2. What is Salvation?
Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot but be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God’s Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts, and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.
The Thought of peace was given to God’s Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given without opposite, and merely was. But when the mind is split there is a need of healing. So the Thought that has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness. Now it did not know itself, and thought its own Identity was lost.
Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed; an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before it, and the memory of God not far behind.
Let us come daily to this holy place, and spend a while together. Here we share our final dream. It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perspective. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light.
From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all.
INITIAL INSIGHT: There are two parts to salvation. In one part we stop supporting the ego by listening to and believing its thoughts. In doing so, the truth is revealed. In the other part, we spend time with our Self through meditation. As Jesus says it, we spend time at the altar to the Holy Name of God whereon His Word is written. We are His Word.
As we spend time with our Self let us bring the gift of forgiveness to this altar. I think of forgiveness as the first part of the process, where we stop giving our attention and belief to the ego thus undoing it since it exists only in our mind. So, I see that the two parts of salvation blend into each other. This is why the daily lessons encourage meditation even if it doesn’t use that word.
From nearly the beginning of the Workbook it requires that we spend time with the idea of the day and does so in ever-increasing increments. It is necessary that we take these breaks from the ego-mind so that we can learn to remember what peace is and that we want it. There is no peace in the ego. There is no salvation in the ego.
Here is something that stood out to me in this message. “But when the mind is split there is a need of healing. So the Thought that has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness.” That Thought is the Holy Spirit in my mind. That is the Thought I call on to correct my mistaken beliefs and to guide me back home to my Father.
When I am unhappy I know it is because I believe something that is not true. I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me on this belief and to correct my mind. This is calling on that Thought to heal and to bring my mind back to wholeness. When I am in fear and confusion, I call on that Thought to guide me to truth and this, too, helps restore the mind to the memory of wholeness. Though I have not lost my wholeness, I have forgotten it. This leaves me with an experience of separation that is the cause of my suffering.
DAILY APPLICATION: Here is an example of how I fail to support the ego. This happened a number of years ago while I was still working. I had been in Florida visiting Pathways of Light and had just returned to Louisiana.
“Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice.“ .
I left my cell phone in Orlando yesterday. It is really inconvenient not to have it. There are few payphones left in the world and so I have no way to contact those I need to talk to. I am working, going from customer to customer, and can’t even call ahead to let them know I am coming or to locate them if they are not where I expect them to be. I can’t call the office to get information. And worse of all, my customers will call me and think I am not returning their calls.
There was a time when I would be very upset about this. I would worry and fret and probably make bad decisions about what to do because fear clouds the mind with confusion. I would feel stupid for having done it. I would wonder why I could not be as organized as other people. I might wonder if I forgot my phone because I am getting older and my memory is not so good, and begin to worry about that. In other words, I would be supporting the idea of separation and making it stronger within the mind.
Now I approach this differently. I am aware of the challenges of not having a phone present and become quiet so that I can be guided to the best action. Then I follow that guidance. No worry, no judgments, no projecting into the future possible outcomes. Just ask for guidance and move with that guidance. In this way, I fail to support the ego separation idea and so I begin to unravel it. When I have done this often enough it becomes a way of life and one day there will be no memory of that thought system left in mind.
I am still using this practice, and now especially, I have given it my entire focus. I have decided that I want only the peace of God. Each thought that is divisive is brought to the Holy Spirit to be removed from my holy mind. I do this all day long, every day now. Sometimes I am not aware of a thought that needs correction, only that I am not happy. Noticing that I am not happy and choosing to stay in that state is a choice for something besides the peace of God. So I bring this, too, to the Holy Spirit.
REGINA’S TIPS
Today we begin a new special theme, “What is Salvation?” Salvation is an idea that has no meaning in truth. Awareness-life-presence is unchanged, so it does not need salvation.
At the same time, attention, which is the moving aspect of presence, has the ability to taste anything it dips into. Since it has dipped deeply into thought, emotion and appearance, it has become confused about what it is. It is like sunlight that shines through a stained glass window. It has taken on the appearance of red and green and blue. However, attention has identified with the appearance, thereby forgetting that it has no color at all.
Salvation is undoing this misidentification. The means of salvation is “failing to support” the misidentification. We do that in two ways:
- Forgiveness. Instead of believing thought, emotion and appearance, and instead of acting based on belief, we watch thought, emotion and appearance without acting from it. We abide as presence. When we are not able to do that easily, we use inquiry or another forgiveness tool to help us see through and detach from mistaken beliefs.
- Awareness-watching-awareness meditation. Instead of going out into appearance, attention is brought back to its source. When attention pays attention to presence, it sees that it is one with presence and the same as presence. It therefore remembers itself as presence and drops the confusion that it is appearance.
MY THOUGHTS
Good job, Regina! That is very clear.