Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Lesson 21: “I am determined to see things differently.”
This lesson gives us instruction to go beyond what we worked on yesterday. The first eye opener that we had was when Jesus asked us to please have the willingness to simply see. I believe that is simply the instruction to stop what we are doing and notice. We don’t have to figure anything out. We just need to get our ego out of “full-steam ahead motto.” Just power the ego down to “Mild” so we don’t get swept away from the whirling judgements the ego is making.
The ego is a mile a minute showering us with every complaint in the book. Thus, the first step is just to get our attention, just make sure we are cognizant of the crazy ego pace that prevents us from simply making the reality of the ego sensible. We can’t figure it out because it is out of control. Our task is simply to look and notice at first. Nothing else is required. We just stop letting the ego’s rant be way louder than anyone else’s.
Then we have this lesson, which is another step in the right direction. Fortunately this steps is also little and easy. There is no way we can falter in getting to the bottom of what we are perceiving because God helps us from here. But in this lesson, we take that next shuffle on the path. Now, we are not only seeing the ego slowed way down, but now we are asked to offer the willingness to see everything differently.
This is a huge shift in consciousness for us because we are bringing our willingness with us to the picture and allowing ourselves to see AND to see things from a different view. This is the most important thing for us to do. This is simply getting our ego out of the way. When the ego is seemingly permanently dictating the events of our perception, we have a deep struggle to even imagine that we perceive differently. It’s way too hard to figure it out it seems.
We just want to stop making the ego our primary problem and the way to do that is to be open enough to accept the truth that our reality is rather of picture of God’s. When we agree to see something differently this immediately puts the ego out of commission. When we bring in the energy of something new, this automatically halts the ego energy. We just need the willingness to get out of the way.
This lesson says, “You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over an intense fury.” I appreciate that the Course helps us to see that all of our anger and emotions are full and powerful no matter how small we think they are. I know I used to notice my own twinges of anger and have worked a lot with them so they no longer snowball into a tantrum of rage. I think anger especially can just hook us. If we get just a little bit triggered with anger, it is so easily escalated into some intense rage. Jesus teaches us here to not forget the small stuff. It all matters and it all has potential to both upset us and have potential to end up in a delivery of attack to another.