HEALING AND ALL-INCLUSIVE LOVE
Raise Your Consciousness Through All-Inclusive Love
By Beth Geer
A Course In Miracles teaches us that true love is to love without condition, without judgment and without any condemnation what-so-ever. True Love is Total Love – it is all-inclusive and all encompassing. Which means It includes everyone, and I mean everyone. This is the Perfect Love, with which God loves us. He loves us as though we had no past, and never committed any wrongdoing. This is the type of love He is asking us to have for one another in the Course.
My only thought upon understanding this was: What?! There's no way I can love everybody on the planet like that! Even child molesters and murders? Even Hitler? Even Judas Iscariot? He betrayed Jesus for crying out loud!
That's all I could think when I realized this is what God is asking of us. How is such love possible? I struggle with just loving family members at times; people who should be easy to love!
But it's true. This is what we're being asked to do in order to heal the world and ourselves. And not only is this type of love possible, but it is necessary that we learn to love like this. It is crucial to our healing, and the healing of the world. There is no way to heal the split within our collective Mind, except by changing our perception from one of separation, to one of union. We must learn to change our perception so that we are looking through the eyes of Total Love.
So how can we learn to do this?
The very first thing we must learn to do, is release our judgments. We have to stop judging others. We have to stop assuming we know all there is to know about anyone else – and this includes ourselves. The ego looks outside of us and tells us it sees bodies. Except the body is not who we are in truth, and so the first step in learning all-inclusive Love, is to overlook what the ego tells us it sees and cease to believe it. We have to cease to believe are bodies capable of being hurt and judged.
A Course In Miracles, Manual for Teachers 10. HOW IS JUDGMENT RELINQUSHED?
“It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot.” (2:1)
“(The) only judgment there is, and it is the only one: “God’s Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist.” (2:9)
How do we arrive at the judgement of God, that we are guiltless, and sin does not exist? Well, I have discovered that the word “guiltless” in A Course In Miracles also means “bodiless.” And the word “sin” also means “separation.”
So, the above quote could more understandably be restated as: “God’s Son is bodiless, and our separation does not exist.”
In my opinion, this rephrased statement is a more attainable thought to believe about ourselves.
If we are not bodies and we are not separated, but unified in God’s Oneness, then who is the enemy we would judge against? And so it is, our judgement is fully released. We can judge no one, for our eyes only show us bodies and separation. We cannot judge for we cannot see our bodiless selves and our Union in God.
The next step is to learn that how we see others, is our responsibility and no one else’s. In every case, the person who needs healing is not the one we judge, but rather, ourselves. Yes, that’s right. We need to heal our perception of ourselves. Once that is accomplished, Total Love will take the place of all judgment, condemnation, hate, fear and pain. We will see others the same way we see ourselves, knowing we are One Love; the innocent perfect children of God that we are. Every moment, we have the power to choose to see our self as either loving or judgmental. We can't be both, and only one is true.
Judgment and love are total opposites. You cannot have both within your mind at the same time. You are either judging a situation or person and seeing separation through the eyes of the ego, or loving them and seeing union with them through the inner eyes of the Holy Spirit.
In ACIM Workbook Lesson 352 it states: "Judgment and love are opposites. From one comes all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself."
Why is that? What is it about our judgment that hurts us so bad? And how do we stop judging and start loving other people?
JUDGMENT
Judgment is the cause of all inner discomfort, because to judge is to decide you want things to be or look a certain way. You have judged that other people must behave and act a certain way towards you in order to feel happy. You have judged that they are bodies, because that is what your eyes show you, and so you believe it is true. Only the ego judges in this way. Only the ego wants the world to bend to its will and demand that people and circumstances look and behave exactly as it dictates.
The problem is, that people almost never behave the way we want, and circumstances rarely work out the way we'd like. Hence our constant strain and struggle with judging everything outside of us, which results in only temporary happiness at best, and abject suffering at worst.
Again, the only way out of this never-ending cycle of pain and disappointment, is to release our judgments; which includes letting go of all outcomes.
This brings us back to the basic practice of watching our thoughts for signs of discomfort. All forms of discomfort are a sure sign you are judging the world through the ego instead of extending your love to it through the Holy Spirit.
