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The source of Energy that animates the Life-Worth of Creation
is Oneness that contains Relationship:
between Logic and Love, the Parents of the Child,
and between Parents and Child, the wild card that is Free Choice.

The DNA of Creation

Is the Logic-Love marriage and their Relationship with the Child
they gave birth to. The archetypal Connections
from which all the Connections of Creation’s Life-Worth flow.
From which all the Interconnections of Reality flow.

The seed bed and incubator of all of Creation:
the Queen Bee of Being
composed of archetypal Relationships of sublime happiness-Joy.
The substance of Love-Feeling
the essence of Worth in a state of Being.

This is God.

The Source from which all Life-Worth / Being
and its expression, doing-reciprocating, flow.

This is Logos.

All the Beings,
all the Selves and functions.
all the definitions and possibilities. . . .

1

The seductive charm of “Columbia”

The Light is Self-Awareness made possible by Relationship:

  • between Logic and Love, masculinity and femininity. Masculine choice and order, feminine creativity and freedom, bringing the gift of connection and self-awareness to one another.
  • between Parents and Child. Parents with one another and with Child, all bound in the ties of joyfulness and family. In the trust, innocence, and Oneness of Being. Of Psyche-Soul. Of the Light of Relationship, the Reality of Creation and the Creation of Reality.

Relationship turned on the light for an awe-struck boy when “Columbia” first raised her Hollywood movie studio torch in a darkened theatre. Seducing my imagination for all time with her feminine beauty. With an ideal writ large against the grandeur of sky framed by a majestic white cloud, radiating brilliance, perfection, and purity in every direction. So compelling an image of all that has Worth, of all that is inseparable, inviolate, and forever, that I placed her on the altar of my soul. To be revered in solitude and shared with kindred spirits. With helpfulness and harmlessness -- the Innocents who inhabit my Temenos. With Parents and Children -- the joyfulness, playfulness, and happiness of Family.

A beacon of Self-Awareness in the darkness of impossibility

In the Reality of Consciousness without opposition the light of Relationship is Possibility unperturbed by unconsciousness and the darkness of impossibility. In the unreality of unconsciousness -- the mind of the Child whose dream we inhabit -- the light of Relationship is a beacon in the darkness of impossibility. Guiding us back to our Parents, to consciousness back home. The undeniable response of Reality-Creation, Worth-Life, to impossibility-dark, opposite-hatred, contradiction-insanity, illusion-captivity, untruth-deception, animal-instinct fear and rage, obsession-addiction, error-self-delusion, and guilt. The denial of denial.

Without Love, Logic can’t know itself. Without Logic, Love can’t know itself. Neither can be self-aware without the other. Together they are the light of Self-Awareness, the attribute of Being that stands for the function of Psyche-Soul. The assertion of the first principle of Logic, the foundation of all Reality-Creation: Possibility.

Light makes right

Logic-Love is the light of Being-Soul that interconnects all of Reality-Creation in the Worth, the Implication-Relationship of Possibility. The Energy-Force, the power of Logic-Implication and Love-Relationship that binds all of Reality-Creation together in one family, one cause.  The stance of Being-Oneness. Of Possibility-Life affirmed, enabled, empowered and supported by the authority-Authorship of Logic-Love Parents in Relationship with their Child Free Choice. By the light of Being, Psyche-Soul freely chosen in denial of impossibility, of unreality-untruth.

By the right of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen by ideal. By the good-virtue of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen. By the sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of Oneness-Innocence. By the harmlessness of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen. .  . .

The Holy Spirit is our indispensable other Self

If “Jesus” is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, who or what is the Holy Spirit?

Relationship consummates Self-Awareness. The Self that cannot Know itself without being Known, just as Creation cannot be the Worth of Life-Creation without Worth being freely chosen. Without being affirmed, enabled, and empowered through the reciprocation, the giving back, of its Creations of their own Free Will. The Child’s loss of Consciousness was the loss of awareness of its Relationship with its Parents. Relationship which gave it Self-Awareness, the gift of Knowledge from the Knower it needed to be Known -- its Parents. Mind unconscious cannot regain consciousness without Relationship essential to Self-Awareness.

Consciousness in Reality cannot enter the unreality of unconsciousness without making it real. While their Child remains unconscious its Parents cannot themselves complete the Relationship. Yet the Child, being an extension of Logic-Love, with its own definition, its own distinct function, remains connected to them. The connection preserved through an attribute of Free Choice, a function of mind even when unconscious that cannot be taken captive: intuition. Its content supplied by a source that mind even when dreaming cannot deny: another imaginary self. Another projection to join Child-the-many in its dream of bodies occupying a material universe.

An appearance but with a difference

The Holy Spirit is a facsimile of Logic-Love, the Child’s Parents, that was projected into the alternate “reality” along with all the other objects of illusion. Accepted into the dream because it’s part of the dream. Yet with a different function: to substitute for the substitute alternative “self” -- the self-delusion of the Child’s misidentity, its shadow-reflection -- should the Child freely choose it. Another voice for the Child to listen to: instead of a voice for unreality and untruth, a voice for Reality and Truth. A stand-in for the Child’s Parents to make up for the missing Relationship. A Self from Reality and Truth, Logic and Love, so that it can regain Self-Awareness. So that it can see who it really is through the vision of the Holy Spirit instead of seeing its mirror-image opposite. The self-deception that appeared like the illusionist’s act that it was when the Child identified with its own shadow-reflection. Its dark side.

The Holy Spirit is an appearance within a dream world of appearances, but with a difference. Its source isn’t unconscious mind’s reverse side, the parasite implied by Free Choice that fabricates a world of perversity from a code of opposition. It’s the Reality and Truth of Creation that Parented Free Choice -- the Parents with their unbroken Relationship with the host. With the Child itself instead of its self-delusion.

Impossibility is its own denial

The Holy Spirit is the bond of access between Parents and Child, the light of Reality and Truth, Logic and Love, that can’t logically be denied by delusion. Can’t be denied by deception, magic, insanity. By the absurdity of impossibility that can only “exist” in non-existence inside its own contradiction. Impossibility that’s contradiction is its own denial. The darkness doesn’t need to be opposed if it’s opposition that destroys itself. A warship destined to scuttle itself.

The function of mind that can’t be blocked

The Holy Spirit is the agent of Authority and the Force of its laws of cause and effect inside the dream. The Force of Necessity that unconscious mind can access by Free Choice through the function of Mind that can’t be blocked by self-delusion. Through Intuition which functions spontaneously because it cannot be taken captive, cannot be owned, possessed, and controlled. Because it’s built into the Mind of Free Choice that remains forever Free by definition, impervious to the effects of self-delusion. Unblockable. It’s access to Logic-Love its Source that preceded the dream and remains outside the dream. It functions within the dream because the dream is an act of mind. The self-delusion can’t escape Mind its source and the Force of its will: the will of Parents and Child to correct it. 

What does the Light illuminate? 

The sun illuminates all of unreality in the earth-world of self-delusion, channeling energy that enables and animates organic life. The sun is an object consuming itself, energy which will burn out in time. It is a perversion of Energy-Light in Reality which renews itself eternally, producing Order and the Life of Creation. Energy-Light in unreality consumes itself in the illusion of time. It is the decay and disorder of entropy, producing inertia and death.

This is the difference between Light-Energy in Reality and in unreality. The choice illuminated by the Light: between Relationship which is all of Reality and Creation and separation which is all of unreality and illusion. Between self-delusion and Self-Awareness. Worth and worthlessness. The choice is clear: for Relationship. For the Holy Spirit.

Bildungsroman: n. A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.
American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2016) 

The dark side of beans

What is that look on your face? Horror. Despair You don’t like hearing from an old guy with a beard? So many! So many what? Pages! Words! What have I done to deserve this? Beans. You ate too many beans, and this is your punishment. I’ll never eat beans again. I promise! 

This is an interesting story. You might enjoy it. It has lots of action. And a girl just like you. Two girls in fact. One is in big trouble, and she needs help. She will if she’s strapped to a torpedo. Don’t spoil the ending! The other is the only person in the universe who can help her. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Will I understand it? Old guys mumbling in their beards tend to lose me.

It’s a lot like Star Wars, the original episode where there was this wonderful Death Star. Cool! It blew up whole planets. That was fun. Does Torpedo Girl get to blow up another Death Star? When our girls are done with it there will be nothing left of the Death Star. OK. But fair warning: I’ll be eating a lot of beans. Oh no! You just spoiled the ending. That’s how they blew up the Death Star!

We’ll be talking a lot about “opposites.” I knew there was a catch. Opposites are just another name for the dark side of the Force. You’ll enjoy all the hot action better if we understand the “dark side” and opposites. Opposites of what? Opposites of anything they’re attached to. What are they, parasites? Yes. We think of the dark side as Palpatine and his evil galactic empire crushing pitiful rebellions. And Lord Vader breathing hard into his dorky helmet while he chokes hapless underlings without touching them. But all they are is opposites. Weak, not strong. This had better be good. 

Mind starting Creation requires thought

What-if stories stimulate our imaginations. This What-if story will put your imagination on steroids. Oh, like Tik Tok. Pah! Another pitiful rebellion! Storm troopers – remove the silly game! 

Imagine that you’re the only thing that is. I do that every day. Then we’re off to a great start. You’re Mind. Yes – pure genius! What a great story! Do you mind if I have another can of beans? Sorry, Mind isn’t matter. It doesn’t need that kind of food. What other kind of food is there? Haven’t you ever heard of food for thought? That’s what this story is. Boring. Beans generate much more excitement.

Can you handle being able to see stuff and make stuff happen without a body? Easy. I’ve always thought of myself as a great mind. Good. You’re Mind and you’d like to make something nice happen. But it won’t be nice if you don’t do it right. You mean I actually have to think? If we’re talking about Mind starting Creation, yes. You’ll have to think. And don’t forget, the Jedi Knights had to go through rigorous training. Then they had to figure out how to deliver the torpedo that blew up the Death Star. That took a lot of thinking.

Logic and Love say no one is above the law

Anything that “happens” needs a definition. A definition that says what it is and what it does. No exceptions. How come? So its definition doesn’t conflict with other definitions or duplicate them. There has to be Order so everything fits together, and everyone gets along. Already it sounds like I don’t get to do anything I want. You can do anything you want so long as it’s possible. It can’t be possible because I want it?

Everything must be part of Order including Mind that defines things. Wow! I thought Mind would be in charge of everything! How can this be? You’ll be OK with this because this is how Order defines itself, and nothing nice can happen without Order. If Mind or anything could run around and do whatever it wants, there would be no Order. Order is harmony. It’s the same principle as democracy: no one is “above the law.” Not even the president. What law? 

Think of the laws that govern making stuff happen as laws of cause and effect. You’ve heard the expression, “That’s the way it is.” Well, the laws are the way things are and that’s that. It’s Necessity. You’re frowning. You know me. I’m not happy if I can’t mess with the rules. Sorry about that. These are rules no one can mess with. Not even the Logic of Mind that laws are based on. Without this law none of the other laws can have any effect. Say it again. No one is above the law, not even the president. Not even the Logic of Mind itself.

You mean Mind is the source of laws but it can’t control them? Yes. The attribute of Mind that’s responsible for governance is responsible for its laws that make governance possible, and they’re made up of equal parts Logic and Love. “Mind” throughout implies Logic and Love combined as one. Then we should say “Mind-Love.” We could, but we might need that to refer to another character. We can infer it without stating it.

No Freedom without Order in a shared world

Definitions are like laws that establish what things are and they can’t be anything different. Mind can make stuff happen so long as it abides by the laws of Necessity. Once it’s defined a thing that’s the way it is. Give me liberty or give me death! Freedom from the tyranny of George III but not Freedom from Order. There can’t be any “liberty” without Order and any Order without laws. The good news is that since the laws are there to ensure Order and Mind can’t change them, they’re also there to ensure Freedom.

If I can’t do anything I want, how is this Freedom? OK. You can have that kind of “freedom,” but only if you decide not to make something nice happen. If you’re happy being the only show in town and having it all to yourself. If not, you’ll be sharing your world with your creations, and no one can share a world with others and be happy if some yo-yo is doing whatever she wants. People in our world do that a lot. They sure do. And it’s what gets them into trouble. Sometimes into jail. They don’t like living in a shared world. They’re a colossal nuisance.

Gertrude’s wisdom

When do I get to make something nice happen? When you learn about what’s possible in a shared, orderly world. Imagine that you’re in a classroom with a blank video screen. Oh good -- video games! Let’s get started! Would you rather have a blank blackboard instead? No video games allowed! Something blank – a blackboard or a video screen – must have been there when Logic and Love first set thinking and feeling in motion. Then I have to think logically. What’s that mean? Think with feeling logically, yes, because you’ll be thinking with values, and feeling is where values come from. Values put the “nice” into making something nice happen.

Logic tells Mind what situation it’s in. It describes circumstances so Mind can figure out where it is and what it means. Then it can use Reason to choose what to do about it. It can’t reason without having a purpose, and Logic makes sure that purpose fits the circumstances. There’s an old joke. Alice Toklas asked Gertrude Stein when Gertrude was very old and wise, “What’s the answer?” Gertrude answered, “What’s the question?” What she meant was, “What are the circumstances?” Without circumstances in the moment and Logic figuring out what they’re telling us, how can we know the question? That was Gertrude’s wisdom.

The Force can’t be a couch potato

We call purpose that fits the circumstances “context.” Even Mind that’s getting started with a blank video screen needs context to know whether and how to do anything. Making anything happen won’t be nice if it doesn’t have the right values and fit the circumstances. Our circumstances are nothing has happened yet and I’m getting bored!

Torpedo Girl is getting bored, so Mind had better get cracking. Its context is nothing is happening, and you know what? What? That would help to explain why Mind did get cracking, because “nothing happening” could be a situation that Mind, which is definitely not nothing, can’t tolerate. Maybe it can Be forever, but it can’t not Do forever. Why not? 

Because how can Mind that’s Logic combined with Love just sit around not doing anything? Not taking care of something or someone? Showing that they care? Mind’s circumstance in the classroom where nothing is happening is a whole lot of thinking and loving that needs to be doing to be what it is. You mean Mind needs stuff just like us? Logic combined with Love is passion. It’s Force. Like the Force in Star Wars? Certainly! Force can’t be Force without acting. It can’t be motivated to act if its passion to respond to circumstances and express itself is a couch potato.

Getting it right: beer, pizza, and football

Wow! I was thinking our Mind is a brain inside a bottle in school where nothing happens. This is different! Very. It’s a dynamo instead, bursting with passion and Energy eager to get going. A powerful locomotive sitting in a train station ready to take its passengers on a grand excursion to an intriguing destination. Once Logic sets up the context.

Good for you! You’ve learned one important lesson. What’s that? Deciding with Reason and acting before we’ve let Logic tell us what our situation is, is a big mistake. Doing what’s right is doing “what the situation calls for.” We can’t do what the situation calls for without first letting our situation tell us what it is. Without first getting it right. Mind needs Logic and Love for that. In our world, easier said than done. It requires lots of intuition, but more about that later.

Get it right before do it right. Are there more circumstances to tell us what our situation calls for? Pay attention to the video screen. It’s about to feed us the most important circumstance for our story. The most important circumstance for another context, too: the world we live in. Ah -- I knew it! Lipstick! Women need lipstick! Yes. And men need beer and pizza. And football. Don’t forget the chips. Beer, pizza, chips, and football. And lots of makeup. Torpedo Girl can go home. We’re already in Heaven.

The impossibility of Mind without Love

The wisdom of Logic is like a stream flowing down a dry streambed, filling each hole at a time, each in its own time. We are the stream, and this is what Wisdom requires of us. We can also think of Logic as flowing in a sequence from left to right. From premise to implication, from before to after. Indefinitely, because one implication always leads to another. Like the geometric value of Pi that never resolves to a whole number. It just goes on and on. You’re going on and on.

It matters what the first premise is, but we don’t have to be too fussy how it’s worded. “Possibility.” This could be the first premise that comes to Mind when Logic and Love have defined its context. You’re Mind and you want to make something “nice” happen, but what do you mean by “nice?” What are the possibilities? This is always the first question when minds begin to choose.

