Happy New Year! Beautiful New World!
It seems appropriate as we head into a new year that millions of people are drawn to the movie "Avatar." In this amazing film, director James Cameron shows us a whole new world. Certainly nothing is more needed at this time in human history than a new world, wouldn't you say?
In the movie story, human beings are out of touch with reality. They work for a corporation which doesn't understand the Holy Spirit will always provide for their true "bottom line." But the lesson of the story could as easily have been taught if the film's human beings had worked not for a corporation but for a government which feels the need to force people to live certain ways because its leaders refuse to understand the Holy Spirit will provide for every citizen's true welfare if political "do gooders" get out of the way.
In any truly meaningful dictionary, being out of touch with reality could be said to be "corruption."
In American culture today, so-called "liberals" or "progressives" are likely to believe most corporations are corrupt, while by some unknown miracle government can be trusted to do good. Conservatives, on the other hand, see governments as rampantly corrupt while corporations have at least a market incentive to be honest. Our libertarian friends, innately uncomfortable with corruption from any quarter, often choose to dream of a new kind of world with ultimately very little man-made "government" and maybe no corporations at all.
Is this imagined libertarian world an impossible dream? The Na'vi in the movie "Avatar" do not need either government (as we know it) or corporations. What they really need, and the movie shows this powerfully, is their awareness of their oneness with reality, their awareness of their spiritual nature.
Perhaps our new world would be of a different form than the world of the Na'vi, but the lesson is the same. We must learn to be consistently and always aware of our true spiritual nature. (See the blog Tsahaylu, which means "oneness" in Na'vi.) This is exactly what Jesus Christ teaches in his modern day revelation, A Course in Miracles:
You see the flesh or recognize the Spirit. There is no compromise between the two. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or Spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the Spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes, and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless. (ACIM Text Chap 31)
Some might experience the movie "Avatar" and imagine they could more easily establish themselves in spiritual seeing the way the Na'vi see if they could revert to the Na'vi level of tribal existence. But that would be missing the point altogether. Jesus teaches it is not the form a world or a culture takes. It is how we see ourselves and how we see others. Tell your libertarian friends they do not have to altogether do away with government and corporations. They only need to pray with all their heart and soul for spiritual seeing.
It is only necessary to establish one self in spiritual seeing. Then one's entire world is free of corruption. Governments and corporations would rearrange themselves. Jesus guarantees it:
Are you a Spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared but only loved. (ACIM Text Chap. 31)
Having learned to see anew our gratitude is boundless. The song from "Avatar" has been our song:
"You teach me how to see
All that’s beautiful
My senses touch your world I never pictured
Now I give my hope to you
I surrender
I pray in my heart that this world never ends !”
"...nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21)
Click below for more information on A Course in Miracles Light Sessions:
Holy Instant Christian Fellowship in Salt Lake City
