The Holy Meeting Place

To understand the dynamics of Holy Creation, we first need to apprehend the paramount role Agape plays in the process. The Greek word for Divine Love (for which there is no English equivalent), Agape is the Creative Force of Divine Will that God extends or projects to create the Perfect and Eternal. God is the CAUSE of Agape “going forth,” while the Son is the created EFFECT of that “creative act.”

When we partnered with the Ego Mind to prevent God and Agape from entering our make-believe hiding place, we excluded the CAUSE of Perfect Creation. In so doing, we made the two-part dynamic of Holy Creation impossible in the dream-realm.

Without God, the Sonship is like an archer without a bow.

Without God, the Sonship is like an archer without a bow. Without his bow, the archer can only fling the arrow at his chosen target. Without the bow, the archer is doomed to “sin” — an archery term meaning “to miss the mark.”

Or, as Course-Jesus explains:

When [spiritual] vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The purpose now becomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be a cause. This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as standing by itself, and capable of serving as a cause of the events and feelings its maker thinks it causes. Earlier, we spoke of your desire to create your own creator, and be father and not son to him. This is the same desire. The Son is the Effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to BE the cause, producing real effects. Nothing can have effects without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both.

It is as needful that you recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize that you did not create yourself. THE ARE THE SAME MISTAKE. Nothing created not by your Creator has any influence over you. And if you think what you have made can tell you what you see and feel, and place your faith in its ability to do so, you are denying your Creator and believing that you made yourself. For if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you are confusing Son and Father; effect and Source.

The Son’s creations are like his Father’s. Yet in creating them the Son does not delude himself that he is independent of his Source. His union with It is the source of his creating. Apart from this he has no power to create, and what he makes is meaningless. It changes nothing in creation, depends entirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot serve to justify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks the world he made, made him. Thus he denies he made it.

(ACIM, T-21.II.10:1–12:9)

Heed well what he says, my dreaming brother. Without God, we have no power to create; and what we make in ego-induced madness is meaningless. The flip-side of that Truth is that without real CAUSE, the effects of our actions in the world have no real consequences. God doesn’t know or see what we’re dreaming down here. He only knows that some of His channels are blocking the flow of His never-ending Agape.

Or, as Jesus states at the start of the Course:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

Being all-powerful, God could have extended or projected the Creative Force of Agape into the little basket underneath the Bubble. But, according to Course-Jesus, our Heavenly Father elected not to do so for two important reasons.

The first is that, by dispatching the full force of His Will, God would have blown the little basket to smithereens. Being awakened so abruptly would have scared the bejesus out of the dreaming parts of the Sonship, which would defeat the purpose of ending the dream of fear.

The second reason is that, by unleashing the full force of His Will on the little basket, God also would have overridden the Sonship’s free-will — and with it our ability to be His free and willing partner(s) in the joyful enterprise of Perfect Creation.

But let’s leave all that for now, because we’ll discuss how the separation came about and how God solved the problem in a future post. For now, just know that “Grace” is the little brother of “Agape” whose assigned purpose is ending the perceived separation without jeopardizing the Sonship’s free will.

It was through the Spirit of Grace that the miscreated world was transformed into an experiential teaching-learning environment for restoring the “at-one-ment” of Holy Creation — because only in Oneness or Wholeness can Perfect Creation take place.

Insofar as our limited intellects can grasp these ideas, Agape is the “glue” that holds Creation together in the Covenant of Love — the solemn creative partnership that exists between God and His Creations. That Covenant — the First or Old Covenant mentioned in the Bible — was forged when God first extended the Divine Idea of creating another mind “in his own image and likeness.”

Or, as Course-Jesus explains:

The statement “God created man in his own image and likeness” needs reinterpretation. “Image” can be understood as “thought,” and “likeness” as “of a like quality.” God did create spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own. There IS nothing else.

Interpretations differ, but in my view, the Second or New Covenant refers to our solemn agreement with God to awaken from the dream — of our own free will — when we’ve had our fill of the adventure in miscreating. God fulfilled His part of the promise by projecting the Spirit of Grace into the little basket to facilitate our escape. Now it’s up to us to do our part — by choosing to call upon that guiding Spirit or Thought Force to help us “awaken in Christ.”

Let’s go back now to what Jesus just said about God creating “spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own.” The thought and quality to which he refers is Agape — the Thought of Divine Love that breathed eternal life and holiness into All That Is, Has Ever Been, or Will Ever Be.

