Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 21: Seeing Reality
6. The Two Temples
The Meaning of any Child of the Divine is solely in their Relationship with their Creator. If It were elsewhere, It would rest upon contingency. But there is nothing else. And this Relationship is wholly loving, and forever.
Yet have the separated ones woven a hallucination of a broken relationship between themselves and their Creator. Their real Relationship is one of perfect Union and unbroken Continuity. The one they made in the madness of a dream is self-centered, shattered into fragments, and full of fear. The one created by their Creator is wholly Self-Encompassing and Self-Extending. The one they made is entirely self-limiting and therefore self-destructive.
Nothing can show the contrast between these two relationships better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on Love, and rests on It serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body is a focus is based on idolatry, not on Love. Love wills to be known, understood completely, and shared. It has no secrets, nothing that It would keep apart and hidden. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome, and with sincerity so simple and so obvious that it cannot be misunderstood.
Idols do not share because they have no true being, being mis-projections of wounded minds. Idols receive but never truly return. They can be adored or worshipped, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and so any relationship that offers to them loses its meaning. The adoration of them makes love meaningless. Idols live in secrecy, blocking the sunlight, and snug in the body’s apparent darkness, where they can be hidden and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no real relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not perceive.
Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are attempted to be kept obscure and hidden from the Light. It does not seek for control, but for true Relationship.
The body is the ego’s chosen weapon for seeking control through relationships. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they are the ego does not even perceive. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that the rest could offer is perceived as valueless. Itself without a true Home, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.
The Holy Spirit’s Temple is a Relationship, not a body.
The body as used by the ego is an isolated speck of darkness, a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship attempts to escape Reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its sisters and brothers, holding them bound in its worship of itself. Here is the ego “safe,” for here it believes that Love cannot enter.
The Holy Spirit does not build Its Temple in an illusion, where Love can never be. Would That which always sees the Face of Divine Essence choose as Its Home the only place in all the Universe where This cannot be seen?
Because it is temporal and finite, the body is an illusion and cannot be made into the Holy Spirit’s Temple, and it will never be the Seat of Love. Unless it is used solely for the Holy Spirit’s Purpose, the body becomes the home of the self-worshipper, and thus of Love’s condemnation. For here is Love made fearful, and Hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no real relationships and no return from delusion. Here is the “mystery” of separation perceived in “awe” and held in reverence. What the Divine wills not is here kept “safe” from It. What you have not yet realized is that what you fear within your sisters and brothers – their reality – and choose not to perceive in them, is also what makes the Divine seem fearful and kept unknown to you.
Devotees of idols will always be afraid of Love. For nothing so severely threatens them as Love’s Approach. Let Love draw near them and see beyond the body, as It will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Sisters and brothers, if you tremble with them, what you fear is merely the herald of your escape from illusions. This place of darkness is not your Home. Your true Temple is not threatened. You are devotees of idols no longer.
The Holy Spirit’s Purpose is safe in your holy relationship, and not your bodies. The ego’s purpose for the body you have escaped. Where you are now fear cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set Its Temple there.
There are no levels or orders of real relationships. They either are, or are not. An unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation that seems to be what it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your Relationship with the Divine broken seemed to be possible, all relationships were made meaningless to the split mind that embraced the idea. In fact, embracing this mad idea as if it could be real is what split the mind. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the illusion of reality. And so the idea seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time, and then vanished in “death.” For what could house this mad idea against Reality except for an instant?
The body was made as the ego’s idol, the belief in separation and sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produced what seemed to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given only an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to those who worship the body to be life: an instant of despair, a tiny island of sand, bereft of pure water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Child of the Divine stop briefly by, to offer Its devotion to death’s idols, and then pass on. And here this Child is more dead than living.
But it is also here that It makes Its choice again between idols and Love. Here it is given the Children of the Divine who have forgotten their Identity and their Source to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body in honor of the ego, or to let themselves be given Freedom from it. Here they can accept the Holy Instant, offered them to replace the unholy instant they chose before. And here can they learn that real relationships are their awakening, not their doom.
You who are learning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. The Holy Instant is of greater value to you now than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned that of these two you really want only one. This is therefore no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement. You have a real relationship, and it has Meaning. It is as like your true Relationship with the Divine as equal things are like themselves. Idols are past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear each other a little yet. Perhaps a shadow of the fear of the Divine remains with you. But what is that to those who have been given a real relationship beyond the body? Can they be long held back from beholding the Face of Divine Essence? And can they long withhold the Memory of their Relationship with their Creator from themselves, and keep Remembrance of Its Love apart from their awareness?
Idols must disappear into their nothingness, and will leave no trace behind in their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is as frail as a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Could this be the substitute anyone would want in exchange for the eternal Blessing of the Holy Instant, and Its unlimited Beneficence? The malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seemingly powerful and so bitterly misunderstood, and so invested in false attraction, is no longer your preference to the Holy Instant, which offers Peace and Joy. Then lay aside the focus on the body, and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. And from Spirit’s holy Temple do not look back on what you have awakened from. For no illusions can attract the minds that have transcended them, and left them far behind.
The holy relationship reflects the true Relationship that the Children of the Divine have with their Creator in Reality. The Holy Spirit rests within it, in the Certainty that its Essence will endure forever. Its firm Foundation is eternally upheld by Truth, and Love shines on it with the gentle Smile and tender Blessing It offers to Its Own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the Holy Instant of safe Return. Here is the Way to true Relationship held gently open, through which you walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind, and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love’s Arms are open to receive you, and give you Peace forever.
