This beautiful world...

 The time has slipped by. I am reviewing some of my classwork before heading off to Missouri, I am in the middle of what seems to be a head cold, and I am still unpacking. You’d think, under the circumstances, that I’d be unable to write…when in truth, I have so much to write about, that I’m too distracted to complete any one theme.

So lets begin with a couple of loose ends from previous writings. The one I wish to address today stems from the first post of the year, where I was talking about how if we were perfect in our realization of the God-spirit carried within, we wouldn’t have things to grow beyond, to struggle for, and so we might be missing some fundamental joy in this life. If everything were perfect, as it is supposed to be in God-mind, would we be bored? Are angels be bored? Is that how we got here?

Popular thinking has God creating this world as kind of a trial run, a test, a learning spot for spirits trying to obtain perfection. However, in order to accept that concept, one has to see God as having human feelings and emotions. One has to see spirits as needing perfection, and living a life that can be separate - distinct entities that can “choose” to reenter this world and live again. Huh? This is not God as Oneness, Divine Mind, or even God as a Supreme Being. That’s not the all-powerful, omnipresent Oneness I know.

And yet, if there is only Oneness, the only reality is that of Spirit, God, and this earthly experience is unreal, like so many faiths believe, then why have this relative world at all?  I hear constantly that we are living a dream, we are spiritual beings having an earthly experience…if so, why? Why have this earth, this existence at all? Is there an answer without resorting to the God-as-reflection-of-ourselves with some human-like motive?

Charles Fillmore, founder of Unity, defined God/Divine Mind as Absolute Truth, the Divine idea which encompasses all Divine Ideas. Relative Truth is what we experience in the physical realm, this worldly experience. We learn that the relative realm doesn’t exist without the Absolute Realm or Absolute Truth. As I wrote in homework for one of the classes, "To our outside senses, the relative world is real, yet it does not exist separately from the absolute. Yet to say it does not exist separately from the absolute infers that it is a reality after all.”

Is it a reality?  I can understand that I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts. Something greater is inside me, is my bedrock. But that’s a far cry from calling this gorgeous world “not real.” After all, we have a life outside those feelings and thoughts.

So, OK, what is the truth?

We might never know the answer. We can only guess, and dream up some of the wonderful theories I’ve heard. For myself, I want to keep the question open, and just say that it is what it is. I’m not ready to declare our beautiful world and people in it as being “unreal.” God is everywhere, everything, including me, you, and even that rock over there. Yes, I want to keep the question open.