The Muslim mystic poet Hafiz wrote a succinct summary of this lesson in a poem several centuries ago:
“I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely
or in darkness,
“The
Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!”
That inner light that we all possess is essential for us to switch from the ego’s vision of this world to God’s vision. As today’s lesson emphasizes, “In order to see, you must recognize that light is within, not without.”
We think we see light outside of ourselves – the sun shining, the lightbulb driving away the darkness of a room at night, the candle creating a romantic glow, the fire lighting up the night sky. All of these are the eye’s perception of light, but none of these lights, no matter how bright, represent the real light of Love that shines only within each of us.
It is that inner light that allows us to see through the darkness our ego projects onto the world. Our ego loves to see the dark side of everything and everyone. We project guilt, fear and hatred onto this world and perceive evil, angry and hateful people around us. All we can see in them is darkness, fear and danger.
Lesson 43: God is my Source. I cannot see apart from God.
I sometimes
get my source and my channels all mixed up. Especially when I check my bank
account. The middle of the month seems to be the most anxiety-producing time
when I’m hoping nothing surprising shows up so the little remaining money I
have will stretch to the next blessed paycheck.
I see the
paycheck as my source. Coincidentally, the mortgage and car finance companies
do, too. Today’s lesson reminds me that I am confused about what is what. My paycheck,
as handy as it may be at keeping me fed and living indoors, is not my source –
neither is the job that provides the regular pay.
God is my
Source. If this job were to disappear tomorrow, something else would arise to
take its place. What I needed would be provided until that happened. The
in-between time may not be the lap of luxury – but all needs would be met. When
I reflect the dwindling number in my bank account, I remind myself of this
fact. I have never, not once, gone without my needs being met. My wants and
desires? They will always be with me, but my needs? Always handled in some form
or fashion.
This is what
it’s like when you know God is your source. The paycheck, the job, the other
streams of income are merely the channels that the Divine source uses to meet
your needs (and sometimes your desires).
Lesson 42: God is my strength. Vision is His gift.
I have trouble asking for help. It’s not that I think I’m all that and can do what needs to get done on my own. I don’t like to feel that I’m inconveniencing people and fear that I’ll feel rejected if a string of people turn down my request. Consequently, I either do something poorly, or make a lot of mistakes, or just decide whatever I thought I needed help with could wait, or ultimately go undone.
It’s all just an ego trick, of course. Feeling reticent to connect with others and seek their assistance is a symptom of the separation. The ego tells us, “They have their lives, y’know. Asking them to go out of their way for you is selfish and a sign of weakness that you can’t handle something in your own life.”
Fostering feelings of shame, blame, insecurity and inferiority is all part of the ego’s stock and trade to keep us perpetuating the separation we feel from those around us – and also from God. In the Southern Baptist tradition in which I was raised, I was always taught to rely on God for strength – but at the same time, you had be at work, proving you were a capable “partner” with God.
Several
years ago, I fell into a deep depression. It was just like others had described
it to me – a deep dark hole that you felt you could never climb out of, no
matter what. Nothing in the world mattered to me. I called this my, “fuck
it” stage of depression.
The house catches
fire? “Fuck it.”
The dog
dies? “Fuck it.”
I win the
lottery? “Fuck it.”
Nothing,
good or bad, could shake me from my darkness. During that time, one of my most
beloved cats did, in fact, die, and while I missed him, it didn’t rip me apart
like I thought it would. I could not sink deeper into darkness, even with his
death.
I keenly felt a sense of separation – from the person I loved the most at that time and even the animals I loved the most. Nothing in the world brought me joy, and going within myself to try to find that joy made me even more depressed.
It wasn’t
until my psychologist put me on anti-depressant medication that my world
changed. Not because the medication made me feel better. In fact, I felt worse.
The first day I took the meds, I felt invincible. I got so much done and felt
better. As the weeks wore on, though, the meds helped even less than nothing. I
felt angry all the time.
Lesson 40: I am blessed as a Son (or Child) of God.
I knocked a full glass of my morning iced coffee onto the floor sometime last year, and watched as the glass shattered, spattering coffee everywhere like a caffeine crime scene.
I burst into tears. I wasn’t crying over spilled latte as much as the shattering glass and coffee explosion reminded me that life hadn’t really panned out the way I imagined it would when I was a kid. I was in the midst of a divorce and had just moved into a new house. All the ideas and plans I had conjured up for my life – the fame, the fortune, heck, even just a bit of recognition and enough money in the bank – had not seemed to appear as I thought they should have.
