The second grand illusion of man
“And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.” (CWG, Book 1, p21)
How can I truly love someone if the outcome of that relationship is doubt? How can this produce a truly loving relationship, and not instead a “Sponsoring Thought” of fear? Yet my teachers have taught me just this: that only certain people will “get to heaven” and all the others will “go to hell.” The outcome is in doubt! How can this produce any sort of love and not fear? Can God be depended upon? Can I really trust the outcome? And so in pledging my greatest love I greet my greatest fear! Does God really love me? Does God really accept me?
“You have projected the role of “parent” onto God, and have come up with a God Who judges and rewards and punishes, based on how good He feels about what you’ve been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with Who I Am. Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. Its Sponsoring Thought is wrong, but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though this new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to be feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.” (CWG, Book 1, p24)
As I read and re-read and re-read that last paragraph, love swells up inside me and everything within me shouts out for joy that it is true!
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Jon's New Age Wanderings 
Hi Jon,
I’m not sure it follows that because the outcome of a relationship is in doubt, it is impossible to love. People fall in love all the time, or love friends and family. Realistically, it’s impossible to know for certain how any relationship will work out. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow or so might someone you love. That is a fearful thought, but it doesn’t stop you loving anyone.
If you’re just talking about a relationship with “god” though, I agree that a loving relationship cannot be based on fear. Love is about seeing someone as an equal, sharing your thoughts and experiences, trusting them, having confidence in them, knowing that they would rather anything than to cause you harm.
This is simply not the relationship many people believe they have with their “god”. The relationship between popular gods and humans in religion is like a master and a pet. God cares for us and punishes us if we poo on the kitchen floor, strokes us occasionally but still sees us as inferior. And people love getting stroked by their god, barking, rolling over, looking up longingly, but never truly sharing the proper love that two humans can have.
Those of us who ‘fall in love’ fall in love with how another makes us feel. We do not really love them, only the feelings they inspire within us. For if and when they do not inspire these feeliongs, we fall ‘out of love’ with them just as quickly as we fell in.
What most of us have been taught is Love, isn’t. It’s actually ‘A LACK OF IT’, called ‘need’.
Most of the time when we hear, ‘I love you’, “I need you’ is what is really being said.
I mention Universal Law. The Law of Cause and Effect. Being Loved is an effect of actually being Lovable. Being Adored, an effect of Being Adorable.
And it’s this actual substance of character, that the ‘god’ we were all taught about, is noticably missing.
We fill our cups, then allow those cups to overflow. We extend what we have, rather then seek to try to get.
Genuine Love, Real Love, extends itself for the sheer Joy of the extension. NO conditions. It’s only a whore that has to be compenstated for their affection..
evanescent,
Thanks for taking up my challenge! The reason I wanted you to read this post was to see (in the second quote) that there are some very different models out there of God and man that are very different from the tradiotional christian model. If it is true, then there is no judgement, no hell, no punishment. The mythology of the bible is so hopelessly out-moded and out of date that it is amazing anyone keeps reading it at all. Humanity has moved on to a new level of understanding and God is revealing him/herself in whole new ways that are grander and wider and render the bible obselete.
I disagree the “master and pet” statement concerning me and my God. My experience is more one of parent and child.
Doug,
I agree the “master and pet” analogy is extreme! The problem however with the “parent and child” metaphor is that it is also deeply flawed. Parents have loved us conditionally. They have acted unjustly. They have incorrectly judged us, unfairly punished us, and got it wrong in all sorts of ways, even though they were just doing their best with what they knew at the time. While that describes most parents, it in no way at all describes God, or how we relate to Him/Her. That is the whole thrust of the quote above!
Jon
PS: Thanks for posting! I promise I won’t bark at you again!
The difficultly with the ‘parent and child’ model, is an avoidance of personal responsibility and accountibility for decisions and choices. I blocks any intimate understanding of the Law of Cause and Effect. This is an authority issue. Sovereignty is a choice.