Lesson 17: I see no neutral things.
During Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, one of the chants at his rallies was, “Build that wall!” The candidate ran on a platform of securing the US southern border with a “big, beautiful wall” designed to stop the flow of refugees and immigrants from Mexico and other South American countries.
Even though the chant is about a literal wall, it is an example of the walls of separation that divide us as humans. While Trump’s supporters yelled for a barrier between countries, others felt that walls were unnecessary if proper immigration policies were in place, while still others questioned the value of walls at all, preferring open borders.
There were no neutral thoughts on the wall – and the wall itself, figuratively or literally, was not neutral either.
Where did these walls come from anyway? This lesson seeks to answer that by helping us realize that everything we have brought forth into this world begins with a thought. We believe that the wall caused our thoughts and subsequent division – but it’s really the opposite. We, collectively, believe in the goodness of separating by race and boundary lines and so we create them here in our collective experience.
A Course in Miracles is trying to help us understand cause and effect. We believe that we are at the effect of things around us and that other people are out there causing all those things that anger us and make us want to protest and vote them out of power. We have it backward, the Course says. We have caused all of the ill in the world.
Which, on one level is bad news, but on another level, it holds the miracle we seek. If we are the cause of all the ill effects in the world then we – by becoming open channels for God’s love and light – can save the world and bring about an end to the separation and realize that we have never left the unity of the mind of God.
If our thoughts come first and those thoughts create an illusion in this world that we all agree to either believe or not believe – then watching our thoughts becomes a paramount exercise for us to learn. We have to remember, we have no idle thoughts – we are always creating on some level – but at the same time, we must remember that our perceptions are limited and nothing we see through the eyes of ego are as they truly are.
We are always consumed with past thoughts and experiences which can cloud our vision of what’s happening now. By questioning our thoughts and being willing to see that our thoughts have created our world and not the other way around, we can begin to bring ourselves fully into this present moment – where we can receive a miracle and become teachable and powerful co-creators with God.
Hafiz has a warning for us as we continue our journey through the lessons: Watch out for spiritual la-la land.
We’ll know we’ve landed there when we believe things outside of ourselves create our thoughts. Or, as he says:
“The early warning signs are:
“You start wearing all orange or white and count your beads in public.
“You start believing some basically regular guy or gal with dreamy eyes – who parrots wisdom – is a saint.”
The beginning of all True wisdom arises from our higher, divine Self and that is only accessible once we realize the truth of cause and effect. We have caused the illusion by our thoughts of separation. God, however, is the cause of true Reality, which we can only see when we understand just how powerful our miscreated reality is – and the power it holds over us.
Walls will not make us happy. They only cause more separation, both physically and spiritually.
“Regardless of what you may believe,” this lesson says, “you do not see anything that is really alive or really joyous. That is because you are unaware as yet of any thought that is really true, and therefore really happy.”
The ultimate aim of the Course is to show us that the only way to be really happy is to tear down all the walls we have built within ourselves that separate us from Love.
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