ACIM VII. Creation and Communication, P 5, 6. God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy.
ACIM Chapter 4, VII. Creation and Communication, P 5, 6
VII. Creation and Communication, P 5
5 God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. That is what creation means. “How,” “what” and “to whom” are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always.
This is not a very long paragraph, but several things hit the radar for me. God as Divine Abstraction is the first thing I noticed, probably because yesterday I was wondering what God is. I know He is not a body or a man, but I don’t really have another category. Thing, or It doesn’t feel right either. Father, Creator, these are just titles given to help my comfort level. I cannot define God, only label Him. I cannot understand God from this place I find myself, and maybe I cannot understand Him ever.
God’s Attributes
There are certain attributes I can associate with God. He created me like Himself through the extension of Himself. Thus I understand Him to be generous and loving, and giving. From A Course in Miracles and from the answering response in my heart, I attribute God with kindness, gentleness, and strength. And as I write this, I realize it would be truer perhaps to say He is not kind and gentle and strong, but He is Kindness and Gentleness and Strength itself, and thus so am I, having been made in His likeness.
As I am created like God, everything I exhibit that is unlike God cannot be true. It can only be errant thought taking shape through the power that is mine, through a mighty will that is mine, but that has been distorted. Not creation, but a pale shadow of creation, a child’s game of make-believe. Because of who I am and Who my Creator is, my play is not without effects, but it is limited to play.
We Are Not Separate
Another thing that jumped out at me is that we, as we were created, are beings and individuals, yet we are encompassed by God. In other places in the Course, we learn that we are one mind and one with God. We are not separate, which is the whole point of the Course. So how can there be one of us and yet be more than one? The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Sometimes in my ignorance, I will think and even write so as to indicate I know something. This is hilarious, and I invite you to laugh with me when you notice I do this.
I wonder if I can ever understand the nature of God and the nature of creation, but perhaps that is because I am temporarily stuck in this dense state, with at least partial amnesia. Perhaps all will become clear as I awaken. Right now, I am reminded of Star Trek and the Borg. They were many individuals, but they operated from a single mind. In the story, they were not the good guys but isn’t that typical ego to imitate reality and then distort it into something reality could never be?
Divine Abstraction
The most important thing I see in this paragraph is that God, Reality, and Oneness is Divine Abstraction. God gives. There is nothing He does not give and give completely, holding nothing back. In creation, there is no separation. There is no singling out, no giving to one and not another. He does not give at certain times and withholds at others. God simply gives, and this giving creates more of Itself. Later the Course will tell us that to have, give all to all. Be as God. Create as God.
I will be honest; I cannot imagine this. I can understand it in my head, but I cannot see myself being divinely abstract. Nor do I see myself giving all to all. I label everything. I categorize it according to importance to me. Even what remains in which category is elusive. It can change from day to day or from moment to moment. I give only reluctantly. I give money; compared to what I used to do, I am very generous. Compared to some others, I am miserly. But when I give, I choose carefully where the gift goes. I categorize and judge and decide who is worthy of my gift. And who is not.
Removing Obstacles
Money is just a symbol, but this applies to people, too. I give my love only after considering if the recipient is worthy. I have, over the years, as I studied the Course and allowed my mind to be healed, greatly enlarged the circle of worthy people. But I still give only to some and withhold from others. I am sorry to see it in myself, but I know it is true right now. I am willing that it not be true.
You know, maybe I do have a clue what it means to be divinely abstract. I am moving, albeit slowly, in that direction as I become more and more willing to have all obstacles to Love removed from my mind. This is, after all, the miracle, the point of all my study and practice of the Course. I forgive, and thus the ego is undone in my mind, and I am left with only the truth of my being. Since I am an extension of my Creator, Who is Divine Abstraction, I must be that too, so how can it be a mystery to me? How can my nature be unknown to me? I must know.
“God, please reveal my Self to me.”
VII. Creation and Communication, P 6
6 The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows it in His Own Being and its experience of His Son’s experience. The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him.
In this paragraph, more is revealed about the nature of God. The good news is that God does not have an ego. If you tell me how wonderful I am, my ego will inflate. It loves that kind of thing. My ego perceives positive words from you as good things and negative words as not good. But God does not have an ego. He is not needy, so He is not dependent on reassurances about Himself.
Nor does he perceive; He simply knows. And in knowledge, there is nothing to judge. It is typical for us to project onto the idea of God our own experience. To the degree I perceive, judge, and crave acceptance and praise, I will tend to believe this about God. Thus, I am reminded here that I am the one with an ego, not God.
The Nature of God
It seems simple to say that God does not have an ego but to really understand what this means is not so simple. The next part of the paragraph further describes the nature of God. Here is what it seems to be saying to me. God created me by extending Himself. This feels confusing to me because I refer to God as a He, which implies a body, and my mind cannot compute a body extending itself. I have to remind myself that using pronouns is just a convenience and not to be taken literally.
So, God extends “Its Self” and thus creates. This brings God joy, and this joy is ongoing. It seems to me that Jesus is telling us that creation is a continuous process, so God experiences joy through that process continuously. Also, God experiences joy through His experience of His Son’s experience. So, God is aware of not only His own experience of creation but also His son’s experience of creation, and the awareness is one of joy.
The part of our mind that is asleep is no longer creating and is no longer in full communication with God, so His joy has been blocked. Jesus says that He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. Lonely implies both judgment and need, so I am sure that it is just a way of trying to communicate within the limits imposed by words. It is the same way we say “He” when we refer to God. We do this even though God is not a body/personality and certainly not gender specific. He is not gender anything since gender is just another part of the illusion of separation.
Maybe I Get the Picture
But even though it is impossible to find words to explain God adequately, I think I get the picture. God, Who is Love, extended Itself in an act of joyful creation. The nature of creation is such that It must continue to create in the same way, extending Itself as God did. Communication throughout all of creation is joyful. When part of our minds took a side trip into something that is not creation, this communication was curtailed because God knows only creation and does not share in our delusions. Creation was not undone, but it was partially disrupted, and when communication was disrupted, so was joy.
If I were to think of this in a way I can readily relate to, I would think that my Father created me out of love and that it makes Him very happy when we talk. Then one day, I wandered away on an adventure and forgot all about my Father. He no longer shares in my life and no longer enjoys our communications. He misses me and longs for me to return home.
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