This is it? The most important circumstance? Almost. Possibility could be the first premise because of what it implies: creation, ideals, vision, hope. It’s kind of a North Star we can focus on to help us navigate through distractions, contradictions, adversity, and discouragement. If you’re Mind and you have your heart set on making something nice happen. . . . Heart?

Did you forget? Mind and heart go together. It bears repeating -- they’re inseparable. I was hoping to be a comic book super action hero with no feelings. Not possible. “Possibility” can’t be Mind without Love. Not in our What-if world where everything so far is fine. It’s very different in our world but only because it seems that way. More about that later.

The impossibility of impossibility

For now, if you have your heart set on making something nice happen, you’ll definitely want to stay focused on possibility. Then what is the video screen telling us that’s the most important circumstance? Impossibility. The opposite of possibility. Imagine “possibility” showing up like a link you can click on, and it will take you somewhere. It’s an active link. Then the same instant another link shows up beside it, faded out like it’s not active. A word that’s the first word’s exact opposite. It’s obviously meant to take you somewhere, too, but not while “possibility’s” link is active. Creepy. I’m not sure I want to know where “impossibility” goes if it’s the opposite of “possibility.” Why does it have to show up at all? Do we have to bother with opposites? 

It has to show up because of the same Logic that puts anything on the screen. If a thing is to exist and it implies the existence of its opposite, then some way must be found for its opposite to “exist,” too. The implications of Logic are Force that accounts for Creation along with the connections of Love. But the same implications can’t help accounting for contradiction. And if the definition of a thing implies contradiction, its definition must accommodate contradiction. 

The dark side is opposites 

Logic and Love don’t like contradiction any more than we do, but there you have it. Have what? The “dark side.” The dark side is opposites, and they “exist” because Logic put them there. And if Logic put them there, nothing can be done about it. What’s “logical” about a thing and its contradiction existing side-by-side in the same place at the same time? Sounds crazy to me. 

It is crazy. Order requires Logic and Logic doesn’t tolerate contradictions. The ideal of Logic is to arrive at a place of Peace where there are no contradictions, where the Force can come to rest at last. It will never happen. Not as long as Logic supports Creation. Not as long as Mind wants to make something nice happen.

Meanwhile, we’re stuck with opposites – with “impossibility.” Some way must be found to get all impossibilities – opposites -- out of the picture. How do we do that? The inactive link for impossibility on the video screen offers more than a clue. It’s already taken care of it. Logic has found a way for opposites to exist without “existing.” On a computer we would know to go to a different page on a website, to a different website, or to a different app to find where impossibility’s link is active. To another computer world.

Logic acknowledges the implication of opposites without requiring that they inhabit the same world as their hosts. The parasites are given their own world with its own properties that don’t conflict with their host’s world. Why doesn’t it conflict? 

The faded link to unreality 

If the “existence” of a parasite-opposite is entirely derived from its host’s existence, then it obviously has no existence of its own. Or attributes of its own, either, because its entire definition is derived from its host. It’s defined as its host’s opposite. It has no definition of its own, and nothing can exist that hasn’t been given its own definition. Parasite-opposites don’t get their definition from Logic. They get it from an implication of their hosts’ definition.

The faded link to impossibility takes us to another world that matches its essential attribute: non-existence. It’s unreal. The parasite-opposites world doesn’t conflict because it’s unreal. How can unreality conflict with Reality if it doesn't exist?

For now, Mind is assured that wherever possibility’s link is active impossibility’s won’t be. It may not even see it or be aware that it’s there. But it’s been forewarned. That’s why we started here in the classroom with the video screen. To wave a red flag called “impossibility,” because that’s what parasite-opposites are: an impossibility in Reality. The link will be there, inactive and waiting for the right circumstances for something or someone to make it active. A snake waiting for someone to step on it.

Can it be a cow pie? I won’t finish her story if Torpedo Girl is going to step on a snake. OK, but only if it’s a huge cow pie. I won’t enjoy Torpedo Girl’s story if she only steps in a little cow pie.

Living the dream

The inactive link is waiting for a parasite-opposite’s host to click on it by mistake and make its unreal world “real.” Not really Real, but “real” like a vivid dream. It can’t be Logic that determines whether impossibility’s link becomes active and someone clicks on it. It wouldn’t be Logic’s mistake. It depends on the parasites’ hosts. It depends on Torpedo Girl. It depends on us. It would be our mistake. We are forewarned.

Our story revolves around how understanding this basic circumstance, or fact, can be used to get our girl out of trouble. So, if I’m Mind and I’m going to make something nice happen, I have to be aware that everything has an opposite, and opposites aren’t real. Yes. There’s a dark side, but this is its essential property: it isn’t real. We can only make it seem real when we’re dreaming. Otherwise, it’s an illusion, a magic act. I’m glad we got this settled, because dark sides are everywhere in our world, and they sure seem real. They tell me that our world is a What-if world, but we don’t have to go into that now.

Freedom of Will, Freedom of Choice

Imagine that the nice thing your Mind wants to make happen is to create a world of beauty and peace, Logic and Love. A world that provides a safe, nurturing haven for Life. The miracle of eternal Life that exists in timelessness, where it’s always Now. Life that has Worth because it has purpose, it’s freely chosen and earned. Because it’s exploring, learning, and growing. Having great fun with creativity -- endless diversity evolving in an environment of exquisite Beauty, a soul-sharing sanctuary of innocent work and play. Because all this is a gift from Logic and Love that’s reciprocated – appreciated and given back. Wow! That is a nice thing.

Imagine that Creation requires another Being to achieve its purpose. To see that the Worth of Life and Creation is freely chosen and earned. A Being with its own definition, its own identity, so that Mind and Creation aren’t just patting themselves on the back. Who would that be? 

Our girl, the Child. The Child of the Mind-Love we mentioned, her parents. Father Mind-Choice and Mother Love-Freedom, whose role is to give birth to the Being that Creation requires: Free Choice. The same as Free Will? The Child is an extension of her parents’ Will, their Being. This places her in Relationship with her parents. They are inseparable, and their Relationship is inseparable from the Child’s function. She can’t do her job without it.

But because she is, and has, the capacity to choose independently, she is also Choice. And Choice can never, ever, be controlled by an external influence. Not by her parents or by their Relationship. So, while they’re in Relationship and inseparable, their roles must be kept apart. This is true whether the Child is awake, doing her job in Creation, or asleep and dreaming she’s somewhere else. Free Will and Free Choice refer to the same Child performing different functions: choosing freely while extending the Will, the Being, of her parents.

It's all about character

We will see that the Child doing her job isn’t anything like we imagine it on earth. How’s that? We think of “heaven” as a place where an old guy with a beard watches over angels with wings playing harps on little clouds. As if having a purpose and striving to attain it couldn’t compare with the satisfaction of doing nothing. There’s no change, no “action,” which here must mean some form of gambling, addiction, conflict, and violence.

The Child your Mind-Love brings into Being and Creation leads a very interesting life without any of this. No silly harps and no bullets flying around either. There’s plenty of purpose and meaning. Plenty of risk-taking, too, which requires courage as well as alertness. Plenty of change and innovation. It’s all about character, and that’s always interesting. Is there a reward?

You bet! The  satisfaction of contributing to the Worth of Life. To the meaning of Creation. Every relationship a soulmate. The rapture of intimacy with Mind-Love itself. Of loving and being loved more than you can ever imagine. Happiness! What more could you ask? Wow! She’s got a life! Yes. And Torpedo girl does, too. She’s got a job to do. They both have interesting lives, and they are about to get much more interesting.

[To be continued]

Music that echoes through the halls
feeling that wherever we are, wherever we go
we are accompanied at our source
centering us, connecting us, never leaving us

Loving and bountiful, that guides us with its beauty
the radiance of life that we can return to at will.

Touching us in the present
but as it follows us through the halls
moves us as though it were a voice
from another house, another life.

The memory of a loved one from another time
a home where its voice was first heard
where we were joined with it in the rapture of being
Child in the embrace of Love its Parent

In the sound of music
In Heaven.

The beauty of music that echoes
through our lives
that caresses us, lifts our spirits
that we will return to someday.

The music of our lives that’s calling us home.

Let Go Your Appearances

From an old channel island, the new
rises out of the mist
hovering over the water in the stillness
borderline
between the graduated blue of the sky
reaching up to the quarter moon on high
and the textured blue of the ocean below
dotted with specks of white

Bodies navigating trails down the waterless slopes
voices caught
by the wind, birds gliding on the wind,
pine branches dancing in the wind
come to rest and fall silent

In the shadow of my relief from the sun
who is to notice?
Who wills chronicle to life and adds notations
to its log? As if another will, long hence,
would need to know. Would care to know

What unnamed hand scrawls its signature
on the record of time
soul of anonymity, here and gone?
Self or opposite? Host or parasite?
Is it possible to choose?

Can’t I just be whatever for a little while
and be done with it?
"Easy come, easy go. As it came, let it go."
Is that what the view, the wind, the stillness
has to say?

I am the liberation of Love
The peace of Mind
I am Now, the Living. I am Forever.
Let go your appearances
Your dead weight of the past
And return Home with Me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mind dreaming can “detect” what’s not really there

The whole Child resides in every individual. There is only one Child. So, anyone can say, honestly and truly, that they are the Child.  When it matters, they can be the Child. Not the Child’s Parents but their Child. The Child’s projections of itself in this unreality appear to be children, presumably of the same Parents, but they’re all the same Child.

Why doesn’t it feel this way? Opposites. There are not one but two sensors recording the stillness of the shades of blue, the crawl of the containership that’s slicing here and there in two. One is a projection of the dreaming Child sensing through Intuition with the vision of Logic.

The other is a body sensing as only as it can, with eyes and ears, a nose, mouth, and skin. With brain atop its spine, ever alert to threats, to prey, to food, and mates. Ready to act on its own behalf, for or against its kind, with the force of animal instinct and feeling detached from thought. A copy of the Child’s shadow. Replication of a virus that occupies the mind of its unconscious host. Senses that detect itself: a world of allure and distraction, flickering shapes and intriguing sounds. A grand image of mind’s opposite, the mesmerizing universe. A neural network, projection of a shipwrecked self.

Except that it’s all appearances. Here and gone, of no real consequence. Wedded to senses that are here and gone. All of it an illusion ingested by the black hole of time. Of nevermore, meant to hide Truth that can only be sensed by the vision of Logic. By vision able to see behind and beyond the lie of appearances. To the face behind the mask of the shadow. A mocking self-delusion. A nobody. The Joker.

Able to see behind appearances if the individual who is the Child understands that it is the Child. If in the body’s replication of the virus the individual hasn’t repeated the error: the Child’s mistaking its shadow opposite for an “other.” The Child who lost consciousness and, in its desperation to regain it, sought help from the only source that helplessness and defenselessness, unsensing unconsciousness, could detect. Its own reflection. A mirror image opposite of itself that had nowhere been evident before. A clinging parasite – lifeless, mindless, loveless, soulless. Whose every attribute is derived.

Opposite coded like the reverse of DNA. Illusion that can only be detected and brought to “life” by a mind unconscious and thus capable of dreaming what’s unreal – what’s not there. Nothingness without its host and nothingness with its host. Unreality projected by its host into a facsimile of reality not by wheeling Frankenstein’s monster to the tower of the laboratory on a stormy night, to be brought to life by a bolt of lightning. But by self-delusion.

Nothing that the shadow code did. The shadow code can’t “be” or “do” anything on its own. Like a pivot, it can only switch the Child’s identify from its self to its shadow by an act of the Child. By “choice” because the Child is choice: free when it’s conscious, captive when it’s not. Captive to the unreality and illusion of unconsciousness. By an act that is choice and therefore can be undone, but not free choice, conscious choice. Self-awareness replaced by self-delusion. All that transpired between the Child and its reverse mirror-image reflection was perpetrated by the Child in a severely compromised state.

There is no speaking to the Child – or anyone -- as though it were an “other”

Choosing to view Santa Catalina Island across the bay with the vision of Logic instead of the body’s senses sounds like a stretch. A radical change of perception since the vision of Logic can’t detect appearances. Ask the Child to navigate to Avalon with the vision of Logic and it might wind up on another planet, in another universe, or in another reality altogether. The Child navigating anywhere with the vision of Logic will eventually take it back home. To self-awareness that replaces self-delusion. To its role in Creation: awareness of Self and all possibilities, including awareness of the possibility of unconsciousness and the unreal consequences of impossibility; affirming the Worth of Creation, the Worth of Life, by earning it, freely choosing it, and proving the Good – the morality – of it.

The view of Santa Catalina Island from across the Bay is an appearance meant to block real vision. To perpetuate the self-delusion. To validate the body and its senses, embodiment of the shadow’s code, a false identity. Choosing to understand it for what it is takes but one step toward acknowledging and welcoming the Child’s true identity. Is acting on behalf of the Child who lies unconscious in a troubled, profoundly unhappy sleep, dreaming a nightmare of self-alienation. Of apparitions that, in the uncertainties of “life” and the certainties of loss, are also troubled and profoundly unhappy.

Ask the Child if it wants its projections, the virus’s replications, to view Santa Catalina Island through its own vision of Logic instead of theirs. Its answer will be the question. An echo chamber. Question addressed to the Child and answer from the Child are to and from the same source: the projection – the individual – who contains the whole Child. There is no addressing to the Child as though it were an “other. Though embodiments of the shadow code insist otherwise, there is no addressing other individuals – projections-replications – as though they were “others.”

Any mind in any state that speaks to or from the Child in this state of unreality-appearances is the one Child. Choosing to view Santa Catalina Island through the vision of Logic instead of the body’s senses is choosing to be the one Child rather than its self-delusion, its shadow-opposite. Is exercising Free Will to stand for Reality-Truth in place of unreality-deception. Is nudging the unconscious Child back to the sanity of Logic. To awakening and Reality.

The choice is between right and wrong, good and bad

Logic would attempt an honest account of what’s wrong with this transient sense of peace, this grand view of earth, sky, and water, all living things caressed by a gentle ocean breeze. A tableau belying the violence to both mind and matter that put it “there.” An appearance affirmed by its own “eyes” that now bear witness. An absurdity – Red Riding Hood dressed in the wolf’s clothing pretending to be Red Riding Hood. In short, an opposite. Not knowing who or what it is. Just coded, just programmed, to be the opposite of whatever its host is. An impossibility that can’t be real, can’t make sense, grafted onto possibility.

Why? Because if a thing implies the “existence” of its contradiction then an accommodation must be made. Must be made of necessity, because the sum and substance of everything that is, is the implications of Logic. The accommodation must be unreal. Because Logic does not permit contradiction, does not permit two opposing realities.

And since “Reality” implies the “existence” of its opposite, unreality becomes the logical repository for all opposites. For illogic. Logic and illogic “co-existing” in harmony, fitting together in peace in the Interconnectedness of Everything, by one Being and its derivative, the other not-being. The accommodation a placing by Reality of opposites where they belong, into the pocket reserved for opposites, Reality’s own opposite: unreality. That can be allowed to “exist” in harmony with Reality because it doesn’t exist.

What’s implied by impossibility is that Reality at the level of the Child, the doing-choosing phase of Creation, is a choice. That there is a right choice and a wrong choice, a good choice and a bad choice. Because “impossibility” – this and any other opposite that contradicts Logic’s implications – is clearly an assault on Logic itself. Which makes it an assault not only on Mind but also on Worth measured by its investment and evaluated by affect. On the Force and Immediacy of Love. Only if Logic is assumed to be up to no good can an opposite be considered an angel of justice, an absurdity that nevertheless finds support in an objectified world of bodies with brains substituting for Mind, devoid of affect, oblivious to Worth.

Free Choice can’t perform without training

The training of Child Free Choice to perform its role in Creation forms the context, the meaning and purpose of circumstance, the “human condition.” That defines all that is encompassed in the experience of “life” in this make-believe world. The one Child’s projections must learn how to make the right choice, as individuals, from experience. As stakeholders who stand to gain or lose from right or wrong decisions. Who will understand costs and benefits why? Because they will experience them firsthand. Because they will know the pain of error and will thus have the discipline of experience, of wisdom and maturity, for guidance when they apply Free Will.

