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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

A Course In Miracles

Reality

 
 

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reality

“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” This is how “A Course In Miracles” begins. It makes a fundamental distinction between the real and the unreal … only what [God] created is real.

In the article, The Holodeck Worlds: How We'll Find Wholeness in Summerland from the Traumatic Sufferings of Planet Earth we entertained discussion concerning coming worlds, not just Summerland but, thought-worlds, worlds brought into being by the power of desire and intention. In this surfeit of creativity, the question will arise, "Is it a real world? Is it less real than the Earth-world? Or is this - here, right now - the unreal world?"

 

 

Editor’s prefatory note:

I had awakened in the middle of the night. I glanced at the clock – nearly 3 AM. I wanted to go back to sleep, but the questions just posed concerning “the real world” pressed hard on my spirit and would not let me rest. “3 AM,” I sighed, “is often the time when ‘mail is delivered’,” and, despite the weary body, I felt compelled to write. The previous evening, before bed, I had spent a few minutes in “the small quiet room,” attempting to center myself, to quiet the fears in the head, concerning our world which is quickly changing, but not for the better. The desultory ego, the “circus rider,” true to form, jumped from topic to topic, could not be tamed, and left me with an overriding sense of the difficulty of my task. I mention this as encouragement to all who might seek for the introspective state but seemingly without success. Even though we believe we might have failed to “open a channel,” stay with the process, because, at the right time, maybe at 3 AM, the mail will always be delivered.

 

 

In the “holodeck” writing, How We'll Find Wholeness in Summerland from the Traumatic Sufferings of This World, I asked the question, what would it be like “living in a private world of one’s own design, with no threat of interruption or loss, seeing all ideas and consequences fully worked out”? But,

What if the Earth-plane is also a “holodeck world,” also a world wherein we see ideas and consequences fully worked out?

This question, all by itself, would not let me sleep.

Before offering new thoughts on this subject, allow me to reproduce some discussion from the “holodeck” writing which will serve as prelude.

 

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which one is the "real" world and the "real" life - it can get a little confusing

I hope you've begun to see how this holodeck-world principle might heal sorrowful hearts.

There is a natural tendency to lament: "Oh, I missed out on this experience with the one I love; and we didn't get to do this, and we lost out on that, and then this big problem happened instead - and now there's no way we can ever make this up!" Actually... this is not true.

 

I think you're scared, because you want to be with me, too...

Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan

"Maybe I want to be with you!"

"You don't know what you want!"

"You know what your problem is? - you're hiding from me and from yourself. You hide behind that holy book of yours and your religion. I think you're scared -- because you want to be with me, too."

 

 

What if you could make up the losses and do it right this time, be made whole, in a very real way that satisfies the deepest wishes of the heart?

I don't think the hurts of the past will ever be erased from our minds - and, with a clearer head, we wouldn't want this to happen, as our mistakes and losses become part of our wisdom, the very reason we dared to come to the troubled Earth.

 

Doctor Strange (2016), The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton)

“We never lose our demons. We only learn to live above them.”

 

grief to be swallowed up, displaced, reduced to cool philosophical notation and footnote, by the dominant and overwhelming good experiences to come

Instead of "erasing," we need to displace and minimize, remove the sting of loss and grief, by overlaying the hurtful experience with a new positive one; however, not just any new experience, but the "very same one," so to speak, now sanctified and sanitized, free of trauma and loss. We can do this in a very real holodeck-world.

 

the story of Marie in the Dark Realms 

Robert James Lees was a famous London psychic-medium of the latter 1800s. He was involved in solving the Jack The Ripper case and claimed to know the identity of the sought-for criminal. Lees write a trilogy, the first of which, “Through The Mists” (1898), offers excellent information concerning Summerland. I praise him because, unlike so many reporters who are part of a dysfunctional group over there (see “the 500 tape-recorded messages from the other side” writing), Lees gets it right on many points of natural law. I offer the foregoing as credential of credibility regarding an excerpt from his book.

He informs us of a man named Cushna, on the other side since the days of early Egypt – this could mean 10,000 years of residence in Summerland. Cushna, as revealed in Lees' book, exhibits qualities of the perfect gentleman, the perfect servant, the perfect friend. We take note that he has remained in Summerland to provide a service to dark-realm les miserables.

Cushna speaks to a fairly recent arrival in Summerland. They have just heard the testimony of Marie who had been greatly suffering in the Dark Realms for a long time. Cushna is about to explain how the memory of her suffering is not to be erased but re-interpreted so as to form a basis of future wisdom:

“Cushnal tell me,” I cried, “how can you reconcile your one law of love with the terrible scene I have just witnessed?” [Marie having collapsed in exhaustion after recounting her story of suffering.]

