To overcome the world is to receive of the abundance of God:
“to the one who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.” Revs 2:7
To overcome the world is to find the supreme joy and freedom that is our inheritance:
“The Oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power. This limitless power is God’s gift to you, because it is what you are.”
To overcome the world is to overcome all self-imposed obstacles to Loves awareness; the idols that call to you within the dream – the “fierce attraction of guilt,” the love of death and the fear of God.
It means to cross the ‘dangerous spaces of the soul’, to go where few dare; to stand alone before the Eternal and look directly at insanity, the whole worship of false gods; the empty images that occupy the gap. No-one overcomes the world of death without the moment of devastation, the ‘trials and tribulations’ of turning away from death and all its ‘allies’. The dark night of being an alien here of not being of the world, and not yet of Heaven. The awful realization you have been completely and utterly wrong. And not one belief you have ever held has been true for they are all as nothing before the grandeur of perfection.
This is the journey of the individual. Heaven’s help lends its strength and patience as you are called to leave the world, this slaughterhouse, and reach far beyond to where its nothingness gives way to the homecoming energies of the resurrection. It is your unqualified determination to go beyond perceptions dusty rim to the holy Light and the unseen, unknown Knowledge of Oneness. Your eternal Home denies the impossible dream that disappears as a mist before the rising sun.
“The power of God and all His Love, without limit, will support you as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement … His help suffices, for His Messenger understands how to restore the Kingdom to you, and to place all your investment in salvation in your relationship with Him.”
“You are as God created you. There is nothing else to learn, nothing else to know, and nothing else that has any value.”
Let forgiveness teach you to do nothing of yourself but let His love direct your way away from the ‘asylum’ you have called your home. To overcome the world is to rise above meaninglessness and littleness, to be willing to accept correction. It is the great reversal of the thinking of the world and objectivity itself. It is the desire for one thing alone, a single purpose, a rebirth into the eternal present and acceptance of the atonement for oneself.
Overcoming the world is dependence on God and his Holy Guide, it is overcoming the forms of suffering and death the body was made heir to. It is following the Will of God of ones own choice.
Overcoming the world is surmounting death and the fear of God. It is the great release of power and glory in which you rise up and gain ascendance over your earthly domain, the body and all your associations of self.
In this extraordinary programme of enlightenment the ultra personal existential lesson is simply to close the gap that seems to keep separation as a condition of perpetual projection. It means to share a purpose divine for your relationship and so to relegate the flesh as no impediment to the natural communicative nature of mind. Mind is singular, whole and without end or limit; one mind in Christ. For the Sonship is One with a singular Cause whose Identity He shares with all Creation: Exactly what we have searched for and craved since the first tick of time came to make uncertain the only certainty; the Absolute and Eternal Truth.
It is surely clear this Course teaches a relationship; your brother is the embodiment of the wish to be separate. Your relationship contains the whole story of the fall, the descent into separation, and finally the end of arrogance and the turning away from madness. Humility, the prayer for help, the change of heart; to want only the one thing possible. To find in what seemed to be another your whole way out of fear. To look with ‘sun-gazing lids’ beyond the body of death to the eternal it was made to cover: the living Christ is found where once crucifixion was the endless state.
It is a ‘dream of judgment’ and your relationship with your brother is your relationship with God. And from the special hell relationship made to crucify the Son of God a transformation is made, to holiness and the return to love. The fruits of your forgiveness of your self.
“Seek and find His message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven… To join in close relationship with Him is to accept relationships as real, and through their reality to give over all illusions for the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with Him and to no other. The truth lies there and nowhere else. You choose this or nothing.”
“To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained.”
“Only a little wall of dust still stands between you and your brother. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you.”
“Whoever says, “There is no gap between my mind and yours” has kept God’s promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing is his brother healed.”
“Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart… God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. In his creation did his Father say, “You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me.”
