Lesson 166: “I am entrusted with the gifts of God.”

This lesson says, “How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile?”  

This sentence gets right to the essence of the Course’s message.  It is asking us a question.

The Course teaches us to get into a questioning outlook, to get us out of our staid egos’ mentality.  

When we ask questions, then our minds are open to doubt that we want things the way they are with the egos’ command.

What we are learning to do is to be teachable, to be persuadable in getting our minds into a fresh mental space.  

We redo our thinking through opening our minds in the question.

The Course also reminds us here that we need sometimes powerful words to punctuate via light what we are not used to bringing to our awareness.  The problem is that we get numb with the egos’ plan in motion.  Then we forget to notice things can be perfect and totally different if we are willing to raise that numbness to a place of truly seeing and feeling with God awareness.  This means that we must learn how to see what is happening within our minds.  The problem is when we forget.

The Course says that our task is simply to see the extremes of what we are doing in our minds.  When we feel without love, poverty is actually the result.

When we accept any way of thinking or being that is in essence lacking love, this is an actual sense of poverty.

We feel like the poorest people out there because our minds have forgotten otherwise.  This is a huge challenge for all of us who desire to live in abundance.  We accept our mental poverty without a second thought most of the time and even don’ t pay attention to how we got that way.

Poverty means we are without God within because we let our minds slip into moments of unpleasant error- in getting buried in this feeling that we in some way have the worst of it in our minds.

That means that we feel terrible, like we were the only one not invited to the party because everyone else landed the lucky roles.  

This is the problem that is the same for all people with egos- which includes everyone.  Our egos like to perpetuate that inner war we have about making some sense of lack real.  They do it because they like to hear themselves condone the nightmare.

The Course gently reminds us that it is our own error when we have rejected God in some way-that we believe in our own reality of poverty.  

The Course says here we think we are in exile because we are not believing we are united with God.

The ego complains loudly that we are in a condition of poverty.  Furthermore, we are in exile from God when we are wrapped up in our poverty.  This is all one huge nightmare that will easily fall away when we just breathe it out back into the Universe.

 This is what it is like when we are believing in a reality that simply can never be.  

God says that there is no way ever that He would leave our minds unattended.  All we have to do is realize that the egos will concoct all kinds of stories to justify their own beliefs in our poverty.  The ego will go to great lengths to make up a convincing story that we on some level believe because in the egos’ world anything is likely.

The Course says this whole idea that we are in exile from God or in any way separated is always a huge sham.  

God is our number one fan because God loves us and this is always what is true.  Our egos may use strong language to try to more successfully get the ego’s point of view across.

We must be wary of listening except in the moments where we laugh and see it as the ridiculous absurdity that it is.

The ego is always wrong.  Our job is to remember God is always with us.