“I can well understand your difficulty,” he replied, “and will try to explain… It is impossible for me to relate, or make you understand how, or by what means, she has been gradually weaned from the terrible agony in which I first found her, a remnant of which you have just witnessed… there is nothing inconsistent with the law of love in asking her to tell her story. The retention of individuality demands that the memory of the past shall never be effaced - the scar of every wrong we have done will forever remain, till, when we have paid its penalty, it ceases to be a source of pain - the wound slowly heals, the discomfort dies away, but the scar endures.

“Marie has now reached this healing stage, and every time she tells her story it is like another dressing of her wound - painful for the present, but beneficial in the result. Every recital is less agonising than the last, and the exhaustion it causes induces a sleep from which she derives additional strength, which is very necessary to her progress.

“And how long will it be before all this can be accomplished?”

“That varies very considerably - generally about the same length of time as the previous imprisonment.”

“Have you any idea how long that was?”

“Yes! As I have told you it lasted about twenty years [in the Dark Realms].”

 

 

Our time on the Earth is more or less a disaster for everyone, and people naturally worry how they will ever find peace of mind from the losses here. I have come to see that the Spirit Guides do not share this worry with us, as they know of the coming holodeck-worlds where we'll be able to "overwrite the sad scene" with a better ending, one to our individual and particular liking.

 

but... which one is the "real" experience

Let's remember that these holodeck-worlds can recreate an Earth-scene down to the "finest detail." When I saw that phrase, a whimsical thought came to mind: "This means that on the lake by the old farm there will be the same July mosquitoes hovering on the water at dusk, and the same frogs I used to chase by the shore when I was ten!"

 

When there's that kind of detail recreated, it suddenly becomes a little confusing about which is the "real world." I suggest we review Father Benson's remarks in the "archetype" article as he strongly asserts that the Earth-world is the pale, black-and-white "copy," with the coming "real world" the permanent full-color production.

 

nothing here is real... nothing here matters...

I've learned much from Picard's wisdom, but, in this case, I think he had it wrong. It's the Earth-world, not the holodeck-worlds, where "nothing matters."

Everything here, as Kairissi and Elenchus came to see, is provisional and reversible; everything here, essentially, expresses the cravings of the Small Ego; everything here was built by deluded creatures of whom Jesus said, "they know not what they do"; everything here is in a state of flux, decay, and is passing away; every good thing here is like the elusive butterfly defying capture and gone the next moment; everything here is meant to be training-ground, the "practice turn," a disposable throw-away version.

But, in the coming "real world," every good thing reflects our "true self," the authentic needs and wishes of the soul, that which we "ought" to desire and were made to desire; every lasting relationship in Summerland is built upon permanent soul-affinity, not the transitory ego-needs or instinctual bio-responses of "John and Mary," which latter union will naturally fade away and be abandoned when they realize their error; every good thing in the Spirit World is enduring and fixed, never again to suffer loss - and when we find something there that we really like, we can stay with it as long as we want - unendingly, if so desired; or until we're ready to say, "been there, done that, what's next?" No one will ever ask us to vacate or leave or give up something good; no one, nothing, will ever disrupt our happiness.

Why, then, should we favor the shadowy Earth-experience as "real" and not that of the coming worlds wherein our truest selves, our deepest yearnings and soul-pledges - that which "should have been" - find solid, actual, and permanent expression?

 

 

How can it not be real when the same mosquitoes are on the lake? 

Kairissi: This whole discussion of the “real world” really gets to me.

Elenchus: What's bothering you, Kriss?

K. The author's comment about the vicissitudes of his old boyhood farm - even the lake’s changing shoreline, in his own lifetime - I find rather unnerving.

E. (small smile) His frog-chasing may have encouraged the expression, "mad as a box of frogs."

K. (small smile) I'm sure he was right in there.

E. Tell me what you're really seeing here, Krissi.

K. It’s just the impermanence of it all. The author has stated that the old way of life, the German farming community of childhood, appeared as enduring as the ancient Roman Empire, which lasted a thousand years, and another thousand in the East. But really, those views of solidity are just illusion; yes, while kids live “at home” under the control of powerful father figures, it can all seem set in stone, but how quickly the stage-props disintegrate. In the end, the "solid" farm and "permanent" way of life were all made of straw and playing cards. The big bad wolf just huffed-and-puffed it all down so easily.

E. The “powerful father figures,” too, ended up dying; indeed, rather early, and the farms blew away like super-dry combine chaff.

K. Oats, flax, or wheat? But, Ellus, I have come to see that institutions and modes of living on the Earth are all just fake scenery; just kids playing with wooden swords and paper hats. And in all this insubstantiality, I marvel and wonder why part of me so readily ascribes any assessment of “real world” to the Earth, this gossamer moth of fading summer.

