I haven't done the calculations yet, but at the rate I've been progressing through these lessons, it may well take a decade or more to finish the Workbook! I spent a number of days trying to tackle Lesson 39 -- "My unloving thoughts about ___ are keeping me in hell. My holiness is my salvation." It's a good one, I admit. Even when I'm not feeling very holy--maybe particularly when I'm not feeling very holy. But I struggled to meet the requirements. A couple of nights ago, as I considered what to do, I felt like the message to me was that it was OK to move on. I still wavered a bit after that, but today I moved on to Lesson 40: "I am blessed as a Son of God." Every 10 minutes was the recommendation.
I don't know if it's just me, but even with the timer, I missed a lot of intervals. I would forget to reset the timer, or I would accidentally reset it wrong, or something like that.
I liked it, though. It's been kind of a stressful time at work, and I think that thought was a good antidote for me. Yes, I struggled a teensy bit with the whole "Son" thing. Like, why wasn't the author of the Course a little bit more forward thinking and gender-neutral and all that? But when I think those thoughts, I realize that the challenge for me is to elevate myself, as it were, above thinking of myself too stringently as a gendered being. After all, isn't gender just part of the story? Isn't trying to protect ideas of gender all about protecting the ego and our identification with it?
As Shakespeare once famously wrote, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts..." I think that trying not to take any of that stuff too seriously is key.
40 seems like a milestone. Yea for me, and onward to tomorrow and Lesson 41!
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