Lesson 109: “I rest in God.”

The Course is teaching us how to get out of the habit of trying to fix ourselves.  Our egos have a list a mile long with all of our undesirable traits.  The ego thinks we need to get right on the task of making ourselves better.  The world is a crazy place because a lot of what we do there as we grow into adulthood is work on improving our skills.  This makes us more successful in the world’s standards.  We repeatedly hear that having more refined skills is admirable and desirable.  Then we buy into the whole effort of getting ourselves into a more skilled position and we start to believe that what we do in the world is what makes us valuable.

The Course says that we are perfectly wonderful just as we are.  We don’t have to do anything to be perfect because God already created us as perfect.  Therefore, we don’t have to do anything to win God’s favor or to win our salvation.

God gives us that because God knows our worth and in God’s eyes- this never changes.  

Worldly status is something that may lead to worldly kudos but this never leads us anywhere in God’s grand scheme of things.  Our worldly success is also not what enhances our sense of inner peace.

The world is fun to do things in and it may make us feel valuable in some ways, but we need to remember that this is just a very small part of what is meant to be the crux of our lives. 

We are asked to focus on God and that what God determines about us is true.  That means we can trust that God already has declared us as perfectly worthy just as we are. 

This means we don’t have to do anything in order to get to this wonderful place where we are certain of our worth because we realize that God has already given us the go ahead to be certain. 

Since God is the perfect entity with all knowledge available to Him at all times, this means He can and does always make correct assessments.  This is why we can trust that God knows exactly the truth of us and we can have faith in His word.

The Course teaches us to simply do nothing and simply sit and realize that we are just fine and perfect exactly as we are.  We can do worldly things to improve ourselves there or we can do absolutely nothing and either way, we are still equally worthy.

Our worth is not at all dependent on whether we do any activities well. 

We learn here that we can stop and simply relax because there is no way God will stop loving us.  God already determined our worth.  Therefore, we don’t have to participate in the world’s activity if we want to not do so.  The slickest trick in the book is when the ego tries to improve ourselves in the world, and then the ego has attachments about how this looks in the world and endless judgements about this process.

Then we get stuck  in that challenging dilemma of how to be present in our lives and improve some aspect, but then we end up getting upset over it because it is very commonly a direct route to our inner battleground.

When we start to judge our own attempts at improving, then the cycle of attack goes around and back again in our minds. 

The Course teaches us to engage in the world when we feel called by the Holy Spirit to do so.  But while we make this effort to improve, just stay mindful of the mental traps we set up to get down on ourselves for being in any way imperfect in the process.

We want to not be attached to the outcome. 

Therefore, we need to be gentle and kind with our minds.

We want to be disciplined in our efforts to grow, but very kind and delicate with those thoughts that are counter to God energy- which is forgiving and accepting and open for direction about how to make whatever better.