When Jesus says, “There is nothing else,” he means Agape constitutes the Cause (God the Father), the Effect (God, the Son), and the Creative Force, Actuating Spirit, or Divine Idea through which God willed Creation into being.

The God Mind is Agape, all God’s Thoughts are Agape, and everything God creates is Agape, because THERE IS NOTHING ELSE.

Stated another way, the Source of Agape extended the Force of Agape to create its mirror-image, because everything in Holy Creation reflects everything else in Holy Creation. Ergo, the God Mind is Agape, all God’s Thoughts are Agape, and everything God creates is Agape, because there is nothing else. And this is what the statement “God is Love” truly means.

It might help to picture God as a crystal-clear pool of water. Activating the Ruach, Spirit, Wind, or Cosmic Breath of His Will — the Creative Force of Agape — God causes the water to gently ripple outward in concentric circles. Because God’s always transmitting Thoughts of Love across the Whole of Creation, the rippling never ceases. The pool itself, however, remains as it always was. Beneath the gently rippling surface, it teems with life and creative energy.

Hard as it is for us to imagine, the pool of Creation expands inwardly rather than outwardly. When I meditate upon this idea, I see a cell dividing its cytoplasm into smaller and smaller particles without growing in size.

Now, unite what I’ve described with what Course-Jesus says below:

God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this Wholeness NOW. God created you to create. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its Wholeness.

Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. This is as true of God’s Thinking as it is of yours. Because your mind is split, you can perceive as well as think. Yet perception cannot escape the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind and project your perceptions outward. Although perception of any kind is unreal, you made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it toward God. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore does not want it now.

(ACIM, T-6.II.8:1–9:8)

Are you getting the idea? I hope so, because this isn’t easy stuff to explain.

Let’s now turn to the Holy Bible, wherein the story of Creation is allegedly told in the first chapters of the Old Testament Book of Genesis and the New Testament Gospel of John. I say “allegedly” because Genesis doesn’t actually describe “the first coming of Christ.” As I’ll explain in a future post, it explains what Elohim, the Spirit of Grace, did in the “dark void” AFTER God projected him into the little basket.

The preamble to the Gospel of John does, however, describe what God did to create the Sonship. In the KJV Bible, John 1:1-4 reads as follows: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Is this description accurate? Yes, more or less — provided we correctly interpret the symbols. Stated without metaphor, God (the Supreme Causal Mind) spoke (activated the Creative Force) to bring the Word (the Divine Thought or Idea of Agape) into being.

Pretty clear, right? What isn’t clear is whom the “him” in John 1:2-4 is supposed to be. Is this “him” the Logos, God, or something else? Most Christians believe “him” refers to the Son of God “made flesh” in the person of Jesus Christ. This common interpretation is, I believe, both right and wrong. It’s right if we apprehend that Jesus Christ is a SYMBOL of Agape. It’s wrong if we perceive that SYMBOL as one particular person.

The “him” to which this verse refers HAS to be the Divine Idea of Agape, the generative thought without which nothing real can be made, as per the Law of Love. As explained last time, the Law of Love is God’s most basic mandate that “Love creates itself, and nothing but itself.”

In the Course, Jesus states emphatically that he is NOT the “only begotten son of God.” Rather, he is our brother in the One Living Being the Father created “in the beginning.” As the first separated Soul to wake up, Jesus became the “brand ambassador,” if you will, for Agape, the Atonement Plan, and the Law of Love.

As Course-Jesus explains in the Manual for Teachers:

The name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. But it stands for love that is not of this world. It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray. It becomes the shining symbol for the Word of God, so close to what it stands for that the little space between the two is lost, the moment that the name is called to mind. Remembering the name of Jesus Christ is to give thanks for all the gifts that God has given you. And gratitude to God becomes the way in which He is remembered, for love cannot be far behind a grateful heart and thankful mind. God enters easily, for these are the true conditions for your homecoming. (ACIM, M-23.4:1-7)

And yes. If you’re doing the Course, he does indeed tell us herein that the Name we share with God (as per Workbook Lessons 183 and 184) is “Jesus Christ.” There are, however, other names we can also repeat to open our inner ears to the “unstruck sound” of Elohim’s Living Water. As I understand it, any Name symbolizing the Logos and/or Word of God achieves the same desirable result.

We might, for example, chant “Elohim,” “Om,” “Hari Om,” “Agape,” “Amen,” or “Allah Hoo” — all of which are merely different symbols for the same Divine Idea.

