Lesson 115: Review of
Lesson 99: Salvation is my only function here, and
Lesson 100: My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation
My Facebook feed is filled with people who are wrong … deeply, and often irretrievably wrong. I used to spend a lot of time correcting these people – starting long posts and diatribes about their wrongness and just how badly they were mistaken and engaging in hours of back and forth with people who obviously just can’t admit how wrong they really are.
Then, I read this little ditty in A Course in Miracles: “Would you rather be right or happy?”
At first, the answer was obvious: I want to be right. I want to be seen as knowledgeable, as informed, as intelligent and a contributing member of my society! Knowing I was right was what made me happy!
Or so, I believed.
Some people do live to argue – I have a sister that will argue with you all day, every day about the tiniest little thing. It seems to make her happy to challenge every little detail of another person’s argument. In reality, it is the clue to our deepest unhappiness. In a reflection on this lesson over at Pathways of Light, the author muses about our ego’s need to be right:
“The fear of not being right seems to be a greater motivator than the attraction of happiness and peace. On the surface it seems unbelievable that this could be true. But beneath the surface is the fear that if I’m not right, I do not exist.”
So, to the ego, it’s not: “I think, therefore, I am,” but “I’m right, therefore, I am.”
If you don’t believe me, read your own Facebook timeline for five minutes.
What stopped me in today’s lesson was this sentence: “My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made.”
Say what? For all the errors “I” have made? What about all those other errors going on out there that “I” didn’t make? I have to forgive the world for my fuck ups?
Well, yes, of course I do. If there is only one of us here, everything that has gone wrong is because of the errors I have made. I make errors because I want to co-create a world with my ego instead of with the Holy Spirit. When I co-create with my ego, I make errors – big ones, small ones, medium-sized ones. Everything I hate about myself I project onto the world and create a macrocosm of grievances masquerading as reality.
This is what I need to forgive the world for – because I created it from my own fears, my own doubts, my own need to have more, do more, be more and be the smartest, most correct person in the world.
Our purpose here has nothing to do with being right. In fact, when the world says I’m right, it should be a sign to completely rethink how I’m existing in the world. Being “right” in a fearful, egoic world is a sure sign of pure insanity. Being considered “wrong” by this world then is the key to happiness – that place of pure joy that is beyond the ego’s reach or understanding.
Does that mean I abdicate my responsibility to end the suffering in this world? Not one bit. Instead, it means that I will no longer miscreate from my ego by giving in to knee-jerk reactions or taking the bait on Facebook. Instead, I will recreate my inner world by co-creating joy with the Holy Spirit – THEN, I will project that joy outward into the world. By co-creating joy, love and peace first within myself, I will realize that my only function here is the salvation of the world – to help us all remember who we are and whose we are.
From that place, we will all ultimately be proven “right” – because we are no longer serving the ego, but the Spirit.
As this lesson teaches us, God cannot do this work without us. Hafiz tells us that our Beloved is always saying, “My name is not complete without yours.”
“God revealed a sublime truth to the world,
when He sang,
“‘I am made whole by your life. Each soul,
each soul completes
me.'”
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