AYoMW: Jan. 23, 2020 — We’re cooking now

Lesson 23: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

Meister Eckhart once observed: “God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.”

Today’s lesson from A Course in Miracles workbook turns on this idea that we need not add anything to ourselves to bring about an end of the separation – but subtract all the thoughts of attack – and being attacked – that have created this world in the first place.

My experience with my father is a microcosm of the macro-change we can bring into the world. Once I stopped attacking my father in my head – and no longer replayed all the stories where I believed he was attacking me – the world outside of myself changed dramatically. No longer did I find myself angered by small things, like someone cutting me off in traffic or appearing to slight me in some other way. No longer was I impatient with shortcomings of others, preferring instead to see them through the eyes of compassion and know they were acting from their pain and suffering – not their divine, higher Self. (I still don’t do all of this perfectly, by the way, but am hitting the mark more often.)

In short, my whole world changed because I saw clearly that the world around me wasn’t the cause of my pain and suffering. Instead, my mind was causing the pain and suffering – specifically my thoughts about attacking my father and feeling attacked by him. When I replaced those thoughts with loving, compassionate and kind thoughts toward my father – my heart softened and my world of anger and cynicism was destroyed. No longer did I seem to attract a tribe of other angry and cynical people. No longer was I attracted to angry and cynical remarks or TV shows or books or other depictions of such behavior. Instead I felt empathy, but also compassion for those still stuck in those thoughts of attack and being attacked.

Do I still have thoughts of attack and being attacked? Sure. I have other areas where I’m working to release my feelings of being victimizing by others and the temptation to victimize those around me.

The point of this lesson is to help us realize that we have created this world with our hateful, fearful thoughts and once we realize the mind is the cause of our troubles – not the troubles we think we see around us out there – then we can get on with the task of watching for attacking thoughts – and thoughts about being attacked – and question their truth and allow them to let go of us.

“You see the world that you have made,” today’s lesson says, “but you do not see yourself as the image maker.”

Our thoughts have created everything we perceive. We are the image maker, which means we can recreate those images if we’re willing to see things differently – to receive a miracle of a shift in perception. Again, this is not positive-thinking-New-Age-woo-woo. This is how the world works. Our thoughts are creative and they are always creating at some level, since there are no idle thoughts.

In Chapter 2, the Course says “the truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.”

This is not a matter of changing our behavior, the Course tells us. We’ve all been through that self-help trope of “fake it ’til you make it.” Such strategies simply increase our fear and anxiety and produce a split mind within us that’s trying to put two divergent things together. One must be subtracted – and that would be behavior.

When we “make up our mind,” the Course says, we will feel no strain because our will has been aligned with God’s will. A conflicted mind lives in fear – a calm mind, aligned with God’s will – produces a sense of peace.  

It was that sense of peace that I found when I aligned my mind with God’s concerning my father. Holy Spirit helped me see that he, too, was a suffering soul in this world who came to learn his own lessons while helping me learn mine. By subtracting my attack thoughts – and my thoughts about being attacked – around my father, I was able to experience a miracle – and a whole new, more compassionate, world.

Our mind is powerful, the Course tells us, “and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating.” (Chapter 2)

Jesus told us we can move mountains if our faith in the creative power of our thoughts was a small as a mustard seed. But we think it’s arrogant to move mountains with thoughts, the Course says, so we “prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them.”

The ego keeps us in that fear because it knows if we stay with the status quo – if we believe it’s woo-woo to think that our thoughts can create an entirely new world – then we won’t be motivated to destroy this world of suffering and misery. Instead, we’ll just use our thoughts to rationalize it and attack those we blame for making it all this way.

The truth is, we made the world the way it is – a world of injustice, suffering, fear and death. If that’s true, then we have the power to recreate it – to banish fear and bring forth a world of unity and love. We do that not by adding more spiritual practices or participating in more marches and protests. We do that by subtraction – by eliminating the thoughts of attack and being attacked; by dedicating ourselves to changing our mind, which will result in behaviors that bring about whole new world.

Hafiz says we’re all in the kitchen cooking up this world and what it will be. Our ingredients – our loving thoughts – will ensure that we create a delicious world for us all.

The movements of our hands help build the Unseen.
We add to the universe by our efforts.

Whatever we do, we should never think it is irrelevant;
whatever we do, we should not conclude it is so important either.

Between those two poles find your balance;
between those two regions your talents will bloom.

Word spreads about good cooking.
Become that, an exquisite meal for us.

The alchemy stone is waiting to retire and confess …
something in us is its power.

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