Let’s now revise John 1:1-4 by inserting “the Divine Idea of Agape” where I believe it belongs:

In the beginning was the Divine Idea of Agape, and the Divine Idea of Agape was with God, and the Divine Idea of Agape was God. All things were made by the Divine Idea of Agape; and without the Divine Idea of Agape was not any thing made that was made. In the Divine Idea of Agape was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Rephrased thusly, it becomes apparent (to me at least) that John is describing the Law of Love rather than God’s physical “creation” of Jesus Christ.

Now, having said all that, let me now say this: When the oral narratives that became the canonical gospels were first written down in Greek, the Aramaic word “Milta” was changed to “Logos” — a word meaning “Divine Idea.” The reason was that the Greek language had no word that conveyed the full scope of “Milta.” Fifteen-hundred years later, when the Anglicans first translated the New Testament into English, the already watered-down word “Logos” was changed to the much-weaker “Word” for the same reason. The English language has no word equivalent to either “Logos” or “Milta.”

Let’s now explore the subtle-yet-illuminating differences in meaning between these three terms. The most diluted of the three, “word” has no specific divine connotations. A “word” is merely a symbol humans assign to something, be it person, place, object, or idea. So, God’s “word” is a pretty vague description that leaves its meaning open to wide interpretation — a dangerous thing in the hands of the Ego Mind.

“Logos,” meanwhile, cuts away a layer of vagueness by referring specifically to a Divine Idea, rather than anything said or written. 

“Milta” also translates, at first pass, as “Divine Thought or Idea,” but the Aramaic word has much deeper connotations. Milta doesn’t just describe a static thought in God’s Mind, it communicates how God’s Mind creates, from start to finish. Unlike “Logos,” “Milta” encapsulates the whole Alpha-to-Omega gamut of the Divine Idea referenced.

Because the God Mind operates inside the ever-repeating now-moment of Superconscious Eternity, the Creative Force of Agape doesn’t just bring a Divine Idea into “being” the moment God pulls the trigger.

The Holy Instant God says, “Go,” the Creative Force of Agape spins out everything the God Mind imagined that Divine Idea would do and become — to the end-point of completion. This is, in fact, how God creates and also why His Creations can neither usurp His Supreme Creative Will and Laws nor change their True Identities or destinies in the slightest way.

Stated another way, the perfect completion of the Sonship was a done-deal the Holy Instant God first thought, “This is Good. Let’s do this.”

This is partly what the Burning Bush meant when it said to Moses, “I Am that I Am.” Dialed back to the original Hebrew, “I Am that I Am” essentially means, “I Am what always was, what is now, and what will be again.”

What “Milta” expresses also is partly what the author of Ecclesiastes meant when s/he wrote: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

I say “partly”  in both instances because the Old Testament bush and scribe also meant that the dream of earthly existence is both already over and never happened — hard as that is to wrap our ego-impaired intellects around.

The point I’m trying to make is that “the Word” wasn’t an actual word because God doesn’t communicate in words. God thinks and communicates abstractly, as do (according to Jesus) the Souls He created. More specifically, God communicates directly (telepathically) with His Thought-Creations through “idea-packets.”

Being ONE with everything, God also has a one-track mind; meaning He only ever thinks, communicates, and creates ONE all-encompassing and ever-extending “idea packet.” That “packet” expresses Perfect Love in all its Divine Attributes, which include glory, joy, peace, comfort, devotion, mercy, abundance, generosity, goodness, loving kindness, fraternity, charity, sharing, eternal being, and grace (among others).

Unfortunately, by substituting “Word” for “Logos,” the men who translated the New Testament into English perpetuated the FALLACY that God looks, speaks, and behaves like a human being. In actuality, our Heavenly Father has NOTHING in common with our ego-authored self-concepts — our humanness, in other words. Despite what the Bible appears to say, God did NOT create “man” in His physical likeness. God, being CAUSAL SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND, is invisible, and so are His Creations.

This may seem like a minor distinction, but it’s actually of vital importance. Why? Because, as Jesus explains in the Course (and John explains at the start of his gospel), nothing real can be created without the Force of Divine Will through which God and His Creations expand the Divine Idea, “idea-packet,” “pond” or “bubble” of Perfect Love that GOD IS.

