Saturday, January 17, 2015
Lesson 17: “I see no neutral things.”
It is especially helpful for our peace of mind when we realize we are going to be able to function perfectly well in the world even after we apply such lessons as today’s to our mindset. The Course’s teaching is in part entirely idealistic. It goes to the Nth degree of asking us to conclude the letting go of all of our past ideas of how to see the world. Jesus tells us here to spare no expense of willingness to get in touch with whatever thoughts we have buried. Then we realize that we are often riding with the ego’s lip when it says that having judgement is no problem, rather the work of the common person.
The ego makes us knock ourselves down a peg because we aren’t allowing everything to be a certain way. We end up getting downtrodden for our ego’s attempt at making perception of the world something we recognize. We try to make sense of things by giving everything names and meanings, but it is all nonsensical. We give it all the judgement of the belief that the ego knows just how to handle what it sees by shaping our thought system to be a reflection of our external world.
The other piece the Course teaches is utterly practical. We must hold this idealistic way of being in the world from a view of total love and forgiveness of everything. Meanwhile, we also realize on another level that we need to live in the world, so we must learn how to do these two things simultaneously. That’s the key. We have to do them at the same time or we lose sight of God’s ultimate purpose- which is to teach us the union of the ideals of these ultimate emotional and practical principles. When we do them together then we carry this idealistic principle with us.
We always reflect it in our world when we have integrated this within us. Thus, we do the idealistic practices like seeing the world as not real and seeing we are free from our bodies. We get crystal clear about this truth and we carry it in the depths of our hearts and souls. Then we approach the world with the knowing that nothing in the world can threaten our peace because we are unaffected by any insanity with which we may come into contact.
The reason the Course wants us to see for example that all of our thoughts are clouded with judgement in the ego’s attempt at meaning is because then we can realize- what is my life like when I apply all of the Course’s principles? When we stop judging the lesson and how our minds fret about how we can function in the world, then we take to heart these messages. We just open our minds and ask them to be willing to be written on while knowing we will have over time the know how to make all of the Course’s idealistic lessons part of our well integrated instruction. It teaches us about how to live effectively and competently managing the appeals from the world.