Month: March 2020

Lesson 71: Only God’s plan for salvation will work.

I don’t know about any of you, but I have a TON of plans for my own salvation and I always have. I knew I would be okay in this world if I just found the right job, the right place to live, the right partner to do all that living with and the right community to support me in all of that.

Yeah, it never quite worked out that way. I spent a lot of time looking for jobs, homes, partners and communities. They all disappointed me at some point – and in my dissatisfaction, I made new plans for salvation – new jobs, new homes, new partners, new communities.

It reminds me of the scene from Evan Almighty when Steve Carrell’s character says to Morgan Freeman’s incarnation of God, “This isn’t what I had planned.” To which Freeman bursts out laughing: “Your plans.”

“If you want to make God laugh,” the old joke says, “tell Her your plans.”

Today’s lesson reveals the truth about all my plans: “Such is the ego’s plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in strict accord with the ego’s basic doctrine, ‘Seek but do not find.'”

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 11, 2020 — Seek but do not find”

Lesson 70: My salvation comes from me.

Oh, man, my ego really, really doesn’t like today’s lesson at all. It flies in the face of the religious tradition in which I was raised. If I had said to my religious teachers of my childhood, “My salvation comes from me,” they would have strung me up immediately as a heretic. Pearls would be clutched. Collective gasps would be gasped. The world would implode.

The arrogance of such a statement would render them all aghast. Salvation, I was taught, comes only from one man – that Jesus guy – dying on a cross for your sins, and don’t you forget it, buster. “You’re a filthy sinner who deserves hell and the only reason – hear me, now – the ONLY reason you’re not going straight to hell this minute is because Jesus died for your sins, you terrible, wretched, worm of a soul,” they all said to me.

Those old tapes of fire and brimstone still play their top hits when lessons like this pop up in the workbook, promising me that I have gone far afield from the faith of my childhood. Thank God I have, because those old tapes no longer make any sense to me – they don’t have a beat that’s easy to dance to – and for good reason. Dancing is of the devil anyway.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 10, 2020 — Dancing with the devil”

Lesson 69: My grievances hide the light of the world in me.

When I was a kid, the Southern Baptist tradition taught something known as the Rapture. It was a tale of how the world would end. God would “take up” the righteous and leave the damned on earth to fight apocalyptic battles among themselves as Jesus and the Devil battled for their soul. You really, really didn’t want to be “left behind.”

I feared the apocalypse. I was shown biblical passages that talked about the moon turning to blood and God raising the saved from the dead. The part about sucking up the living like a divine Hoover wasn’t in there, but that didn’t keep the story from scaring the bejeezus out of me.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned the true meaning of the word “apocalypse.” It simply means a revealing – a lifting of the veil between this world of ego and the realm of God. My religion taught that it would be an epic, violent and bloody battle for that veil to be lifted. A Course in Miracles says all we have to do is recognize that the veil isn’t real, and its gone. No fuss, no muss and nobody gets sucked up into the Divine Hoover.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 9, 2020 — Apocalypse now”

Lesson 68: Love holds no grievances.

I mentioned at Jubilee! Circle this morning that today’s lesson in A Course in Miracles lesson was, “Love holds no grievances,” and from the back I heard a voice ask plaintively, “None?”

That voice sounded just like the voice of my ego, hoping against hope that I could keep a couple of my most valuable grievances – some grudges I enjoy visiting, some snarky judgments of others that tickle me when I think of them. Leave me something to ruminate over, to be cynical about, please.

If we truly want to remember who we are, this is impossible. We can’t be a little bit enlightened. Holding any grievance – even if we believe it’s just a tiny one – splits our mind between ego and spirit and a split mind is an unhealed mind. We must choose to release every grievance – even those pet grudges that we keep revisiting in our mind and feeding on a daily basis.

When we hold a grievance of any kind, we deny that Love has created us like itself. Instead, this lesson instructs us to not hold any grudge against anyone, no matter what kind of terrible – or even evil – thing the ego says they have said or done to us or in the world. This is a thought our ego naturally rebels at. “Treat that horrible leader who has done terrible things in the world that have done harm to people as a friend?” it rages. “That’s ridiculous and irresponsible. Justice must be done.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 8, 2020 — Let it go”

Lesson 67: Love created me like itself.

St. Teresa of Calcutta once remarked: “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

That’s how this lesson makes me feel. If Love created me like Itself, then that means I am made of nothing but Love, which is a HUGE responsibility to live up to. A responsibility I don’t think I asked for and if I did, I can’t fathom how to actually live up to such a high expectation. That’s, of course, what my ego wants me to believe. It’s easy to believe the ego, since it’s got all the proof that the last thing you were created like was Love.

