Being There

Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. (ACIM:W-188.1)

The theme of Logion 109 has been frequent through the Thomas material. The same idea of immediacy, that just awaits our opening our eyes, comes up in Logia 3, 5, 18, 24, 26, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37, 51, 52, 70, 91, 92, 94, 97,  and that's just by cursorily flipping through the pages. Many more logia imply the same theme in one way or another - the Kingdom is here, not "there" and that it is only we ourselves who rob ourselves of the experience of it, of course by interposing the story of the ego, instead of following Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Again studying A Course in Miracles will definitely give you the whole framework which is mostly only implied in the Thomas gospel, and the consistency of this material will become clearer as you come along. Without a doubt also, this selection which Pursah has presented as being reflective of the real original sayings of Jesus, gains in strength the more you work with it. Just like Jesus teaches that he is always with us, if only we ask him, so he teaches that the Kingdom is always present to us, except we don't see it, and the only thing we need is to change our mind, or metanoia in the Greek of the New Testament. It is the essence of the miracle of forgiveness, namely to let go of the judgment of the ego, which heretofore has defined our reality, and accept the judgment of the Holy Spirit instead. A beautiful corollary to all this is found in the Course's notion of "a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T8.VI.9:7)

It is the ego which always wants to see the Kingdom as some faraway destination that you can never get to in reality. This is the basic mythology of Christianity, the religion that was invented by Paul after Jesus's death, and given his name. There the basic mythology is that the teacher died, and did not come back when he promised, so now we have a substitute teacher (Vicar of Christ), Peter, and then we perpetuate this tradition by means of the apostolic succession (conveniently invented after the fact as a justification for the authority of the Pope), so as long as you come to classes faithfully, you'll be ready when the teacher comes back. This of course is a marvelous way of setting up a perpetual charter for the Church, for THAT teacher, the body, is never coming back, but it conveniently blocks out of our awareness the teacher who is always with us, our own Internal Teacher, which Jesus refers us to in A Course In Miracles. Thus again, it becomes blatantly clear how Christianity teaches just about the opposite of what Jesus taught, and the principal misunderstanding is the level confusion between the teaching that is about the mind, about an inner change, so we can enter the Kingdom, which is shifted completely towards an outer Kingdom that depends on the bodily return of the teacher. That teacher taught BEFORE the crucifixion that he'd always be present for us, whenever we'd choose to join with each other and with him - Do this in the remembrance of me.

This logion also reminds me of a Chassidic legend, which I remember reading in the work of Martin Buber - I'll retell it from memory, and make up the names. There a chassid in Krakau, by the name of Jacob Goldman, who has this dream that there's a treasure buried under the hearth in the house of a Samuel Cohen in Prague. He travels to Prague, and starts looking for a Samuel Cohen, and as he asks around, finally someone says that that's my name. So our friend starts telling his story. At which point Samuel Cohen says: "But that's crazy, can you imagine how man people are called Samuel Cohen in this town? I've had a dream too, that there was a treasure buried in the hearth of a Jacob Goldman in Krakau, but you think I'm going to waste my time to seek out all the Jacob Goldmans in Krakau?" So our friend returns home, digs up his hearth, and finds the treasure. Remember also here, this is a parable, it is not about a bag of gold coins buried in your physical fireplace, but of course the fireplace is (used to be) a beautiful symbol for the center of your house. One way or another it's here and now, right in front of your face, and the very situation you are in today is the best classroom you could wish for, if only you ask the right teacher.