The New Year: A year of joy
Chapter 16, II. The Power of Holiness
January 3, 2010
Tom Baker (tbaker@omega.hrcoxmail.com)

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The second part of Chapter 16 entitled ‚"The Power of Holiness‚" is essentially the New Years part of the Course and suggests, without exactly saying it, a new years resolution in respect to the Course: ‚"This is the year for the application of the ideas that have been given you.‚" (Chap. 16, II., p. 334). It is fair to ask what ideas have been given us that we should now apply. This section, in a sense, provides an implicit summary of the ideas in the Course. The summary is not exhaustive but it is suggestive of the main ideas in the Course.

The first idea is that holiness includes everyone. Everyone is holy. No exceptions. The implication here is that our holiness is not attached to our actions. While holiness can of course be demonstrated it is not achieved or earned or proven and, like miracles, there are no degrees of holiness. Some people are not more holy than are others. The degrees apply to the awareness of holiness, not the holiness itself.

The second idea is an ego idea. Egoic perception has ‚ "tendency to fragment, and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole.‚" (Chap. 16, II. p. 332). When I see you through the eyes of the ego I see you in parts. I also see you in terms of the part of me that is superior or inferior to the parts I see in my self; I will compare my parts with your parts: nose, hands, hair, clothes, vocabulary, social skills, friendliness, intelligence, cooperation, etc. And you are doing the same with me through ego eyes. Thus the ego has taught us to see in terms of fragmentation, projection, and comparison (judgment) and focus on the parts rather than the whole. For the ego, to know me is to deconstruct me and then relate to your parts in relation to my parts rather than to the whole that you are and I am and that we are all together with God. In simple terms we have become preoccupied with the trees and the parts of the trees and have completely lost sight of the forest. But even this simple analogy falls short of divine vision, which is the third idea.

The third idea is divine vision, which is explained as ‚"the way God thinks." This is to see the part as the whole and the whole in every part. This way of seeing is actually somewhat familiar to us, it's most obvious and moving poetic expression being William Blake‚ verse ‚

" To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour "

We are naturally moved to a kind of universal compassion when we see the face of a starving child and call it the face of world hunger or the Pieta and see in that sculpture the sorrow of every mother for a child lost. Scientifically, we affirm a divine vision when we note that in every cell of the body is contained the entire genetic code for the body as a whole. In a sunset we often feel a deep and expansive peace as if the universe is contained in a single moment of the setting sun. The Course goes so far as to claim that this is our ‚"natural perception," a notion which echoes the sixth miracle principle which states that miracles are natural and that when they do not occur something has gone wrong.

Along with the form of the vision, we are further told that we do not do miracles alone, that they are always performed in the context of minds joining: "You have done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind and joined with it. When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made." Chap. 16, II., p. 333). Again, we experience this on an everyday basis when we agree deeply with someone or we share a profound conviction, sometimes without the need for words. To be "one mind‚" is to take the first step in the awareness of love's presence.

Finally we are told that we must really want the truth that the miracle brings. The Holy Spirit assures us that we really want the peace of God but that we think we want anything but the peace of God. This is where determination and practice come in plus a noting of ‚" the witnesses that He has given you to His reality." The implication is that the more determined we are to have the peace of God the more we will notice the examples of that peace. Part of bringing this about is to dedicate the new year to believing that holiness is power and attack is weakness, a proposition reversed by the ego which has trained our minds to believe that holiness is weakness and that attack is power. Although this teaching seems to come from someone outside of us we are reminded that when we listened to our Teacher (the Holy Spirit) who instructs us in the omnipotence of holiness and the impotence of attack, "the results have brought us joy."

The section ends with an interesting appeal to our experience of prayer. We are reminded that the Holy Spirit has solved any problem we have ever given it and any problem we have tried to solve by ourselves has not been resolved. It is in this way that we are asked to apply the ideas that we have been given, that is, by asking the Holy Spirit to help us. For it is the Holy Spirit Who has the faith in our holiness that we have temporarily lost.