The Thought System of Separation

creations of and photo from Dale Johnson

I listen to audiobooks while I do chores and cook. Lately, I’ve heard numerous thought-provoking books. Right now, I’m listening to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and the concepts presented are fascinating. A young 19th-century girl laments her life, wishing she had more freedom and wasn’t being forced into a marriage. She makes a pact with the “old gods”, but she wishes for the wrong thing and ends up living forever, but no one can remember her once she’s out of their sight. The life of isolation she is thrown into is haunting, frightening, sad. Her plight brings to mind the many present-day people who are lonesome. I listen, trying to understand what brings on their feelings of wistful longing. Or is it even longing? I’m not sure, but I’d like to empathize. Another recent audiobook, What Alice Forgot, is about a woman who has a head injury and forgets the last ten years of her life. The lack of connection she feels with family and friends is sort of the flip side of Addie’s isolation. It takes my thoughts to the different aspects of loneliness and the perceptions associated with this feeling of lack. Perhaps the quest to understand our unity, to feel unseparated from our source, precludes this feeling I do not know. Walking with God may not mean the same thing to me as it might to others. This is yet another thing to ponder on these winter evenings! Stay warm and happy, everyone. Namaste…

“The ego thought system must hide our awareness of our oneness in God in order to make the image of having a separate life for ourselves alone appear real to us. In order to experience this false thought system, we must be willing to set up barriers against remembering God’s oneness through denying our natural awareness of Love’s eternal presence. To experience this thought system of separation, we dream up a world where separate bodies rule the universe. In this dream, we, as separate individuals, are the judge of what is real and what is denied. We build up images of a kingdom that we rule alone and God’s oneness is sacrificed.” A Course in Miracles, Chapter 26, Section I. (pages 542-544)