07.09.23 "Who Told Us We Were Naked?"

For a couple of months now I have been sharing about how I am realizing what a strong focus ACIM has on "freedom." Well, nice to know there are still new things to learn from ACIM even after 40 plus years of being thoroughly engaged in the discipline. "You have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free." (OrEd.Tx.16.22) I believe that to completely interpret certain passages like this, one needs to understand that Jesus was speaking first to Helen and Bill, before we make the statement universal and general. What I now get from this is that an intellectual understanding about freedom is not being free itself. We are not asked to understand freedom, we are told to live free.

Freedom heals slavery and imprisonment. "Release your body from imprisonment, and you will see no one as prisoner to what you have escaped." (OrEd.Tx.31.31) We must heal ourselves, and everyone else, from the imprisonment of believing we are limited bodies with finite lives. Regardless of how strong this illusion may seem, it is not the truth and can be blown away like dust when we center in on the truth of who and what we are. "Only a little wall of dust still stands between you [and Christ]. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you." (OrEd.Tx.18.83)

The Garden of Eden is not just the place we left, it is the place we are going back to. It is a place where life is lived in abundance, in beauty, and in freedom. Freedom from what you might ask? Freedom from guilt and shame. In the symbolic Garden, when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree of good and evil, the so-called "Tree of Knowledge," they felt shame for the first time, shame about being bodies. So they put on clothes. When God saw that they had done this he asked them the famous question, "Who told you you were naked?" "And He said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?'" (Bible:Gen.3.11) We should be asking ourselves the same question today. Who told us we were naked? Who told us we were guilty? Who told us we should be ashamed? What "good and evil" fruit did we "eat" that we should not have eaten? Freedom lies in the answer to that question. 27 min.

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