Monday, August 17, 2015
Lesson 229: “What is forgiveness?” “Love, which created me, is what I am.”
We get to live in the awareness that we are God’s children. One of the words I like to use for God is Love. Because I think Love is the complete essence of God. God is no more and no less. Love is the experience of perfect joy and a sense of peace because it is the most ideal feeling. Love is the simple answer for God. We don’t have to give God a whole personality. We can if that’s helpful.
I think the Course’s explanation for what God is is actually the undoing of the world’s definition of God’s personality. We need to let go of those associations that God is in anyway judgmental or that God wants to cause us pain. God is the perfect experience of Love, so we can let God be a simple example of Love, the feeling of Love, the energy of Love.
We need to remove our ideas that God is any different than Love. This is the way to understand God truly and then this is the way we understand ourselves. Jesus tells us that we are simply the same essence as God because God created us. This can help us to undo those old views of ourselves that we are the long list of worldly definitions as well as owners of things.
This worldly way of identifying ourselves is invariably with some physical attribute or a physical possession. This always leads us to despair because these things deteriorate and we are necessarily identifying ourselves with that which does not last. This is a recipe for disaster. This is an error at best. Jesus says- stop and reconnect with what has brought us a sense of joy and is an accurate reflection of what we are. This is our identification with Love and with God as Love.