I think I went just a little off the deep end there. Just a bit. I think I got really afraid of the Course. Felt like I just wasn't ready to deal with what I thought it was going to put me through. Was scared for my health. Just kind of wanted to put it on the back burner. It didn't occur to me until very recently just how nutso my reasoning was there.
I just re-read Carrie Triffet's book, and have been re-reading The Disappearance of the Universe. And I got a Kindle, and started reading the Text (somehow it seems less intimidating on a screen than with that big fat blue book). Somewhere between all of those things I realized a couple of things. First, that if I was going to face some challenges with my health, I'd be much better off keeping these teachings close at hand. And second, that this ego which is so roiling with anger and wrath that it would sooner make me sick and kill me off than have its own existence threatened...that it really has no power on its own. That I am holding it up between me and God, as a form of protection from the punishment that I fear. That it has no power in an of itself, because all it is, at its core, is a mistaken thought. Yes, working with the Course did start to stir up a bunch of ugly and vicious stuff. I thought I was basically a nice person. I had NO idea a lot of this stuff was lurking there right beneath the surface. In some ways it felt easier to set it aside and try to live a normal life, like I could fool this nasty ego into leaving me alone if I did it.
It seems pretty crazy when I think about it now.
Part of the lesson I've been working on for the last couple of days (Lesson 204) says this, which I think is so beautiful:
God’s Name reminds me that I am His Son, not slave to time, unbound by laws which rule the world of sick illusions, free in God, forever and forever one with Him.
Sick illusions is right. The more I look out at the world, the more it confirms the central message of the Course. A world of sickness and death, of frailty and apparent lack, where loss is inevitable, is so far from perfection it's laughable. And yet we long for that perfection, don't we? From the moment I started to learn about the problems of the world, it never made sense to me. Why would we all together create this world which would seem to be nothing that any of us (in our right minds) would choose? The answer that we are NOT in our right minds...well, it makes a certain kind of sense. But no matter how crazy the world looked, I always thought I was pretty smart and pretty...sane. It's a hard idea to accept that you might be rather crazy, along with everyone else. But once you start to see it, really see it, it starts to open up some cracks in the veneer, and some light starts to shine through.
So...back to the lessons. I've been a good student most of my life, but this has been a different journey. Fits and starts. But I'm so grateful for all of the people who've helped me so far, and for God who has been faithful through everything.
