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.
