Lesson 128:

The world I see holds nothing that I want…

This phrase actually is almost word for word, the prayer I prayed, when disillusioned and defeated, I sat alone with the world of my own making and gave up, gave it all up~

I received a miracle.

It is the design of all though to perpetuate itself, and the thinking that made me enemy to myself, unworthy of trust and untrusting, was no different. The primary aspect was denial.

Done, I turned in my thinking-coach~ or death. I had been wrong about everything. I had mistaken about who I was and why I was here. I became willing to shut up and listen.

There emerged a voice so loving and forgiving that planning and scheming had no resonance here. Even guilt and regret, when bullying their way in, immediately, tails between their legs, slipped out the way they came.

Ah yes. It was indeed a miracle…

I was freed indeed from the bond of the destructive life where I had become predator and prey ~ it was a miracle. Things felt and became so much better. Now here’s where knowing, for sure, this lesson, is essential. The ego waits for attention to wavier, then runs it ‘feel-good’ thoughts through the ancient grooves in the body-brain-mind. Before we realize it, we are mistaking this new-found happiness and world-life related...

Look, I know, I’ve been there too… and maybe a description of my experience of that time would be helpful. I was aware on some deep level, that I was becoming addicted to my new-better-model image. But I felt doing good in the world and peoples lives. I wasn’t willing to look at the price of peace I was paying for it.)

The Course, in The Branching of the Road, offers an appropriate reference: “When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now. The way you came no longer matters. It can no longer serve. No one who reaches this far can make the wrong decision, although he can delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go.” (T-22.IV.1)

Now I look back at that time through forgiving eyes. Apparently, I attempted to go straight, and make no choice. It did turn out that it was merely a delay in the inevitable… But I wasn’t willing to choose. Somewhere inside I knew there was really only one choice, but that choice would defraud my whole life and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

God Will is inevitable, and all the denial and distraction and misbelief known to man, can’t alter the fact; only truth is true and what is not is false and does not exist at all. The world of make-believe cannot change what God created as His Son.

It’s not that I couldn’t have had clarity on this point, had I been wholly willing to, I just wasn’t. I sought to make an alternative plan, which kept the illusion that “I” had some power and was in control of the game. Its sounds ludicrous to me now, putting it down on paper, while seeing from the One perspective, yet, it is my little account of how this one came to Self.

Apparently, I conned myself in to believing there was a way to have my cake and eat it too… Having once seen the light, touched the truth, I attempted to restructure my so-called life, bringing truth to the equation (illusion), trying to incorporate it into my illusory constructs; the beliefs and values I peopled my world with; my residual self-image, the hierarchy of illusions, so as to use ‘truth’ to my advantage. Does that make a lick of sense? How can one use truth to foster illusion? Hello? In any case, a vein attempt I must say, yet, the attempt ensued. I wasn’t trying to be unappreciative of the miracles received, or disrespectful, I was in denial...

The lesson, today says: ”What you value you make part of you as you perceive yourself” Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back. Nothing is here to cherish. Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain; one moment of uncertainty and doubt. The worthless offer nothing. Certainty of worth can not be found in worthlessness”…

I just cared more about unreality than reality at the time. I cared about the world, people, bodies, status, and pretend happiness. I wouldn’t see that the world I saw was a wish to be special, to be god; the boss of my world... Until I did… Even the career I chose supported this idea. Psychology is the study of the psyche within this world. I was in the downward spiral of absentmindedness and I wouldn’t admit it. Needless to say, I lost contact with the miracle mind. I felt the disorientation of this disconnect happening, yet I was stubbornly trying to do it my way~ to be right. I was too ashamed to admit the true state of my inner world, even to myself. Instead, I planned and tried, blah, blah, blah, and attempted to medicated the building horrible feeling of self- betrayal, the emptiness engendered by the loss of identity with the Self… In its place was a spiraling self-concept discernible only by the residual feelings of quilt, loss and aloneness left in the wake of make-believe… This vicious spiral of guilt and fear, took me down… I had no fight left. And only darkness seemed to remain…

Alone and sad and with no defense left which would render an instant’s more delay, I saw the prayer of the worthy, through the tears of my despair: “The world I see hold nothing that I want”…

At last I saw the choice that I had made. ‘Heaven is the decision I must make’~ and the only one I see…

I found myself in the borderland, that the course talks about. Please join me in this space in mind as we review this excerpt from the Course together: “There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought together; where conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that received instead” (T-26.III.1)

This describes the daily world which through surrender of my own, I live, seeing through forgiving eyes… Nothing in this so-called world has ever been the same. The shadow figures that people it are recognized in the purpose in the Atonement they are to fulfill… And gratitude is the word of the day, everyday, Now!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!