Willingness is the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it, even if learning must occur in the process. Willingness is the birth (the beginning) of awakening.

Let’s look more carefully at what willingness is. Let’s begin with the First Principle of God, which is pure, absolute truth. Somehow a motion evolved in the First Principle of God, which created the Second Principle of God. There are stories that try to explain this motion. NTI Romans 2 says it was an idea asking, “What if nothing was as it is?” Kabbalah teaches that the First Principle wanted to create a vessel to receive its love. That vessel is the Second Principle. A Course in Miracles  simply calls it “a tiny mad idea.”

All stories are for the mind. They help it to imagine that it understands. I think we are more enlightened when we realize we do not understand, and we are perfectly okay with that. So, I think it is more truthful to say:

Somehow, a motion evolved in the First Principle of God, which created the Second Principle of God. The Second Principle of God is ‘I am’ consciousness, the first sense of self. For that reason, it is often called the Self. It is a subject without an object—the ability for ‘awareness of’ without anything to be aware of.

Therefore, the next motion that occurred was the creation of the Third Principle of God, which is a process through which objects can be created. Through the interaction of ‘I am’ consciousness with the creative principle, the Fourth Principle of God is created.

The Fourth Principle of God is consciousness appearing as something (many things) other than consciousness. In Kabbalah, there is a story about how the vessel (‘I am’ consciousness) exploded into many tiny pieces. That story points to the ego, which appears as many individual aspects of “I am,” each one seeing itself as separate and independent.

Willingness—the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it—is the next motion in this process. It is a natural occurrence through which the “many” aspects of consciousness begin their return to one unity consciousness. From unity consciousness, an even stronger pull coming directly from the source calls ‘I am’ back into the First Principle of God.

If you examine this process carefully, you will see that willingness is not something that belongs to you, an individual. Willingness is a call coming from the nature of God. In that way, willingness is  God, and it calls to you, because it is your time to return to the realization of Self.

What about the billions of others who do not feel the call to awaken?

Willingness lives in them too, like a dormant alarm. The gravity of the return force will eventually activate the willingness in every aspect of consciousness.

When you realize that a return is happening—it is in motion—and all will be pulled into it in their time, you realize the nature of your own call to awaken as a powerful, natural force.

Today’s reading teaches us how to cooperate with this call—with the natural return action—instead of resisting it. It likens learning to cooperate to a dance. Sometimes we step in one direction, and sometimes we step in another direction, but through the total motion of the dance, we twirl and sway our way into unity consciousness.

In NTI Galatians 1, Jesus said:

I am the Way and the Life. I come to you on this day to clear up your confusion, … It is nothing and can be easily laid aside when you see the simplicity of love as I offer it to you.

Today’s reading tells us:

… the simple way to know love and extend love within the world is to:

Focus on your willingness …

Willingness is the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it, even if learning must occur in the process.

Willingness is the birth (the beginning) of awakening.

The opposite of willingness is resistance. Therefore, resistance can be defined as not wanting to awaken to truth. Another way to say that is:

Resistance is attachment to the world.

NTI Galatians 4 pointed out that the world is a false god. Therefore, the question that we need to ask ourselves is this:

Which do I prefer, a false god or the supreme and ultimate reality?

NTI Galatians comes to us as the voice of Jesus. It harnesses the essence of his experience as a human who awakened to truth. Based on his experience, belief in the world is a primary obstacle to truth. Willingness to transcend the world is the key to awakening.

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. ~ John 16:33 (NIV)

Today we return to the story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. As you know, Abraham represents willingness. Sarah represents belief in the world. It’s important to realize that both Abraham (willingness) and Sarah (belief in the world) are in your mind now. The story about Abraham and Sarah is a story about you.

In the story, God promised Abraham that he would have offspring as numerous as the stars. However, years past without a child being borne, so Sarah took matters into her own hands. She asked Abraham to sleep with her slave, Hagar, and she adopted the child when it was born.

That didn’t work out like Sarah expected. Since Sarah was unable to nurse the child, the boy bonded with his natural mother, Hagar. Also, Abraham loved his son, Ishmael. Sarah became jealous.

And then one day a miracle happened. Sarah, an old and previously barren woman, gave birth to a son, Isaac. Isaac’s birth was different than Ishmael’s birth, because it occurred in spite of the physical laws of the world—laws that would have made a birth impossible if the world and its laws were constant and real.

This story indicates that truth is supreme. When we believe the world is supreme, like Sarah did when she asked Abraham to sleep with Hagar, we make a mistake. By believing the world is supreme, we reinforce our belief in it. However, if we are willing to see that the world is illusion and only truth is supreme, evidence of this fact will come into our experience. We will learn this truth directly for ourselves, just as Abraham learned it through Isaac’s birth.

One word of caution: It isn’t for us to decide how we will learn that the world isn’t real. Our role is to surrender and follow intuition in faith. As we do that, the evidence that is most helpful will come. We will see for ourselves that the world is not real and truth reigns supreme.

As we learned on Day 66, faith is:

• trusting the healing process
• having confidence in a benevolent power beyond what your senses or mind can know
• accepting that all is well under all circumstances, regardless of the appearance

Side comment: Muslims and Jews remain divided today over differences of opinion regarding which son was the son promised by God in his covenant with Abraham. Muslims say that the first-born son, Ishmael, was the promised son. Ishmael is believed to be the beginning of the Arab lineage. Jews say that Sarah’s son, Isaac, was the promised son. Isaac is believed to be the beginning of the Jewish lineage.

Careful consideration of the Bible shows that Abraham loved both sons equally, and God looked over and cared for both sons equally. To use the story to support division is listening “through the ears of judgment,” taking the “message of freedom” and making “of it a slave.”

God promised offspring as numerous as the stars. That offspring represents awakening. God’s promise is still being fulfilled through the Muslims, Jews and all of mankind. For example, Rumi was a Muslim. Jesus was a Jew. And then there was Buddha, Lao Tzu, and others who were neither.

The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac is to be taken figuratively, as are all stories. Figurative interpretations are used by inner wisdom to point toward truth. Interpretations laid upon the literal almost always point to belief in the world and further entrapment in separation.