Lesson 73: “I will there be light.” 

This lesson says, “Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange.”

The Course is teaching us how to be light. 

We get so dark and dreary and dense.  The ego is a nightmare in the most serious way.  The ego has us going on and on with grievances over and over.

We have a love for drama the way the ego likes it.

The ego is always outdoing itself in making things worse. 

When we have one problem, suddenly then, this snowballs into a multitude problems. 

This gives the ego fuel and the ego wants to survive with no objection and so it does whatever is needed to make itself part of the life we expect and count on.

This is really what is happening.

Guilt is a constant in the ego existence.

We are always suffering over each minute detail the ego spews out in our brains. 

The ego makes it all significant suffering.

The Course is our breath of fresh air because it says that this ego doctrine that we believe completely is actually a “strange” bartering. 

“Strange” just gets us out of the same old ego reality.

We want to see a different reality than the ego’s ideally.  To begin with, we can simply appreciate how the ego’s reality is simply strange.

When we don’t label the ego good or bad, then this gets us out of our dualistic thinking which is all the ego’s force. 

Thus, this is a step in the right direction. 

We want to have a way to think about the ego’s reality, so we can talk about it, and eventually get to that place where we choose God’s reality instead.

But for now, just starting with not buying into the ego’s same old song is a huge step forward. 

We just see the ego as strange.

This then simply awakens our minds. 

Then, we start really noticing what the ego is actually doing because we allow ourselves to notice how peculiar it is- without judgement. 

Thus, we don’t want to judge it as bad because that puts us directly into the attack cycle, that we want to avoid beginning in any area possible. 

Strange is a great word to describe the ego’s shenanigans because it gives us pause to pay attention, without deeming it no good. 

This is the first step of waking up and choosing God, when we simply allow our minds to- be available- to reach God instead of the ego.