In the Course, Jesus says ideas can’t leave their source. Being God’s Divine Idea, we can’t, therefore, leave the God Mind. So, we’re still safe at home in the God Mind, only dreaming we’re in exile on Planet Psycho. And if nothing we do in God-excluding dreams can have any real effects, then nothing we do on Planet Earth can change anything in Creation.

Let’s take this idea one step farther: If nothing we do changes anything REAL, God has no reason to get mad or punish us when we screw up in our dream-lives. Not that anger, wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or damnation are Divine Attributes. They are, in fact, unreal opposites invented by the Ego Mind to fool us into agreeing to live in its waterless “desert.” The Great Deceiver also uses our BELIEF in these unreal opposites to 1) keep its love-blocking Web of Fear strong in our minds and 2) use the anger, guilt, and condemnation we project onto others to both punish our dream-selves and chain our Souls to the Karmic Wheel of Rebirth.

What we THINK in the dream can’t create anything real, but our ego-generated thoughts can and DO generate their like at the level of form. As explained, this is because the Law of Love dictates that we receive (at the level of effect/form) what we give (at the level of mind/will). And Divine Law still governs how thought manifests, even in the Kingdom of Darkness. It is, however, our belief in sin, guilt, and karma that chains us to the Wheel of Rebirth. To liberate our Souls, we need only forgive ourselves and others for wrongly believing in these dream-imprisoning deceptions.

Is this a tall order? Hell, yes. Can it be achieved? Not until we fully accept that the world we perceive is a dream in which nothing real actually happens. Because our acceptance of this FACT is the key to the karma-busting practice of True Forgiveness, we must strive with every fiber of our beings to 1) see the world as the fantastical projection it actually is and 2) correct the wrong-minded thoughts and beliefs blocking our memories of God and Heaven.

Okay, so … now that we better understand the process of Perfect Creation, let’s examine more closely the various components or “aspects” of Agape involved in the “act” or “process.”

As I see it, those “aspects” are these:

1. God = Causal Source of Agape (the crystal-clear pool)
2. Creative Force = Divine Thought of Agape (the “word” God spoke or metaphoric “breath” He exhaled to activate the rippling)
3. Son of God = the “first coming of Christ” generated by God through the Word “in the beginning” (the first series of ripples)
4. Grandson of God = Christ’s Son, the “creations” we brought into being in partnership with God in accordance with the Law of Love (all the subsequent sets of ripples into infinity)

Jesus mentions the “creations” I’ve identified as the Grandson of God numerous times in the Course. He does not, however, make clear what these “creations” are. He simply says we are “father” to them in the same way God is “father” to us. He also says these “creations of the Christ” are eagerly awaiting our return to Heaven.

At one point, with regard to these mysterious “creations,” Jesus says:

A co-creator with the Father must have a son. Yet must this son have been created like himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from — not born of size nor weight nor time nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.

As far as I can figure, these creations of the Sonship resulted from our extension of Agape in partnership with God either before the separation, after the Holy Spirit ended the dream, or both. Because, as Jesus explains, God and Christ’s creative partnership has continued in Heaven as if the separation never occurred.

Because, as far as God is concerned, it never did. It was merely a fleeting thought-error our Father mercifully corrected before it ever produced ripples.

Okay, so … stated in the simplest terms, the ripples can’t exist without the pond. And they certainly can’t produce more ripples without the pond’s willing participation and consent.

Makes sense, right?

Let’s now revisit our God-Mind Bubble model of Creation. As explained in my earlier post, the beams shooting out of the Bubble in all directions are God’s projections of the “Spirit” or “Thought Force” of Grace into the various universes the Ego Mind manifested as hiding places for the Separated Ones.

That Divine Thought Force is personified as Elohim in the Holy Bible, King Indra in the Rig Veda, and Allah in the Holy Qur’an. The names may be different, but the story these three sacred texts tell is essentially the same — because they were all dictated by the same Holy Raconteur.

Let’s now crack open the invisible Creation Bubble to have a look inside. Since everything in Creation mirrors everything else, and everything in the world mirrors what we already know, let’s assume Earth is at some level a materialized mirror-image of the God-Mind Bubble. This is, of course, pure speculation on my part, but kindly humor me for the sake of greater understanding of the dynamics of Perfect Creation.

If the God-Mind Bubble’s interior did resemble the image above, the Inner Core would be God, the Outer Core would be God’s first-generation Creations, the Mantle would be Christ’s second-generation Creations, and the Crust would be the Creative Force of Agape, holding the whole ball of wax together in Oneness as “God” or “Holy Creation.”

