Monday, October 12, 2015
Lesson 285: “What is the Holy Spirit?” “My holiness shines bright and clear today.”
The Course teaches us that our innocence is what sustains us. Our innocence, or our holiness, is the foundation upon which we make our whole selves. This is the basis of our certainty because it is the knowing that we are guilt-free and never did anything that would in any way negate our worthiness. We could do nothing to change our lovability. Our innocence is always intact. Our innocence means that we have no faults. We are innocent so we don’t have to wallow in our suffering over not making the mark.
Our innocence guarantees that we are gifted with all good things in the kingdom of God. Our innocence means we can just be light and play in the world because we never did anything wrong. This is why we want to simply remember that our innocence is always in place. We want to think with this awareness within our minds. We want to understand that it is our holiness that defines us. Lots of us may disregard this knowing because it feels like a stretch- to include ourselves in the defined image of what is holy.
God says that we are holy because we are the children of God. We can trust that God is the one who makes the decision about who gets considered holy. We have to know that God would never be wrong. This is one of the essential facets to remember. God is infallible. Therefore, God would never have the wrong opinion about any of us. That’s why we have to accept this- because it is true from the mind of God. This is not something we want to argue over or try to figure out how God established this. This is the truth because God so wills it.
This is what the Course teaches us around how to learn this truth about us. Our certainty depends on knowing this simple truth about us- that we are holy as we always have been. When God declares this, there is no reason to assert otherwise. God established the truth. What we need to do is not try to become better, because we are already good enough to do be saved by God. What we need to do is gain this awareness. The way we get to salvation is we realize that there was never a moment when we aren’t perfectly innocent. Then our salvation is current in our minds when we are willing to accept this truth as ours. This is why we are always filled with our own innocence. Nothing else exists.
Jesus says here that our holiness is the light- God’s light- that is the beacon of our consciousness. God gives us this holiness so it is inherent within us. When we understand it is always part of us then we can enjoy the clarity and brilliance of the inner light that shows us our way. We are invited to understand that with this simple innocence we need no other light. This is the attribute that makes a perfect home for God’s light and thus we can use it to steer the ship of our minds. We can allow the brightness to be our ever present guide. It can also be the illumination that brings us joy because it is a light energy that casts out any weighty dark areas within our functioning.
This lesson says, “I will ask for only joyous things the instant I accept my holiness.” One of the purposes of the Course is to give us high self esteem. When we understand we are totally lovable because then we are holy just as we are- as God created us- then we start to behave differently. When we feel truly positively and have non-judgment about ourselves then we feel empowered enough to expect to live in peace and authentic expression of our hearts and minds. When we feel that God so loves us no matter what, then we feel so strongly about wanting to experience peace all the time, we won’t settle for less in the life experience. We get to the place when our hearts are full of God’s love, where we are truly firm in our decision to live only in something so pleasant and easy as the joy of God.