God is but love.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Commentary
"God is but Love, and therefore so am I."
In Review V of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles, there is a key phrase used during the following ten lessons. It says, "God is but Love, and therefore so am I." This sentence is the focus of this commentary.
First, the sentence "God is but Love, and therefore so am I" is a good example of how one word can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Second, the sentence contains an important spiritual meaning central to the metaphysical principles in A Course In Miracles.
Let's first reread the sentence without the word 'therefore.' "God is but Love, and so am I." It's still a nice statement, but a little reflection reveals an important meaning has been removed from the sentence. Without the word 'therefore,' no reason is given as to why I am Love. There is no relationship drawn between God being Love and my being Love. So the sentence could just as easily be stated, "God is but Love, and it just so happens, so am I." In other words, without the word 'therefore,' my being Love is coincidental to God's being Love. My being Love is not dependent on God's being Love. I could just as easily not be Love while God is still Love, i.e., "God is Love, and I am not."
Before putting 'therefore' back into the sentence, what does the word 'therefore' mean? The dictionary and thesaurus give us these meanings:
- "for that reason"
- "because of that"
- "as a result"
- "consequently"
So you can substitute any of those phrases for the word 'therefore' within the sentence. Let's do that—and see how much more meaning is added to the sentence:
- "God is Love, and for that reason, so am I."
- "God is Love, and because of that, so am I."
- "God is Love, and as a result, so am I."
- "God is Love, and consequently, so am I."
No matter which substitute phrase you use, the meaning of the sentence is the same. Putting 'therefore' back into the sentence does two things:
- It gives us a reason why we are Love.
- It establishes a relationship between what God is and what I am.
These are key to a metaphysical principle in the Course that says, in other words from the Course, "I am as God created me."
The word 'therefore' establishes a cause and effect relationship between God and me that is not present when 'therefore' is removed from the sentence. Rephrased yet retaining the intended meaning, the sentence reads, "I am Love because God is Love." Or, "Because God is Love, I am Love." God is Cause, and because I, the Son of God, am the Effect of God, whatever God is, I must be. That's a metaphysical principle that runs throughout the Course. And the Course is consistent in teaching this, never deviating or compromising on this principle—or any other for that matter.
Elsewhere in the Text, when speaking of the Son of God, Jesus says, "His [the Son of God] Cause is Its Effect." In other words, the Son of God's Cause, God, is both Cause and Effect! "His Cause is Its Effect." God is both God and the Son of God. Jesus reminds us repeatedly in his Course that God gave all of Himself in the Creation of His Son, that He withheld nothing, and that Their relationship is that of Oneness. He tells us that God and His Son are so alike that "nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him." The only difference is "you are not in a reciprocal relation to God, since He created you but you did not create Him." So we are all that our Creator is in nature and function, only the Cause and Effect relationship differs. The Father created the Son, not the other way around.
Now we see even better how "God is but Love, and therefore so am I" fits within the context of other metaphysical statements within the Course. Based on these other statements and to be consistent with what the Course teaches, I have to be Love if God is Love because "His Cause is Its Effect." If God is both Cause and Its Own Effect, how could the Effect be different from the Cause—without God being a contradiction to Himself? So, you and I, as aspects of the Son of God, cannot be anything that God is not because we are God in Effect.
What God is, I must be. And if I am the Love of God, I can't be fear or fearful. God defines Reality with Himself. God is Reality, and anything unlike Him must, by definition, be false, i.e., an illusion or dream. If God is Love, I have to be Love, and therefore, fear has to be an illusion I make up in my dream of being separate from God (Love).
The sentence, "God is but Love, and therefore so am I" says even more than what we've discussed thus far. What is true in my relationship to God must also be true for you and everyone else. Therefore, what I am, my brother is, for we are all aspect of God's One Effect. Together we would say, "God is but Love, and therefore so are we." We are joined; one in spirit and mind. We are not separate beings, not if Jesus is teaching us the Truth through his Course.
Now we get to the practical application and life-changing power of the statement, "God is but Love, and therefore so am I." Chances are, as you've been reading this commentary, you've heard another voice inside you resisting, to a greater or lesser degree, what Jesus is saying. That's the ego. It always resists truth because it is the antithesis of truth. "God is but Love, and therefore so am I" is one of the Workbooks hundreds of antidotes to the ego's claims.
If I am what God is, if I am God Extended, I can't be the sinful, guilty, fearful, deprived, poor, sick, separate, limited, mortal, finite, wretched thing my ego will claim I am. What's more, neither you or I can be a body! (We'll get into that in some future commentary.) How God defines me and how the ego defines me can't both be true or real. It's one or the other. Either I am as God created me, or God's Will means nothing when compared to the ego's "will." To believe the ego's definition of me is arrogant because it opposes God's definition. As Jesus says, "Your value is in God's Mind, and therefore not in yours alone. To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance, because it is the denial of arrogance. To accept your littleness is arrogant, because it means that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God's." As I see it, whenever I buy into what the ego tells me, what I'm really saying is God's Will is a wimp compared to that of my ego. The ego believes it holds the trump card over God's Will. That is the arrogance of the ego.
The Course is designed to awaken us from this ego-arrogant state of seeming separation from God, an illusory state of mind. It's a state where the ego seems to run rampant around our minds telling us that Truth is false and what is false is true, that it knows what the truth is. And in this state of mind, the ego constantly shoves all its "evidence" in our faces to "prove" itself right. And what's amazing is we generally find it easier to buy into the depravity the ego shrieks about than it is to buy into the beautiful divine Truth that God would have us hear.
So which is it? Are you as God created you? Or is God wrong about you? That's what it comes down to. What you believe is your choice. The choice you make determines whether you would rather continue your dream of separation from God or awaken to your reality as God's Effect. In every moment, that's what's on the table. Enlightenment or ignorance. Awakening or dreaming. Truth or illusion. There is no compromise, no middle ground.
You might want to try this, and it doesn't make any difference if you've started the Course or not. For the next ten days, take the phrase, "God is but Love, and therefore so am I" and use it as often throughout every day as possible. Go to sleep with the phrase on your mind. Waken with it on your lips. And at least twice during each day, sit in quiet with your eyes closed for at least five minutes and contemplate the meaning of the words. That's what you want to go for: the meaning of the words. The meaning can change your life, not the words themselves. Then see where you are ten days from now.
Here are some of Jesus' comments regarding the use of these words: "Yet are the words but aids, and to be used, except at the beginning and the end of practice periods, but to recall the mind, as needed, to its purpose. We place faith in the experience that comes from practice, not the means we use. We wait for the experience, and recognize that it is only here conviction lies. We use the words, and try and try again to go beyond them to their meaning, which is far beyond their sound. The sound grows dim and disappears, as we approach the Source of meaning. It is Here that we find rest." W-rV.in.12
"God is but Love, and therefore so am I." One sentence can say a lot.
