Question: We are being taught that all things that are not loving are illusions because they are not in alignment with the Thought of God. We are also taught that we can see the perfection of everyone and everything by choosing to see through the Vision of the Holy Spirit. But is that enough, the most we can do, when someone is in great pain with seemingly no place to turn? What are we to do? What is the greatest help we can give?
Tom: In a world we think of as a physical place, it is hard to imagine any “thought” being sufficient to heal what we see there. Coupled with our old, old belief that surrendering to love, which symbolically is the surrender of our defenses, however admirable it may be, in our world it is a dangerous thing to do. We need only look to the ego’s interpretation of “what happened” to Jesus to see how threatening it is to surrender to love.
All this kind or “reasoning” however, is predicated on our conviction that what happens in the world happens “to us,” not because our thoughts and beliefs have made it everything it seems to be. We think that love is weak because we see ourselves as undeserving to be loved. The simple truth is we have forgotten what love really is and the role it plays in our creation.
We do not recognize that the world is first a state of mind; that its sole function is to be the mirror for our universal belief that there is something wrong with us. We cannot find love in the world because we have not brought love to it. Love does not seem to heal pain because we do not believe it is a lack of love that is the cause of our pain.
Sin and guilt are the names we give to our belief that we have been separated from our source of Love. This belief has become so strong we have come to feel it is “normal” to think that love is dependent on what we do, not simply who we are. Love will never seem to be enough until it has become what we most want to give and what we want most to find in others.