One way to release all judgments you have towards everyone and everything, is to decide that no one is really hurting you. You must decide you are not a body. Remember, everyone has forgotten who they are, and their mindless (thoughtless) words and actions come from their ego, which isn't real. No one truly knows what they do, nor to whom they do it. We are One Love, and we literally attack Love (our Self) when we have unloving thoughts. And because of our Oneness, we are always only attacking our Self. By releasing our judgment; by admitting we are not seeing things correctly; we cease to attack the people we do not understand or truly know. By releasing judgment, we cease to attack and hurt our One Self. Judge someone to be a body, and you see separation and an opportunity to feel unhappy with them. Instead, see them as a body, but knowthey are part of your One Self – the vision of whom you need to heal in order to be at peace with your Self. In truth, we are Spirit, and we should remember only the Light within others. Then we will see each other truly.
Acknowledge that within every body is a Light our eyes cannot see, but our Spirit knows and does love as part of our One Self.
ACIM T.pg.215 Chapter 12 I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit
"If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth." (1.7-8)
"There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes." (3.1-4)
"By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you." (8.1)
"Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing fear really means. If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it." (8.7-10)
"Fear is a symptom of your own deep sense of loss. If when you perceive it in others you learn to supply the loss, the basic cause of fear is removed." (9.1-2)
"If you would look upon love, which is the world's reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense against it, the underlying appeal for it?" (10.1)
"Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love and translate error into truth. And thus will you learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity." (10.4-5)
In truth, we do not see anyone as they truly are; we do not know what we look like to one another as Spirit; the way God created us. We do not see our Perfect Unity while we dream we are in these bodies. We each feel like separate individuals, living individual lives, with individual private thoughts.
When in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
And what we judge or decide another person is (ego or Holy Spirit), we have decided it about ourselves, and what we decide we are, is the reality we will see.
The ego shows us this world, and the Holy Spirit will show us Heaven. Our judgments are literally what are holding this illusion in place. We are nearly always thinking with our ego, and therefore only seeing the world it made.
If we could remember instead our all-inclusive, Total Love for one another, we would see a world completely different than the one we see now. We would manifest a future different from the past just by changing our thoughts in the present. The memory of our all-inclusive Love for everyone is what we gave up when we came into these bodies. You know this is true, because we are all born with complete amnesia. If we could remember our Total Love, our mind would be instantly healed of the separation and the world as we know it would disappear; it would be replaced with Heaven and we would hear the Voice of God once again, clear as day. Therefore, we must not deny each other our all-inclusive Love. The Law of Seeing dictates that the love we give is the love we will see. So, in order to see Heaven here on earth, we must give only all-inclusive Love. So how do we do this?
LOVE
ACIM T.pg.127 Chapter 7 VII. The Totality of the Kingdom
"Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part." (1.1-2)
"When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions." (2.1-5)
"The gift of life is yours to give, because it was given you. You are unaware of your gift because you do not give it. You cannot make nothing live, since nothing can be enlivened. Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and are, and so you do not know your being." (5.1-4)
"But love everything He created, of which you are a part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift for yourself. You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created like you." (6.5-6)
"You are the Will of God. Do not accept anything else as your will, or you are denying what you are. Deny this and you will attack, believing you have been attacked. But see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him with them. They are part of you, and you are part of God. You are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God is understanding this. There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way into it. Understand totally by understanding totality." (10.1-10)
"Perceive any part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable. Wanting this only you will have this only, and giving this only you will be only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you." (11.1-4)
Again, here we are being asked to love one another as God loves us, and His Love is Total. There are no exclusions, no exceptions and no condemnation. We are each loved equally as part of His holy Sonship.
The difficulty is, we have totally forgotten our Total Love for one another. We have forgotten everything we knew before we came here into these bodies.
The easy part is, we have within in us, the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, Who not only maintains our connection to God while we wander in this dark illusion, but also holds every memory we ever shared with Him.
It is our goal to reclaim these memories so that we can see Heaven, heal our split mind, and regain full communication with God. We want to remember what we forgot! We want to know our forgotten thoughts we think with God.
So what are the thoughts of God that we forgot? What kind of things does God think?
You are a Thought of God. He did not will to be alone, and so God had a very holy, very sacred Thought; and it was you. And me. And everyone else.
Now. If we are the Thoughts of God, and if we are One with God because He created us, then it must be His Life and Love that sustains us and keeps us alive. It must also mean that we are in His mind and He must be within us as well. We share God's Mind because we are in it – we literally are His Thoughts. If we share God's Mind, then we also share His Thoughts. Which means, our true thoughts are actually about our love for one another, because those are the Thoughts God has about us.
God is only Love, and He can only extend what He is, and therefore we are only Love, and it is the Loving Thoughts that God holds about us that keep us held in existence.
And God loves us with a Love that surpasses all else. It is a Love so strong that we literally came into existence because of It, and God wants us to exist! And He wants us to be happy! And He wants us to remember these thoughts He has about each of us, because they are also our own thoughts about one another.