E. Would you agree? – it’s just a prejudice we indulge in. As Amit Goswami says, we errantly identify with our social conditioning, "with a particular pattern of habits for responding to stimuli;" this is what the small ego does as it creates illusion on many levels. We humor ourselves that time flows with constant rate, that tables are solid, and that the Sun rises in the east.

K. But we are deceived – as the author asserted repeatedly in “Stars And Midnight Blue.” “Might we always be deceived?” he asked the reader. And I think another point of common deception, well in line with the numerous "I am deceived" misperceptions outlined in that writing, is that we count this world as the “real” and primary one.

E. This is a very important insight, and it helps to clarify the whole issue. Our default judgment that the Earth-plane is the “real world” should be ranked with the rooster’s fancied belief that his crowing brings on the dawn.

K. I think so. And the point is, the Earth is not the “real world,” no matter what our five senses cajole us to accept. That view is just a prejudice, along with a hundred others that form our deluded notions of how life works.

E. You’ve added something important to this discussion. So, since you’re “on a roll” here, let me ask you, where does this leave us in our review of this subject?

K. I think… in a coming "holodeck-world," in a “sphere of love,” we will begin to let go of our social conditioning and gradually allow our perceptions to become convinced of many truths. With better knowledge, keener judgment, with less ego directing us, all of the examples of “I am deceived” will begin to surrender to a more enlightened view. And part of this realignment will include that which we count as “the real world.” The hegemony of the Earth-plane, and our disastrous time on this planet, will fade in our thinking, replaced by the far more substantial reality of Summerland and “the spheres.”

E. It all comes down to simple mistake. We crown the Earth as "the real world" because that's all we know right now.

K. "Garbage in, garbage out," Darling Dear.

 

 

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The above discussion from the “holodeck article” is among the most important, and personally most revered, of the Word Gems writings. I hope you read it in its entirety. However, I have come to see some new things. Life is clearer in the darkness of 3 AM.

What if there is no such thing as a “real world”?

What if neither Summerland, nor others to come, nor even this present Earth-world, is a “real world”?

What if all worlds, this one and those in the offing, are meant to be like laboratories in which our ideas and their consequences are fully worked out, the effects of which brought to fruition, all in service of our spiritual education and growth in wisdom?

What if there is no “real world,” anywhere? - because that which is truly “real,” the only thing that's "real" and permanent and unchanging, is not “out there” but can only be found by going within: the inner riches, the sacred soul, with our link to God and our love-bonds with dearest ones.

I think this assessment takes us a few steps closer to an accurate view. And this is why Sir Oliver Lodge’s son Raymond, reporting via psychic-medium from Summerland, said that Summerland is also a world of illusion. All worlds are.

I think there’s much value to the metaphor of all worlds as laboratories. It's there that we work out the consequences of ideas and impressions, usually half-baked - and in the resulting epiphanies we achieve greater depths of wisdom.

Let’s think about this with more detail in reference to our “tour of duty” here on the Earth.

In our natural state, we have indestructible, eternally-youthful bodies. "How terribly strange to be 70," sang Simon and Garfunkel. What does it mean to experience aches and pains, disease and disability? to lose vitality and grow old? to look into a mirror and see an increasingly wrinkled face? to exclaim to oneself, “I used to be the image of athletic health and vigor, and now I look like Father Time and death-warmed-over”?

In our natural state, we live in community and warm conviviality with friends and loved ones, and, indeed, all peoples. When we want to talk and share concourse, people we like and love can be immediately accessed, as fast as the speed of thought. But in our world, especially as we grow older, we live in little boxes, cut off from the main; often isolated, a virtual solitary confinement.

In our natural state, the one we were meant to love most dearly is always with us. To lose her is unfathomable. We naturally share all of life together, experience everything together, and we never lose each other. What would it be like – how unthinkable! what an unimaginable horror! – to be separated from this darling companion; separated by death, by misunderstanding, by immaturity, by anger and hurt feelings, by out-of-phase development, by missed opportunity.

In our natural state, we live with complete freedom to negotiate life as we will. Personal liberties become the air we breathe as we adventure to explore a Jeffersonian world of “the pursuit of happiness.” But, how strange, how utterly anomalous, how totally contrary to inner constitution, to live in a world where, more and more, the sacred dignity of the individual is minimized in favor of the totalitarian group.

We could go on. All of these anomalies we would never experience if we had remained in the spirit world, if we had not come to this what-if-scenario world.

Why should we have come? Why should we experience all this Darkness when we were made for Light? Our inner person informs us and makes it clear:

Without our personal “descent into hell,” we would forever remain shallow and naïve. We would nod in agreement, smile a callow smile of the very young, and with no depth of perception.

We'd be unable to appreciate, with no wisdom and understanding, why God’s way of love and service, of personal development and education, of authentic romantic love and true relationship, is the only way to live.

It's now 5:55 AM.

 

Editor's last word: