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Where the Action is

“Sanctuary” for the Child’s role in Creation, within the protection of Logic in the Here and Now of Reality, equates with the depth of felt experience defined as “Romance” and “Meaning.” Why? Because it’s where Creation happens: thoughts-feelings and choices with Real consequences that define Romance and Meaning.

In the ego’s made-up world of spacetime and matter there is no Sanctuary. There is no real experience of Romance and Meaning, only unsatisfying temporary substitutes contrived by a corrupted mind’s imagination. Because unreality can only be where nothing happens.

Attachments from the “past” are forever

Imagination’s attachment to the “past” is recognition that time is illusion. That the Reality of people, places, and events that formed attachments wasn’t dependent on bodies-matter. It was a function of Mind which doesn’t need bodies. Attachment beyond the present into the unlimited past is being there for whoever and whatever were objects of affection. For those who were and continue to be loved. Communicating with those welcomed into Memory recognizes that the connection can’t be broken by anything to do with the dream. It can’t be broken by the lie of “death” and time.

Remembering and communicating with those we loved in the “past” isn’t making unreality real. It’s denying the denial. It’s assuring subjects loved that Love is eternal, unaffected by time. That they haven’t been abandoned. Jesus concludes the Text in A Course in Miracles with a promise: “I love you. I will always love you. I will never leave you comfortless.” It means we can’t be abandoned-separated. It means his promise not to abandon-separate us can’t be broken by time.

Where the Action isn’t

Romance and Meaning are inherent in timelessness, in the Here and Now. What breaks up Romance and Meaning in this life is the absence of Now plus the separation of past and future from “present” which is not Now. The ego’s illusory made-up world is one-dimensional. To substitute for the absence of the three-dimensional Romance and Meaning of Reality the Child’s ego-corrupted mind orchestrates contrived “events:” “action” involving bodies-matter, competition and conflict, that distract sensory perception with meaningless movement and noise, pleasure and pain.

Real vertical timelessness incorporates past and future into Now which accounts for the three-dimensional depth, the Romance and Meaning of Reality. Unreal horizontal time flatlines past, present, and future into a separated sequence. This accounts for the absence of depth, the absence of Romance and Meaning, in the ego’s unreal material world. If this “life” feels flat and in dire need of depth, that’s because it is flat.

Vodka Martini, “shaken not stirred”

Alcohol temporarily aligns past and future with the present in a vertical configuration, causing the illusion of experiencing all three in the moment -- the illusion of depth, This brain-altering effect accounts for alcohol’s appeal. Being cut off from three-dimensional Reality starves human lives of a basic need: the need for Romance and Meaning. It accounts for the universal appeal of entertainments, storytelling, and mythmaking. For addiction to brain-altering substances that mimic the intensity of beliefs, the passions that stimulate imaginary experiences beyond the limits of the ego’s artificial “reality.”

All driven by craving for Romance and Meaning. All rooted in the same condition: the absence of Romance and Meaning in the one-dimensional everyday unreality of time. By the absence of Creation’s Sanctuary, the Child’s Home – our Home -- in Reality.

What is implied by the Story of Mind is that it is the Story of Logic. Everything that flows from Mind in the “beginning” either extends Consciousness in an unbroken network of logical connections or it becomes a perversion of logic when the Child’s mind becomes unconscious. We deal either with Logic or its logical opposite, but one way or the other we are dealing with the essential attribute of Mind which is Logic. It is the source of “necessity,” the notion favored by philosophers who also speak of the “nature” of things, the “laws” of cause and effect. It’s all about Logic.

To violate Logic is to violate Mind itself, because Mind can’t be what it is not. If you are born within Mind as the Child was and you violate Logic there’s only one possible outcome. You can’t not Be, because you are part of Being itself. But you can lose Consciousness. It may be tough on you, but if there isn’t a breaker to trip from Consciousness into unconsciousness think of what happens to Mind. Mind can’t hold contradictory illogical thoughts and still be what it is, Logic.

