— THE WILLINGNESS TO HEAR —
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PAUL. Good evening, Raj.
RAJ. Yes. Good evening, Paul.
PAUL. I feel stuck. What on earth can be said now? If the need will be met by grace and with grace . . . and not at my hand . . . what is there for me to do now?
Ahhhh !
RAJ. You caught it! The problem is the “me”— the “me” you think is typing out these words, and all the “me’s” that you imagine will be reading them! It is the “stranger” spoken of in Lesson 160 of the Workbook of A Course in Miracles.
Grace is inconceivable, unheard of by this “stranger,” but still present there to be experienced. To look with eyes wide shut is to feign blindness, justifying faithlessness and fear, while every single need IS being met because it is the very Nature of Creation . . . yes . . . God’s boundless Love!
With eyes wide open, on the other hand, it is clearly ludicrous to think that Omnipresence and Omnipotence might fall just short of being omnipresent and omnipotent, and therefore insufficient to successfully be All-in-all.
It justifies a universal laugh, indeed!
And this releases one from fear and doubt, opening one’s Mind to boundless curiosity—a form of expectation called “permission,” which knows that nothing is impossible, and what is possible IS already done . . . and one wastes not a moment finding how to “make it so!”
It is folly to believe that you create your good . . . or even that you can! It is the “stranger” which believes it so, and does because it seems to prove that “he” exists, when “he” is nothing more than an arrangement of imaginations which, unchallenged, mask it’s’ obvious charade and hide the Truth behind an artificial “me.”
One’s freedom from delusion, then, arises from discovering his good must be invited and allowed! Permission must be given! “LET this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and “Thy will, not mine be done!”
This “letting” is the “open sesame” and it releases all fulfillment into view which had been “hidden” out of sight behind the misperception of an independent “me,” while actually being there as Love created them, untouched and sitting in plain sight.
You DO exist! But not as who you think you are, nor as the world defines you. You Are, before a single thought takes form—pure Mind . . . pure Presence . . . All There Is.
As such, You are what I have just described as “boundless curiosity”— profound permission given without bias, plans or preferences. Your Self is That which simply looks and sees with “eyes” of innocence!
WHY?
Because YOU are the Way God demonstrates HIS Omnipresence, His Omnipotence. It is the Way Creation works. As co-creators, You and I and every One confirms Him, and Our confirmation never supersedes His Presence or His Power, and it doesn’t hide Them underneath the misperception of an artificial “me.”
This is the Truth which is insulting to the “me,” the figment of imagination which has no real existence from which it can respond with pleasure or dismay! And then, as you are well aware, you can immobilize this sense of “me” with further “justifiable” self-righteousness and anger. It’s insanity!
Or else . . . it is a meaningless misunderstanding, taken seriously, given meaning that it doesn’t have, and suffered from unnecessarily, until someone like You or Me insists on giving voice to Truth, confirming God as each One’s real Identity, forever being Gifted and returned to Him from whence It came, in one grand circle of Atonement.
The latter is the simplifying and the healing clarity. Thank God! It is not complicated. The Art of Listening leads naturally to the Willingness to Hear, which means that one is willing to abandon the “authority” of “me,” and be the standing invitation of the Truth . . . revealed through him, as Whom He truly Is . . . because that is the Way Creation works, and He would rather be at Home with Truth, and in His Sanity!
Rajpur
Kingston, Washington
June 9, 2024
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