Lesson 12: I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
Today’s lesson instructs us to look at the world around us and say: “I think I see a fearful world, a dangerous world, a hostile world, a sad world, a wicked world, a crazy world …”
All we have to do is turn on the news and all those thoughts will be confirmed. Wars, rumors of wars, famine, greed, hostility, division – it’s a cornucopia of insanity out there right now. It, of course, always has been. We’ve created this insane world together – joining our fearful egos in a horror show we call “life.”
Today’s lesson is the first step to correcting that vision and becoming a clear channel for God to begin to create “the good, the beautiful and the holy,” through us. We believe, this lesson says, that we’re upset because the world is frightening, sad, violent or insane. In reality, the world is meaningless. We’re the ones who struggle with fear, sadness, violence and insanity.
We have yet to see through the illusions of all of these generators of fear within our own heart and mind, and so we project all of that onto the blank screen that is the true Reality of the world. We are the artists of our own paintings – the screenwriters of our own play of life – and we misuse our creativity and imagination to build fearful and crazy worlds. That’s because we’ve given the pen and brush of creation over to our ego – which loves to paint pictures of chaos, competition and separation.
This lesson invites us to take back any tool that is used to paint pictures that frighten or confuse us and instead learn that nothing we project onto this world – whether it’s images of violence and mayhem or even peace and cooperation – will manifest the world we want if we are attempting to create without guidance from the Holy.
This is the key to this lesson, I believe. We see a frightening world that appears to be endlessly evil and fleetingly good because we have forgotten who we are – children of God whose function it is to allow God to create through them.
“If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy,” this lesson tells us. “But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth.”
Our ego can’t stand a vacuum – which is what Reality is – a blank screen – so it will scrawl frightening images on it like a craven graffiti artist. Once we wrest the spray paint can from the ego, we can begin to understand that the blank canvas of Reality is where God will render a masterpiece if we allow the Holy to move through us and create.
“Beneath your words is written the Word of God,” the lesson says.
The Muslim mystic poet Rumi reminds us what that Word of God sounds like:
“silence
is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
This lesson is an invitation to silence the words of the ego and begin to learn a new language. When our words are erased, God’s can begin to be spoken – and a new heaven and a new earth will emerge in this meaningless world.
Photo credit: Liana De Laurent from Pexels