Lesson 57: Review of Lessons 31 – 35
Here are the main ideas from Lessons 31 – 35:
31. I am not the victim of the world I see.
32. I have invented the world I see.
33. There is another way of looking at the world.
34. I could see peace instead of this.
35. My mind is part of God’s. I am very Holy.
Author Wayne Dyer once told a story about a day he was running on the beach near his home in Hawaii and a woman stopped him and told him she was thinking of moving to the area.
“How are the people here?” she asked him.
“How are the people where you live now?” he asked back.
“Oh, they’re horrible. Rude, mean, nasty. Nobody cares for each other there,” she told him.
“Well, folks are a lot like that here,” he told her and they said their goodbyes.
A little further down the beach, he was stopped by another woman who also expressed a desire to move to this island paradise and wanted to know how the people were in this area. He asked her the same question as the previous woman, “What are they like where you come from?”
“Oh,” the woman smiled, “they’re all so friendly and helpful. You never meet a stranger there.”
“Well, the people here are a lot like that,” Dyer told her.
As the famous saying goes: “Wherever you go, there you are.”
We bring our preconceived notions of people, places and things into every situation we encounter, whether we’re moving to a new state or just interacting with our local folks. If we feel victimized by the world, we’ll feel that way no matter if we live in Maui or Timbuctoo. If we have invented a world where people are rude and nasty, we’ll encounter rude and nasty people everywhere. Same goes if we invent a world of nice and helpful people. Everywhere we go, nice and helpful people will appear.
Dyer was also the first New Thought evangelist that I ever heard say: “I can choose peace rather than this.” When I heard him say that years ago, I had no idea that it came from A Course in Miracles. I hadn’t even heard of the Course at this time. I was living in a world that I had invented that poo-pooed such ridiculous ideas.
How can you choose peace while people are suffering? Isn’t that just a sign of your own privilege? How can children in cages, separated from their parents just simply decide to choose peace? Those living in war-torn lands, those in places of famine? They can just “choose peace” instead of despair, death or starvation? Gimme a break, man!
My idea of the world at that point was one of brutality, fear and anger. I could see nothing beyond the way humans treated one another inhumanely. I was in the news business, after all, and that’s mainly what I wrote about – how unusually cruel and awful we all are to each other on a daily basis.
Dyer once explained this concept differently, and it finally clicked with me that my definition of “peace” and his were totally different. He said that even if you have broken a bone at the moment or some other painful situation is occurring, you can “choose peace” by clearly seeing the event that is happening to you without panic, without fear or anger, and in that state of clarity, the actions you perform will ease your suffering or the suffering around you.
This “peace” is our natural state of being that sees the situation before us without judgment, without panic, and relies on guidance from Spirit to take the actions – or refrain from actions – that will improve or worsen what’s taking place. We can do that because we understand that our mind is Holy. We are connected to God through our right thinking and when we tap into that Higher Mind, we are guided in ways that heal the world.
When we accept that guidance and think with that Holy Mind, this lesson tells us that the world “takes on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light I begin to see what my illusions about myself kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself, and their oneness with me.”
Or as Hafiz puts it:
“Die before you die,”
said the Prophet Muhammad.
What do you think that feels like?
It is no game for the fainthearted.
It is living hell,
for there will be nothing left of you,
but a molten, bright sphere.
Seems a pretty good trade though,
a fantastic deal,
when all the tough haggling is complete.
Photo by Loe Moshkovska from Pexels