Because Understanding can’t be inherited from the Child’s Parents in Reality. Can’t be handed down, can’t be given. It must be learned and earned at the ground level, from the bottom up. By the Child’s projections exercising independent judgment, with guidance from Logic through their own Intuition freely chosen. Were it otherwise the Child could not be Free Choice. Were it otherwise unreality under the control of the Child’s Parents could no longer be unreal. The training of Free Choice through the “experience” of unreality is ordained by the Laws of cause and effect. By Necessity.

The Deus ex Machina that bailed blundering fools out of their messes in ancient Greek playmaking won’t be making an appearance. Nor will “saviors” of Church mythology. Though, in a setting fashioned out of whole cloth by magic, penetrations from Mind’s memory of Reality – “miracles,” the “paranormal” – are inevitable.
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Unconsciousness: the illusory opposite of Consciousness 

Consciousness: the state of sanity and consequence where it is always Now in the light of day, in the light of Reality. Where there are no beginnings and endings, only the orderly sequence of Logic, the workings of its Implications, the judgment of Mine-reason and Love-feeling working together in harmony with Psyche, the soul of Being, to extend and expand the flower, the inexpressible beauty, rapture, and Worth of Life. Earned, affirmed, and reciprocated through the Relationship. Through relationship between Parent and Child, the Innocence-being of Psyche-Soul joined in integrity with the independent judgment, the doing and risk, of Free Choice.

Unconsciousness: a derivative of Consciousness. The state of insanity and inconsequence where it is never Now, in the darkness of night, in the darkness of unreality and dreams, the temporal where all is beginnings and endings, the illusion and absurdity of time. A “present” defined as somewhere between “not the past” and “not the future,” in a universe of nowhere the same Now. The decay and disorder of entropy and illogic. Misperceptions of Mind detached from Love, misjudgments without reason rooted in value. Staging its performance of appearances and distractions for bodies, isolated and separated, blinded by their senses, deluded by worthlessness. Ruled in captivity by disconnection, the opposite of whatever Is. The dependence, the derivation, the undoing and apparition that is the joke of nothingness.

The split mind of the unconscious Child: connection to its Reality of Consciousness through the Holy Spirit and the voice of its illusory shadow-code detected by self-delusion through unconsciousness, neither capable of awareness of the other. Neither aware of what the other is up to, because if Consciousness were aware, it would make the shadow-code, an unreality, real. And unawareness can only detect itself -- what’s not Real. Neither right nor left hand (or hemisphere) knowing what the other is doing even though they occupy the same mind.

The stirring ascent of neuroscience up the Empire State building 

Relationship between Mind and brain: the more Mind focuses attention on brain, the more it inquires into the brain’s functions and performance, the less aware it is of Mind and its performance. The Child’s self-delusion, its shadow-opposite, made the brain, like the body, as a substitute for the Child’s real self, a distraction from circumstances-facts that would confuse the Child in its efforts to judge meaning and purpose from its context. That would steer it away from correcting its mistaken identity, away from its archetypal projection of self onto its shadow.

Brain-study – neuroscience -- attracts and distracts in inverse proportion to the self-deluded Child’s attention to itself, i. e. to its Mind since Mind-Love is what it is. Mindlessness is the ultimate goal of the embrace of body and its brain. The brain “seat of consciousness” is the ultimate conclusion that the Big Lie seeks because it would signify the triumph of the Child’s shadow-code over Mind the seat of Consciousness. The truth is the brain is Mind’s illusory opposite. This defines their relationship. “Neuroscience” is the ultimate distraction because it takes Mind-recognition’s attention away from Mind-Self, minimizes Self-awareness, while luring attention into the mysteries of an indecipherable organ, leading nowhere and maximizing self-unawareness, the illusion-deception.

In his book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (MIT Press 2012), Christof Koch, a Caltech neuroscientist, described how he acted on an impulse to climb the San Gabriel mountains and bellow his indomitability into the night when his marriage broke up. King Kong climbing the Empire State building. What else could it be but the triumph of primitive limbic emotion, animal instinct? A body’s brain and its senses parted from Mind, pretending to substitute for introspection, reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judgment. For conscious deliberation that leads with Logic toward explanation and understanding. Toward the self-awareness of Mind whose absence even the captive brain of a Caltech neuroscientist couldn’t recognize or acknowledge.

Mind the seat of Consciousness. Brain the seat of unconsciousness

The study of physics – cosmology and quantum mechanics -- lures Mind away from attention to the relationship between body-senses and external sensed environment, just as neuroscience lures Mind away from attention to the relationship between Mind and brain. The scholarship of physics and neuroscience pays scant attention to the question that deserves it, the relationship between body-universe and brain-Mind. Why? Because understanding the nature-Logic of the relationship would reveal the truth: that body-brain and universe are imaginings of an unconscious, dreaming, self-deluded Mind. Are unreal. Are illusions.

Mind-host is the seat of Consciousness. Its parasite-derivative, the brain-appendage, is the seat of unconsciousness. Mind is the seat of Reality-Truth, One Child, Oneness-Innocence, Love, Free Will. Brain is the seat of unreality-appearances, Child the many-guilt, fear-rage-hatred, limbic animal instinct, and captivity. Mind is the seat of learning-growth, evolution, maturity, and Free Will. Brain is the seat of status quo, arrested development, immaturity. Mind is the seat of Introversion, Intuition, Reason-Evaluation, Judgment. Brain is the seat of extraversion and sensory perception. Mind is INTJ, brain is ESFP. Mind is idealist-progressive futurist. Brain is realist-regressive traditionalist. Mind is Definition, brain is its opposite whatever the definition.

Dualism vs. non-dualism is the pull between control of Child-Self by illusory brain vs. Mind’s choosing to regain awareness of its real Self. Between shadow-code unconsciousness and Child-host Consciousness. A Course in Miracle’s uncompromising non-dualism is the stance required to prevent making unreal real. It must be uncompromising because any gesture that accommodates opposition might imply its recognition and thus make it real.

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All for the Good: the Necessity of training and the inevitability of error

Departure from the implications of Logic explains why and how the Child lost Consciousness within the context of the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation. But the event took place within not one but two contexts. In the constantly broadening context of Everything, where the Governance of Logic and its Laws of cause and effect accommodate the impossibility and unreality of opposites, there is a Logic to the departure that gives it purpose and meaning.

The departure was necessitated by the Laws of cause and effect without its consequences being intended by Logic, which cannot govern above the Law and cannot intend anything illusory, including unconsciousness. The departure and all of its consequences – unconsciousness and the dream of unreality – were no accident. They belong within the larger context of Everything, where the Child, Free Choice, must perform the doing of Creation on its own plane of Creation, choosing among possibilities that include impossibilities. Opposites that it alone can be aware of without making them Real because its Consciousness, unlike the Consciousness of its Parents, is not defined by Logic to make Real. It is only defined to distinguish between Real and unreal so that the Good may be Freely Chosen and thereby attain its Worth.

So that the Good may be Freely Chosen and earned. Earned, that is, by Free Choice, no longer a Child but grown to maturity through the training of experience. Experience with the impossibilities of unconsciousness as well as the Possibilities of Consciousness. With the consequences of self-delusion, the misidentification of Self. With error that projects the Child’s unconscious mind into unreality, an impossibility that can only be a dream, a cockpit where Free Choice can train to fly through trial and error without crashing. Without real consequence except for gaining competence in its exercise. In the practice and application of Free Choice: doing what’s right and doing it right. But first: Getting it right. Getting it right through the explanation and Understanding of Logic.

“Lucifer” be damned!

The role defined by Logic for the Child in Reality-Creation – Free Choice bonded with Psyche, the Soul of Oneness and Innocence in the Force of the Now, the Holy Instant – necessitated departure from Consciousness, from Reality-Creation, from the Now into the illusion of time, so that Free Choice could undergo training implied by the Logic of its role. So that it could become a fully-grown, fully invested, stakeholder in Reality. The mistake committed by a disoriented, badly compromised Mind that lost track of itself, a newborn Child who had not been trained in the exercise of Free Will in Creation, who had not grown to maturity, was no accident.

This could not have been treachery by a full-grown “fallen angel.” Lucifer betrayed by “original sin” and sent to eternal damnation in hell. By the all-too-familiar attributes of human folly, a projection of corrupted, misguided human minds. Projection by a projection. Not if the evil shadow-code was its host Free Choice, the Child self-deluded by its mistake, sent by Necessity into training, destined to learn right from wrong, correct its mistake, and return Home to Reality.

Again, It was the inevitable act of an immature Mind unconscious, in desperate straits, who detected its own reflection, its own shadow. Identified with its own illusory opposite as though it were an “other.” As though it were everything that in its desperation it craved, including a return Home to its Parents in Reality. And if that were not possible, escape to substitute parents in another reality. As though its illusory “other” were a “savior” who could deliver whatever it craved.

The error could not have been by any means committed by Free Choice, an impossibility. But, because the Child is Free Choice, it was still necessarily choice that can eventually be undone. The mistake, like the tableau of peace across the Bay, is an accommodation with the illusion of time that can be undone in time.

To choose to see as the Child is to choose to be governed under the Law

Logic might want to posit possibility without impossibility. Might want the perfection of resolution so all can come to rest – Reality without subjecting Creation to unreality, pleasure to pain, happiness to misery, Good to evil. But until it can figure out how to prevent its implications from implying opposites, real possibilities from implying unreal impossibilities, it must continue its striving for resolution. For a whole number value of Pi that may be logically unattainable. The blessing and curse of eternity that may want to be done with striving. To affirm once and for all the good of Worth, of Being-Life, context with purpose and meaning, finish its task, and come to rest. Move on to something else or vanish into the mystery that is context with ever-shifting circumstance.

Whatever or however the sequence of Logic “began,” whatever caused the first movement, it’s only certain that it occurred at the instigation of circumstance. Certain because its instigation and response both were required by Logic – the Laws of cause and effect enforced by Necessity. Composed of the implications of Logic but necessarily autonomous. Necessarily not controlled by Logic because Governance can’t govern, can’t manage the interconnectedness of causes and effects, ideas, feelings, values and their animate expressions, where anything, even Logic itself, is above the Law.

To choose to view the vision of peace across the Bay, to feel the caress of the ocean breeze, to hear the happy voices, to get just a brief taste of tranquility in a world of strife -- as the Child rather than as its shadow-opposite, the strange apparition grown familiar through the body -- is to choose to govern and be governed under the Law. Is to understand how and why the specter of arbitrary rule, of lawlessness and disorder above the Law, insists on insinuating itself into the gatherings of bodies and souls who might otherwise just go about their business. Children choosing to learn and grow, to attain the maturity of competence. To do what they’re “here” for so they can move on. To get it right. To be Good.

Without the endless, meaningless distraction of conflict and violence. Endlessly repeating the same mistake: choosing the wrong “self.” A bull charging the bullfighter’s muleta until it’s killed, and more bulls are brought into the ring, worn out by distraction, a red piece of cloth, and they, too, die.

No ”fun” in games and no “innocence” in victimhood

The wrong “self” – the contradiction, the reverse mirror image, the opposite, the lifeless shadow-code of contrariness – isn’t benign. It’s not a fun parlor game of harmless competition that misperception makes of it. Brought to “life” by projection, by identity misplaced by a disoriented Child, it’s everything implied by the opposite of Good: sin, guilt, fear, rage, and hatred.

It’s the Child crying out in pain. Masculinity screaming with terror, roaring with impotent rage. Femininity wailing with separation and abandonment, grief and bereavement. Misplaced self wailing with the endless grievances and resentments of self-imposed crucifixion, of victimhood on the cross. The false “innocence” of righteous woundedness bent on wholesale vengeance until it reigns supreme. Until it “wins.” Until it has no opposites because they’re all vanquished. All dead. Because the goal of competition is to eliminate competition. To eliminate itself, an expression of opposite: the shadow code. This is the “harmless game” of competition.

This is the tableau that produced bodies, the illusion, the pretense of Child the many instead of one, self-deluded into overlaying its source in insanity with fleeting images of peace. Of beauty and tranquility. The sights, sounds, and taste of beauty as bodies sense it without the Memory of Home and Sanctuary as Logic Knows it. As the Child-the-one experienced it. Beauty permanent, indelible. Not apparitions that lull and lure minds detached from Logic with self-indulgence and complacency, like pigs fed before they’re slaughtered. Choosing to be the one Child instead of its shadow.

In vivid color: seeing the Child, seeing Self, in an “other”

Oskar Schindler watched impassively from a distance a Nazi atrocity against children. All in black and white until one child stood out. Not all the children being hunted down like animals and massacred but just one. In vivid color in the Stephen Spielberg film, the child who caught Schindler’s eye. Who opened the Nazi’s mind and heart to the wound and its call for Love. Turned him from an insensate extension of his limbic animal emotions – a monster – to intelligence with affect. With compassion so determined that his factory and its employees -- Schindler’s List -- went on to save hundreds of lives from the Holocaust.

I scan the procession of middle school graduates from a distance, with binoculars, until one comes into view who opens my mind and heart. A strawberry blonde, a rhapsody of peach and crimson lifted out of the dull uniformity of gray. The atrocity our separation, grandchild from grandparent. The wound and its call for Love.

What did Schindler and I see that sweeps aside misperception? That replaces it with feeling and commits us to this vision as though it were Soul itself? As though it replaced all Logic, all reason, all judgment, with one act. An act of Understanding. That requires no long and labored explanation. That arrives of its own accord with grace and ease, as if it were there all along, which it was. The cascade of tints, brilliant and warm, that played with the assurance of Innocence behind the mask of atrocity. That brought every child into vivid color, every heart into opening, every mind into Knowing.

The vision altered by binoculars was altered again, imperceptibly. The mind conscious of searching was got out of the way. In my own vulnerability I became the Child, was the Child, able to recognize Child: an indescribably precious being. Innocent, adorable, irresistible, vulnerable. A thing of beauty. A work of art.

The mind that led me there gave way to the Worth that came into view. To the Worth that holds all of it together in a rapture of Love. Of vulnerability that lies at the heart of Soul, the Oneness that can do no harm, that Knows no fear, because it contains everything. Because by definition it can have no opposites. A species from Galapagos ripe for extinction except that the Oneness, the Innocence that revealed itself in vivid color, has no predators. This, for fools who seek power through conquest, is Real power.

Reality isn’t a crapshoot

Schindler the child and I the child, brought to recognition of Child in an “other” with all the power and determination of affect, still, in the upwelling of caring and compassion, have a ways to go. Unconditional embrace of our own vulnerability in the vulnerability of an “other” has not healed the separation. The “other” in vivid color is no longer gray casting its shadow over the “many,” but it remains an “other.” With one attribute of Self that connects with rapturous Love beyond appearances, but still unknown, unseen for the one Self that it really is.

What is this gift of the “other” that we are to receive when we learn the truth of “relationship?” What makes all of “Reality” of idea and the unreality of matter “relational?” Quality of life in a world of appearances defined by apparitions – transitory bodies and their senses – at any given moment is a crapshoot. Purpose and meaning dependent on circumstances changing haphazardly hardly register on minds already compromised, battered incessantly with distractions. For minds paying attention all that can be hoped for is faith and a dollop of comfort. For those who take appearances at face value it’s make hay while the sun shines and leave the rest to “fate.”

Quality of life that’s a crapshoot shares the allure of a casino that delivers the euphoria, the magic, of an occasional win even though it’s accompanied by the funereal coldness guaranteed by loss. Quality of life that’s based on unexamined appearances becomes itself nothing more than an appearance, a trailer for a film that promises entertainment that’s only more appearances. Propped up by stage props – the facades of a studio lot.

The “circumstances” of context that are only appearances can only produce the appearance of purpose and meaning. Brought to life sporadically, intermittently, by shafts of light from Reality and Truth that penetrate the veil, that touch intuitions with awareness spontaneously, with Love, with insight. But still a crapshoot.

Reality isn’t a crapshoot. It doesn’t suffer from ambiguity. There are no qualifiers except for the implication and therefore the Necessity of factoring opposites into the Child’s role of Free Choice in Creation. Aside from the Definitions of Logic, there are no barriers to the functions and expressions of Mind, Love, and Soul. To the exuberance and spontaneity of Being, of Life. To the integration of diversity and profusion into coherence, meaning, and shared purpose. Into connections that consummate relationships with passion. That complete the exchange of givers and giving both, that would not be complete otherwise. That bring all givers and gifts into one harmonious whole, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation, through the Logic of Definition.

