On Remembering

 

You have everything. Everything has already been given to you; you are completely safe and capable of awakening to reality. The ego (defined at the end of the text), however, maintains vigilance over what it allows to enter your awareness. The ego cannot accept thoughts that clearly indicate its own nothingness, and so it denies or rejects them.

The good news is that you are not the ego, and it has no power over you unless you grant it that power yourself. You can therefore prevent what you have refused to accept from entering your awareness, and it will not be forced upon you. But you can also remember what is, in which case you are merely bringing back into awareness what is already there. (Though you had rejected it or cast it aside.)

Remembering depends on your own willingness, just as accepting reality does. Willingness cannot, however, be forced; it must be allowed to arise of its own accord. One obstacle might be that you desire something that you would actually fear if you received it. You cannot truly want something like that, and so it cannot be given or received either. One obstacle may be the fear of nothingness, for who would want something they believe would destroy them? Of course, there is no way you could lose what You Are.

 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” [Genesis 1:1] Except that He didn’t. The biblical creation narrative is a metaphorical account of how the subconscious mind made the world. God knows only Heaven, which is why we can remember it at all and “return” there. Who, then, would be at Home if He were to leave it and forget Himself? God has nothing to do with the world – fortunately. Otherwise, He would be just as deranged as the world itself, and that He is not.

[I should note that this isn’t a religious website. Not that there’s anything wrong with religions. Still, I use some of the same terms that are used in A Course in Miracles. Words are not the thing they describe, and what is, is literally indescribable. You can try to describe the present moment and everything in it in your mind, and you’ll soon realize the limitations of words. However, we have to use words if we want to say anything. At least until some other form of communication becomes possible. Hehe. If the word “God” feels awkward, you can of course replace it with a term that feels more natural for you. In Himself, He is beyond the reach of all words and definitions.]

 

God:

The Source. Life. The Creator. Truth. Infinity, Boundlessness, All that is. Love. Peace. He is not a person, nor is He separate from you, nor is He human-like – even though people have tried to make Him in their own image, for to the ego, the ego is god. By “He,” I do not refer to the fearsome authority of religions. He knows; He does not perceive. A fact, not a symbol.

 

ego:

The idea of separation from God, of distinctness, of division. A personal notion of individuality – “I am me, and you are separate from me, and the world is outside of me.” A story about yourself you have constructed through your past experiences. A mental concept of your own self. It compares. It manipulates, among other things, through emotional energy. It represents fear. The term “ego” is also used in psychology, but I’m not personally familiar with what it means in that field.

 

translated from Finnish
by Alexandra Hiltunen