Who am I vs. What am I?
Who am I vs. What am I?
We recently gave an online meditation for the Miracle network in the UK. We took 2 ideas from the course and brought them together. I thought we’d share with you where we came out. The first idea comes from the Workbook and is something we’ve used often in various classes and workshops.
What Am I?
1. I am God’s Son (child), complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. ²In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. ³In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. ⁴I am the holy home of God Himself. ⁵I am the Heaven where His Love resides. ⁶I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own. (ACIM, W-pII.14.1:1-6)
I think this is a beautiful description of the state of mind and thought necessary for the awareness of Heaven. This is what the experience of a holy instant brings with it. This is the memory of Love and Truth itself. This is our true Home that I think we all recognise and remember when we’re in it. It is an eternal state that is constantly expanding, creating more of itself. The only thing that prevents us from living in this state all the time, is the second idea from the text that, as a course student, we have all heard many times.
²Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. ³In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. ⁴ (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2-4)
Beginning with a reference to our first quote, this second passage gives the how and why the original separation began and continues to be experienced. I don’t think that what this tiny, mad idea was, really matters. What does matter is, I took the idea seriously, thus giving it the power of my belief. In doing so, I make it my experience through constantly looking for more evidence to make it true. Luckily for us, no amount of evidence can ever make true, that which was never true. I think, eventually, we will be able to laugh again at all our insane attempts to uphold nothing more than a tiny, mad idea.
On a more practical and personal level, we can take steps in this direction by monitoring and identifying whatever thoughts we have about ourselves and others that don’t fit or agree with what’s stated in that first passage and remember to laugh. Now, you might think that the vast majority, perhaps 95% or more, of thoughts that I have every day, don’t agree with What I Am. And you would be right, but we have to start somewhere. I think that if I could catch just 1% of my insanity, share it with another and have a good laugh about it, I’d have a far better day than I had yesterday. Laughing about ourselves, with others is one of the most healing experiences I know. It’s time, to start taking ourselves and others less seriously and remember to laugh again.
