Lesson 30. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind

When I did these lessons years ago I read everything as an admonishment, but now I see things differently.  How reassuring it is to know that God is in everything because God is in my mind and there is nothing outside of my mind.

But what does it mean God is in my mind?  It means God is the essence of my mind. And the life I live given to the purpose and awareness of that essence is the springboard for vision. A different kind of vision.  Our lesson today calls it Real vision.  “Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body’s eyes at all.”

NTI Colossians 1 speaks of our essence, “You are the heavens and the earth, the bees and the sunshine.  You are the process that made all things and is all things, so that they live through the process that created them.  You are the flow of Life and separte from nothing that is life, for that which flows through them is the process that you are.”  NTI Colossians 2 continues in the same vein, “You are all things, and all things are you.”

So why don’t we know this?  NTI Colossians 2 answers, “Your imaginings have cut you off from awareness of the Life Force that you are, but that awareness has not been cut off from you.  We represent that awareness within your mind.  Listening to our song brings that awareness back to you.  Be quiet and hear our song.  Feel its flow within you.”  This is a reflection of Love and Union.  The workbook lesson says, “Thus we are trying to join with what we see, rather than keeping it apart from us.”  NTI Colossians says, “See that all things are one through you.”

What we want to remember is that this lesson is neither an admonishment nor an academic exercise. We are reprogramming the brain to remember that which we truly are. How do we bring the awareness of the Life Force that we are back into our awareness?

In his book, Shift Into Freedom, Loch Kelly provides helpful training exercises to do just that.

The open-hearted awareness approach focuses on uncovering or discovering our essential nature and then shifting our level of mind to live from open-hearted awareness. Because awake awareness is already here, there is no need to strive to earn it, create it, or develop it; nor is it effective to adopt the passive attitude of waiting for it to find us. Awake awareness, the ground of being, is equally available within each of us, as our essence. However, simply believing this—or intellectually understanding it—is not enough.

Loch writes that “In order to abide in awake awareness, we must glimpse it several times and become familiar with the view from this new level of mind.” What follows is an exercise Loch designed to give us one of those glimpses.

Glimpse 1: Seen, Seeing, and Awareness

In this glimpse, you’ll use your visual sense to become aware of awareness. You can use the words on this page as the object of focus while you’re reading, or you can learn the exercise first and then try it with another object, like a cup. [I found this exercise easier to do with objects than with the words.]

1. 1. Become aware of the words on this page as objects.
   2. Notice your normal way of seeing the words on the page: looking outward from subject (“I”) to object (words). Notice: “I am aware of seeing the words.”
   3. Now reverse the process. Notice the words as the seen.
   4. Next, be aware of light reflecting off the page and coming to your eyes as seeing.
   5. Now follow your awareness back to rest as that which is aware of seeing.
   6. Let your awareness move backwards from the seen … to seeing … and then through the “I” to rest back as that which is aware of seeing.
   7. Let awareness move back from the page to discover the awareness behind and within that is already aware and looking.
   8. Allow awareness to rest back until it discovers the awake awareness that is effortlessly reading the words.

We can also foster this awareness of our essence by reminding ourselves as we think we think, as we go about our day, “I am not separate from anything I see, from anything I hear, from anything I feel.” We are to hold God or Is-ness in our hearts and look for this essence in all things. Reach for God today and you will find him. Allow the spaciousness and you will come to see that there is no boundary between what you are and all that is. It is this imagined boundary that we would remove today. By opening to this spacious way of seeing, we soften the edges we would place on everything.

If we sincerely practice this lesson, we will see that everything is contained within the mind and that vision is seeing everything with the purpose of knowing God as our true essence.

LESSON 29. God is in everything I see.

The lesson begins: “The idea for today explains why you can see all purpose in everything. It explains why nothing is separate, by itself or in itself. And it explains why nothing you see means anything. In fact, it explains every idea we have used thus far, and all subsequent ones as well. Today’s idea is the whole basis for vision.”

It would be easy to practice this lesson through rote application or as some sort of detached mantra. (I know, I’ve done it that way in the past). Such practice, however, would miss the point of the lesson entirely. What we are attempting with this lesson is to move beyond our conception of ourselves as bodies (or even as spirits encased within bodies) as opposed to or separated from everything else in our experience.

NTI Colossians 1 explains our “place” in the universe:

You are the flow that is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the creator of all things within time. You are the heavens and the earth, the bees and the sunshine. You are the process that made all things and is all things, so that they live through the process that created them. You are the flow of Life and separate from nothing that is Life, for that which flows through them is the process that you are. You are beyond concepts and differences and form, and within the Life Force that is all things.

We have been focused on the thoughts which come into the mind and how the thoughts to which we have habitually given attention keep us locked within the concept of ourselves as limited beings separate and apart from others. It is this self-concept that makes it seem silly, irreverent, senseless, funny and even objectionable to think that God or is-ness or being-ness could be located in a table, a lamp, etc.

The lesson states that all things share the same purpose and “what shares the purpose of the universe shares the purpose of its Creator.” Purpose is defined as “the reason for which something exists.” (Dictionary.com). What then is this purpose?

As we have seen, we are the process of creation that is God. NTI Colossians 1 reiterates this point:

The Christ is your truth, It is the law of Love, It is the process of creation, It is That Which is you.

As the process of creation, or the extension of God, extension is purpose. NTI Matthew 16 tells us, “The Spirit of God is one, and His Son is one with Him. There is no separateness. There is only the Father and His extension of His Self, which is His Son.” The extension of God is the reason all things exist.

The shared purpose of all things is indeed the extension of that which you are and that which you be. There is no contraction or collapse within beingness, though there is a recognition of the sameness of all that is. This is a difficult concept because our mind works in terms of dimension and what we are and what we be, cannot be contained with the dimensionality of the thinking mind. All things that be and are, only be and are as God, through God and for God. God, Is-ness, Creation’s joy is the extension of itself. This is joining in the play of creation. Such creation is the source of all joy. It is the way in which God knows himself.

NTI Colossians 1 tells us, “Your imaginings have cut you off from the awareness of the Life Force that you are, but that awareness has not been cut off from you. … Feel its flow within you. Feel it expanding and pushing out from the center of your Heart to all things through the willingness of your mind.”

This is the practice we adopt in doing the lesson today. We are invited to actually contemplate that inanimate objects, others, everything, is that Is-ness, power of Love, extension of God and I Am That.