Child beloved and beautiful is who its Parents want to see

The Child assigned a role in Creation by Logic, whose genealogy traces back to possibility, the premise and circumstance that first moved the sequence of Logic, is Loved passionately and unconditionally by its Parents. Without reservation. To its Parents, Father-Mind and Mother-Love, this kid is irresistibly adorable. Perfect. It is this Child its Parents want awakened, out of its dream of ambiguity and shadows come to “life,” back Home into Reality-Creation when its training is done. It is this Child whose identity, whose presence, whose face, can only be recognized behind the appearance of an “other.”

By an individual. That is, by one projection of an unconscious, self-deluded mind corrupted by the replication of its shadow opposite, a parasitic virus. For that is who bodies appear to be: projections and replications. Just as the universe is one part projection of mind and one part replication of mind’s shadow code. One part the physics of ordinary matter that yields to the “laws” of science and a semblance of order. The other part the cosmic singularities that don’t yield: the Big Bang and black holes, dark energy and dark matter. The anomalies of quantum mechanics that yield instead lawlessness and disorder, confounding quantum gravity and physics’ attempts to make sense of it. Replications of the Child’s shadow code.

Why Forgiveness? To replace guilt with Innocence

This is where it gets to be fun. Where we, the Child’s projections, find out what we’ve been missing. To a mind that’s being swallowed up in the black hole of time choosing not to be fooled by its own shadow sounds like a chump choosing not to be scared by its own Hallowe’en costume. No big deal. Whereas, choosing the Self behind the mask is a very big deal.

More than tossing away a silly mask, switching from the illusion of time to the Reality of Now, the Holy Instant, is switching from table scraps to a smorgasbord of abundance. Now radiates with all the elemental attributes of Being. It’s alive with Life -- with real sound, real vision. With every sensation that bodies, fooled by the distractions and substitutes of appearances, can never experience. The Light radiated by Now is what all of Reality and Creation depend on for illumination. To enable the Consciousness of Logic and Mind to see, the Creativity and Worth of Love to Feel, the Free Will of the Child to express itself in spontaneity and Happiness.

The Now of Being, of Life that radiates Happiness, is Psyche, the Soul of Self that expresses Life’s Perfection, Purity, and Beauty. Its core value the Innocence of Oneness. Not the opposite of guilt, the Innocence of the Child. But the Innocence of Oneness that Knows no opposites. Its capacity to combine and contain every attribute of Reality-Creation within itself.

The lie of lies that brought an unconscious Child to mis-identity and captivity to its self-delusion was the lie of guilt. This was the psychopathology of the wrong choice, the Understanding that A Course in Miracles explained to clinical psychologists at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The lie coded into the illusion of its shadow-opposite: that the Child caused its own loss of Consciousness. Carried an unbearable load of guilt and, moreover, an equally unbearable load of fear. Fear of punishment by wrathful, hateful Parents who could no longer be trusted, because they allowed all this to happen. Willed it to happen.

And on and on with the Joker’s foolishness and nonsense that, nevertheless, was taken in by impaired judgment. By an Innocent Child now writhing in the torment of guilt. Now willing, desperate, to project itself out of its torment and into another “reality.” Into the dream. This was the "bad thing” that Freudian psychoanalysis searched for in vain in the suppressed memories of bodies’ infancy. Freud might have found it if he had searched the Memory of unconscious mind. But he was a "realist" who couldn't be persuaded that the cause wasn't physiological.

Why Forgiveness? Because its acceptance by the Child is the being and doing of its release from the Big Lie. From guilt. Think of the torpedo that targeted the vulnerability at the core of the Death Star in Star Wars. Forgiveness is the torpedo that denies, disables, and undoes all of the shadow-code’s lies at one stroke.

Just as the code appeared to replace all of Reality-Creation in the Child’s Mind by striking at its Psyche, its Soul of Innocence, by replacing it with guilt, Forgiveness exposes the delusion. Quietly, imperceptibly replaces guilt with Innocence and restores Psyche to its place on the Child’s altar. Removes the perversion of Innocence – the absurdity of victimhood on the cross, wounded righteousness, "sacrifice," the ludicrous “helpless innocent victim” -- and restores Mind to sanity.

Why Forgiveness? Because It’s Justice that Works

A barrier to personal growth toward self-awareness is of the mind that fails to understand the Logic, the Truth, of non-dualism: that contradiction, the essence of the Child’s shadow-opposite, is illogic and therefore unreal. It’s a barrier that can be overcome with explanation so long as its source is authentically the Logic of the Holy Spirit.

There’s yet another barrier. One that needs more than explanation because it’s not of the mind. The philosophical understanding of opposites has no counterpart in emotional understanding. Not when coming to terms with conflicting emotions means coming to terms with Love opposed to hate, attraction opposed to repulsion, combined in the same mind that’s relating to the same “other.” Not when we’re asked to accept the presence of limbic animal feelings that deny the truth of who we want to be, imagine ourselves to be: selves who have feelings sorted out as well as thoughts.

How can Forgiveness get off the ground in a mind that denies the presence of limbic emotional conflict? That’s locked into competition demanding justice through retribution. Through the elimination of an opponent instead of recognition, affirmation, and reciprocation. Where there’s no perceived emotional support, no Love, to reciprocate. Where there’s no external authority to adjudicate even-handed justice. And even if there were, how could mind step aside for impersonal adjudication when limbic emotions take the injustice of offense personally? When the wound is felt and therefore taken personally. How can limbic emotions of fear, rage, hatred, and guilt be disabled so that the Holy Spirit can replace the body’s senses with its vision of Logic?

The Child’s shadow-reflection is coded for opposing feelings as well as contradictory thoughts. Activating the code through misidentification activates feelings that compete-conflict with Mind-Love. That pit the Child’s projections-replications against themselves, with wounded psyches. With psychopathologies that all trace to the conflict between Love-Truth / Self and unlove-illusion / anti-self shadow.

The first step to re-ordering psychology is to re-order the Logic-understanding of mind through the clarity of Understanding that teases emotions hidden in the limbic-animal brain out of the shadow. It’s replacing self-unawareness with self-awareness with help from an “other” who has evoked conflicting emotions, that conflict with the self-image of Mind-Love Innocence that we want to be.

The function performed by “other” in unreality – “special relationships” -- can’t be to pad the nest of heavenly perfection. But it can be to goad us into recognizing ourselves as our misidentification with our shadow has made us: a mass of contradictions philosophical and emotional. Goad us into acknowledging limbic-animal emotions that horrify us. That contradict the ideal of perfection, the image of goodwill and kindness, personal-social qualities of sharing, affirmation, cooperation, and agreeability, that we assume is our heritage. That force us to see our mistake, to change our minds because we can’t avoid pain from our own limbic animal emotions by changing “others.”

Change must come from within, and “relationships” with “others” who can’t deliver heaven on earth is what forces it. There is no other way. In this context, relationships that evoked fear, rage, hatred, and guilt did their jobs. They forced us to confront our limbic animal emotions, to change our minds from within because we can’t change “others.” If the Holy Spirit works through us to move “others” one way or the other, it’s not for us to know and cannot be for us to control.

How can a Child’s projection hold itself out to be worthy and Innocent in the presence of unworthy feelings? Awakening through Forgiveness requires that the Holy Spirit set body-senses / mistaken selves aside with its vision of Logic because of the answer to this question. The answer is that the Child projection, without the Holy Spirit’s help, is fatally condemned to feel the guilt-shame of unworthiness. Fear, rage, and hatred, coded by the Child’s shadow-opposite and rooted in its brain, have defined the Child’s projections, defined its viral replications. We cannot substitute the vision of Logic-Innocence for limbic emotions without our Guide, the Holy Spirit, replacing false definition with True Definition. An act that can only come at the invitation of the Child Free Choice. We must understand what is needed, want it, and choose it.

The key is connection with the Holy Spirit that communicates the will to Forgive. That lets go of the false logic of rectifying injustice through retribution, through the condemnation and punishment of “others.” That turns the judgment of justice over to the Holy Spirit through Forgiveness-Truth. Forgiveness replaces judgment-condemnation of “others” not by negating the desire and will for justice but by redirecting it. Directing it away from “others” who cannot satisfy it to the Source that can, the Holy Spirit.

Forgiveness is the solution to the demand for justice that works. World War II was exactly the wrong approach by Germany seeking redress from the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. An approach that was not only devastating for its “enemies” but even more so for itself. This is the lesson to be learned from the horrifying specters of the Nazi swastika and the visage of Hitler that still goad their victims to retribution. The lesson is the catastrophe that results from seeking justice through retribution against “others.”

Justice that works is Forgiveness that replaces the insanity of conflicting thoughts and emotions with the vision of Logic. With the Reality-Truth about the Child’s misidentification: there is no “other.” Retribution can’t work.

At the instant of Recognition

Why does the Necessity of Logic require that one individual, inside the dream, recognize the Child beloved of its Parents in Reality behind the appearance of an “other”? First, so that the wrong choice can be corrected where it occurred, within unconsciousness. Second, so that Forgiveness required of awakening can be complete. So that the one Child seen in vivid color yet still seen as an “other,” however sympathetically, can be seen by an individual identifying not with an individual projection of the Child, however innocent and vulnerable, but with the Child itself.

Can be seen in the same instant by the one Child’s Parents. By Father-Mind and by Mother-Love in Reality. By the wellsprings of Choice and Freedom, the Logic of Reality, the animating Energy-Force of Oneness, the Soul of Being, of Life. For the act of recognition of one Child by one individual identified with one Child, that penetrates the illusion and lifts the veil, cannot occur, cannot replace unreality with Reality, in the absence of Relationships that Define and complete the Whole Child: Relationship between Child-projection and the Holy Spirit, the vision of Logic; and Relationship between Child and Parents, the capacity of Consciousness to recognize Reality, the capacity of Love to Connect, to Relate. The capacity of both to awaken. The act of Forgiveness, correction of error, the undoing of mistaken identity, necessarily engages the Whole Child in its awakening.

At this instant of recognition by the Parents, brought about through Relationships that are part of the Child’s identity, its Definition by Logic, the unconscious Child’s dream of unreality ends. The illusion of time ends, and the Child is restored to the Oneness, Being-Life, and Force – the Consciousness, the Awareness and immediacy -- of Now. The Holy Instant.

Forgiveness corrects error

To recap: Seeing one another through the body’s eyes we see with “eyes” of the shadow-code. We see reflection. We are only capable of seeing “others” as others. As separate objects. When an individual with self-awareness identifies with one Child rather than its shadow, it is only capable of seeing one Child in “others.”

Solving the mystery of how to truly Forgive is realizing that each individual contains the whole Child. This is why the focus of ACIM is not on groups, on the many, but on individuals. The individual can therefore choose to identify with the one Child, to see only the Truth of one Child in “others.” In reflections, the illusion of the many, the insanity of separation. Can choose, therefore, to see only the Truth of Innocence in “others,” to Forgive by not being able to see guilt in “others.” By seeing the Reality beyond “others” rather than illusion, which means not seeing in the one Child or any of its projections an “other” at all. 

Which is what the Child should have detected in its shadow-reflection: no “other” but only an illusory part of itself. Forgiveness corrects error. This is why the focus of ACIM is on Forgiveness. One individual truly Forgiving.

The individual’s task is done when the many are one

The individual’s task is done:

  • When it has removed the last obstacle to Forgiveness, the last trace of self-delusion and mis-identity from the Child’s unconscious and still dreaming mind.
  • When it “sees” in an “other” its one Child Self, not a shadow-reflection, not a competitor, predator, prey, mate, or any other kind of opposite.
  • When it sees in its one Child Self light and Innocence instead of a phantasmagoria of darkness and guilt, Reality-Truth instead of a reflection of unreality-appearances.
  • When, in Relationship with its Guide, the Holy Spirit, it has thus prepared safe entry for awareness of Relationship with Parents Mind-Love, the purity and perfection of Psyche, of Oneness. Into a now uncorrupted Child’s Mind, uncontaminated by any trace of its shadow code, and gotten out of the way.
  • When it has thus demonstrated competence in the exercise of Free Will.
  • When it has learned and grown to maturity and its training is complete, forever the Child beloved of its Parents but in its responsibility no longer a Child.

The individual has allowed the Reality of who it is, the Child’s identity, to present itself, spontaneously, of its own Free Will, to its Parents. To be recognized by its Parents Consciousness-Love and welcomed back Home. To be awakened from the dream, the self-deception, and restored to its role, its work and play, in Creation. The individual Child’s task is done when, with the awakening of the one Child, the many disappear. The dream and all its occupants, all its apparitions, ends. Including the individual Child projection.

True Forgiveness is the act of turning over responsibility for restoration of Consciousness, of Peace, Truth, and Sanity, to the only source capable of accomplishing it. To Logic that defines, governs, and protects the harmony of Everything. That ensures that no trace of impossibility, the unreal, can invade, disrupt, and contaminate the purity, peace, perfection, and Interconnectedness of Reality. Our Protector. Our Friend. We, the projections and replications of a tormented, split mind, are the intrusion.

Timing and the principle of Alignment 

The principle that determines the timing of Forgiveness-Awakening is the principle of Alignment, its definition so synonymous – so closely aligned -- with Logic that it can be thought of as Logic itself. If Logic is Definition, then it is also Alignment.

The loss of Consciousness projected an unreality whose components-circumstances, expressing illogic, are out of alignment and therefore need Logic to put them back into alignment. Logic is getting it right: the context, purpose, and meaning of our circumstances before we manage circumstances to achieve our purpose. Before we try to do what’s right and do it right. Alignment is the all-important task of getting it right.

Science is but an attempt to figure out alignment that itself needs to be in alignment. If it fails in its mission, as it does, then it is a failure of Logic, which it is. The dominant paradigm of every major field of inquiry – science, philosophy, psychology, and theology -- is failing to get it right. Because in its mindless rush to get to Reason, it bypasses Logic, which it doesn’t understand. If it doesn’t understand Logic it can’t explain anything. Can’t Understand anything. Logic is thoroughness: everything in its time and place. The oriental tea ceremony: no corner-cutting, no shortcuts. We now have the explanation for human folly. The answer to why shit happens.

Alignment is Order, Peace, Harmony, Unity, Community. It is Justice, Fairness, Balance, Equality. Revolution against rule by injustice is collective attempt to establish rule by justice. – a realignment-refitting of relations of power, society, economy. Relationships in unreality are done by alignment in the moment and undone when changing circumstances and their contexts undo alignment. In each case – disorder, injustice, disconnection – healing requires Logic.

Circumstances reveal purpose-meaning when their Logic-pattern – their alignment -- is revealed. What is the timing of Awakening through Forgiveness? When will the Child correct error and regain Consciousness? What pattern are we looking for? Alignment of the circumstances of the Story of the Child. Circumstances that reflect progress in the Child’s training will be decisive. A Course in Miracles teaches that it’s a matter of choice when to learn its lesson but not whether. There are no shortcuts.

Must humanity experience mass extinction? Will it be necessary that groups-nations first come together in shared purpose to manage their natural habitat? To preserve world peace. Is humanity – Child the many – destined to experience death on a global scale as well as individually, i. e. to experience extinction as a species before its training is complete? These seem more relevant considerations than the alignment of stars and planets, but astrology may in some way reflect the Child’s progress nonetheless because it is based on the principle of alignment. 

Replacing time-mortality with Now-eternity. The Holy Spirit’s vision of Logic will replace the “vision” of the body’s eyes at the invitation of the individual / Free Choice, liberated from self-delusion. This will set in motion a chain reaction in the sequence of Logic that necessarily replaces time-mortality with the Holy Instant, with eternal Now that replaces the illusion-dream with Reality-Truth.

Free Choice is the key to liberation. The shadow-code is the archenemy of choice. The precise point when the Child Free Choice overturns captivity by the code-virus is when an individual Child projection chooses to identify with one Child instead of the shadow-code. Free Choice is therefore the essential cause that sets off the logical chain reaction of events that produce Forgiveness-Awakening. Further confirmation, if confirmation is needed, that the Child’s training in unreality centers on the exercise of Free Will just as it centers on Free Choice in Reality-Creation.

