Conflict

Even though I try not to watch the news because it is so depressing, I know there seems to be a lot of conflict in the world at the moment.  What do you think is the source of this conflict?

If we look to A Course in Miracles for answers, we find that the source of conflict in the world is merely a reflection of the conflict within each one of us.

The separation which we perceive between ourselves and others in the outside world is a reflection of the separation between our ego-selves and our God-selves.  The God-like part of each of us sees no separation between ourselves, God, and all of God’s creation.  The ego part of each of us, on the other hand, wishes to maintain the separation from God and others, as a way to maintain the ego’s identity.  This causes a splitting of the mind, and this is the cause of all the insanity in our inner world and our outer world.

The God-like part of us sees everyone else as the same as it – a perfect extension of God’s love, innocent, and incapable of evil, but capable only of errors in thinking which aren’t real.  This part of us knows that God is incapable of error, and as extensions of God’s love, his creations are truly incapable of error as well.  The errors which are perceived by us are misperceptions only.

The ego part of us sees everyone as different from itself.  It perceives the God-like part of us as a threat to its identity, and thus sees God as a threat to its identity.  It unnaturally perceives the other parts of God (all of the rest of God’s creation) as a threat to it as well.  It would have us live in fear, but it sees the way to overcome fear as attack.  It attacks the God-like part of us with feelings of guilt, and it projects this guilt onto God and everyone outside of itself.

All conflict is a conflict between fear and love.

The Course, however, offers help in overcoming this conflict, and that is to accept Atonement, which really means At-one-ment, or the acceptance that each of us is one with God and all of his creation.

It offers some simple steps in resolving all conflict:

Know first that this is fear.

Fear arises from lack of love.

The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

Perfect love is the Atonement.

Jesus gave us an example of the way to offer perfect love – to love others as ourselves.  As we send love out into the world we are extending God’s love, and thus seeing ourselves as perfect extensions of God’s love.  We can therefore only remove the guilt within ourselves as we perceive our brothers and sisters without guilt.

To our split minds, this can seem like a mammoth task – to overlook the errors of others.  But to God, this is easy, as God loves each of us unconditionally with perfect love, regardless of any perceived errors.  God sees no errors in his creation.  God is perfect in every way, and so is his creation.  All we have to do is to believe this.

All we have to do is to be the person we were created to be.

We can perceive all attack as a call for help, for all attack is caused by a lack of love.  The solution to attack is not defence, but love.

We can send our love out into the world every day.  As we send our love out, we are not losing anything but attracting more of the same.  The more love we send out, the more we see ourselves as extensions of God’s love, and the more faith we have in our ability to be what we were created to be.

As we begin to remove our own guilt, by refusing to see any guilt in our brothers and sisters, we can understand that our innocence is a source of strength.

No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he thinks he has.  Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God.

For God knows no enemies, as God is all-powerful.  As extensions of God’s love, we too are powerful.  Our power, our strength, comes from our ability to extend God’s love to others, as God has done to us.  As we do this, we perceive each other as innocents, and become the innocents that God knows us to be.  Herein lies our strength.

This is a miracle.

A miracle is when we think in accordance with the Will of God – when we know that we truly have no enemies, that we truly have no weaknesses, that we are strong as innocents, as extensions of God’s love – when we accept our At-one-ment with God and all of his creation.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net