I have come to experience, miraculously, through the mind-training of A Course in Miracles the stillness of the peace of God. I have come to know that this experience of stillness is how God created me, how God created you. This is the reference point for declaring that I AM God’s Son.
I AM God’s Son, complete and healed and whole,
Shining in the reflection of His Love.
W-p11.14.What am I? 1:1
I find myself seeing “I Am, ” rather than "I am," ever since coming across this passage in Eckhart Tolle’s book, Stillness Speaks.
Your innermost sense of self, of what you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I AM that is deeper than name and form.
(Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, (Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, CA, 2003), p. 3.
I AM not a body. I AM free,
For I AM still as God created me.
W-p1.Review VI.3:3-5
The word still carries two meanings, I continue to be, and I AM stillness.
I find myself expressing this most frequently as, I AM in the world and not of the world. It is always a matter of remembering not of and letting go of in, remembering that I AM God’s Son, Light and Love and Peace and Stillness, and letting go of the dream that I made myself a body, seeing through the body’s eyes, using my physical brain to project and then interpret what I see in my dream.
One way I persist in maintaining my dream is to cast my brothers in particular roles in my drama. It is as if I were a casting director facing a stage and behind the curtains are assembled my brothers, the Holy Sons of God. I call them out one-by-one and assign each of them roles, garb them in costumes and give them lines to speak, forgetting that a moment ago they were standing behind the curtain as God created them, forgetting that I am assigning them roles in my dream, making them characters as I would have them be and responding to them as if they were on a stage outside of my mind. When all the time, I am only seeing what I fashioned in the first place inside my mind.
Casting our brothers to play certain roles happens so rapidly that we are usually unaware that we are doing it; it just seems to be the way things are. An image appears and we deal with it, forgetting that we projected the image “out there” with a thought. These projections happen unconsciously.
They seem unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. W-p1.136.3:3
We make a choice each time we “look out” and see one of our projections. We choose between seeing through the body’s eyes, or through the eyes of Christ. We choose to see our brother as a body, or as the face of Christ.
I want to slow down this automatic, unconscious, rapid process of casting our brothers to play certain roles, and what comes to mind is Hamlet’s advice to his players. Just imagine that you were to stop for a moment and give each brother you assign a role his or her instructions. Be Hamlet for a moment and say to each actor in your drama:
Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. . . Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. . . Go make you ready.
Hamlet.3.2:1-36
Perhaps, this will slow us down a bit, pretending that we take time to instruct each player in our drama to play his part as we are assigning it as he steps from behind the curtain.
It is always a case of remembering that I am walking around in a play, a drama, of my own making. While all the time, I AM home in Heaven with my Father. I AM in this world and not of it, and my stay here on this worldly stage is temporary.
It is a delicate balance, this remembering and forgetting, because it is not a matter of either/or, it is both; it is the simultaneity of stepping into time and space from out of time, and while I AM walking around, remembering my true Home.
When I experience the stillness of I AM, it is a holy instant, and what I then see in the world is a clear reflection of what is in my healed mind.
Come to the holy instant and be healed,
for nothing that is there received is left
behind on your returning to the world.
And being blessed you will bring blessing. Life
is given you to give the dying world.
And suffering eyes no longer will accuse,
but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave.
The holy instant's radiance will light
your eyes, and give them sight to see beyond
all suffering and see Christ's face instead.
Healing replaces suffering. Who looks
on one cannot perceive the other, for
they cannot both be there. And what you see
the world will witness, and will witness to.
T-27.V.6
And, if I think for a moment that a brother does not appreciate something I did, or said, I say to myself, before casting him as a villain,
It does not matter if another thinks
your gifts unworthy. In his mind there is
a part that joins with yours in thanking you.
W-pI.197.4:1,2
Or, I look into a brother’s eyes, no matter the role I assigned to him, and say, silently, “Namaste, the Christ in me greets the Christ in you.” And in that moment, I fully remember that I AM not of this world.
There is a way of living in the world
that is not here, although it seems to be.
You do not change appearance, though you smile
more frequently. Your forehead is serene;
your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk
the world as you do recognize their own.
W-pI.155.1:1-4
And here’s Shakespeare, again.
Jacques: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances.
As You Like It, 2. 7. 139-167
May I be aware that I am totally responsible for all my players, their entrances and their exits, as I tell them now, Go make you ready.
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