Searching for the Whole Self

By David Basiove

I have been to the mountain top, and I have seen the promised land. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King’s immortal words take on special significance for readers of A Course of Love that have had the mountain top experience accompanied by Jesus, our Brother Heart. But what is this promised land that Dr. King refers to? Is it a place on earth, a country, a land?

The answer is simple: The promised land is a return to self love, and both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love provide a road map. I wonder if Dr. King knew that the promised land was a place inside us all. A place of self love and self acceptance, that once fully integrated into wholeness is reflected in the outer as the promised land, the land of love that goes with us wherever we may find ourselves.

I’ve always been a big fan of Jesus. I read everything I can get my hands on that is either written about Him or attributed to Him. This includes occasionally diving into the New Testament. Early on in my journey I remember first encountering Jesus’s statement, “For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) I smile when I think about my first reaction to reading this profound statement: “Dude, what are you talking about? All that is inside me is a bunch of ageing organs!” In the beginning, this idea that the Kingdom of God was within me was pretty hard to accept.

But then, first ACIM and then ACOL came into my life and I was guided by Jesus to the formless landscape of the inner world of the spirit, heart, and emotional body. Now I’m starting to think that maybe He is really on to something!

Acceptance is necessary because escape is not possible. Everything that is, is with us, which is why we are the accomplished as well as the void, the healed as well as the sick, the chaos as and the peace. Thus we heal now by calling on wholeness. D:Day14.1

Our journey to wholeness begins with self-acceptance because we can’t escape from ourselves. I did myself proud trying to escape myself. I applied all manner of behavior to attempt my daring escape: Drugs, alcohol, ego aggrandizement, running with a gang of tough guys. As sixties pop culture icon, Timothy Leary, said, “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” I bought in (mostly the turn-on part), but try as I might, it just didn’t work. Regardless of my attempted escape methods, I couldn’t escape the ego mind. It’s always there with its need to label, to keep things neat and orderly, constantly judging that it knows what is right for me and everyone else.

Something I have found helpful on my journey is to drop under my mind’s chatter and to ground my conscious awareness in my body. For me it is now relatively easy to do, but staying there in our busy world is challenging. When I began practicing this I would lie on my bed, warm and comfortable, cover my eyes and begin to relax, first releasing the tension in my jaws and my eyes. Then I found the point of awareness in my mind, and took it on an elevator ride down into my pelvic floor, visualizing the elevator stopping at each chakra on the way down. I might get off the elevator for a moment’s dialogue, checking in to see how they feel, asking what I can do to fully include it in my wholeness, in my daily life.

This is especially important when arriving at the chakras below the heart. Here we are in the realms of feeling, emotion, intuition, passion, sexuality, and receptivity. These chakras have received the most denial on earth, are often feeling neglected, left holding emotions we have found unacceptable. Openness to receiving how these chakras are feeling goes a long way in fully integrating these power centers into our beingness. Allowing release of previously held emotions and moving them with sound and body motion, however subtle, can be so very healing, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.

As I go through my day, my breath helps me ground my awareness in my body. I didn’t really understand what “pass through” was (ACOL Chapter 22, “The Intersection”) until I experienced it with my conscious awareness anchored in my pelvic bowl.

Now a new degree of union is occurring to allow for a new type of experience. The new visual pattern is that of spirit resurrected in form. It is the ascension of the body, or elevation of the self of form. You are called to demonstrate this pattern. D:Day18.9,10

I worked as a professional diver and scuba instructor for 40 years. I have had the blessed opportunity to see so many unique and exquisite forms being expressed in the underwater realms. I’ve enjoyed communing with everything from very small creatures to very large fish, eels, rays, and octopus. God’s Loving Light extends into manifested creation, differentiating into an infinite array of forms with which to experience itself. Some proudly bear all the colors of the rainbow, others are in more plain colors of grey or brown, and yet others live in the ocean’s depth, appearing to have only light bodies. Underwater I feel a oneness, a unity with forms both entertaining and mesmerizing, and it is in this liquid paradise that I know from these holy encounters that form is as divine as spirit.

I want to go back to the formless world of feeling and emotions. How did humanity arrive at the decision that some emotions are positive and others negative? Surely these labels make things neat and orderly, and my mind loves to maintain the status quo. But:

You have no feelings that are bad. You embrace sadness, grief, anger, and all else that you feel because these feelings are part of who you are in the present moment. When you remain in the present moment you remain within Christ-consciousness where all that is exists in harmony. D:Day16.10

When feeling emotions, I always make my best effort to simply allow them to be, to stay anchored in my body and to feel. But even then my mind jumps in with its list of attributes that aren’t helpful in allowing the free flow of emotional energy. Once the mind labels an emotion—such as anger—I know right away what that feeling is about, and what is the potential outcome of allowing it free rein.

Once I started paying attention to all of this, I discovered that there are patterns running that I wasn’t consciously aware of. I dearly want to change these habit patterns and I want to embrace all of myself, not just the parts that are deemed more acceptable to mind’s judgments. How am I going to make that happen? Again the answer seems simple enough: self-acceptance and self-love.

“[Y]our willingness to be made known and to know exists alongside your willingness to embrace the unknown. . . . You are here to make one another known and in so doing to know oneness”. D:Day15.2,15

My core desire is to know all of my true Self in loving acceptance and I anticipate getting to know what remains unknown. Selah

David Basiove is a professional writer and photographer residing in Montreal, Canada. He is a world traveler, having visited more than 200 cities in 22 countries. He first answered the call in 1985 and began to delve into various Christ Consciousness teachings. He received emotional healing through his work with the Right Use of Will materials and is an avid reader of both ACIM and ACOL.