This lesson assures us that all of the qualities God has – Love, joy, compassion, justice, acceptance – all reside within us as well, since we are created from that pure Love that is God. The ego scoffs at this. As evidence, it dredges up the old religious traditions of my childhood that warned you not to get above your raisin’ which most definitely means don’t go comparing yourself to God. God is God and you are you and never the twain shall meet.

My religious background taught me that I was made in God’s image – but I am a mere reflection of the qualities of God. I do not actually possess those qualities and to think that I do is to think more highly of myself than I ought.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 7, 2020 — Love and Light”

Lesson 65: My only function is the one God gave me.

The world has many expectations of us – to be productive members of society, form relationships, propagate the species and, first and foremost, look out for number one. We have a lot of expectations on ourselves as well to be “successful” in the world (whatever that means) and build a life that we hope will make us happy.

The ego tells us that our function in this world, then, is to go out there and make it happen – to be the best we can be in business, at home, at play and in all other areas of life. We live by the carrot and the stick – chasing after worldly success and accolades – but wondering at the end of the day what we’re really striving for and if it’s worth all the effort we seem to be exerting – because happiness seems to so fleeting.

A Course in Miracles says we are free to try everything under the ego’s sun to find happiness and fulfillment, but we will never find true happiness until we embrace our true function – to accept forgiveness for ourselves (the Atonement that undoes all illusion) and realize our true function is the one God has given us – to be the light of the world. In the roll and flow of life, however, we forget this. The ego’s game is easy to get wrapped up in, trying to get ahead out there while neglecting the work within that guarantees we can find peace and happiness.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 5, 2020 — The servant of unity”

Lesson 64: Let me not forget my function.

Now that we know our sole function in this world is to be a beacon of God’s Light of Love and save the world through our forgiveness, the ego will do everything it can to undermine us. It will create doubt. It will create fear. It will tell us that this woo-woo junk is so much crap, wishful thinking and spiritual bypass.

“Your function in the world is to be happy?” it scoffs. “How can you be happy while so many suffer?”

And that’s where we forget our function because suddenly, we’re right smack back in the middle of guilt. There are so many suffering people in the world – kids in cages, human trafficking, wars, plagues, famines. “How dare you be happy amid all of this suffering?” the ego demands. “That’s just another sign of your privilege in this world.”

I admit, it’s a tough argument to overcome. I mean, how can you even think of your own happiness at a time like this? Well, if there were such things as private thoughts and separation, then it might actually be a good question. However, since there really is only one of us here, it only takes one of us to truly nail this happiness thing for all of us to step out of our suffering.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 4, 2020 — Forget me not.”

Lesson 63: The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.

One of the things that most confused me when I first started reading the Course is its use of terms that come from my Christian background. Words such as “redemption,” “forgiveness,” “atonement,” “purification,” “crucifixion,” “resurrection,” and even “heaven” and “hell” figure prominently in the text and workbook. Yet, they are all redefined by the Course – made into positive things that do not require any sacrifice on my part, but are turned into tools to help me navigate my path back to the Joy and Love that I was created to be.

This lesson mentions another of those distinctly Christian words – but gives it a twist: Salvation.

To my Southern Baptist ears, that word speaks of a very specific thing: Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. My tradition teaches that salvation comes about by Jesus dying on the cross for my sins – making himself a sacrificial lamb to take away the sins of the world.

This is not what the Course means by “salvation.” No one has to die, no one has to sacrifice and, indeed, no one has to do anything but accept that salvation and it will bring peace to every mind. Salvation isn’t an act by one man giving his life to save the world – instead it is an undoing of illusion. Salvation peels back the veil we have set before us when we believed in separation and created this ego world of confusion and suffering.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 3, 2020 — Save me!”

Lesson 62: Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.

Years ago, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post where I talked about forgiving a past landlord for what I felt was an outrageous slight after he sued me and then-girlfriend for some alleged damage we had inflicted to the apartment we had rented. I wrote about how every time I drove by his house (which was often, since it was on my way to work) I would give him the one-finger salute, which was even more satisfying if he was out working in his yard at the time.

This was during the time I have mentioned before when I was a very, very angry and cynical person. This landlord had simply confirmed all of my suspicions about people – that they were bad, out for themselves and would take advantage of you if you let your guard down.

In the article, I talked about the process I had used to forgive him because I realized – much as the unforgiveness for my father had done – my anger and disgust at him was doing harm to exactly one person – me.  You would have thought that I had asked people to give up breathing or eating. The outrage in the comments was overwhelming. People recounted terrible things that others had done to them and asked, pointedly, if they should just let that go, too.

The answer is, well: “Yes.” Our function in this world is to forgive, today’s lesson tells us. The ego is all over it, loudly protesting what those commenters said: “If we just forgive everyone then we’ll just be doormats and taken advantage of by every Tom, Dick and grifter on the planet.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 2, 2020 — Shed your coat”