In truth, you already love everyone with all-inclusive Love. In truth, you want everyone on this planet to exist because you love every person on this planet with a Love that surpasses all else. You love them without limit, without condition, and without judgment. You love every single person who ever existed as your own. You have only forgotten that this is true. Even animals share in this love. They defend their young, because they see them as part of themselves. Animals view their babies as their own, and this is how we must see each other.
Except you don't really feel that way because you forgot these thoughts. These are your missing thoughts that you gave up when you came into your body.
Now, we want to uncover those forgotten memories of love towards one another, because the memory of which will literally change our reality.
If we truly saw only our Unity with one another through God's Love, we would hold each other so dear, so beloved, and so cherished, that the idea of harming anyone would be literally unthinkable. You are minebecause it is my shared Will with God that you exist. I am yours, because it is your shared Will with God that Iexist. We hold each other in existence through our mutual loving connection through God. We are brothers. We are soul mates. I want you to feel happy and connected to all living things. I don't want you to feel separate; I want you to feel whole. The only way the illusion of separation can be healed, is to look past the body and see you as part of me, part of my One Self.
And when I look upon you this way, I am extending my love to you. And because what I give, I also receive, it stands to reason that I will receive "all encompassing love" in return. We are doing this for one another whether we're aware of it or not. This is because the Holy Spirit within you is the Giver of this Love, and He is doing this for us all the time. Our exchange of Love never ceases; only our awareness of it does. It is this awareness that needs to be restored to our blank minds; minds that are obsessively preoccupied with the illusionary world outside of us. Such distractions exist on purpose, because the ego does not want you to begin looking within and discovering your true Thoughts.
Now, you may be thinking that there are some people you do not love on this level, or that there are some people who surely do not love you on this level. Can a person "un-love" someone? Can anyone truly be excluded from God's Love, and therefore our Love? What if we absolutely cannot stand them, or they us?
Know this; you cannot "un-love" anyone, or you would be "un-loving" or trying to exclude a part of yourself, and this cannot be done because we are One Self. We cannot go against God's Will to love one another, because it would be to will that part of us cease to exist. That is impossible, because of our Oneness, and to will for part of the whole to be un-loved would be to will that you are un-loved. You cannot will yourself not to exist or to be un-loved. You can forget your Love for God and everyone He created with you, but you cannot stop it or escape it.
ACIM T.pg.220 Chapter 12 III. The Investment in Reality
"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made out of your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if you could really separate yourself from the Mind of God you would die." (8.4-5)
The thing is, we have already tried to do this; we have tried to separate ourselves from the Mind of God; we have tried to "un-love" one another and God. And the result of that choice is the world you see before you now. It is an illusory world, because true separation is impossible, but it is a terrible illusion of separation, guilt, and pain. We were able to make hell, but not our own obliteration.
The good news is, we can actively reverse that choice right now, through making the choice to see only Love in all things with our inner eyes. We can make the choice to see everyone as one of God's loving Thoughts, which undoes the illusion of separation. We have the power to make this world, and we also have the power to un-make it through the simple choice to cease our un-loving thoughts.
I want to tell you, at this point in my learning, I wondered two things: first, if we are each a Loving Thought of God, then is this all that occupies His Mind? I mean, are we all that God thinks about? Wouldn't God have better thoughts? You know, of something maybe more incredible? What else is in God's Mind? Secondly, I wondered what the reality of Heaven must be like. If once we forgive the body and see everyone as one of God's loving Thoughts and this world is transformed into Heaven, how boring must Heaven be if it's only filled with us?
Here is the answer I received from the Holy Spirit:
"You underestimate your own value and magnitude. You have no idea what beauty, magnificence and glory await you when you no longer see yourself as these bodies. The will to separate has reduced to you a weak and vulnerable creature, who appears to suffer and die with little or no resistance. I tell you, nothing is more grand and powerful than a Son of God, and you are each one of My Sons.
Heaven too, is immeasurable in its magnificence. Your mind currently only perceives through the faulty and pitiful filter of the body, and so, you cannot know what heavenly beauty is all around you. You are limited by the body's perception, and therefore cannot even imagine or understand what glory awaits you once you are no longer restricted by it."
And so, let us not be too afraid to see the real world all around us. We will not be able to see it, until all fear and judgment is given up.
Here are some points to bring everything together:
1. Whenever you feel anything that is not joy, it is because of the separation and nothing else. All forms of suffering stem from our original choice to separate. When you have an un-loving thought, stop whatever you're thinking immediately. Know that you are feeling some form of fear, and it stems from the original "sin" of imagining our separation from God. It is the ego talking, not Holy Spirit.
