Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Lesson 272: “What is the Christ?” “How can illusions satisfy God’s Son?”
Spirit says we never do anything wrong. Our egos are pointing fingers- especially at ourselves. We almost always are our own worst critic. We can run with this harsh perfectionism as a lifestyle. When we feel like we must be perfect, then when something happens where we have done wrong, we can feel so very low. We can feel our certainty is disrupted. When we go through the days, we have that feeling that Jesus says is certainty where we feel happy in our own skin and easy in our minds. We aren’t at war within. When we insist on being perfect, what happens is that our certainty is threatened. We will react with anger and guilt and resentment or sadness. This emotional pull will then lead us to feeling low. When we sacrifice our certainty at the hand of the ego’s perfectionism, this invariably leads us to a depressing life.
The Course says we are never at fault. If we forget to do something, this is just part of the landscape but it has no bearing on the calm and light mind. The Course says everything has purpose. Even if we do something that looks wrong in appearance, we can be certain that God has a plan for this wrong instance. When we take a wrong turn we may be missing an accident or instead we will run into our friend in the unusual path. The Course says so clearly not to judge- don’t make anything good or bad. It may have an impact down the road that we can’t foresee. It is essential that we don’t get into a position of judging anything when we don’t know God’s position about it. Therefore, we also don’t know what learning this could have to benefit our own lives later on. The Course says this is something we need to trust.
When we have anxiety about what is happening and we judge that thing we automatically go out of our certainty and lightness. This is definitely the way to be miserable. When we aren’t with solid certainty we end up getting further stressed about whatever happens in our lives. This then definitely makes us miserable and also makes feel disempowered in our lives. When it feels like we can’t ride the waves of a changing life with grace, then we end up feeling terrible about ourselves and our lives. This is why we absolutely must be committed to the idea that nothing we do is ever call for this judgement our ego tries to bring. In order to get out of the nightmare of what could happen in the world we need to have faith that God has a perfect plan and that our experiences are directly in line with them and thus meld with them perfectly. Nothing is ever out of place because it all has purpose.