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Before I could respond, I found myself in yet another chamber in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit began to speak directly to my mind again, saying,
“Look, this is the Tree of Life. It contains all life that God created.”
I looked up at a tree made entirely of lights like stars that numbered into infinity, with the eternal sky as its backdrop. As I gazed at the stars on the Tree of Life, I noticed that there were so many that they easily outnumbered the more than 400 trillion stars in our universe, and all the droplets of water in the ocean, and orbs in the air combined. There were countless stars, showing me there are no limits to life in Heaven. In my mind, I pictured a star for every being of God. A star for everyone and everything: one for you, me, and each, and every living being created by God including the animals. Then the Holy Spirit spoke once more, saying,
“Look again; this is Christ!”
I had already learned through my studies in ACIM that Christ equals the sum of all God’s Thoughts, and the Bible clearly says Christ represents the body of God. Now seeing Christ as the Tree of Life made perfect sense. For He himself said that He was “the way, the truth, and the life,” which of course refers to all of God’s original ideas, given to him in creation. Since we were created like him, I was able to clearly see why Christ is the head of us all from the foundation of the world. Not our physical world on Earth, but the only true world, in the Mind of God. The Holy Spirit said,
“Look again; this is God!”
He was teaching me the oneness of life, Christ, and God, one by one, each in separate but adjoining thoughts as we are to God and each other. In this thought, He helped me to see that when God created His only son, He created all things in Him and like Him. Therefore, His son, Christ, not only symbolizes the kingdom; He is the universe of God being that God created Christ as His host as He is a host to Him. The relationship is symbiotic, or cooperative. However, God the Father is the only author of life and the only giver of it. In truth, he gave us but one law, which is the “Law of Love.” It contains an eternal promise between the immortal and the eternal, or more precisely between God and his only son, of which we are a part. Hence, as a part of the sonship, we too made the promise to uphold his eternal law, and we have and always will. We have but one choice, which is a promise between each of us and God, promising to always love with his love. That promise secures a failsafe of eternal life and a forever unity in our minds.
As I pondered the thoughts and lessons given to me, the Holy Spirit continued speaking, saying,
“Follow the tree to its roots.”
As instructed, my mind’s eye followed the main branch of the Tree of Life to its roots, and then the Holy Spirit asked me,
“What do you see?”
I saw the shadow of the Tree of Life, and I told Him so. He then asked me,
“What is it?”
In truth, I had no idea what it was and said, “As I told you in the beginning, I know nothing. Please, tell me.”
He quickly replied,
“It is the whole world’s perception, including your own. In fact, it’s the whole world, but it’s just a shadow.”
The Holy Spirit helped me to clearly see that the “Shadow Tree” is represent the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” spoken of in the Bible, or the tree made only of “Sensory Perception.” He clearly said it was but my perception and the world’s perception. Each of us made our own private world. For He said clearly it was a shadow. A shadow is but a reflection of something real but is not real itself. Then He shined on my mind, telling me that the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” spoken of by prophets of old like King David and Job, was but a world made of dreams. That led me to consider the fact that the course taught me that it was never found in the Bible where God had specifically awakened Adam after he fell asleep. There is no such reference. For the lives of Adam and all those in the Bible are but a dreamscape, or a world made only of dreams.