My life felt just as shattered as the glass I now had to clean up off the floor.
In that moment, the last thing I felt was blessed, as a Child of God or otherwise.
We all have these moments when life overwhelms us, when we feel like our dreams are cracked or obliterated, and our sense of self-worth hits zero. In those moments of stress, depression and anxiety, it’s easy to feel worthless, to feel defeated by life and count the ways we have failed in this world.
As a Southern Baptist kid, I was taught that hell was an actual place, with actual fire, actual demons with actual horns and pitchforks where you actually were burned alive each day but not consumed by the fire. You went there because you were a bad person in your life – or you danced, drank or wore your hair long as a boy or wore pants as a girl.
It was a scary place to think about, especially as a pants-loving girl.
When I came out as a lesbian, hell was most often the threat that was used against me. If I had a dime for every time someone told me that my sexual orientation would send me to hell, I could have bought Joel Osteen’s stadium church a million times over. That would be me, living my best life.
It took me a long, long time to overcome my fear of hell – to realize that if it truly is a literal place, I’m already there, because I have put myself in hell by believing all those stories about hell in the first place. As A Course in Miracles points out in this lesson, hell is a choice we make whenever we accept the ego’s idea that we’re guilty of something.
Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do.
In her book, A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”
Today’s lesson
tries to help us wrap our mind around this concept that our greatest fear is that
we are “powerful beyond measure.” We, honestly, don’t want to be that
powerful, because with power comes great responsibility. We prefer to play
small because that way, while we may lose the adulation of the world, we will
definitely escape its scorn if things go sideways.
If we actually embraced the Reality of our holiness, we could transform the world. Our holiness, this lesson says, “is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind.”
Who we really are isn’t limited by time, or space, or anything we see in this outside world. Instead, the lesson says, “Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone because it is equal in its power to save anyone.”
In Matthew 9:13, Jesus makes it clear what lesson we are here to learn in this bodily world: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'”
The Greek
word used for “mercy” in this passage means “kindness or good will.”
The word used for “sacrifice” means “victim.” We have already
learned in an earlier lesson that we are not the victim of the world we see. We
only learn that when we begin to be willing to see the world differently and
understand that what has been created out here was first created in our mind.
The world of
fear, despair and greed we perceive together is a misuse of our creative powers.
We have created a world where “sacrifice” is seen as a good and noble
thing. We’ll sacrifice our lives for others, we’ll sacrifice our time, our belongings,
our peace of mind. It sounds so generous. But we are not called to sacrifice,
this lesson tells us, because sacrifice creates separation. It creates a sense
of specialness.
You know
plenty of people who take pride in the sacrifices they have made for others –
for their kids, their family, their friends and their bosses. They can recount
everything they’ve given up for the pleasure and comfort of others. It makes
them feel special – and it makes them feel like a victim – a doormat taken advantage
of by others.
Lesson 36: My holiness envelopes everything I see.
Today, I should feel outraged, angry and justified in feeling that way. My “side” of the political aisle appears to face an insurmountable amount of what I perceive to be hatred, fear, greed and cruelty from those on the other side of that aisle.
Just last night, the partisan pot boiled over with a president giving a State of the Union address filled with outright lies about the state of our nation, snubbing the House leader who led his impeachment and then her retribution as she tore up her copy of his speech after it was all over.
After nearly three years as a student of A Course in Miracles, I feel my outrage muted by my desire to see peace rather than this, by my desire to go within my own mind and find the holiness that resides there and instead of filling my Facebook feed with outraged screeds, I want to use my mind, my words, my very life, to create a new world – a happy dream where the bridge to unity can be built.
For as much as my ego rejoiced as Nancy Pelosi ripped up that speech, my heart hurt. One more petty action provoked by another petty action. This is not how we display love in the world. What should she have done? Hugged his neck? Endured his arrogance and handshake snub?
Honestly, I don’t know. The fear and anger in this world appear to be insurmountable, but I know there had to be a better way to show the president a fierce kind of love in this moment of fear and hatred. Tearing up his speech wasn’t it. All that did was deepen the separation, strengthen the egos of all involved and made everyone feel justified in their hatred of each other.
Today’s lesson is a step toward finding a better way.
