“The mortal self—defined by the body, described in terms of worldly circumstances, and at the effect of the material world—is but an aspect of who we are. In fact, the body is like a wall we have built around an invisible self. That invisible self—be it called the Christ, or Buddha Mind, or shekinah, or by any other name—is who we essentially, fundamentally, and eternally are. You are not a body, but an eternal spirit. You were alive before your physical birth, and you will be alive beyond your physical death. What God creates cannot be uncreated.

It is a radical commitment to try to remember who we are in a world that does all it can, every moment of every day, to persuade us that we are who we really aren’t and that we aren’t who we really are. The world as we know it is organized around the denial of spiritual sight, treating bodies as real and spirit as fantasy. It rests on the presupposition that only what happens externally matters.

As such, our modern civilization is spiritually blind. It is ignorant of the deeper reality and meaning of life. It is asleep to the deeper dynamics and evolutionary imperatives of human existence, and in its sleep it has produced nightmares for individuals and for the entire species.

The ravages produced by our spiritual ignorance are now being experienced on massive scales, producing deep psychological and emotional problems in individuals and seemingly unstoppable environmental and political destructiveness in the world. But such problems are not causes; they are effects that have resulted from a state of humanity in which we have become dissociated from what we truly are. Separated from who we are, we become neurotic at best and genuinely insane at worst.

“The ego mind, the delusional self, seeks every moment of every day to annihilate God’s creation. Which means its goal is to annihilate you. Within this world, the ego can have devastating effects. All of this is happening within a vast illusion, but the effects of the illusion feel very real while we are in the midst of it. The role of the miracle-worker is not to ignore the darkness but to dispel it.

The ego’s world is as depressing as it is insane, of course. It posits us as temporary beings, when in fact we’re eternal. It posits us as separate from God, when in fact we are thoughts within His Mind. It posits us as separate from each other, when in fact we are created as one and remain “as one.

To heal our depression, we must close the mental gap between that which is the ego’s view of ourselves and others, and God’s view of ourselves and others. This is the only salvation from sadness and pain.

The ego is our own mental energy turned against us. Yet just as darkness is nothing but the absence of light, so fear is nothing but the absence of love. The ego is simply a mental miscreation, the delusional thought that we are not who in fact we are. In its mad belief that we are separate, it persuades us that we are alone . . . and endangered . . . and unloved. Of course we are depressed. And the healing of our depression lies in remembering who we are.

We are perfect, innocent children of God. That is God’s Reality, and God’s Reality is changeless. Moreover, we were created as one and on the level of spirit we are one. The ego is vigilant in its efforts to make us forget we are perfect, to make us forget we are innocent, and to make us forget we are one.

The anxiety and mental anguish this forgetfulness produces is the real meaning of the word “hell.” The awareness of our oneness and the peace this pronounces is the meaning of the word “heaven.” Hell is not our natural habitat. Heaven is where we come from and where we belong—not just after we die, but every moment of every day.”

Excerpt From: Williamson, Marianne. “Tears to Triumph.”