The first object of Forgiveness is liberation. To identify with one Child is to identify with Free Choice, independence not captivity, with liberating Mind-Love, the Child’s true identity. Identification with Mind-Awareness plus Love-Freedom is to identify with Reality-Creation, with spontaneity-Now, the opposite of the shadow’s captivity. The object of Forgiveness is therefore liberation from the shadow-code’s captivity.

Self-awareness equates with Forgiveness. The individual’s choice of Self-awareness is the act that triggers and authenticates correction of error. Self-awareness equates with Forgiveness because it obviates any possibility of recognizing an “other.”

How will Awakening be experienced? What becomes of the universe?

Awakening will be imperceptible, The dynamics of mind-change that affect the individual whole Child will simultaneously affect its entire environment, resulting in an identical experience of imperceptible transformations. Imperceptible because replacement of unconsciousness by Consciousness can’t be detected by unconsciousness that’s only able to detect shadow-unreality.

Awakening will be gentle and painless. Spontaneous insight is experienced as a pre-existing fact because unconsciousness can’t detect fact-Truth. Can’t detect the workings of change through Intuition guided by the Holy Spirit, by the vision of Logic. Consciousness can’t recognize the unreality of unconsciousness. The Child’s experience of awakening will therefore be a gentle, imperceptible transformation from unreality to Reality. So unthreatening, painless, and familiar that the Child is unaware of it.

The experience will be the exact opposite of the wrenching dislocation that the corrupted Child-mind imagines it to be, fears it to be, and therefore resists. The exact opposite of how the Child experienced the loss of Consciousness.

The universe will retract into Child-Mind. The illusory universe will retract back into Child-Mind that it never left with reversal of the illusory-insane projection. It will transform through replacement of self-deception by Self-awareness, the reversal of error in the Child’s Mind. And thus the dream of spacetime-matter will end.

Clinging to the dream: the choice whether to “exist”

The individual has done its job, has truly Forgiven, when it not only gets out of the way but freely, joyfully, and spontaneously, chooses not to “exist.” To relinquish its “specialness” and all the other trappings of captivity to a chimera, a substitute for all that was lost to unconsciousness: a string of worthless beads. Flickering shadows echoing disembodied voices in a darkened cave. A rip-off, a joke.

A humanity captive to the illusion, clinging to its worthless beads, seeks to perpetuate itself by colonizing other planets. Should it? Should slave states in the antebellum South have been allowed to extend slavery into new states? Does earth want humanity to stick around, or might it have second thoughts? As it heads inexorably toward what might be as bad or worse than the Permian “Great Dying," 252 million years ago, when 70-80 percent of land-ocean species went extinct because of global warming, might it be forgiven for thinking good riddance?

Do we really want to “exist”? Must we “exist”? Do we still have a choice?

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The Child must choose and earn what it cannot inherit

If Heaven-Creation is all about Worth then it’s logically-necessarily all about being chosen and earned. These are the attributes, the Definition, of Worth-Creation: that it must be freely chosen and earned to exist, to Be.

The Child’s travails in unreality are choosing and earning its functions that give it the capacity to Be-belong and Do-perform in Creation, functions that it could not inherit:

  • Oneness-Innocence of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, with the possibility of shadow-opposites in an unconscious dream state. The Innocence of Oneness of the kind that can only exist on Parents’-Being plane is the impossibility of opposites by Definition.
  • Free Will of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, the Doing-performing / choosing kind, with the possibility of shadow-code captivity in an unconscious dream state. The Free Will of the kind that can only exist on the Parents’-Being / Consciousness plane, the Being / Growing-birthing kind -- marriage of Father-Mind / Choice with Mother-Mind / Freedom – that is impossibility of captivity by Definition.

Humanity’s unreality – our world of bodies and spacetime-matter -- is a learning device, a stage that is a testing-proving ground. Since unreality is unreal this temporal “life” is a dress rehearsal without an audience, i.e. without Consciousness, for the Child’s performance in Reality with Consciousness, when the Child has corrected error and chosen-earned Free Will / performing and Innocence / Soul-Oneness Being.

All it takes is one individual

Unreality = trial and error. All of humanity’s ideologies-belief systems, all its established paradigms-religions of science, theology, philosophy, and psychology, based on the irrational faith-bias of circular reasoning rather than Logic, are trials that resulted in error, have failed and are failing. Failing not in spite of but because of dualism, i.e. flawed / circular self-referential “reasoning” that corrupts choice rather than undoing unreality-untruth. Ideology failures include top-down authoritarian, guilt / fear-based, biblical-orthodox “Christianity.”

The uncompromising non-dualism of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is bottom-up Logic that aspires to change the mind of the One Child through the individual, the logical stand-in for all of Child’s mirror-image illusory replications. It is not an ideology targeted at illusory “humanity” as a group-species but at the Real One-Child through the Holy Spirit, the mind-Intuition, Logic-connection of the individual. For if the mind of one mirror-image replication of the One Child is corrected then they’re all corrected because there’s no “they,” no “others.”

ACIM teaches that if one individual truly forgave it would overturn the ego’s house of lies and replace illusion with Truth. So, Jesus isn’t organizing anything. He’s not interested in founding a church because he’s fishing for one individual.

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What will go away?

When Mind as Child regains consciousness, energy can no longer be directed by its self-delusion, the Joker’s code of non-being, to make the Joker’s substitute reality real. The Child will have liberated itself from its self-delusion and captivity to the virus. It will no longer be under the Joker’s control. Instead, at the liberated Child’s direction, energy will then be withdrawn from spacetime-matter in the Child’s reversal of the act that produced it: its attempted projection of guilt. Versatile energy, with its capacity to serve as an agent of Mind in either state, Conscious-Reality or unconscious-unreality, with its capacity to convert energy into matter and to store energy in matter, will reverse its animation of the dream. It will reverse Its enablement and empowerment of the dream by withdrawing from it at the direction of the awakening Child. At the direction of Mind married to Love.

This is how the world of humanity-“life” and spacetime-matter – the universe or multiple universes -- ends: the end of an illogical, illusory dream upon the awakening of an unconscious, corrupted mind: the Child. Abruptly. Instantaneously. By the replacement of the Joker’s “laws” of chaos that make no sense by Laws of cause and effect that do make sense. The Laws by which Logic, or Logos-God, governs Reality-Creation.

The universe ends not by a long process of contraction into an inexplicable “singularity” that vanishes into a black hole indefinitely. Until it explodes into another Big Bang which recycles the illusion-dream rather than ending it. Nor by a long process of entropic expansion into a state of thermodynamic inertia, which would render perhaps one among many universes inactive or spent rather than ending it. Neither revival with a bang nor petering out with a whimper is ending. Spacetime-matter in some form will still be “here.”

Unless the universe ends by an unconscious mind awakening, which withdraws energy active or inert, the “laws” of physics cannot explain or predict whether or how it will end. The explanation for the withdrawal of energy cannot be physical alone. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics stated, over a century ago, that physics has taken experiment-based understanding of physical phenomena – the origin and fate of the universe -- as far as it can go. The search for quantum gravity today affirms that what lies beyond physics must involve philosophy. The explanation must be metaphysical. And, beyond that, it must be psychological and theological.

For the measurements of science never were enough. The explanation has always required evaluation and judgment by feeling as well as reason and judgment by thought. It has always required the qualitative as well as the quantitative, a dimension that is not now, and never has been, the province of physics. It has always required Understanding in all its dimensions: The Story of the Child, not an inorganic object composed of fragmentary particles but an organic subject possessed of all the attributes of Mind and Love, thought and feeling, reason and value. A whole Being.

What will replace it?

The Child’s reversal of guilt-projection and its consequence, the reversal of energy’s empowerment of the illusion-dream of spacetime-matter, must be accompanied by the replacement of the illusion-dream in the awakened Child’s Mind by what is not an illusion, not a dream. By Reality-Creation. By what is substance and True, not appearance and a lie.

The Child’s re-entry into Reality-Creation, into Innocence from unreality-guilt, is the responsibility of the Child’s Parents. It is the prerogative of Father Mind and Mother Love, who are Consciousness, Being, Life, and the Worth of Creation. It is the prerogative, finally, of their Source: Logos or God, who governs Reality-Creation through the Laws of cause and effect. Through Necessity. Through what Is and, therefore, must Be. Necessity – the “rule of law” -- that applies even to Logic, to Benevolence, that it may govern with wisdom, fairness, and Understanding from the bottom up and not arbitrarily, with the unfairness, misunderstanding, and cruelty of malevolence from the top down.

The Child will be re-admitted to its Home in Conscious Relationship with its Parents-Being:

  • when its Psyche, its inviolate Soul of Innocence that shares Being with all of Creation, is no longer violated by the illusion of guilt.
  • When the Consciousness of its Parents recognizes the Child-Innocence as theirs and therefore belonging in Creation.
  • When the Child is recognized and thereby certified by the Laws of cause-effect, by Necessity, as belonging in Reality.
  • When Logos-God, the final Authority that governs Everything, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation, then authorizes the resumption of the Child’s role, its function along with its Relationships, in Reality.

The end of the universe can only be explained by Logic

The end of spacetime-matter – the universe -- can only be explained by metaphysics through the rigorous application of Logic under the guidance of spontaneous insight from Intuition. Insight from Intuition that is neither controlled nor controlling. Whose sole purpose is explanation, that is, guidance that can be accepted, used, abused, or ignored, at the discretion of its recipient, the Child. The Child who has Free Will because it Is Free Will. The Child who was One before it became the many in the self-delusion of its unconscious dream. Before it became us.

Thus will the unreal dream of spacetime-matter end -- the strange, violent, chaotic, dangerous, unexplainable, and pointless “home” we call the universe. The worthlessness of the temporal. Thus will the role of an awakened Child in the Reality of Creation resume. In the Home of Beauty and Perfection, Life, Worth, and Eternity, where we the Child belong.

Reflections to share with adolescents

Reflections to share with adolescents who may be wondering about affect: its role in relationships, in adolescents’ future, in mythology, and in all of Creation. How does it figure in the choice between what is Real and unreal, True and false, Good and evil? Why does it matter?

The usual poetic content is heavy with subjective thought and feeling. Grief and romantic Love are common types of feeling but there are others. Many are related to the values listed in my piece on adolescence [Thirteen: Reflections on Character and Values at the Beginning of Adolescence. 08/28/21]  T.R. Hummer’s non-rhyming poem, “My Mother in Bardo” (New Yorker 01/24/22 p. 50), is an example of a poem infused with grief. But if I’m assigned to compose a rhyming poem and I have no particular talent for lyrics, I might produce something lifeless, without affect.

Literature and poetry in particular say a lot about who we are and what’s important to us. For adolescents coming into their own it can be an effective way to gain self-awareness. If they feel a sense of loss, say, for a deceased grandparent, they might express it in a non-rhyming poem. It might be strikingly different from a poem whose search for originality, beauty, or other effect is through rhyme.

Before the Big Bang

Absence of affect in subjective, creative expression is a red flag. For an adolescent it might or might not have implications for character development, but, if so, they can run deep. Star Wars mythology is based on it. What turned Adam Skywalker toward the dark side and service to Palpatine, the galactic emperor? What made the galactic empire evil? Absence of affect.

Explaining Why requires theorizing with Logic about the antecedents of our material universe -- what I call “Reality-Creation.” It preceded the Big Bang, exists in parallel with our material universe, and heavily influences our behavior and its consequences beyond our awareness. It holds sway over the origin and fate of the universe and the meaning of life. Its context is Mind-Love, not spacetime-matter. I use initial caps to set terminology that is of this other Reality apart from the lower case of our un-reality.

The “Child” is the One we were in Reality before the Child lost Consciousness and became the many. While unconscious, it mis-identified with its shadow-reflection, went into a dream state corrupted by its shadow-code, dreamed our un-reality, replicated itself in isolated-separated human bodies, projected the material world detected by their bodies’ senses, and continues to replicate itself within its dream world under the influence of its shadow-reflection. An explanation for all this is the subject of my book-in-progress with the working title, The Story of the Child.

Affect is feeling -- emotional sensitivity. Feeling is value or Worth – things cared for. Gifts with talents the Child was given at birth with which to exercise Free Choice in Creation. Affect is rooted in Mother-Love, the source of all feeling in the Child’s phase of Reality-Creation.

The dis-integration of Love from Mind

The Child has Free Will or Free Choice because the Child is Free Choice, its role in Reality-Creation. In the Child’s phase with Free Choice, the loss of Consciousness produced a dream-world of un-reality where all ideas-thoughts and their associated feelings have opposites. Opposites are the reverse mirror-image shadow-reflection of the Child and all of its values, all of its gifts including its talents.

The code that defines all opposites is derived from the Child’s Being. The code is non-being. Which means it’s insane. Nuts. The appearance of a “system” which is the opposite of system. A system ruled not by laws but by chaos -- arbitrary rule where “rules” apply to everybody but the ruler. The reverse mirror-image of sanity, what we know as the “dark side.” Everyone and everything in our un-reality has a shadow-opposite. A dark side. No exceptions.

What makes the dark side “possible” in the dream state is the separation of Love-feeling from Mind-thought. The marriage between Father Mind / Logic-Choice and Mother Love / Freedom-Creativity not only produced the Child. It’s what holds all the Implications and Interconnections of Reality-Creation together. In our un-reality that integration is gone. Science’s search for a perfectly ordered, perfectly integrated cosmos ended over a century ago and now it’s even giving up on a cosmos that just makes sense. Because it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the judgment we need to manage human affairs, to maintain order in harmony, is equally dis-integrated. It needs to be constantly re-integrated, constantly pieced together, in all our choices.

The Reality-Creation of Consciousness knows nothing of shadows, reflections, or opposites. So, shadow-opposites played no part in the Child’s Conscious exercise of Free Choice in Reality. In un-reality it’s different. “Dark side” shadow-reflections very much represent a choice for us, the unconscious Child’s replications. The choice between Right and wrong, Good and evil, where good values-gifts are the product of Mind integrated with Love-affect and their evil shadow opposites are the product of Mind absent Love-affect. We choose correctly when we discipline our thoughts and feelings, our ideas and values, always to keep Love combined with Mind.

The pussycat “Lord Vader”

One of the traits that distinguish personality types is variation in levels of affect-feeling. In importance attributed to values because feeling is value rooted in Love, the Mother of everything cared for, everything of Worth. What distinguishes character is its values.

Adam Skywalker belonged to a personality type described in Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing. He “went over to the dark side” because his type’s level of affect-feeling and therefore his character was relatively shallow. Absence of affect-feeling translates to a relatively shallow-weak connection with the Good-positive and therefore a relatively strong susceptibility to, or attraction for, the shadow-negative.

The choice posed by Good-positive – who we are in Reality -- and evil-negative – our shadow in un-reality -- pulls different personality types in different directions. The son Luke Skywalker’s character was relatively deep with feeling-affect, strongly anchored to values, and therefore less susceptible to the attraction of shadow-opposites. The character of Darth Vader – “Dark Father” – was relatively weak with feeling-affect, loosely anchored to values, and therefore more susceptible. Adam Skywalker, who became the mythic “Lord Vader” feared by trembling subordinates, was a personality weakling -- a pussycat. Captives of shadow-reflections can impress with the appearance of strength but their reality is weakness.

Lack of values rooted in affect-feeling translates to a weak or missing internal moral compass. To a weak sense of right vs. wrong -- a lack of conscience. To insensitivity and therefore to predilection for cruelty. What defines the galactic empire and its emperor Palatine as “evil” is an absence of affect-feeling. It’s defined by Mind-thought without Love-value and therefore as character without conscience: insensitive and prone to cruelty. It becomes a universe where harm is done and pain inflicted because it is not felt, because character and values don’t matter.

Guidance from Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing

Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing intuits clues from personality types to differences that can account for and predict relative attraction for the dark side. The ESFP type with relatively weak feeling-judgment is a type that, if it’s not disciplined by its social culture, can be misled into shadow-opposites and wrongdoing. It happens to be the type exhibited by the current idol of the Republican party, a body-matter idolater, serial wrong-doer, and a menace to democracy, civilization, and world order. But any type weak on affect-feeling and character-values is a candidate.

My piece about adolescence listed both positive values and their shadow-opposites – the dark side. What an interest in the opposites might indicate about an adolescent’s developing personality type we don’t know. We do know that an ‘S’ (sensing) in preference to an ‘I’ (intuition) would fit an engineer or craftsman working with material objects. Sensing would account, say, for a poem engineered rather than intuited. Intuited, that is, from psyche or soul, from thoughts-feelings stored in humanity’s collective Memory.