This just to emphasize, before we get out ahead of ourselves, that Mind and Logic are joined at the hip. Logic is what Mind does but it is also what Mind is. Which means that everything is governed by Logic. Everything has attributes and these are defined by Logic. Even unconsciousness. Reality and unreality both. Even Feeling -- Mother Love, the Free Spirit who can’t be captured by anything, even by definitions, yet she is contained within Oneness, the Seed of Creation, and accepts the Logic of Purpose, the birth of hers and Father Mind’s Child and their Child’s part in Creation. This attempt to explain the Child’s loss of Consciousness stands or falls on Logic, because there can be no other basis for it, neither blind faith nor experience.

“Mother Love” / “Father Mind.” How did gender get into it? Must their Child be referred to as “he?” There is no word in the English language that’s gender neutral that also captures the reality and force of Self – the Who instead of the What. “It” does not suffice and I usually prefer not to resort to “their.” My choice of the feminine for Mother Love and masculine for Father Mind follows our cultural norms but is otherwise entirely arbitrary and free of bias. As is my choice of the masculine for the Child which could be either, though it will be seen that the Child’s masculine or feminine attributes do play a part in his/her story and are not incidental.

Imagine that you get to decide whether anything shall Be. You’re a nice person so you don’t want a black hole of death and nothingness to have your name on it. You want something nice, so you say let there be Life. And presto, there it is: Life! You’ve begun the process with your mind which makes choices based on thoughts-reasons and feeling. With Logic. With definitions and attributes. And the Logic of your choice is a Self endowed with its definition and attributes: Life.

If that were all there is to it we would all have eternal life and it would be nonstop fun, joyfulness, and laughter. But that’s not all there is to it. “Life” wasn’t a given with no opposite. It was a choice, and just because you chose it doesn’t mean that Life doesn’t imply the potential existence of its opposite, death, or the opposite of Being which is nothingness. The Logic of “Life” includes the possibility of its opposite. The definition of Life can’t be detached from the definition of what it is not. One implies the existence -- the definition, the Logic -- of the other. So, in choosing Life you have set in motion a scenario – a logical sequence of events -- that must include the possibility of opposites. And as we will find, the Logic of opposites and their attributes can make their presence felt in the mind of an unconscious Child.

The Logic of Mind implies the possibility of the thought of its opposite: mindlessness. But because its true opposite, as opposed to the derivatives non-mind or non-being, is entirely separate and mindless, Mind has no Knowledge of it. Mind that is Consciousness by definition can have no Knowledge of the possibility of its own unconsciousness. This is because by definition it can’t be unconscious. This is an attribute of Mind-Consciousness that will be decisive in the Child’s loss of Consciousness, so we need to remember it.

Popular culture and mythology, religion and philosophy, all condition us to think of “God” as “all-powerful” and “all-knowing.” One among many definitions of Mind is “Knowledge.” Yet the Logic of Mind, as we will see, implies that there is much that Mind does not know. All that is Real is what Mind Knows, and it is Mind that Creates Reality. It cannot know what it is not, for to do so would make its opposite Real. It cannot Know the unknown into which Creation, by definition, ventures. The effects of causes cannot be brought to Consciousness, cannot be made Real, without following in logical sequence, where there is a before and after. Mind-Consciousness does not Know effects of causes, does not bring them to Reality, until it recognizes them. To recognize a violation of Logic in cause and effect, to bring it to Consciousness, would violate the Logic of Mind and throw it into unconsciousness – an impossibility. As we will see, it was to prevent a violation of Logic of the Child’s Conscious Mind that his Mind lost Consciousness.

The Logic of timelessness does not imply that everything that is and is to be is already Known. Consciousness that does the Knowing and therefore the Creating -- the Child in Relationship with his Parents – is timeless and eternal. Yet it proceeds with Creation in logical sequence into the unknown; is therefore constantly extending and expanding itself; engaged in change; and it is the glory and wonder of Creation, of Life, that in its presence it is eternally yet to come.