14. What Am I ?
I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His
Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is
love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the
holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy
Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own.
Our use for words is almost over now. Yet in the final days of this one year we
gave to God together, you and I, we found a single purpose that we shared. And
thus you joined with me, so what I am are you as well. The truth of what we are
is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here,
and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us.
We are the bringers of salvation. We accept our part as saviors of the world,
which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed. And this, our gift, is
therefore given us. We look on everyone as brother, and perceive all things as
kindly and as good. We do not seek a function that is past the gate of Heaven.
Knowledge will return when we have done our part. We are concerned only with
giving welcome to the truth.
Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees a world redeemed from every
thought of sin. Ours are the ears that hear the Voice for God proclaim the world
as sinless. Ours the minds that join together as we bless the world. And from
the oneness that we have attained we call to all our brothers, asking them to
share our peace and consummate our joy.
We are the holy messengers of God who speak for Him, and carrying His Word to
everyone whom He has sent to us, we learn that it is written on our hearts. And
thus our minds are changed about the aim for which we came, and which we seek to
serve. We bring glad tidings to the Son of God, who thought he suffered. Now is
he redeemed. And as he sees the gate of Heaven stand open before him, he will
enter in and disappear into the Heart of God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries from his book set called: "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~ M. Street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
14. What Am I ?
*We come to the final summary, "What Am I ?" Of the many jewels in the Course's
treasure chest, this is among the most treasured -- a beautiful description of
Who we are as God's Son. The answer that Jesus gives to this question has been
the underlying focus of A Course in Miracles, inasmuch as the problem at the
beginning when we chose the ego over the Holy Spirit was our making a self that
is decidedly not Who we are. Paralleling this is the only question asked of his
followers by the enlightened Indian teacher Ramana Maharshi: "Who am I?" If the
answer is the body and personality, we have answered incorrectly, and from that
belief comes our pain, misery, and unhappiness. The purpose of A Course in
Miracles, therefore, is to help us be open to ask the right question -- "What am
I?" -- that we may hear and accept this inspiring answer.*
(1) "I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of
His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is
love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the
holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy
Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own."
*This is our response to everything the ego ever taught is true about ourselves,
undoing all fear and guilt, all pain and suffering. What remains is the eternal
life given us in creation, unblemished by the ego's sullying thoughts of
miscreation and usurpation. Never real, these thoughts evanesce into the
nothingness of their own illusion. From the glorious end of the text, we read of
the ending of a journey that never really happened:
"Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still
remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone." (T-31.VIII.12:5)
This shining face lasts but an instant before its place is taken by the sinless
Self that God created, residing in God's holy home. Recall the lovely close to
the clarification of terms:
"The Son is still, and in the quiet God has given him enters his home and is
at peace at last." (C-ep.5:6)*
(2:1-2) "Our use for words is almost over now. Yet in the final days of this one
year we gave to God together, you and I, we found a single purpose that we
shared."
*Recall that A Course in Miracles is about purpose and our need to realize that
maintaining the ego's purpose of individuality has not made us happy or brought
us peace. Indeed, the single purpose mentioned above, shared by everyone, is the
need to forgive and recognize our simple mistake -- nothing more than a bad
dream that will last only as long as we choose to believe in the ego's purpose
of separation. This passage from the text nicely expresses our shared purpose,
which reveals to our awakened awareness the Oneness of God's holy Will:
"The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined... when they
joined and shared a purpose, they were free to learn their will is one. And thus
the Will of God must reach to their awareness. Nor can they forget for long that
it is but their own." (T-30.V.11:3:5-13)*
(2:3) "And thus you joined with me, so what I am are you as well."
*This teaching is crucial for undoing Christianity's millennia-old tradition
that Jesus is ontologically different from us and thus we are <not> like him.
With such specialness as our foundation, we can only <hope> to join with him,
asking his help and suffering as he did, but never able to see that we are what
he is.*
(2:4-5) "The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet
we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too,
if we exemplify the words in us."
*Again, Who we are as Christ in the realm of knowledge is not what Jesus teaches
in his course, and is certainly not what we are capable of learning. However, he
can teach and we can learn how to undo the interferences to the remembrance of
our Self. Therefore the words can be of use as symbols that correct the ego's
symbols. The reader will no doubt recall this important discussion in the
clarification of terms, where Jesus explains how words -- i.e., symbols --
fulfill his purpose in A Course in Miracles:
"This course remains within the ego framework, where it is needed. It is not
concerned with what is beyond all error because it is planned only to set the
direction towards it. Therefore it uses words, which are symbolic, and cannot
express what lies beyond symbol." (C-in.3:1-3).
The ego speaks first, as the text says (T-5.VI.3:5), and is always wrong. The
Holy Spirit is the Answer, and is always right. The ego spoke first by producing
a thought system of separation and making the perceptual world to be its cover.
A Course in Miracles is one of the answers the Holy Spirit has given that uses
the ego's symbols within its framework -- the separated world -- but for a
totally different purpose. Our function, however, is not to teach the truth of A
Course in Miracles by preaching or explaining its theory, but by accepting its
principles and living them, accepting Jesus' forgiving love so that it extends
through us. That is what he teaches us, and asks us to teach through him. We
cannot quote often his exhortation to us, his disciples: "Teach not that I died
in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you."
(T-11.VI.7:3-4)*
(3:1) "We are the bringers of salvation."
*Once again, we bring salvation through exemplifying Jesus' teaching. A Course
in Miracles states that the best teaching is by example (T-5.IV.5:1). In fact we
could say that the only real teaching is by example, as this previously quoted
passage from the manual illustrates:
"To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you
demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time. From your
demonstration others learn, and so do you. The question is not whether you will
teach, for in that there is no choice. The purpose of the course might be said
to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of
what you want to learn." (M-in.2.1-5).
Thus, our choice is whether we are to be bringers of salvation or damnation,
resurrection or crucifixion -- knowing that what we bring to others we have
first brought to ourselves.*
(3:2-4) "We accept our part as saviors of the world, which through our joint
forgiveness is redeemed. And this, our gift, is therefore given us. We look on
everyone as brother, and perceive all things as kindly and as good."
