Monday, May 25, 2015
Lesson 145: Review: “My mind holds only what I think with God.” “Beyond this world there is a world I want.” “It is impossible to see two worlds.”
We can be completely encouraged and infused with hope because the Course teaches us that there are two ways to live in the world. We can feel disheartened upon hearing the news that the world is unreal. Our egos are virtually seamlessly tied to the world. If the world does not exist, surely that means the end of our egos. Thus, they get angry and disillusioned and try to make their own view the only one we have.
When we tell the ego that the world is an illusion, we are very likely to feel disenchanted with life. It seems to our egos that we will have to give up the world that exists as we know it- thus the picture of our current life. Our egos get very upset about the declaration of an ending to the ego’s stage. Then if we are listening in, we hear our egos groan with disgust about the prospect of discontinuing our existence. The ego thinks surely that is all over for us.
The Course tells us that the ego’s world may end but this will be nothing but a blessing. What is truly extraordinary is the experience of the world when we use God’s perspective in the practice of living through it. When we choose God’s plan instead, we can be happy beyond belief. The world which seems confusing and difficult when the ego rules, turns to a place of clarity and everlasting gratitude and joyful life when God is our Co-creator.
This is why we have to see that there is hope when we make space for the possibility in our minds that there is a world where we can exist when we look beyond our ego’s view. Then we are fully heartened with this news because then we can enjoy being in the world. We will never have to have the anxiety that we will cease to exist in a state of joy because we mistakenly believe the world will be cast away.
The ego will be cast away. But we can live in the world from God’s view. This means not that the world is real and true home of God. God is not inherently of the world so God is not a permanent resident in the world. God stays in the world as long as we are there and want Him to walk with us there. Then the world is in fact, the happy dream, which is what the Course calls when God is ever present in our day to day life as a human.
We want to be reminded that our seeing more than one world is impossible. We are fortunate to learn that there is more than just the ego’s world. At any moment, we can look to God’s world, know it to be real, and choose to live within it without fail. However, what we can’t do is be in more than one world at a time. This never really happens anyway.
We can never be in two world because God places us in only one. However, I think the ego often tries to fool us. The ego tries to keep us with both feet in separate realities- one in God’s world and one in the ego’s. The ego never wants to give up the fight of trying to convince us that we can’t leave the ego’s home. The ego keeps us invested in this idea that we can’t ever leave.
Therefore our egos make us feel completely confused and ungrounded because we are trying to balance with one foot in each different world. We then are led to believe since our foot is still with one in the ego world, that we have some sort of investment already in maintaining the ego. This is always the way we suffer when we feel divided and not at home in any place and also not committed to God’s world. This is why we have to forgive our ego for being so committed to its existence and be firm in the knowing that we can be only in one world. The ego’s convincing story is also easily whisked away when we understand that we have to be committed to living only in God’s world.