Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Lesson 364: “This holy instant I would give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.”
This lesson says, “And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him.” The Course teaches us that we must practice living with an open mind. When the ego is in charge of our direction, we get rigidly attached to our viewpoint. The ego smashes down our openness and creates all sorts of blocks that get in the way. The ego has the regular trick of eliminating any openness.
The ego is so focused on its little view, it can’t branch out and make itself available to discover new possibilities. The Course reminds us that with the ego in charge, the ego makes use of its old tool bag of tricks. And whatever the ego has been using is just not working. The ego usually keeps trying, insisting it will find the right way to approach, but inevitably, it leaves us so far off track. We have to realize this old bag of tricks is not the way out.
What we need is the open mind. We are asked to do our part in making this our reality. When we insist on letting the ego lead, we create the insane reality. The ego is never open to truth. The ego marches to that old off beat that never sang to our hearts harmoniously. The open mind is the answer to get our minds aligned with God. Even if we don’t know how to do that, or we forget how to make that happen, along the way all we have to do is stop and ask Holy Spirit for some Godly clarity. We can also ask for the willingness to allow the openness to be our step forward. The open mind is the only way to get into aligned mind with God. We are asked to stay at it.
Sometimes when we read the Course we can receive a lot of information about how to manage our thinking with God and how to live emotionally in a way that feeds our deepest nature. This is great because it is part of the way we can get to a deeper understanding of how to live in peace always. But when we applying the philosophy we can get stuck sometimes. Sometimes when we can’t exactly identify what is keeping us from our desired alignment with God’s mind. Checking out our openness is one of the major components to making these ideals work practically. If we can’t move into a peaceful state, we can pray and ask God for guidance. Then sometimes we can take a closer look at our own individual emotional dynamic. Our level of openness is a sure place to look. We can see if it is an area we need to forgive and let go of old blocks to love’s presence.