Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Lesson 287: “What is the Holy Spirit?” “You are my goal, my Father. Only You.”
Jesus teaches us in the Course to have a single minded purpose. Lots of us feel like we have many pursuits, we may have jobs and spouses, children, friends and business associates. We have hobbies and exercises and favorite pastimes. We are often heading in an expansive multitude of directions. We have all kinds of goals that seem separate and unique. What Jesus is teaching us here is that we want to in fact change the way we live in our lives and stick to a single plan.
Our egos hear this and grimace. The ego is convinced we will miss out on the length and extent of life’s activity. We can take this the wrong way because our egos like to find problems in God’s plan. The ego wants to fight to stay in control by affirming to us that this Godly goal will mean we miss out tremendously. The ego wants us in a panic- to keep the ego in control because then it is likely to convince us to just put our heads in the sand and not be willing and able to make the different decision for God. Our egos say that we are going to be ever unhappy without the familiar idols on which the ego collects and obsesses.
We are asked to make a clean break from the ego’s incessant attachment to its idols, whatever they may be. Our egos want desperately to maintain some semblance of what they believe is power. Their only power is the power we give them when we give them time, energy and attention. This is why we have to be willing to just let the ego stop its crazed push to keep it at the helm when we live.
Jesus is teaching us here that our power surfaces within our minds when we stay committed to having God as our only direction and purpose. God says that we will find true peace when we surrender our need to multitask, surrender our need to have our schedule be the one we pay mind to. We can have essentially anything be our idols. What is essential is that we don’t allow anything to be more important than God or we love something more than God. Further, we must not allow that idol to throw us out of balance because we like the worldly rush of energy we get when we partake in this thing.
We want to understand that when we are living, essentially anything can throw us off base. The nature of our existence at this time is one of abundance and we are of the most fortunate in the world because most of our basic needs are attended to at least at an adequate level. Therefore, it is the prime time when we start to have even more addicted thinking and behaviors. We love our idols and we have the time to devote to them. We allow ourselves to be thrown off because the world has a secret passion for this level of over- abundance. Therefore lots of times in our lives because we are exposed to such abundance and live within it primarily, we end up creating whole relationships with our idols or our addictions.
We have to forgive this about the way we exist as humans at this time- that we have a propensity of living to the extreme and partaking much in the idols. What Jesus says is just forgive that this happens, don’t hold our minds hostage because we have this tendency. Let go any guilt over this. But then lets get up and pay attention to what is calling to us in a way that we make this thing bigger than God in our hearts.
Understand we are not asked to deny the cool worldly rush that this item may have when we experience them in the world. We don’t have to avoid it or try to make it less. What we want to do is partake in it in moderation. Learn the joy of learning how to stay in the middle way. We can learn how lightness feels. We don’t have to have a hundred of everything. We can have some and love it and care for it. We can relish and anticipate with great happiness that it comes in our lives. Just let it be subtle and delicate in our minds. It doesn’t have to be big enough to knock us over. Let’s instead love the gift of it without forgetting that God is the great joy of each day. And while we know this and feel this, we can love the worldly rushes at the occasions when it is appropriate for us. We just must let God be the priority always.