Lesson 131: No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth
By every measure of this ego’s world, I am a failure. I am not famous. I am not rich. I am not powerful. I have not accomplished all that much in the grand scheme of things. There are people half my age who accomplished fame, fortune and achieved powerful offices in government, entertainment and other institutions.
I am not one of those.
I used to worry about this. I used to berate myself for being lazy. “Yeah, you got ONE book published, but what about those writers who turn out a book every year, ore even every six months? What a loser.”
The litany in my head goes on and on – my spiritual community is not a mega-church so I have to have a full-time job in addition to that job. Loser.
I’ve discovered, though, being a loser in this world isn’t all that bad. What, truly, does this world have to offer anyone? We can value fame, fortune and power, but once we achieve it, we have to spend the rest of our lives protecting it, defending it, fearing that something will snatch it away from us.
I have high praise for low expectations. So does the Course. This world really has nothing worth striving for in a material sense. Certainly, those who gain fame, fortune and power can use them to better the world – to extend love and create the “happy dream” the Course says is needed to help end the separation we feel and restore us to unity. The material world can serve the purpose as we seek to end separation, but often we make serving the world our purpose. This is where we go wrong, this lesson tells us.
Today, we put aside the striving for this world and strive for heaven instead – which is an end to separation and our remembering of who we truly are – one with God and everyone else.
St. Teresa of Avila puts it this way:
Anxious to see you, I died to the world.
Hearing your voice at the city’s edge, at the
horizon of form and space,
how could I then notice anything hands made;
how could I adore or suffer time?
Anxious to hold you, I forgot myself completely
but you did not care about the way I came to
look; I mean your shape and mine, what were
those?
the seed husk that falls, because it could not
contain our mingled feet.
Anxious to see you, our souls became your
glory, our eyes became your fire.
All concepts of God are like a jar we break,
because only the infinite can contain our
perfect love.
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