Sunday, July 5, 2015
Lesson 186: “Salvation of the world depends on me.”
This lesson says “Here is the statement that will one day take away all arrogance.” Our egos have such low opinions of themselves. Their sense of self-assuredness and confidence is not based on anything real or consistent or enduring. Therefore, when they try to function in the world they rely on their old inner programming which repeatedly tells us that there is no basis for an even neutral opinion of ourselves.
Our egos have absolutely no substance to their opinions of us so they naturally result in acting less than and not worthy of any actual personality and purpose in the world. Our egos are based on nothing real so they get sensitive and reactive when they hear things like the fact that salvation of the world depends on us. Our egos chalk this up to necessarily being arrogant because the ego has no true substance in our inner foundation. Thus the ego has nothing to depend on to hold up its opinion of us.
That’s why the ego stumbles immediately. It has only beliefs about us that we have no value and necessarily can have no true effect in the world. This is the natural reaction of our egos when they have nothing upon which to base their inner feelings of purpose. They think because theirs has no substance to our purpose, that they fall back on putting us down in terms of asserting our function in the world. Our egos believe that we have no valid reason for our existence because they think so little of us.
This is why they get incredibly triggered by hearing something like we are in charge of the salvation of the world. This impacts them so strongly and they squirm terribly. They believe the worst of us so they think this statement is nothing but a twisted view of our purpose. It seems like the worst thing we could say. Our egos think it is bad enough alone that we have such a low opinion of ourselves and that the opinion is true. But then to blurt out something that seems like such a sensational purpose and making it our own individual purpose necessarily seems completely to the nth degree of arrogant.
This lesson says, “Let us not fight our function.” We go to great lengths to deny this about ourselves. Jesus wants us to understand the true nature of our function and to not take this lightly. We tend to think of ourselves as sinful and always at the root of some problem. This is a recurring tragedy for us because we believe truly and deeply that we are not good enough not just for all the benefits of living in heaven all the time but also for the abundance in every part of our lives. Further, the problem is that because we think so lowly of ourselves we necessarily preclude ourselves from having any purpose of real significance. This is a terrible way to live to not have congruent sense of purpose along with our elevated worth. This is also a false way to live because we are not being true to God’s purpose as our own which is what God Wills for us.
What we need to do is realize that we have an essential and extraordinary purpose to live in our humanness. We get to play the part of making salvation everyone’s life plan and goal. When we accept our salvation this is also how we accept the same for the others with whom we share our lives. This is the way we live in our own extraordinary purpose. We don’t have to walk on water if we don’t feel called to do that. Our extraordinariness is acted out in this role as one to accept salvation for our own. Then in our joining with others, salvation then becomes their memory and worldly reality as well. This is the way we save the world.
I also think it helps when we have perspective about what it means to save the world. When we think that saving the world means that we are going to wake everyone from the dead then we may feel like this is out of the realm of what most of us have practice doing. The Course says there are no order of difficulties in miracles. Therefore we can assume this means that any miracles is possible- which it is. Therefore, even waking the dead is a possibility but we don’t focus on that in the Course because we see that the world is temporary and thus not where it makes sense to extend salvation. But one of the things that makes salvation of the world possible now by everyone including me so that salvation is in the mind to which we all have access. Then we simply need to realize that salvation is from God so we don’t have to do anything to make that happen except simply accept it from God.