8. Kinship
We are all descendants of Being.
The entirety of the physical universe is descended from the Presence of Being. We are all "descending" into flesh with Spirit. We are slowing our vibration to enter into flesh and experience the material world.
“We didn’t ‘fall’. The material world isn’t ‘bad’. We’re not being ‘punished’.”
This is all universal purpose and it's all okay.
We became enmeshed in material and forgot who we are. We forgot who we are, we forgot what everything is and made up a bunch of bullshit to explain it. We took our mistakes and our misunderstandings and we made beliefs and religions around them. We mistook a world of separate objects and made up a lot of bullshit justifying attack and guilt.
Most of our bullshit revolves around judgement and punishment.
We judge ourselves and others as "good" or "bad" and the bad are going to be punished. This foundational belief is the main fear and active operating system of our Divided Mind (Ego - acronymed in ACIM as Edging God Out).
Insert whatever reason you want for our fear of impending punishment; disobedience, bad karma, original sin - it's all false and made up and never happened. We made it up to explain the existence of our Divided Mind. That's it.
For generations we've handed down false beliefs about our world. In our religions, public institutions, schools and media we've continued a narrative that is predicated on being guilty because we are bad and fearful of being punished because of our perceived badness.
We're not bad.
We're not filled with grievous sin.
The worst that we are is believing we're separate from the Beloved Presence of Being, separate from Wholeness, separate from one another and separate from love.
That's where Hell came from - that's how it feels when we make a world without love and inclusion.
There is no such thing as "special" love or relationships.
This is a very hard thing for the west to understand because we've been fed a steady diet of nonsense around romantic attachments and the primacy of the family of origin. These are artificially elevated love relationships and aren't any more or less meaningful than any love given and received in the world.
We are required to dismantle all aspects of "us vs. them" in our lives. There is no "them". It doesn't exist. There has only ever been "us". The truth is love and inclusion for all existence. No exceptions.
Excluding and othering is one of the most dehumanizing and humiliating errors we inflict on one another. I was at a dinner once where a member of the table wouldn't touch a lemon I had touched because I wasn't of their religious group. I felt shamed and humiliated. There was a deep sense of wrongness and injustice in the exclusion that pierced to the very heart of me because it was action based on the belief that there can be exclusion in wholeness.
A spirituality founded on a belief of exclusion, isn't the way we worship the Presence of Being.
Regardless, my shame and humiliation are my responsibility.
Others can exclude us and see us as separate or apart or "them", but that's not reality. It's not true and it doesn't exist. My shame and humiliation at being seen as "other" confirmed and supported my own divided mind's belief that I was guilty and other and bad.
When we live fully in the truth of our oneness in Being, no one can exclude us.
No one can make us feel shame or humiliate us as “other” - because we know the truth and we can look on them with the same wholeness that the Presence of Being sees us. Love and inclusion exist for all of life equally, regardless of our belief.
All love is Universal love
Our family of origin isn't more worthy or valuable than any other family on the planet - all families, not just human families. My love for my partner isn't more worthy or valuable than any other love for any being on the planet. Insert any group, affiliation or distinction that we've created in this world as "objective observers" to classify and separate and categorize life and you'll find a system designed to assign value and worth based on separation.
Class, race, gender, religion, family of origin, geopolitical beliefs, national ties... species; all are arbitrary divisions based on superficial, surface perceptions rooted in an attempt to understand the world around us by naming and classifying and separating.
This is but one tiny bit of learning about the world and has been held up by the west as THE ENTIRE WORLD for hundreds of years. Classifications and judging value based upon consumption and profitability by a few is no longer a useful understanding of the world.
We can identify with particular groups and affiliations but we err when we use our group to exclude or devalue others. When we use our group to be "right" and "good" and attack others for being "wrong" and "bad" we've made an error. When we we use any surface identifier to exclude any other being from love and inclusion, we've made an error.
No exceptions.
All of existence is held within the kinship of the Presence of Being. There is no "them". There has only ever been "us".
The Practice
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The ego will fight you on this one for sure because being separate and bad and defending against or attacking each other and ourselves is the fuel for it's survival.
(We’ll get more into Ego and the “dark side” later). Think about one you love unconditionally - I don't care who it is, human, animal, plant, insect, galaxy - all we need is unconditional love.
Feel those feelings for your who.
Now feel those feelings for everything you see around you. The chair, table, pet, plant... all the things. Everything.
There is no distinction of being-ness in Creation. We're back to the First Truth again. This entire Creation is one and we are loved unconditionally.
Practice feeling the unconditional love in return, without exception.
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Expand your feelings of love further and further away from where you sit. Include more and more aspects of the world.
Start with the beings in your life that are easy to love.
For beings that you find difficult to love - try finding gratitude or admiration or respect in your heart for them. It's all love. It's all good.
How did it feel? What did you feel resistant to loving? Why do you think that is? What kind of thoughts stood out to you?
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Whenever you remember (and it is our job to remember), offer feelings of love and gratitude to everything in Creation.
This is literally our only purpose on Earth.