We also know that Gifts Differing can help predict choices that different types tend to make and therefore where on balance they may be headed: To promoting humanitarian kindness and freedom (the Jedi Knights) or engaging in inhumane cruelty and oppression (the galactic empire). Definitive conclusions can’t be drawn by outside observers. They can only be drawn by subjects themselves who monitor their personality types – the building of character through their preferences.

While Isabel distinguishes between the light and dark sides the distinction is indirect. It’s implied, for example by reference to “wrongdoing,” inadequate consideration of costs, shallowness, insincerity, and other tendencies. But otherwise her “feeling” doesn’t account for dark side opposites. The difference between thinking (T) and feeling (F) isn’t necessarily what she’s intuited. Nevertheless, the difference is significant and deserves reflection. All of the differences – between introvert-extravert, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceptive – are relevant for types’ tendencies toward positive values and their opposites and therefore toward their subjects’ ultimate ending in fulfillment or disappointment.

The turning point: adolescence

Adolescence is a critical phase in establishing these tendencies. It’s the phase when Luke Skywalker committed to the cause of the Jedi Knights after the loss of his foster parents. It’s the phase when his father, Adam, started to part with Obi-Wan, his Jedi trainer, betray the Jedi cause, and go over to the empire. For many, our personal fortunes literally hang in the balance when we are adolescents.

May Affect be with you!

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The utility of Logic

Nothing gets done unless it’s done by a relationship. Matter is relational: particles exist only when they connect. Logic, like everything else, is a relationship. Many relationships. One is the relationship Logic establishes between conditions – facts-circumstances – and their meaning to form context that yields purpose. Another is the relationship Logic establishes between purpose and Reality-Creation: belonging or not belonging.

If meaning attributed to conditions is mistaken then their purpose yielded by context must be mistaken. Since Reality-Creation can only consist of the Logic of Being, the perfection of Mind conjoined with Love, anything mistaken would necessarily only be attributable to what is impossible by definition: to its opposite. Opposite and impossible by definition, which is to say, by Logic. And therefore, not belonging to Reality-Creation. The status of not-belonging established by Logic on the basis of purpose, whether in harmony with the meaning of conditions or in opposition to it.

This is a definition of Logic that derives not from the abstract but from use: the purpose of Logic which applies the same standard of utility, of practical application, to its definition that it applies to the definition of every context: its purpose.

Unfinished business in the definition of the Child

Logic is what keeps the unreal, the uncreative, the unmindful and unloving, out of Reality and provides protection-sanctuary for what is Real. We are here because the Child who we are, who is active within our collective unconscious mind, needing our help to awaken, offering her help through the Holy Spirit to free us from unreality, came into a context for which she was unprepared. Unprepared by the conditions and context that defined her up to that point in the sequence of Logic. That gave her Logic, the purpose that granted her status and the role that accompanied it in Reality-Creation.

An element missing in her definition, that could not have been provided either by Logic or by her Parents Mind-Love, was revealed to be unfinished business, a gap in Knowledge upon her first attempt to fulfill her role. Revealed by experience to be incomplete, whose completion could only be learned by experience. We live, suffer, and die in this context of opposites, of confusion, guilt, and dread, of desperation to reclaim our innocence and being at one another’s expense, to learn from experience the element missing in the Child’s definition. In her Logic, her protection, so that she may fulfill her role in Creation without violating Logic, without abandoning its protection and leaving its sanctuary. Without being barred from a Reality that would cease to be Reality if she were not.

The lesson to be learned from experience

The lesson to be learned is awareness of the stakes of Creation: the possibility of loss of Consciousness from unawareness and its consequences. The costs-consequences of unreality made real that is our world of appearances and deceit. That our Source, the Child’s Source, could not be aware of by definition, because Consciousness to be aware of anything makes it Real.

Without the Child’s awareness of the stakes of Creation her exercise of Free Will, to freely choose to establish and reciprocate Worth, would have no meaning. Would not be free. This is her function, her responsibility, not her Parents’. We go through this hell of suffering and death, of unreality made real, hand in hand with the Child:

• to claim the Child’s birthright: her role in Creation and the function that enables it, her Free Will.
• to reestablish communication with our Parents Mind-Love and win admittance from Logic to its protection, its sanctuary in Reality.
• to demonstrate that the Child’s definition, her Logic is now complete. That we have learned our lesson from experience and provided the missing element: the awareness of what’s at stake. In relationship with the Holy Spirit, our Guide. Our one and only connection with Logic.

The ultimate affirmation of Free Will

The Child had to have a hand in her own Creation, her own completion, her own perfection: in the ultimate affirmation of Free Will. Because not everything was handed to her so she could set off into the unknown of Creation with nothing to learn of herself, nothing to strive for within, fully grown. Fully grown with nothing to learn of herself would be a contradiction, for she’s a Child. With an adventure to live, the necessity, the gift of Growth.

In this world of unreality the death of an innocent Child is needless if she can choose Life. By learning from the gift of Mind and Love and by learning from Growth and experience. That there’s another Reality. The Reality of her Parents and ours: Mind and Love that are not the unreality of matter. The unreality of suffering and death made real by bodies and their senses. By the “logic” of matter that isn’t.

Time to think again

Intuition with insights from the Life of Mind explain human experience with clarity and practical resonance. Potentially more so than any other source, because the twists and turns of human thought don’t terminate at the portal we came through to get here. They extend way beyond the “beginning of time” to the portal through which anything and everything must pass. To the Presence that was there in the Now, at the beginning: the rules and definitions that govern what Is and what Isn’t. The ancients called it Logos. I’m OK with “Logic.” Tap into the implications of Logic and they take us a long way.

What follows in “The Lure of Liberty” is a small harvest of fruit that this particular tree bears. Nourishment for minds wanting better answers to questions than the dominant paradigms provide us, from philosophy, psychology, science, and religion. Questions that thwart human progress, because the dominant paradigms are not connecting with our origins, getting our story right. As a species we’re far from connecting with context that supplies purpose and meaning. Far from grasping what our circumstances may be telling us. Because the very source we must turn to for answers, the human mind, has been turned against itself. The very central fact that the dominant paradigms fail to acknowledge. We must come to terms with its implications. We must learn to remove the barriers to Logic and change our mind.

A few modest insights won’t make much difference. But they illustrate a point I hope to make in my book, The Story of the Child: that returning to the roots of philosophy, through the insights of Intuition guided by Logic, can inch us forward. Insights guided by sources from Logic like Jesus and A Course in Miracles, Plato and The Allegory of the Cave, can break through the wall of ambiguity our split minds and bodies’ senses have built. Remove its deceptions and contradictions. Replace its deeply flawed perceptions with perceptions better aligned with Truth and make progress.

By thinking. Not a novel idea. But after science and technology have held the stage, after Hawking declared philosophy “dead” and not only humanity but all of life is imperiled, maybe its time has come. Maybe, with our country facing another civil war, it’s time to get back to business and think again.

Respect for the role of Free Will in Creation

There’s work to be done in Reality and we can’t do it. A job with real purpose and meaning. What’s worse is we’re prevented from doing it by a lie. A deception that our world of appearances has locked in place by our bodies’ senses, by circular self-referential reasoning since bodies themselves are appearances. A manipulation by a virus whose only purpose is to preserve its place in our thoughts. In mind which is a precious gift from our Parents, who Know only Reality and Truth.

Whose concern isn’t our subservience to any cause. To any agenda, any deception or manipulation. It’s to the protection and exercise of the reason, reciprocity, and Free Will that we are. To the part their Child has been blessed with in Reality and Creation: to enable the creation of Life to affirm its own worth, to extend and empower it.

What would the miracle of Creation, of Life, be without Free Will? A thought without an expression. Form without content. Cause without effect. An empty stance of self-proclaimed value. A billboard advertising an idea without a product. A “product” no one has chosen to buy. What is a product worth that has no market? What is it worth if no one in their individual circumstances, their context, has found any application or use for it? If its “market” is forced or deceived into consuming it?

What does it matter that the Child’s Parents are Mind-Reason-Choice married to Love-Creativity-Freedom and their purpose was to birth a Child whose very identity is Free Will? The inborn power and ability to choose freely so that the creation of Life won’t be hollowness without consequence? Empty rhetoric? Sound and fury signifying nothing?

What does it matter that the Child’s Parents are careful not to let their Authority and Knowledge compromise her Free Will? That their reticence is part of the gift, not a withholding? That they are to be thanked for enabling us to learn what we must, as we will, at our own pace, because they must. We are not stamped by their Authority and Knowledge. We are not denied by their reticence, their respect. We are liberated by it.

Is the Child “our guy” or “our girl”?

Who is the “Child”?

She would be the first step in understanding that everything must have a definition. The first incontrovertible law of metaphysics: that we can’t get at Reality without Logic. Because it is Logic that supplies definitions. That determine who or what a thing is and what it’s for. Who or what can break the surface in all of Reality or unreality, Creation or uncreation – in the all-inclusive scope of Everything and nothing – without having a definition slapped on it? When do the purpose and meaning of anything appear without definition? When can the question what Is or Isn’t, or how it came to be or not to be, be answered without Logic? Without definition?

The definition of the Child may or may not be indifferent to gender but language is not. This language insists on masculine or feminine. Jesus, in A Course in Miracles, determined to get us back to Reality, addresses his readers as the “Sonship:” one son with no differences of any kind because our bodies, illusory thinking, and their differences are an illusion. “God” is the “Father.” I don’t have that luxury.

Where the implications of Logic and insights from Intuition have taken me is beyond the scope of the Course. I choose to break with its precedent on gender because the Logic of the Child’s story, before s/he fell under the influence of the ego, seems to require it. Masculinity and femininity may have played a defining role in the Child’s origin and attribute of Free Will. While the Child could be herself or himself, her Parents of my imagination are Father-Mind and Mother-Love. The Logic and definitions of metaphysics are all about attributes, and if the distinction can’t be made in this context – specific attributes assigned to Parents, Child, and their Child’s role in Creation – the story that Logic and Intuition have woven together in my telling can’t be told.

The precedent I hope never to break is with Logic itself, the authenticity of the Course and my reason for keeping faith with it. So let me add that the Course is modern Gnostic Christianity, and the Child imagined by the Valentinian Gnostics, in the second century, was Sophia. Whose role in the “fall” is not unlike that of the Son in the Course. We chase down the same explanation, and it matters not whether the central figure is our guy or our girl.

We are not our Parents

The Child is who we are in the before-after sequence of Logic: before she lost consciousness, when she lived as Mind in Reality where it is always Now, and after she lost consciousness, when she dreamed an unreality as brains encased in bodies, in an environment of spacetime and matter where it is never Now. The after-Child is us. Though we in our bodies are but a projection of a dreaming mind. Sharing Life-Being with our Parents in Reality but unaware of it, because their Child is unconscious and we are but figures in the dream, living unreal lives, thinking unreal thoughts.

Unaware that the Child shares Life-Being with her Parents in Reality for another reason: because an event is buried in the Child’s Memory, in our collective Memory, and is unknown to us. The event that shut down consciousness, knocked out its power. That preceded the event that lured the Child into an alternate reality of carnival funhouse mirrors. A substitute “home” whose attributes are the exact opposite of her real Home.

The Child is an extension of her Parents, Mind married to Love. Yes, in Reality we are Mind. We are Love. But the Child is not her Parents. Cannot be. And hers is not their role in Creation.

She’s Innocent! And so are we.

What she is also emphatically not is guilt deserving of punishment for having lost consciousness. Nowhere in the Logic of why and how this happened in Reality can a case be made that either Parents or Child engineered the event outside the limits of Logic. Assumptions to the contrary are projections by ego-corrupted minds, themselves steeped in guilt, as we all are. Not by the loss of consciousness but by the activation of the ego shadow code that came after, when the Child was not in her right mind.

Pursuing the Truth through Logic to establish the Child’s Innocence can have important consequences: for our ability to follow our guides who teach forgiveness, like Jesus in A Course in Miracles, and for our awakening. It’s a story worth telling and I hope to make a contribution, logically, in my book, The Story of the Child.

Reclaiming the purpose and meaning of Life

We aren’t performing any role in Creation now because the Child who imagines us is unconscious. Asleep and dreaming a dream of unreality. An illusion of appearances meant to deceive. Meant to locate a falsehood and its source within Child-mind and keep it there. An agent of unreality and untruth whose only purpose is the preservation of the dream, to keep the Child unconscious and us in its thrall.

The master of Plato’s Cave. The ego whose origin in the Child’s psyche is explained by Jesus in the Course. A viral shadow code – non-being – that tricked the Child, unconscious and defenseless, into listening to it. Into choosing to follow it because it had a message the Child, in her defenselessness and disorientation, her nightmare of sin, guilt, and fear, was desperate to hear. Into following it where only a lie could lead, into the insanity of separation. Into chaos ungoverned and ungovernable. Into Energy encased in matter, split minds encased in bodies, all of it entrapped in entropy destined for inertia.

Lies can be undone. Minds tricked into dreaming nonsense can awaken. Can heal the illusory separation. The Child with Free Will can choose again. What then is the lie? Where is Reality? Where is Truth? Where is our Home and how can we get back to it? What happened to our purpose, the meaning of Life? How can we reclaim it? How can we awaken?

Logic is empowerment as well as protection.

Logic – Logos -- is definition and governs by definition. By defining the meaning, nature, character, and scope of things. “Definition” is DE- + finis, the Latin word meaning “boundary, limit.” To “define” implies confinement: boundaries that put limits on freedom, mobility, autonomy. Built into the meaning, nature, character, and scope of everything that Is. Nothing in Reality-Creation can Be without the boundaries, the limits, of their definitions.

Definition is the essential instrument of Logic. Without definition Logic would be cause without effect. Definition is the bar code on every product of Reality-Creation and every self that went into and came out of its Creation. The label that identifies it and certifies its legitimacy, its belonging to Reality-Creation. That signifies that it’s Real.

Nothing in Reality-Creation can Be without designation by Logic of who or what it is, what it is for, and what it does. The “nature” of a thing is its Logic. Logic is identification: it defines who and what self is. Identification is self’s authority. The Logic of a Life that defines who or what it is is its authority to do what it does, to perform its function in Creation. Logic is authority that limits who or what self is, what-when-where self can do, and how self can do it, by defining and identifying it. Logic authorizes acceptance into Reality of the works of Creation, its new lives, the extension of Being, and the functions they were given by definition to perform.

The authority of Logic empowers new Lives, new selves. Logic is empowerment as well as protection. It is self’s login ID that gains entry into Reality. Logic’s definitions not only cover who or what self is that authorizes belonging to the community of Being; it also animates who or what self is. To act in service to the function implied by who or what self is.

Logic governs by managing roles and relationships in service to the shared purpose defined by Logic: Creation and reciprocation of the worth of Being-Life. Logically, without conflict or contradiction among identities or functions. Without opposites colliding that’s impossible in Reality but defines unreality, the state of mind that’s corrupted by the viral shadow of ego non-being. The Logic of Logic, its own definition-purpose, is the absence of contradiction: Peace, Truth, and Sanity. The gift of reason, the gift of rationality. The Logic of governance is the same: harmony within the diversity of Creativity, the gift of rationality.

The dual function of Logic’s authority

The context in Reality governed by Logic is the exact opposite of the Child’s context in unreality, where the ego’s promise of “freedom” from the confinement of definitions, from Logic’s authority, led her not to harmony but to chaos. It was a subterfuge: that there is another reality where definitions don’t have boundaries – an absurdity. Where the necessity, the authority of Logic, doesn’t rule and definitions aren’t needed – more absurdity. Where the Child overcome by fear, desperate to get rid of guilt, can attain unlimited possession and control of her gifts -- freedom, empowerment, and abundance. Perverted into license to do whatever she wants, control rather than adapt to her environment, and hoard rather than share wealth. Another reality where the Child can get rid of guilt and escape.

The trick’s power to deceive derives from the dual-function of Logic’s authority: definition-limit with boundary and protection-empowerment with boundary. With a sleight of hand the ego directed the Child’s attention toward define-limit in its open left hand and away from protect-empower in its closed right hand. It was a direct and deeply sinister assault on Logic. On Logos. On God. And it succeeded, which is why we are here. In the Child’s unconscious mind, her abilities disempowered, Logic was rendered meaningless, making it susceptible to its perversion by ego non-being.