2. These feelings always stem from some form of "want" or "need" – a lack in the world that you think you have. In truth, you need nothing, because you are One with All That Is, and you are Spirit, not a body, so you do not actually have any real needs. Make an effort to stop asking the world to give you things, and you will stop feeling bad. You will end the conflict between your split mind, the split between the ego and the Holy Spirit. You will stop listening to the ego when you stop asking the world for anything. Then the Holy Spirit will step forward with what He would give you instead. And He gives only peace, abundance, joy and love.
3. Keep watch over any negative "needy" thoughts. Be vigilant against them! The ego will try to "sucker punch" you during this process with all sorts of bodily and life problems. The ego wants you to stay focused on IT, and nothing else. You may get sick, you may experience some type of "loss," you may have a lot of anxiety or depression. You may even have nightmares. Do not listen to this voice! Go back to steps 1 and 2 and become very present and still your thoughts until you feel at peace. Peace re-establishes the Voice of the Holy Spirit within you. The more vigilant you are against negative "ego" thoughts, the more "readiness" you display to the Holy Spirit that you are ready for your Real Thoughts to be restored to you. You are telling the Holy Spirit you are ready to hear His Voice, and His Voice alone. You are telling the Holy Spirit you want the separation healed and you want the peace of God.
4. Once we are practicing vigilance against our ego thoughts, we must begin to replace them with Thoughts of truth and Total Love. Whomever you have a grievance against, remember that you want them to exist as much as God does – and not as a body. You love them as much as God does, and you would like to rememberthem as God does – and not as a body. You do not want to see them as a needy body offending you in any way or demanding things of you, nor you of them. In truth, you love everyone as your own.
5. Never forget that every single person in this world wants you to exist, and loves you as God loves you. So, this means that untold numbers of people, plus God, love you! We have forgotten this. It is now time to remember it.
6. And though we may have forgotten this love for one another, our forgetfulness has not cancelled it out. Our One Love for one another continues on even though we sleep and dream we are separate and un-loved.
7. This is why A Course In Miracles says we fear to love God. It is because He is literally within us, and if we remembered our love for one another, we would remember we loved Him. It would also undo the illusion of our separation and this entire world along with it. This puts the fear of hellfire, damnation and death into our ego mind, because the ego fears its own undoing. What we don't consciously realize is that what would be undone was never real to begin with. The ego is a fabrication of our own imagination and is not really us – nor is it even a real entity. In God's Reality, we are safe in Heaven at One with Spirit and have only dreamed that we left. There is nothing to fear. We are sustained by the Love of God. Our Identity lies in Him, not our bodies or our ego.
8. Be a giver, not a taker, because you receive what you give and give what you would receive. So give only Love, because that is what you are, and that is what you want. You love all people as God does; and if you remembered this, you would lay down your physical life for your brothers. You would even allow yourself to be crucified for their sake; all to show them you are not a body – you are Love. Let this Love be the gift you give the world, so that it may be returned to you. This is the Love from which all miracles and abundance springs. To give the gift of Total Love is to be miracle minded – the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. The miracle is your healing, and when you are healed, you are not healed alone because you are One with everyone else. This is how you heal others, simply by healing yourself.
One last point:
God had a Thought, and it was you. And how are thoughts shared, except by speaking them as words? So, when God spoke His Thought, it became His Word. You are literally the Word of God. God being nothing but Total Love, therefore, spoke only lovingly, and His Word was Love. We then became the manifestation of the spoken Word of God and became One Self created out of His Total Love. Then God, thinking only loving Thoughts, speaking only loving Words, called you by your holy Name. It is a Name above all other names because you share it with Him as His Creation. His Name is Love, and within that Name is contained all Creation. You therefore both have and are everything God Created. You are a loving Thought of God, Who spoke you as His Word, and called you by His Own Name of Love. Accept your true Name, your beloved Identity as Love and nothing less, and abundance will be yours.
When you remember to see all people around you, including yourself, as contained within the Thought of God, Who spoke His Word and brought you into being sharing in His Name; you are giving the universe the gift of Total Love.
And if the Law of Creation is that what you give you will receive, then imagine how much you will receive through giving your Thought of all-inclusive, Total Love to all creation?
The very fabric of the universe will shift, you will heal your split mind, and we will all be healed with you because we are One Love. You will become a miracle worker.
Thank you, my friend, for every loving Thought you ever held. I am healed because you are choosing to heal yourself when you see only all-inclusive, Total Love in all whom you meet or think of.