Rise Above the Battleground

When great teachers speak of awakening to the light of Heaven within, they are pointing to a conscious emergence from the dark, binding nature of a fixated mind. When Jesus said, “Ye are the light,” he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was describing the literal truth—that each of us exists as the luminous omniscient presence of God itself. He was expressing that quite literally, all there is is light—an infinitely intelligent light appearing as various forms—and all else is a lie, a made up story, like a dream that ends the moment we wake up.

To recognize this is to free oneself from the mind-field of the race, to “rise above the battleground,” as A Course in Miracles calls it. Self-realization is not something that can be figured out. It is only something that can be experienced. The way to recognizing omniscient love is not one of understanding spiritual concepts, but is rather an active moment-to-moment disentanglement from what love is not.  It is only when we disengage from our ideas about what love is, that we finally meet love face-to-face. In other words, when the mind is quiet, we can see clearly.

It is actually very, very simple—perhaps too simple for most minds—when illusions dis-appear, what is real remains.

Realizing love is about learning to see, to live life with all of your eyes wide open. Perception happens through far more than the eyes of the body and our sight is greatly affected by our degree of openness. The heart does not see clearly if it is closed. Neither does the mind. Most of us think that we’re seeing life the way it really is, but unless the heart remains open and the third eye activated and awake, our perception of reality is crippled and limited at best.

This is why a process of healing is so very important for human happiness. Without love there is no happiness. Yet paradoxically, love is the power that heals. Strangely it is love itself, that nudges us towards the right book, the right film, the right teacher, the right therapist, the right relationship that will help our hearts to open up so that more of the same love can enter in and heal the illusory woes of our imagined past.

Through healing the heart, the mind naturally follows, seeing everything anew and an authentic inner-shift takes place. It is through an open heart and mind that the soul emerges and begins to live through your personality and life. From this moment on, a much higher faculty of mind takes over, the faculty of conscious loving awareness. One is set free of the old paradigm of egoic thinking and perceiving. The ego sees itself in everyone. So it is with love. Love knows only love appearing everywhere in a miraculously intelligent play of self-evolution.

The more we can relax around what we see, especially if we experience pain and constriction over what we see, the more our perceptions have a chance to be replaced by true vision. When we find ourselves relaxing our minds around just one fixated idea—perhaps the way we see our spouse, for instance—and suddenly we’re struck by how sweet or beautiful he is, when only moments before he had appeared to be a harsh and critical person, the spiritual and energetic relief is so tremendously freeing that we are impelled to address every thought that follows in the same way.

“Really?” we might say to ourselves. “Is that really true? Is Ralph really that way? What if I’m not seeing correctly…… perhaps I’d experience greater peace if I inquire rather than assume that I’ve got all the facts strait.” Suddenly through the willingness to inquire and investigate what is appearing in the mind, the mind, heart and body all relax together in a single breath and the possibility for freedom and peace becomes apparent.

The way to a lasting realization of love and the freedom it brings is to love our illusions away, one appearing thought at a time. Eventually a figure/ground shift is experienced and it is as if Love is “thinking us” into being without any effort on our part. When Love is fully realized, the mind has finally healed and returned to sanity.