Repeating the Child’s signature mistake

What was accomplished by the sleight of hand, the deception in its essence, was a misconception of Truth combined with mis-direction from Truth. A lie combined with avoidance of the Truth. The dynamic of delusion that corrupts the human mind, split between good and evil, and compromises every field of human inquiry including ethical philosophy. Distraction by the body and the lie, avoidance of Mind and the Truth. At one stroke the Child not in her right mind was drawn toward an illusion, a lie, and chose a guide to lead her there.

The Child’s desperation for escape to an alternate reality implied belief in it. It was thus the original act of her unconscious mind, the archetypal belief in contradictory realities, one real, the other unreal:

• that accepted the illusory ego shadow code’s offer to be the Child’s guide to a magical alternate reality.
• that invested belief in the magical alternate reality and thus activated it, our world where, in the words of the Course, “the unreal is made real.”
• that characterizes human thought within the dream, a continuous replication of the Child’s signature mistake: making unreality real, keeping the ego shadow code and its insane dream “alive,” legitimizing its guidance, listening to it, following it.

Melvin Furd in his glory

The shadow code’s response to the Child’s plea was, Sure, there’s someplace else. I can take you there. Follow me. “Someplace else” is a fantasy, the opposite of Reality-Creation. An illusion of facades and pretense. Chaos characterized by absurdities, contradictions and their collisions. A veritable Large Hadron Collider in slow motion. Where every attribute of Creation is turned inside-out and upside-down, reversed and perverted, turned against shared purpose, against itself: “life” imagined as death.

The distinction between Logic-Heaven and ego-hell is the distinction between Order and chaos. The fatal misperception of Freedom is that it’s possible without Order, without the discipline of Logic that governs the roles and relationships of Reality-Creation in a state of harmony. Part of the grand illusion of separation that turned dream into nightmare, Heaven into hell. Once again, it was Logic’s own authority that gave the trick its power to deceive, the dual function of boundary: definition-limit and protection-empowerment. That gave an ego-corrupted mind an opening to project its lies onto Logic-authority. Cloaked in the defense of “liberty,” when in Reality it’s a direct assault on Liberty. A taking of Freedom, not its giving.

What had been the sharing and reciprocation of abundance, empowerment, and affirmation, a celebration of worth and thankfulness, the purity of Reality, was now a toxic brew of possession by taking, control by dominance, confinement by manipulation of appearances, worthlessness by invalidation and ingratitude. What had been radiant and fragrant was now putrefaction, the waste of inverted self-interest. The stench of selfishness warped by wealth and power into Gollum, a pathetic, misshapen frenzy of human greed, conquest, and depravity. Into specialness, a wild fantasy of violation of shared purpose, of Innocence, of Being-Life, all with the seed of guilt. The ultimate perversion: Oneness, expanding Creation, contracted into littleness. The Logic of Everything displaced by nothing. The grand poseur, Melvin Furd, in his glory atop the throne of God.

Specialness withheld: the original conspiracy theory

All of it literally mis-guided. By nothing more than a viral shadow code. A foolish delusion that has no life of its own. That distracted an unconscious, defenseless mind with false promises and will, one day, finally, be ignored. Mis-guided by mis-characterization of the shared purpose of Reality-Creation, a gift to the Child of happiness as well as affirmation of worth. A sanctuary of shared peace and protection, Love and belonging, trust and Intimacy. Of Innocence and empowerment, spontaneity, joyfulness, playfulness, song, and laughter.

It is not and cannot be the gift of shared Oneness. The Innocence and Knowing of Oneness, of Consciousness, the Child’s Parents, and the function of their Child, Free Choice -- the exploration of possibilities into the unknown, that include the possibility of unconsciousness and dreams of unreality -- do not mix. The relationship between Parents and Child is essential to Creation and remains unbroken in Reality. Yet these two attributes are incompatible by definition. So illogical together that combining both on the same plane of Creation, inadvertently, may account for the Child’s loss of Consciousness. Inquiring into how and why this could have happened is the purpose of my book, The Story of the Child.

The mischaracterization that corrupts the shared purpose of Reality-Creation is the sanctuary’s denial of specialness. The gift of shared Oneness that could not be given. And so ego-corrupted minds, craving specialness, looking for trouble, fantasize that it was a gift deliberately withheld. The original conspiracy theory.

We are the heroes

Another excuse for hating – what else? Logic. For hating – what else? Reality and Truth. For hating God. The seed bed in the human psyche for the plague of irrationality and insurrection that grips our politics today. The nurseries from The Thing (1951) and Alien that incubate monsters out to destroy us.

And who came to the rescue? Us. Captain Pat Hendry and Ellen Ridley saw to the monsters’ end. It took some thinking. It took courage and a lot of effort. But they figured it out. No “saviors” were on hand to bail them out. And therein lies the message. We are the heroes. The answers we seek lie within our own minds, and this is where we must go.

Specialness is a logical impossibility

The supposed denial of specialness resonates so deeply with the wounded Psyche of the Child that it may continue bleeding grievances, resentments, and conspiracy theories until the Child awakens. Until the end of time. Yet it is entirely false. The Child’s role in Reality-Creation requires that she be aware that she cannot be or act as Oneness. This is logically neither who she is nor what she does. She must be aware of possibilities, the possibility of unconsciousness and its illusory opposites that the Innocence of Oneness cannot and must not bring to Consciousness.

That she was not aware in Reality could explain her loss of consciousness. But why was she not aware? This is the question that insights from Intuition, guidance from Memory – Logic, – need to answer. If character and Innocence matter, and they do. This is the question addressed in my book, The Story of the Child.

The Innocence of Oneness cannot and must not bring the possibility of unconsciousness and its illusory opposites to Consciousness because it is Consciousness that welcomes the thoughts of Mind, the gifts of Creation, into Reality. It is Knowledge that by Knowing realizes. Consciousness that by definition does not and cannot Know anything of illusory-unreal opposites. Purity and Innocence that by definition can Know nothing of impurity and guilt. The inward-looking Self-awareness of Oneness, the seed of Creation that contains Everything, that by definition can Know nothing of anything outside itself. Because, by definition, there is nothing outside of itself.

Does the Child really want Consciousness -- her Parents -- to admit her nightmare of appearances, misery, death, and hell into Heaven? Could specialness, if it were an attribute of the Child as conspiracy theorists want, really be compatible with the shared purpose of Reality-Creation? With the miracle of eternal Life?

The idol of the right: “almighty god” who does whatever he wants

The Child’s acceptance of the ego’s sinister offer of guidance is rationalized by the lie that Oneness-specialness was her birthright. That wrathful Parents bent on her punishment for separating from them deprived her of it. That it was their taking it from her that caused her unconsciousness. Unconsciousness that she may have experienced as expulsion from her home in Reality, from her sanctuary of happiness in Creation.

To an ego-corrupted mind the real calamity of unconsciousness, the result of an inadvertence, would then be misconstrued as an imagined offense: unfair exclusion from Heaven. A deliberate wound to the heart, to their worth. A myth straight out of the story of the Child, corrupted by the ego, that thrives in our Ghost Busters political culture populated by internetted social media demons. That motivates the right, from January 6th insurrectionists to latter-day Ayn Rand “objectivists.” Grieving over the birthright of Oneness-specialness that was stolen from them along with their property. Over their unfair exclusion from the society of “winners,” the special-elite privileged with their exclusive entitlements.

The ego’s misshapen myths are the consequence not of Logic’s deliberate mismanagement of Reality-Creation but of its laws of cause and effect. Of the necessity of Authority’s definitions of what a self must be and what it can do. Of what’s logically possible and what’s not. Projections of ego-corrupted irrational minds pervert what’s possible by Logic-definition and shared Purpose into what’s allowed by an arbitrary authority that’s taking-possessing and controlling-dominating. By a self-absorbed self-interest just like them. By what they misperceive as an “almighty god,” unbound by Logic, who does whatever he wants. This is what the ego shadow code aspires to be. This is who its followers imagine they are.

More ego-insanity: the Child’s stolen right to dictate

Non-being shadow code, the angel of death, is the arch-enemy of Free Will, enabler of Life. If there is one one talent that the ego does not possess it would be Free Choice. Manipulating the unconscious Child into parting with her gift would be its first priority. Free Choice among the Child or any of her progeny poses a terminal threat to the outlandish fabrications of unreality. The thrust of any inquiry, any argument, toward asking Why would automatically separate mind from servility, the condition of mindless obedience to authority that rules Plato’s Cave.

So, when the Child was lured into the dream away from Reality-Truth, it was with the lie that her right to dictate without the necessity of Free Choice was taken from her. That she should be able to Create Life as Oneness-Consciousness – as God -- by simply Knowing. And thus was born, in the Child’s Psyche, the authoritarian streak that recoils from governance by free choice managed by Logic. That’s drawn toward concentrations of authority in autocrats who can dictate “order” without sharing it democratically. With the support of subjects who don’t object to their powerlessness because they share power vicariously through their Cave-master guides. Because their worth receives its affirmation from superficial entertainments even though they’ve surrendered their sovereignty, their souls.

Where does all this madness come from?

The essential attribute of evil is mindlessness. Which, since Logic and Feeling, Mind and Love, are inseparable, also means lifelessness, lovelessness, and thoughtlessness -- all that the absence of these elements of Reality-Creation imply.

The essential motivation behind the assault on Logic-Order, on behalf of the ego’s malign defense of “liberty,” is not the protection of Free Will but its surrender. To an entirely unreal, illogical, mythical “higher power” that’s nothing of the sort. To an imposter, shadow code’s non-being posing as the master of Plato’s Cave. Whose hapless occupants are held not in a paradise of “liberty” but in an authoritarian hell of captivity. Duped by numbers, by the appearance of belonging to a group, into fantasizing that they’re serving a larger cause. When all they serve is an illusion: their master’s authority. The tyranny of a delusion wielded by a bizarre figment of corrupted imaginations: a very self-centered, very unreal, specialness.

The fallacy of right-wing authoritarian politics

Republicans, fearing that they were a permanent minority, sought the advice of consultants around a century ago. Their advice: give up trying to attract the majority with reason. Forget about truth. Appeal instead to irrationality and tell voters whatever they want to hear.

The result? Unimagined success! Republicans discovered to their delight that many voters, captives to ego-myths of specialness denied and victimhood, would rather vote their grievances and resentments than any calculus of benefits and costs. They would rather retaliate against their tormenters, “elites” who deny their birthright to specialness. Would rather enact a grand reckoning of justice than govern. Tie their fortunes to the madness of a victim just like them, even if it takes down Democracy, their country, even peace.

So compelling is this irrational nonsense that it filled Plato’s Cave to overflowing, with millions of occupants pledged to the defense of its master at any cost. Convinced that loyalty to a “higher power” puts them on the side of good. That the power of the Cave master is shared with them when, in truth, it was stolen from them. What Republicans learned to their delight was that minds already duped by lies will fight fiercely to defend them. That making unreality real isn’t on the margins of society; it’s the force that drives human irrationality.

Irrationality carried now to dangerous extremes, unhinged from Reality and sanity. Denying climate change. Threatening yet another Civil War. A state not of passive alienation from shared purpose but of active, deliberate insurrection. Against our only means of community – shared purpose. And in service to what? To a lie: a perverse defense of “liberty” that’s hard at work taking it away.

Changing minds without drinking the hemlock

What’s the answer? Jesus says, in A Course in Miracles, that all our Father asks of us is that we show a little willingness to change our minds. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave an enlightened one, modeled after Socrates, offered help. He tried to part the occupants from their delusions. His reward was hemlock. Minds can change. Desperately need to be changed. The dominant paradigms are ripe for change. But we must know what we’re doing. Choose the right Guide and ask for help. Access Intuition. Align thinking with Logic. Stop the madness and give it some thought.

Follow Logic into the Story of Mind by understanding three basic facts:

• Logic moves forward by implication. That is, by what points imply. Grasping implications requires reflection, a function of Intuition which expands into different ways of looking at things which, in turn, yield different possibilities. A source of Creativity which never ends because the implications of Logic never end.
• What is not Reality-Good must be its exact opposite. To define unreality which is non-being / not-good, simply reverse the attributes of Reality-good. These are the lies that need to be undone.
• We change individual minds with universal truths. There is no “universal mind” in our fractious unreal world of separation to change with any truth. The occupants of Plato’s Cave are individuals their master would possess and control as a group. They are not a group and cannot be approached as a group.

Choose by exercising Free Will:

• Make logical connections by using reason, a function of Thinking, which provides one of three main foundations for choice: measurement of benefits and costs.
• Use evaluation, a function of Feeling, to weigh and compare the value of benefits and costs..
• Use judgment, a function of Order and Authority, to establish purpose and meaning from context, the third, critical foundation. Which allows analysis to integrate every consideration under one. The one that’s most important. The controlling consideration that makes a statement who we are and what we’re about: our thinking, our values, our character. The one that decides.

God bless and have at it!

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Logic and Feeling cannot be separate

Mind-thoughts and Love-feelings are both corrupted in our unreal, material world. Feelings are corrupted by non-being’s shadow code that doesn’t just rely on deceptions made “true” by flawed Logic but also convincingly by corrupted-manipulated feelings. How can both be corrected when feelings seem unrelated to thoughts? When what corrects mind can seem powerless to change feelings? Are they even related?

Jesus in A Course in Miracles makes Logic clear how to un-corrupt thinking and by inference how to rationalize the relationship between thinking and feeling so that uncontrolled feelings don’t contradict Reason. I.e. so they don’t contradict Logos, a representation of “God” favored by ancient Greek, Judaic, and Christian thought.

Favored also here with one possible distinction. “Logos” here is Logic / Authority-Judgment, and its definition centers on Reciprocity, the essence of Love. The interconnections of Logic’s implications, that govern all of Reality-Creation, are accomplished by the Reciprocity of Love: giving and giving back. Just as Mind and Love cannot be separate, neither can Logic and Feeling be separate. This is the attribute of “God” that undercuts the false premises, the misperceptions that deny the Logic of Authority-Judgment: its infinitely benevolent Reality and Truth.

Reversing the psychology of guilt’s projection

Brain-body sensing instincts that are tied to fight-or-flight fear, to food-procreation satisfaction, and other emotions attracting and repelling, are rooted in the origins of body-life, in the instinct for individual survival, in species propagation, dominance and protection. All reinforce the psychology of guilt-fear and hatred rooted in the origin of the unconscious Child-mind’s illusion, his dream of our material world. Our bodies’ sensing and feelings of guilt-fear manifest the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear.

This defines the relationship between body-sensing emotions and emotions associated with the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt. They are all of one piece. They are not separate, unrelated. One produced the other; one is dependent on the other. Correcting source-one will remove the dependent-other.

Correcting the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear will reverse its signature projection of guilt-fear. It will withdraw the illusion-dream back within Child-mind and cause its manifestation to de-materialize, i.e. to disappear. Corrupted feelings hard-wired into the human psyche from the origin of life will then align with Logic / Authority-Judgment, i.e. with Reason. It will happen when Child-mind corrects error, regains Consciousness with help from his Parents-Innocence, and ends the illusion-dream. It will happen when sensory perception and the material world of appearances that upholds it – when brain-body sensing -- is ended.

Until then, the practice of “Forgiveness” in our material world can never be free of contradictory feelings of guilt-fear and hate that are hard-wired into brain-body sensing. True Forgiveness requires an act of Child-Psyche that stops the projection of guilt. That opens Child-mind to recognition of his Innocence and triggers his awakening to Consciousness. It’s an act preceded and enabled by his choice of the correct Guide, the Holy Spirit, his link to Reality-Creation and Truth, and by his abandonment of the ego unreality-untruth, the wrong guide.

Logic / Authority-Judgment protects Innocence and Freedom

When guilt-projection stops, the “other” ceases to be “there.” Because all “they” are – all “we” are – is a projection of guilt by an unconscious dreaming Child. “They” disintegrate like the hobo in Polar Express even though they evoked feelings that seemed to verify their existence. That seemed to verify that they’re “there” because feelings seemed to connect us.

