Lesson 130: It is impossible to see two worlds.
If it’s true that this world is not our home, why does it feel so damn real? Today’s lesson has an answer: fear. When the tiny, mad idea that we are separate from God entered our thoughts, fear tagged along behind and overtook our mind.
We are so convinced this world of our physical senses is real that any suggestion that it is an illusion is dismissed as utter insanity. Of course, this world is real. I can touch it, I can smell it, I can taste it and hear it and see it. The thought that there is something beyond this physical reality is so alien to us, we tend to lock people away who constantly seek to look beyond this physical field of existence and call them crazy.
It’s not crazy, it’s reality. Buddhism and other Eastern religions have recognized the illusory impermanence of the world we live in. Even Jesus said it was crazy to store up worldly possessions when our bodies all meet the same fate in the end. We see what that kind of preaching got him.
And that really is the point. Even though we all have this emptiness inside, this nagging feeling that we’re really not supposed to be in this world at all, we’re afraid of the alternative. We’re afraid those in this world will misunderstand us, reject us, fear us, hate us, and yes, even kill our bodies, if we disagree with the egoic paradigm.
That’s why we get called names like “new-agers,” “woo-woo,” “navel gazers” and “spiritual by-passers.” The ego world will do all it can to keep you in line – believing that what your body communicates to you is actual reality. It is not.
There is another world – one that doesn’t require bodies. One where things like sin, envy, anger, competition and fear do not exist. If you’re reading the Course or doing other spiritual exercises, perhaps you have touched this other world, even if just for a moment. A sense of peace that you’ve never felt before may have washed over you briefly, and you long to return to that feeling.
That’s the world beyond this world, and the good news is, while you’re in your body, you can live from that place of inner, undisturbed peace. Practices such as meditation, chanting, dancing with the whirling dervishes, art, singing, painting – anything that takes you outside of your ego self – can transport you to this world almost immediately if you allow them to. Then, once we experience that peace, we can return to it over and over again until it becomes our way of life.
It’s impossible to see two worlds, this lesson tells us. While we are in these bodies, we must engage with what’s around us, but we must do so from within the only world that exists – the world that Love made. We can only do that when we’re living first in the world of Love, then bringing that peace, joy and compassion into this ego world with every thought, word and deed.
This lesson, according to the Muslim mystic poet Rumi, invites us to join the true community of the spirit:
“There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
“Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.”
Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash