Reader Comments on The Agony of Mother Teresa
by Greg Mackie. Read the article.
Dear Greg,
Although I do not consider myself a student of ACIM, I have some comments on the article about Mother Tersesa.
This possible explanation of the darkness Mother Teresa felt is based on things I learned from a flat, emotionless voice I heard for forty years and my experiences and observations after it slowly faded and vanished in 1990. Due to this, before stating my point I will outline what I based it on.
When I was 5 or 6 Dad helped me understand that since God created all things He is in all things. When I realized God was in me so I was part of God, I experienced becoming part of a bright white light. In the light was a vast silence filled with thousands of voices and I could understand all of them simultaneously. I knew this was God, we were all united within Him, and understood that our world is just a dream.
Three or four years later, while I was in third grade, I was given the ability to hear an flat, emotionless, voice that said It was just part of myself very close to God and everyone had a voice exactly like it, which was where hunches in intuition came from. I had just been given the ability to hear my inner voice more clearly than most people. Due to this explanation I knew I was not special in any way.
This inner voice told me over and over that God is spirit and spirit is Life. Because of this all that has Life, (spirit), is part of God, and all that is Life is exactly the same. This means there is no difference between the life of a plant, a bug, and a human. All are equally indestructible and forever exactly like That Which They Are Part Of. Humans assign different values to the various bodies Life uses while on earth, sometimes killing those deemed threatening or useless, but the life that used what seems to die remains forever, exactly like its' Creator.
My Voice told me that, "God is," is only thing we can really say about God. There are three reasons for this. First, time is actually over in eternity, so time does not really exist, which means everything that appears to be inside time, including language, is unreal. One cannot describe what is Real with something that is unreal.
Second, even if we use unreal language correctly and accurately say something about God that is correct, God is always more than what we can describe, so an accurate statement is "A lie by omission." Last, language is made up of meaningless symbols or sounds standing for unreal things, or human, incomplete, or inaccurate ideas about real things. Despite this, since my voice vanished I have learned that God is truly Love and Peace and Joy; three things that have been missing from my life for 17 years. Certainly these symbols for what I miss do not explain what I miss, however, the words "God is Love" lead to my point.
Because God is Love, and we are all part of God, we are love, just as we are spirit because God is spirit. Moreover, simple logic tells us that since all spirit is the same, all love is the same, and since we cannot be something without having it, we have the love we are, and that love is all exactly the same. This means none of us have the ability to love anything or anyone more or less than anyone else. To believe we can love anything or anyone more than anyone else, or in a very special way, is an illusion.
When I became pregnant with my first child I vowed to love my baby more that anyone else, more than myself and more than my husband. I would give up everything for this new life to be, no matter how hard it was or how much it hurt. Through a series of questions my voice made me realize that my child to be would be part of God and I could not love my child at all if I failed to love everyone else, including myself, in exactly the same way, because my child and everyone else are One. It would be like cutting the finger off of my baby and loving only that finger. The Lesson? We cannot love one person more or less than we love others and ourselves. When we try we end up loving nothing.
Mother Teresa vowed to love Jesus, "...as He has never been loved before." I am not certain what she meant by this however it sounds like the vow I made to love my baby; a vow that, if kept, would have given both my first born and myself nothing except the illusion of love; nothing but emptiness. Based on this I would suggest that while Mother Teresa was, and still is, Love, what she gave to Jesus and the world was the illusion of love, and, because we cannot give anything to anyone without receiving it ourselves, what she received was the illusion of love: nothing, emptiness, blackness.
When I read your article the other thing I noticed was that Mother Teresa had constructed an image of Jesus, one that was in horrible pain. It was this image she vowed to serve, love, and imitate. I am fairly certain the Jesus she served was an image, because I had an image of Jesus for many years. Although I was unaware of this image for 40 years, once I became aware of it I slowly realized that all images are based on fear, pain, and suffering. Ultimately all these images must lead to physical death, which I have, correctly or incorrectly, come to think of as our collective reenactment of the separation.
In a nutshell, if Mother Teresa was giving the illusion of love to an image of Jesus, the result would be emptiness, blackness, and loneness. I know how this blackness feels, and it hurts my heart to think anyone could have told her anything that would help her come to love it. Still, I can understand why she might have clung to this strange hope that loving blackness could give her peace. For several years I have been holding tight to the pain of losing my inner voice because this pain "proves" it was once there. Perhaps Mother Teresa felt this same urge to prove something real by embracing its' absence. If so, I can understand.
My Voice use to say, "Nothing can be proven to be True. Fact cannot be proven True because it is so far below Truth, and Truth cannot be proven True because it is so far above fact."
Reading your article has made me aware that I must find a way to stop attempting to prove that unity, love, joy, and gratitude exist by refusing to see them, refusing to accept facts that are unreal, yet gain power when we feel threatened by them, and refusing to make myself happy. I do not know if this awareness will alter anything in my life, yet, in some strange way, I can feel that it has altered me.
Thanks for the article.
Love, Edith
P. S. I read the article yours was based on and have questions. Probably they cannot be answered, yet you might speculate on them.
Was the Jesus that called Mother Teresa to work with the poor the same Jesus who is said to have authored the Course? The Jesus that called Mother Teresa called her, "weak and sinful." Would the Jesus of the Course call anyone "sinful" when the Course says sin does not exist?
Would the Jesus who authored the Course, and told us not to attempt to change the world, direct one person to go into the world and alter it?
Last, but not least, did Mother Teresa really do what she was first called to do? Did she really bring "light" to the poor and suffering when she carried darkness? Certainly she assisted thousands, supplying their bodies with the things needed to survive, and probably she helped many people firmly believe in a merciful God, yet if she saw only the illusions of misery, and did not see the light of God's true creation within each person she assisted, so she could rejoice in that light and thank God for that light, did she actually complete her mission, or did she simply help strengthen the illusion that God exists in the blackness, loneness, and emptiness of ego?
May God bless all your endeavors and may the Peace of God always be within
your awareness.
Edith Pounds Bernard.
Greg, I just finished the Times article on Mother Theresa and coincidentally decided to open your website and found you commentary. Well said.
Thanks for bringing it back to the simplicity of the Course's teachings.
Sincerely,
—Leslie Arden
I wanted to truly thank you for your further insight on Mother Theresa's agony. I had this sitting in my mind and I wanted to blog about it carefully. I read the story of her letters in Time and was at first perplexed that a woman on her last life(understood from Your immortal Reality) was going through so much pain. I was expecting so much light from her and was shocked as I read her personal accounts, but then I began to understand.
What was enlightening to me was how I came into your understanding, that some of us, who are searching, are induced with so much doubt;so much abandonment that we are in some cases tormented by it, but we still do, we still follow this invisible way. That dichotomy is putting us up against the reason we we created this world in the begining.It is right there, waiting for us disable it's power.
thank you so much again
wonderful.
—Martin Rollins
Chicago
Holistic Health Counselor
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