Monday, January 5, 2015
Lesson 5: “I am never upset for the reason I think.”
Our thoughts and minds are wholly connected. The world generally interprets every thing to be mechanized. We see every thing as a machine that is not connected or affected by everything else. We founded our whole belief system on the idea that one part of ourselves is separate from everything else and thus has no bearing on how the other parts operate. We are taught that things and people are separate entities and make no matter in influencing each other because they are distinct.
The Course has the perspective that we are whole beings. Our individual parts all are directly impacted by the others. The Course teaches us that everything is energy and so all that we do or think is all a direct consequence of the other aspects of our beings. These views, the ego’s and the Course’s directly oppose each other. It’s some work to let go of this old belief system that serves us not. The larger society and science are in their own processes of evolution. They are discovering and revising drastically as they go. Quantum physics is a newly recognized look at reality in a way that is similar to what the Course says. We have to forgive the illusion of the world and simply stay focused on learning these beneficial and current perspectives of the Course.
When we realize that we are all connected within ourselves and connected with others even despite the fact that our bodies look separate, we can start to let this new information sink in to the depth of our hearts. We can know that we need to grasp that we are a whole in the larger picture of life. And because we are whole, all of our parts impact each other.
The Course is teaching us here to accept without judgement that our thoughts directly impact our feelings. We have to understand that there is a direct relationship here of how our thoughts are the direct cause of our feelings. This is the route to freedom because it means we can free our minds from the old belief that we are limited in power to change our thoughts or feelings when we get upset. We are learning how to know that this relationship of all of our body and mind parts is a blessing in the end because we can change them.
When we can change our thoughts, our feelings automatically change as well. This is the way to maintain our own peace and happiness because we can intercede in this process of seeing thoughts and then realigning them to something that includes forgiveness. Then feelings are soon to follow in sync because they are the direct consequence of that action of changing the outcome of our thoughts.
Part of what happens when we get upset about something is we become certain we are right about it. That ego’s act of claiming superiority of knowing what is perceived is where the struggle and attachment comes from. The Course is teaching us to systematically release our attachment to the belief we know how things are supposed to be. This is a rigid holding in our minds. In that attachment, we can’t muster a sense of openness because it feels like we can’t let go of the battle against ourselves. Here we are asked to simply make space for the possibility we are wrong. Let this insane idea be released and simply allow there to be empty space where the attachment stood previously.