Does that help? I hope so, because, like I said, this stuff is a real beast to understand, let alone explain to someone else.

When John says, in his gospel, that “without God was not any thing made that was made,” he means that nothing REAL can be created without God’s willing participation and consent. When John says “In the Divine Thought of Agape was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not,” he’s telling us that the only things OF GOD in the Kingdom of Darkness were brought into the dream by the “twin” aspects of Perfect Love, which form the following pairings in the dream:

The Blood of Christ and the Living Water
Peace and Joy
Mercy and Compassion
Light and Life
Majesty and Grace
Power and Glory
Strength and Vision
Forgiveness and Miracles
God’s Word and God’s Voice

That’s my theory, anyway — because I can’t help but notice that Jesus tends to use the same paired groupings quite often in the Course. There are probably others, too, but these are the pairs that stand out for me. And, consequently, these are the “gifts” I give to all my brothers in the Holy Circle of Forgiveness in my mind.

I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect that the Divine Idea of Love, Logos, or Word split itself into two parts upon entering the little basket (after being recalibrated as Saving Grace), presumably to avoid blowing up our fantasized rebellion. Those two parts are, I believe, the Great Rays mentioned several times in the Course.

In the 1930s, Jesus showed these two Great Rays to a young Polish nun, to whom he appeared numerous times throughout her short life. Among other things, he told Sister Faustina she would teach about the Rays in her next life as well. (And so she is, in the personage of yours truly.)

What we see in this image is Jesus, in his symbolic role as the Logos. From his heart — the Heart of God that is the Logos — stream the Blood and Water Rays Elohim shines into “the Temple of the Holy Spirit” (in Course terminology) to bring about our “awakening in Christ.”

We’ll talk more about the Great Rays as we move forward — a lot more, as it happens, because they are central to the Atonement process, as well as my earthly ministry. For now, just know that we can’t “see” or “comprehend” these Great Rays of Agape or Grace underneath the forms our fearful thoughts wove from the dense particles of matter. To perceive that inner radiance in ourselves and our brothers, we have to strip away the Ego Mind’s Truth-obfuscating “veils,” layer by layer.

In the Course, Jesus tells us the Holy Spirit placed a spark of the Logos at the center of what he terms the “Inner-Altar” or “God’s Altar” within us. That “Altar” is what other scriptural texts variously term the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the Throne Room, al-Kursi, the Heart of Hearts, the Heart-Cave, and/or the Sanctum Sanctorum.

As I understand it, this Holiest of Holy Altars can be found on the uppermost/innermost plane of the “dreaming” Christ Mind, which abuts the “crust” of the God-Mind Bubble. As we advance through the process of at-one-ment, purification, ego-undoing, or True Forgiveness, we begin to see that “Altar” within us through the inward-looking Spiritual Eye — “the banded eye in the forehead” referenced in my illumed translation of Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

The image below shows us what that “eye” or “doorway” into the Upper Chambers of the Temple looks like inside our minds in meditation.

In the Dream of Darkness, that bright white “star” at the top of the tunnel is the Light of Agape — the Pure Thought of God — shining into the Temple of our Higher Minds. That “star” is Elohim, Allah, or Indra — the Logos or Word — occupying the Throne of God on the seventh plane of consciousness. Rightly understood, our Souls are the networked “sparks,” “pearls,” or “particles” of that brilliant solitary “star.”

The State of Pure Grace is so close to the Divine Idea of Agape that God’s Mind can reach across “the tiny gap” between the Throne Room and Heaven to pull us back into the Bubble. And. as Jesus explains myriad times in the Course, that “final step” in our reclamation is the only part God the Father plays in the Atonement Process.

Throne Room or Pure Grace consciousness is, therefore, the end learning-goal of the Soul’s Circle-Journey or “Walking Journey” (as per Deuteronomy, and other Bible verses, as we’ll see). That “journey” takes us back up the metaphorical “ladder” we came down into the deepest, darkest “waters” of Ego Consciousness — following the initial “fall from Grace.” Rightly understood, we “fell” from the state of Pure Grace in which our individual Souls were created by Elohim as learning-teaching devices for the Atonement curriculum.

Technically, of course, we’re still in Heaven. Like Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz, we’re still at home in Kansas, merely dreaming we’re in a land where the impossible seems to happen.

Or, to quote Jesus:

There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God Created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true.

Thanks for visiting. I hope my ramblings prove helpful on your journey.

Om Hari Om