CHAPTER XI

OURSELVES IN THE DIVINE OFFERING


If we have grasped the principle I have endeavored to state in the last
chapter we shall find that with this new standpoint a new life and a new
world begin to open out to us. This is because we are now living from a new
recognition of ourselves and of God. Eternal Truth, that which is the
essential reality of Being, is _always_ the same; it has never altered, for
whatever is capable of passing away and giving place to something else is
not eternal, and therefore the real essence of our being, as proceeding
from God and subsisting in Him has always been the same. But this is the
very fact which we have hitherto lost sight of; and since our perception of
life is the measure of our individual consciousness of it, we have imposed
upon ourselves a world of limitation, a world filled with the power of the
negative, because we have viewed things from that standpoint. What takes
place, therefore, when we realize the truth of our Redemption is not a
change in our essential relation to the Parent Spirit, the Eternal Father,
but an awakening to the perception of this eternal and absolutely perfect
relation. We see that in reality it has never been otherwise for the simple
reason that in the very nature of Being it _could_ not be otherwise; and
when we see this we see also that what has hitherto been wrong has not been
the working of "the Father" but our conception of the existence of some
other power, a power of negation, limitation, and destructiveness, the very
opposite to all that the Creative Spirit, by the very fact of Its
Creativeness, must be. That wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son shows us
that he never ceased to be a son. It was not his Father who sent him away