Recognizing and Remembering

All your difficulties stem from the fact that you do not recognize yourself, your brother or God.  To recognize means to "know again," implying that you knew before.
ACIM. Chapter 3: III:1:1-2


I want to clear up some confusion when I speak of  "remembering who I really am and from Whom I came."  I know I say that often and I understand it may be confusing and unsettling to those that hear it. You may question if I am "completely off my rocker" or  suffering some late stage dementia symptoms.  In a sense I am. And so are you.

Say what crazy lady?

Dementia?

 Well...I suffer and am attempting to recover from a different type of dementia that inflicts so many of us once ego steps in to our lives to make its noise.  Once that happens we may not hear the voice of truth that lay beneath it. We may be confused by the chaos. We may begin to believe what ego tells us and think we are something we are not, that the people around us are strangers and we may  wander  farther and farther away from home. We may not recognize the familiar, all we knew before even when it is where it has always been. We will, then, have dementia of the spiritual kind.

Not being able to recognize the world around us causes a great deal of fear, does it not?  Most of us do not see what is real.

I worked with patients who had Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia and though they were sometimes comfortable in their distorted realities...there were many more times when they were terrified. It was heartbreaking to watch them  desperately fight to get through the security doors so they could "go home," to what they knew before.

We all do as they do, on some subconscious level. We struggle to find the familiar, to go home to where we belong. This world of chaos we create in our minds is not where we belong.

Healing

Healing is simply remembering who we are and from Whom we came. "When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the  laws of the ego."  ACIM Chapter 7: 2:6

I want to know the laws of God  again.  I am at the point in my life where I realize that I do not recognize and remember the way I should. I am banging on those doors looking for my way out of this world I created in my head. Something tells me over the ego noise that home is not all that is around me...it is in me.  The doors I want to open, where I know the truth exists, lead inward.  I want to go there.  I want to understand.

If I  looked in the mirror and suddenly heard myself saying, "Oh!  There you are!"...and seen in those eyes staring back at me, the One who created me and Who has never left me...I would "Know again" that which I always knew. All my difficulties would disappear, would they not? I would once again know Love.  And in Love there can be no fear and without fear, there is no suffering.  

Home is the end of fear.  Home is the end of our difficulties.  No wonder why we desperately want to go home even if we are not fully aware of that longing. We want to "know again," what we knew before. Remembering is healing.

So What did we know before?

Hmmm! I don't know. 

I cannot give you a wordy explanation that will answer all that.  I am not sure anyone can.   Even if I did know, I don't think I could put it into words, like so many of us feel we need to do with explanations of heaven and hell, other lifetimes, other dimensions, or other planetary degrees.

 I cannot describe it or give directions because I do not know exactly where we came from. I don't know. I know what I was taught and conditioned to believe but I don't know on the conscious level!

 I  think what we knew/what we know...whatever that may be...  is beyond word constructs and thoughts???  It is beyond the way we understand things in this form.  I believe it can only be known and expressed through feeling, vibration and pure consciousness.   I believe with all my heart... for reasons I cannot even explain...that what we knew/what we know...in ourselves, our brothers and this One source of all Creation that I call God...is Love...pure , uncontaminated, unconditional  Love.  That is all I got for you.

When I say I am remembering...I am simply tapping into that Love somehow...getting glimpses of it from time to time...and they are only glimpses. I will hear something.  I will read something.  I will see something and experience something and it is like remembering the face of a loved one in the midst of a demented fugue.  It clicks!  It resonates.  It feels so good and I find myself saying, "Oh!  Yeah!  That's it!"

I also  believe whatever it is we knew/know...is right now and right here. ...where it always was and where it will always be. We just need to recognize it and remember. Something tells me in a very strong and compelling way, that we do not need to die to do that.  We just need to slow down, breathe and go inward for just a few minutes  a day.  We need to seek that face in the proverbial mirror of our soul.

Well I have a sense I didn't make that any clearer for anyone lol.

A Course in Miracles

For those who want to know more about remembering this Love, I would recommend A Course in Miracles.  It uses a Christian basis to make sense of our remembering who we are and from Whom we came but it is definitely not the fundamentals of heaven and hell Christianity  I was brought up on.   The teachings  resonated with me as they may or may not with you. 

If the course is too daunting for you, try reading Marianne Williamson's Return to Love which is a lovely and gentle introduction to the teachings.

I guess...what I have come to see over the course of my searching is that it is okay to go beyond what we were brought up to believe in search for what we do believe...to what we knew before.

All is well.

References.

ACIM ( 2007).  A Course in Miracles: Combined  Volume. Mill Valley; Foundations for Inner Peace.

Williamson, Marianne ( 1992) Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.  New York: Harper Collins