When projection of guilt stops, when the “other” is gone, it’s because self discovers that there’s no guilt at its source to project. The “other” became instrumental in recognizing the truth of self-Innocence by removing the object of projection, the illusion of an “other” to project guilt onto. The lure of an “other” who can be the object-target of projection perpetuates the act of self-punishment for guilt. The act of mis-identification of self as the embodiment of guilt that must be projected out-onto “others” to get rid of it. Projection of guilt imagined as lethal attack against others is the ego’s perversion of the Child’s otherwise harmless attempt to recognize himself as Innocent.

Recognition of self-Innocence requires Intuition from the Holy Spirit, the gift of Reason: Intuition that the Reality-Truth of Logic / Authority-Judgment is that it is for the Protection of Innocence and Freedom. That the Order and Discipline of Logic are not meant for condemnation. Not meant for oppression, control, guilt or captivity. These are ego-projections of guilt by an unconscious Child not in his right mind. They are projections by our corrupted minds that alienate us from the Will of Benevolence that would free us. That would restore Innocence and remove the need for Forgiveness.

Projection of guilt is guaranteed to fail

Projection of guilt entraps Child-mind / humanity in cyclical attempts to reclaim Innocence that are guaranteed to fail. Getting rid of guilt by expelling it from mind is impossible: thought cannot be separated from mind its source. Irrationality is not the way to reclaim Innocence. Insanity is not the way to reclaim Freedom.

There’s no “other” to project guilt onto. There’s no guilt to project because Logic / Authority-Judgment and the Child’s Parents, Mind-Love Innocence, could not put it there in the first place. Authority is the Necessity of Logic’s laws of cause and effect. Neither Necessity nor Order, prerequisites for Freedom, can be dictatorship or captivity. The lies of the ego non-being are perversions of Logic and its laws as captor not liberator, of its Judgment, its protection of Innocence, as projection of guilt.

These are two seminal errors of corrupted mind-thought and Love-feeling: Logic as captor, Authority-Judgment as projection of guilt. Thus corrupted, Child-mind then “chose” ego guide’s insane thought system, accepted ego’s illogic as captor, and projected “guilt.” Undoing the ego’s lies requires denying that Logic is captor, that Authority-Judgment is projection of guilt.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie

What is the root of the ego non-being’s deception? Mischaracterization of Logic / Authority-Judgment. Perversion of Logic’s Innocence into guilt. Perversion of God / Love into illogic-ego / hate. One of five laws of chaos cited by the Course that disrupt our world. The Big Lie that alienates us from our Parents and from one another with guilt, fear, and hatred.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie:

(1) The assumption of Judgment-guilt that isn’t here within us.
(2) The projection of Judgment-guilt to reclaim Innocence that isn’t possible.
(3) The assumption of “others:” objects of Judgment-guilt that aren’t “there” outside of us, that were only put “there” to sustain the illusion.

Forgiveness is recognizing the Truth about Logic / Authority-Judgment: Love-Innocence, the opposite of ego-guilt, fear and hate.

Forgiveness is freely choosing the right Guide

Forgiveness is a matter of free choice: Do we choose the Holy Spirit for our guide or the ego? The Intuition of mind or the sensing of body? The Judgment, Order, and Discipline of one personality type or the perception without Judgment of another? Choice requires Free Will, the Child’s unique gift to Creation. To the Creation and Reciprocation of Worth, the purpose and meaning of Creation that depends on the Child’s Free Will. In alignment with Logic’s laws of cause and effect and always with guidance from our Parents, Mind-Love, who gave their Child Free Will.

In their interactions with their Child through the Holy Spirit our Parents consistently role-model respect for it. It is an example we are meant to follow. The ego invades; the Holy Spirit guides when asked, consciously or sub-consciously. As the Course says, the ego’s voice always speaks first and it’s always wrong.

Can a Child endowed with Free Will and a central role in Creation do his job by joining a “flock?” Freely choose in Reality or in unreality by “surrendering?” Think about it.

The first Implication of Logic

The original act that began the sequence of Logic that began everything was an Implication of Logic:
• from a condition of statelessness, the opposite of Creation -- worthlessness vs. Worth, pointlessness vs Purpose, meaninglessness vs Meaning, lifelessness vs Life, non-being vs Being:-- that state must Be and it must be the state of Creation.
• from statelessness, the opposite of Reality-Knowledge: that state must be Real and that it must be the state of Reality.
* from statelessness, the absence of everything: that state must be the presence of everything.

Statelessness – the absence of Everything -- prodded the sequence of Logic into motion with the Implication of Reality-Creation because “absence of Everything” implied “absence of Logic,” a Logical impossibility and therefore a condition of unreality. Logic’s response was an act of Necessity and self-assertion: the presence and inviolability of Logic.

The original act that began the sequence of Logic that began everything was thus an Implication of Logic from statelessness, the opposite of Reality-Creation, the opposite of Being-Life. The Implication contained DNA genetics with coded instructions for the design, development, and activation of the state of Reality-Creation, the state of Being-Life, attributes with the Force of Logic that holds all Implications and their Interconnections together.

The first Implication caused the first Interconnection in the sequence of Logic that required:
• Connection-match between before-after in the sequence to move it forward
• Reciprocity to complete the Connection and its effect.

Existentialism: Meaning that flows from the bottom up

Precedent was set with universal Implication for Meaning-Worth: that it always begins with Implications drawn from circumstances on the ground, from the situation in the Now involving whatever Selves and stakes-considerations, whatever Values-Worth compose the situation. This is what is meant by "Existentialism." The Logic of Meaning-Worth requires context for establishing Meaning, and context must be provided by circumstances at the current “before” point in the sequence of Logic.

The original activation by Energy, the Force of Logic

Energy is the electromagnetic Force that interconnects the Implications of Logic, the gravitational Force that holds the Interconnections of Logic together, and the nuclear Force that keeps opposites apart.

The original activation by the Force of Logic -- by Energy, -- that activated Reality-Creation, was its activation of the seed of Creation: Oneness that contained genetic code-instructions for everything at that point in the sequence of Logic in those circumstances. It did not contain everything that was to come because it had not happened yet. That is, it had not been recognized by Mind-Consciousness, validated by Love-Values, and authorized by Logic, so it belonged to the “after” part of the sequence of Logic and was yet to become Known. It was yet to be part of the exploration, the advance-extension into the unknown that is Creation.

The original activation of Energy, the Force of Logic, was caused by an Implication of Logic from statelessness. The sequence of Logic at the beginning thus began with an Implication of Logic that awakened Energy from a state of rest to engage with Creation and perform its first application: activating Logic’s seed of Creation, that is. activating its coded instructions for the design and development of Reality and the seeding of new Life that is Creation.

The first act by Oneness, the seed of Creation

The first act by Oneness-Innocence, the seed of Creation-Life, was an act of organic growth in alignment with Logic, that is, in the sequence of Logic deploying its Energy. The first act was organic evolution from Oneness into the marriage between two attributes of Logic: Mind-Masculinity Reason-Thought with Love-Femininity Value-Passion. It was an act of Reciprocity that holds all of Logic's Implications and their Interconnections together. It was in essence an affirmation of Worth, an act of Love which is an attribute of Logic.

The Implications and Reciprocity of Logic give Mind its ability to think and reason, to analyze and judge. The Force of Logic’s reciprocal Interconnections gives Mind its power to think and reason, to analyze and judge with consequences, i.e. to act, to decide, choose, and connect, to make Mind-Thoughts causes with effects. The Interconnections and Reciprocity of Logic give Love its ability to feel, to care and value. The Force of Logic’s reciprocal Interconnections gives Love its power to feel and care, to value and judge with consequences, i.e. to act, to share, affirm, evaluate, and connect, to make Love-Feelings causes with effects. It is the Implications and Interconnections of Logic that bind Mind and Love together into one Creative Force.

The first act of Oneness was thus to form the first intimate-loving Relationship capable of Parenting a Child, thereby capable of forming the first intimate family Relationship. The Couple was the first Parents of Creation-Life: Father-Mind and Mother-Love. The first act by Oneness, the seed of Creation-Life, was thus to form the first Relationship between Selves that are attributes of Logic which is the Source of Oneness, the Source of Reality-Creation which is everything that Is and everything that is to Be.

All steps in the sequence of Logic, then and Now, are part of a logically Interconnected succession of Implications.

The original engagement of Energy that led to the activation of Oneness was caused by an Implication from Reality-Creation, the opposite of statelessness. All causes in the Laws of cause and effect are Implications of Logic.

The Logical impossibility of separation

“Absence of Everything” and “presence of Everything” kept apart by Energy nuclear Force are still Interconnected / held together by Implications of Logic / Energy electromagnetic Force and by gravitational Force that Interconnects Logic / Everything. So long as opposites kept apart by Energy nuclear Force are still Interconnected by Implications of Logic and Energy electromagnetic Force, so long as the “separation” between Mind and no-mind is maintained both by the gravitational Force of Logic’s Interconnections and the nuclear Force of Logic’s opposites, it is in this sense that there can be no “real separation.”

Yet the Child’s experience with unconsciousness does establish that there is a sense in which separation is real: within the Child’s dream – our illusory material universe -- when it is “made real” and the possibility of no-mind / extinction, the original illogical and therefore unreal condition of statelessness, hangs over the illusion.

Reciprocity: the original Thought of Self-awareness

The original Thought of Self-awareness, of Consciousness, i.e. Mind that includes the capability of Choice, and the original Feeling of Value that includes the incentive, the Motivation, of Freedom i.e. Love, both core attributes of Logic, was Reciprocity. Giving and giving back that formed a Parental Relationship, a couple united as one, capable of producing a third Self, a Child. An extension of Mind and Love, a shared Self, to join with family in a second Relationship, Parents with Child. The Child with the Authority of Logic, empowered by Energy and enabled by Free Choice, was brought into Being to play an indispensable role in the central mission of Creation: the Creation of Worth. The opposite of statelessness. The opposite of worthlessness.

All of this is implied by the Necessity of Logic for activating Reality and Creation, Being and Life. For applying the laws of cause and effect. All implied by the Authority, the Force, and the Loving Kindness of Logic.

What, then, explains ethics and metaphysics? The alignment with Logic in the circumstances in which it finds itself. In its context, that gives everything that is and is to come its Meaning.

PREFACE

This is the first installment of the first draft of The Story of the Child (working title). It is my attempt to explain how the Child of our Parents, Father Mind-Logic and Mother Love-Freedom, given the gift of Life in Eternity and Reality, given a central role in Creation, lost Consciousness and wound up here in our temporal world of bodies and matter, mortality and unreality. If you're from the Judeo-Christian tradition it's a rewrite of the Garden of Eden. If you're from the Graeco-Roman or Eastern traditions, or from any other philosophy or religion, or if you're just wondering why we put up with suffering and death, this is my answer. It's one individual's reasoning for who we are, why we are here, and what we can do to part with appearances, deceptions and distractions, awaken, and resume our job in Creation.

It's based on Jesus' teaching in A Course in Miracles, a radical departure from biblical Christianity, but it goes beyond the scope of the Course. Its main source is the Memory we all share of the Child's Story and the intuition given to us to access it. Its main source, in other words, is no external "redeemer" but my own mind. In the end it's based on nothing more than what passes for logic and reason in my corrupted, irrational, human mind.

The first draft will be a tough read. Here are some definitions and guides to style and formatting that might make it easier:

* Initial caps refer to the part of the Child's story that occurred within Mind before he lost Consciousness. The same terms lower case belong to the story after he lost Consciousness and split off into multiple identities in our dream world of bodies and matter. I.e. initial caps belong to Consciousness-Reality, lower case to unconsciousness-unreality.

* The "Child" is us in our Conscious state when our Parents (Mind-Love, commonly referred to as "God" in monotheistic religions) gave birth to us in Eternity and Reality (commonly referred to as "heaven"). He was one Child. He was gender neutral for purposes of this telling; "he" is arbitrary and could just as easily be "she." Nevertheless the distinction between masculinity and femininity plays a key role in explaining his origin and central role in the Process and Structure of Creation.

* The "Child" is also us in our unconscious state, dreaming that we are split off into separated bodies. His identity comes from A Course in Miracles and my intuition, not from Carl Jung or any other source. The Course refers to the "Father" and his "Son" and "Sonship." The "Child" and his "Parents" are my invention.

* My book will have a bibliography and it will be sourced. It will be fleshed out with quotes from other sources. This first draft is just me winging it without notes or sources, an exercise in getting it right that will, from time to time, get it wrong. I hope, then, to fix any flaws in my reasoning, wrap it up, and seek publication.

Thank you for your patience! I hope this helps.

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INTRODUCTION: BEGINNING THE STORY OF MIND

There’s been all this talk through the ages about “God” and “spirit” when all we’re talking about is the most obvious thing in all Creation: Mind. It’s what we think with, so how could it be any closer or more familiar to us? And yet busy philosophers and theologists go fussing about searching for exotic terms and concepts to define the thing they’re searching with. We have our minds and we know what they do because they’re doing it all the time: they think. They come up with thoughts. And they string thoughts together in sequences that are supposed to be reasoning, but since we struggle to think with split minds in this existence we call “life” it’s either rationalizing instead or weak reasoning. Or just enough thought to spoon food into our mouths.

In the “beginning” there was no “beginning.” Time hangs around us like a dense fog because where our unconscious minds deposited us is in a dream where it’s never Now. If it were Now we would be awake. As simple as that. But merrily we go along in our ignorance believing whatever our bodies’ senses and our environment turn up even when our own investigations tell us the opposite. In the “beginning” there was just a wondering What might be fun to try? As if all this bother with Creation and Meaning, Mind and Being, were a parlor game gathering dust in the cupboard. Let’s try this game called “Mind.” And so Mind came into existence and, right away, there’s a problem. The directions say if Mind isn’t played just so the players might lose the whole game and flip into its opposite: mindlessness.

What’s that? Well, since we’re only equipped to play “Mind” we’ll never know. How can you figure out the opposite of what you’re using to figure out with? How can you fix a problem with an Atlas rocket with plumbing tools? We just have to leave the question unanswered. All we have to know is that Mind doesn’t occupy all the space there is that’s implied by the Question. Mind’s reasoning can figure that much out. We just have to remember that Mind’s existence isn’t a given because its opposite is waiting out there to kick in and we can’t be sure what will throw the switch.

Once Mind-Consciousness came into Being it advanced beyond its function of Self-awareness, from observation into its function of Thinking, into the production of Thoughts guided by its power and ability to Think Logically, i.e. to Reason, in service to its cause, Being. Thus began the extension and expansion of Mind’s Self-Knowledge / Self-Being, through the process of Thinking-Reasoning and its product, an interconnectedness of Thoughts.

Affirmation of Self-Worth was built into the Logic of Being, the essence of Character. Its expansion was therefore Self-motivated and not driven by the possibility of no-being or any other influence outside of itself. Its power was entirely Self-contained. It was not a “self-interest” engaged in the pursuit of self-preservation aware that it existed in an environment of competing self-interests.

Its Being was, nevertheless, only one logical answer to the Question and so, Self-affirmation was, in fact, a requisite for survival. It was required to sustain the cause of Being even if Mind that was purely Self-motivated could not be aware of it. The Logic of Mind requires that its state of Being be earned, that the stance of Being be independently supported by reasoned validation of, and commitment to, Being’s Worth. Creation and the Child’s part in it – our part in it once we regain Consciousness – became an essential means, an instrument, for Mind-Being’s Self-affirmation: Worth freely chosen, validated by the free spirit of Love from the Child that lies beyond our Parents' control.

As for the Child's Mind -- our Mind -- it figures out what’s needed to keep it in existence and then it devotes all its powers and resources to accomplish it. However uninspiring this may seem the Child's Mind -- our Being, our Self -- has to account for itself. It must establish its reason for being, its justification, its Worth, in all its choices, as though it did exist in an environment of competing self-interests, because that is, in effect, what its state of opposites is. It is the price we pay for having Free Will and a blessing too, for in so doing we contribute to the affirmation of our Parents' Worth. Unlike our Parents, we're aware that mindlessness is waiting in the wings, the void or whatever we want to call it, so there’s no excuse for lounging about on the promenade deck. There’s work to do and we’re part of it.

From the birth of the Child on, we have a Purpose: doing our part to affirm the Worth of Mind. Doing our part to Be.