ultimately fills the gaps in our understanding and eradicates the dark corners of fear, doubt, and lack.
Spirit as the Source of Wholeness
The belief in lack springs from our first mistaken belief that we can be, and are, separate from our Source. In other words, the belief arises from our duality. Just as the wave is no longer a wave if it is not part of the ocean, the ray cannot be such if it has no continuous connection with its source (the sun), and we can only exist as the emanation and expression of our Source, Divine Love.
This is a good opportunity to provide an explication of the nature of our Source and its ramifications for us as Its emanation and reflection. The Universe is governed by, and emanates from, a Divine Principle of all Life, the essence of which is Divine Love and Truth. In fact, these terms can be seen as synonymous; Love equals Truth, and together they are the Source of all power.
Rather than seeing God as an anthropomorphic being, with the propensity for anger, revenge, jealousy and the need for control, it is much more useful, and Real, to see God – Source - more as an Omnipotent, Omniscient Principle that governs and gives rise to all Life, that is, all phenomena of Reality. Mary Baker Eddy uniquely and profoundly describes Source as ‘Noumenon and Phenomenon.’ In other words God, or Source, is both the ocean and the wave.
When seen as Principle, rather than a flawed superhuman in the sky, it is easier to see how the rule of perfection of the Universe operates. Because the Principle of Divine Love and Divine Mind is perfect, the creation of that Principle can only come from, and be subject to, the rules of perfection.
Perfection, clearly, is not fully evidenced in the material world. That is because we are in a state of duality. Our five senses attest to and confirm the seeming reality of the material world around us, and our reality - shaped by our own thoughts - is restricted or enhanced by what we believe to be possible.
In the state of duality we have a split mind. One part, which we call our spirit, knows the truth about our spiritual heritage. The other part of our mind, our ego (or our human self which is the vehicle of our seeming separation both from Source and others) can only survive in separation, and is therefore the voice for separation.
It is the ego that makes us want to feel special, superior, to be right, to win, and chooses attack when threatened. Paradoxically, it is also our ego that makes us feel inadequate, unworthy, inferior, fearful, hopeless, and defeated. Where ego is concerned, it is always a matter of whatever it takes. The thoughts that suggest we are in this alone and that we only have ourselves to rely on in our struggle to achieve everything we want to be and to have in life, are the thoughts of ego.
The ego wants nothing of the idea that we are, in fact, part of a perfect and loving order that connects all of us to Source. The ego is, however, nothing more than our supreme test, the trick question on the exam paper of life. It is our lesson to be able to understand what we really are (spirit) in the face of the compelling and overwhelming evidence of what we are not: a body.
We are the manifestation and the expression of our Source. We are what our Source Is. Thus we all have a spark of the Divine in us, and all that our Source Is is ours for the asking. Again the image of the ocean and the wave is useful. The ocean is something far greater as the source of the wave, but the essence of the ocean is contained in each and every wave.
Although this material world is illusory, and thus imperfect, the perfection of Life and Love is nevertheless perceptible. Perfection is manifested in this world as a perfection of process. Because we can never truly be separated from our Source, then the process by which we come to understand our at-one-ment is perfect. It is perfect because the end is sure, and everything that occurs in this process perfectly enables the shifts in our perception towards the realisation of Oneness.
In our native spiritual state, which is the Reality, we need neither a body nor miracles. Whilst we are in this material world, however, we need both. They are the necessary, and compassionate, means of our enlightenment, where we will see and understand Truth in Its entirety. In that state there is, of course, no gap between us and our Source, and therefore no need for miracles to bridge the gap.
When we understand that our origin and ultimate is in Spirit, we will see our wholeness and our Oneness with All That Is. Two important points must be made about wholeness. Firstly, no one is ‘special’ as we understand it in human terms. No one is more worthy, more valuable, more able, or more desired than anyone else. How could they be when we are all the emanation of the same Source?
In Spirit we were made, and in Spirit we remain. Even if we cannot understand it, we can rely on the intellectual argument alone. To be the image and likeness of Spirit, it follows logically that we must be spirit. There are no levels in Spirit. Spirit just Is.
The idea that some are special, superior or of greater value is a mistake many people make, especially in raising their children. They believe that to establish and build a child’s self-esteem, they must continually tell their children how special they are. But setting up this sort of dichotomy only leads to competition and divisiveness.
Further, if we are special in one way, then there must be times when we are not special, for even in human terms none of us are special all the time, or in all things. So if we are One, we can exist in the harmony, peace and contentment that come from the knowledge that we do not have to struggle and strive for pre-eminence. All that Spirit Is is ours, all of ours.
In Spirit, we are all ‘special,’ in that everything that is possible is available to us all if we could but see it and manifest it. But, as A Course in Miracles states: ‘Equality does not imply equality now’ (5). We are all at different stages of our understanding and at varying points along the path to enlightenment. But even this imagery is limited, because sometimes we are at one point in some aspects of our understanding, and at other points – either more or less inspired – in others.
It might be helpful to think about our experiences when we first meet other people. Our first impressions almost always prove to be inaccurate. Once we take the time to look beneath the external and superficial, do we not start to see and appreciate their so-called ‘specialness?’
This ‘specialness’ is the specialness of us all. It is the light and love that is our common spiritual heritage that never fails to gratify and delight us when we see it evidenced in others. One of our greatest pleasures is the moment we discover that someone, whom we had at first judged negatively, turns out to be nothing like we first thought, and instead we find we really like and enjoy who they are.
After fifty years on this planet, I’m starting to believe that, given the chance to get to the very core of each person, I would love and like every other person who walks this earth. This came home to me forcefully recently. In my search for a new way of living after Ian’s death in 2005, I visited an ashram in India. Whilst there, I participated in an activity that involved sitting opposite an absolute stranger. We were instructed to hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes for five minutes.
I do not have the words to fully describe the transformative nature of those five minutes. All I can say is that at the end of that time, I felt I ‘knew’ this young man. I felt totally connected to him as a fellow traveller on the path of life. He clearly felt the same. We didn’t need to know anything else, the details of our humanness. We knew each other as fellow ‘souls.’
After a distressing experience during an exercise in the class, which led me to feel rejected and unworthy (but which actually made me more aware of how much I judge and reject others on the basis of physical
