to experience Reality through its opposite, illusion, Truth through lie, Abundance through scarcity, Peace through war, Innocence through guilt, Joy through sorrow, Love through fear (=hate), Light through darkness, etc.
Each of us, as a sparkle of God, sent on Earth to experience what it feels like to be God in His multiple facets, had to surround himself/herself with darkness and fear through the powerful process of forgetting who we KNOW we are (through birth and death) in order to EXPERIENCE the magnificence of what we are. Essentially, the experience is to discover what it feels like when we REMEMBER who we really are.
Our soul is this sparkle, this image of God that is always deeply aware of what is really going on in the world of duality or illusion, yet our mind can hardly conceive the scenario of the extent world. Our heart is our real link to our soul while our mind is the trick that makes experience possible through forgetting and remembering.
Where does free choice reside then?
To be sent in the relative world of duality was not a real choice, but a decision or a contract: the contract to make the experience of Self-Creation from Self-Knowledge and Self-Love. The essence of the contract was and still is the experience of our divinity through duality, of our unity through multiplicity; that is through the illusion of separation. Sacrifice or suffering was never part of the original deal. Our contract was to listen to our experience because our soul has the road map to bring us back to where we come from, but enriched with the experience of our eternal knowledge and not only the knowledge of our knowledge.
But free choice resides exactly in choosing to listen or not to listen to the real purpose of the experience. Therefore, we have the choice of not listening to our experience and keep reliving separation over and over again in the illusion of duality or the choice to listen to our experience and be ourself the light unto the darkness, be the love unto the fear when we feel to be encircled by what we are not.
Belief in suffering and sacrificing arises when we make the choice of resisting to be the light that we are. Because we are our own light in darkness.
Suspending judgment
Since we cannot experience our divinity without the illusion of its opposite, one very important aspect of our recalibration is to suspend any form of judgment because everything in the physical world serves the purpose of experiencing what it feels like to be a sparkle of God on Earth. Is it bringing Heaven down to Earth or uplifting Earth to Heaven? It is probably both. But it is important for us to understand that love can be experienced even through crime, violence. Not that we have to accept crime as such, but we have to stop to condemn. Rather than trying to change the world, we have to change the way we are looking at the world. Projection makes perception. The kind of world we see is what we give ourself to the world. The world is a witness as well as a testimony of our own state of mind. When judgment is removed, how cannot our greatness and magnificence arise by itself from darkness?
Written by Normand Bourque on Dec 01, 2013
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