By Tom Carpenter
Where Are You?
Understanding all the implications of what is meant by Jesus telling us that this world is a “dream,” a story we are telling about who we think we are, is most times hard to fathom. He tells us that the world is not “real,” that it exists only in our imagination. If this is true, if we are not “in” our story, if we are not “in” the body playing its role “in” the story, where are we? Can we even find the answer to this question in the awareness of who is telling the story?
For most who are seeking the truth, we believe the answer will be found in remembering who we are. I suggest that “who” we are is made vastly more difficult to remember because we continue to insist that “where” we are is in a place that makes it impossible to know the answer. We are told that we are beings of spirit, not confined to the limitations of the body or the world. How are we to learn that this is true if we continue to make choices as though we “live” inside the confines of our story? If we are ever to create an experience that our story is untrue we must begin to recognize that we are not “in” that story.
Jesus teaches us that the true justification for forgiving everything in the world is that it is not real. How hard is that to accept? How much easier would it be to accept if I began to regularly remind myself that “I,” the real me—and the real you—were not in the story we are telling? How much easier will it be to remember there is nothing here to judge when I relieve myself of the burden of being attached to the fearful outcome of my thoughts as they are mirrored in my story of the world?
If we cannot know “where” we are from within the awareness that makes the world we see, how will we ever find it? God placed the awareness of the Holy Spirit, the God created Self, in our Mind that we would always know exactly where, and who, we are. Finding and nurturing this Presence is how we find our Self.
“Nurturing” the Presence means to use the awareness, the guidance, we find there, instead of “nurturing” the ego’s perception as we use it for our choices. This means for all our choices, at least all that we can remember. It is not there for us to use just when we are in “trouble,” or to relieve our pain. It is to learn through practice that there is an entirely different way to think. Continuing to rely on the ego’s judgment for mundane, non “spiritual” matters only strengthens our belief that there is some value in maintaining our separateness.
Using the God Self Awareness is what will allow a loving world to replace the one we now “see.” Using the God Self Awareness will connect us to the whole Self and there will be no question “where” we have always been.