VI. The Illusion of Needs, P 2
2 A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.
Journal
This paragraph begins by telling me that I have not actually separated from God. It tells me that I only have a sense of separation. It says that this happened when I distorted my perception of truth. So what I am experiencing as actuality is not real. I have to wonder what the world would look like if I had not distorted my perception of the truth. I would have had a happy dream, I think, and I will still have that happy dream as I allow my perception to be corrected and brought nearer the truth.
When I distorted my perception so that I could see myself as something other than one and whole this created a sense of lack. Of course, it did! I had never known anything other than wholeness, and now I was less than that. This fragmentation of Self appeared as many levels with different needs. Then I began to organize these needs according to some order, fragmenting them further as I decided which was least important and which I felt more compelled to fill.
Awhile back a very large rock hit my windshield. It caused a big round crack which I have been watching as it slowly creeps across the windshield in various directions, taking on different designs as it does so. It began in a confined area with a specific shape and now there are cracks going off in different directions and each of those cracks has its own design.
I can imagine my error in thinking to have similar effects. Maybe it went something like this. First I imagine a setting for something entirely different, which sets up perception because “entirely different” is not truth so I needed a way of making it all happen. Instead of creating something different, I am now using the mechanism of perception to experience it as if it is different. Maybe I could think of that as imagining it different, or as the Course says, I am dreaming.
But then I want a more intense experience, something more believable, so I distort perception until it no longer resembles the truth in any way. Now I have the seeming experience of being separate from God. That’s when it all got away from me. Like the crack in my window, the fragmenting didn’t stop with the one break, but continued on and on, fragmenting over and over, making many things, many bodies, many desires, and needs, until seemingly becoming endless and hopeless. I became so far from Wholeness that I cannot imagine getting back.
Good thing this was planned for through the Holy Spirit that is the Voice and the guide that keeps me forever connected to God. So here I am on the outer edges of this incredibly complex fragmentation and beginning to wake up to the truth that I am not this and don’t want to hang out here as if I am. I am beginning to listen to that Voice and work my way back home. It seems like an impossible and endless journey because I see all those needs stretching before me, all those errors, some impossibly big and others smaller, some urgent and some just waiting its turn, and I cannot imagine coming to the end of them.
It is very reassuring to read that there are not really a lot of needs, nor are there levels to those needs. There is just one lack I need to correct, the belief that I have actually separated from God. All the distorted fragmentation is dissolved in that one correction. This is my only true goal, my real destination and I am excited to know this. As I continue this study of the text, and as I listen closely to the Voice for God, I will receive more clarity and more instructions and guidance on how to reach my one goal.
Today the Holy Spirit has asked me to remember what everything is for. When I feel I need something, no matter how minor or how important the sense of lack is, I will remember that I have one lack only and that this seeming need is a symbol of that one lack. A sense of separation from God is the only lack I really need correct. I am being asked today to open my mind to that simple thought and become willing to accept it.