November 21, 2017
When we visited this section in a previous reading of the Course, I wrote the following in September of 2007:
“We have all experienced life in ways that seem like there are two totally different worlds. One is heavy and full of challenges, seeming dark and lonely much of the time. The other is light, fun and seemingly easy and effortless. Each world seems to come and go with no rhyme or reason. We seem to be at the mercy of something beyond our control. But we have more control of which world we see than we may think we do. We choose which world we see. The world that feels light, easy, and effortless is always present. It is the world of our natural state. The other world, the one that seems dark and challenging, is one that is made by the way we see it. We have gotten used to seeing the world through the filters of our past experiences. We experience life through the filter of the idea of separation; the idea that we are separate. And so, we see and experience the events of our human existence through all these complex layers of experience. It is like experiencing life from the other side of layers of veils, the veils of our perception, or looking at life through a fog bank. Sometimes we can’t see anything at all through it. Yet it is easy to walk through the fog bank or pull the veils aside and see correctly what is there. It doesn’t matter what events are happening around us, when we begin to see without the filters, we see more clearly. The Holy Spirit is waiting to help us, to be our guide. All we need do is ask and let go of our attachment to our veils or filters. Then we can see through God’s eyes and experience the peace, love and joy that is our natural state. Nothing else has to change for us to see clearly. Try it and see. What have you got to lose?”
The filters and veils are the making of our egoic thought system. They are designed to distort the real world – the world that is Heaven and is our natural world, our home. We have blocked the real world out for so long that we have gotten accustomed to this dark and challenging world and accept it as real and inevitable without question. Are we really happy with that choice? I think we really want something better for ourselves and each other. Perhaps we are afraid that if we let go of the world we currently seem to see things will get worse. The question is, “Who and what do we believe we are?” Perhaps we believe we deserve the dark and challenging world. I say, “No!” We are created whole, complete and limitless. We have everything we need within our being to be the happy divine unified Child of God we truly are. No ifs, ands or buts about it. We are the One Divine Child of our Creator. And when we turn to that Source, we find ourselves complete and whole. This is waiting for us to wake up to. This is the world we are meant to see as we dwell there.
As we look at the world in which we seem to dwell, there seems to be a wall around it, keeping the bad out and what we have chosen to see in. We think it protects us, yet we still feel unsafe in our walled off world. The previous section called this our little garden which we keep fenced off from the rest of the world. Do we really like this world that much? Are we realty thankful for this world? Perhaps we want something better.
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button’s fall, nor hold a feather. Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an illusion of a foundation. Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your hands hold nothing. T-18.IX.6:1-6
The dark world we seem to see has no substance. It appears to have substance only because we believe it has substance. Have we ever challenged or tested it? We don’t challenge it because we are afraid to. We are afraid that if it isn’t real there will be nothing there and we will fall into a never-ending void. The Course asks us to have even a tiny bit of willingness – perhaps the size of a mustard seed – to allow Spirit to guide us to a new, but ancient, understanding of our true Self in Oneness with each other. Together we discover the truth about who we really are and have always been and step into the light of the real world. Come and take another’s hand and walk into Oneness together and leave the little dark world to vanish into nothingness.
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