Commentary on ACIM Lesson 133

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

I will not value what is valueless.

 

 

 

 

There's a 'dollar movie house' here in Albuquerque where I caught Avatar as a late afternoon matinee for the fourth time 'on the cheap' today.  Knowing the story and plot, I found I was paying attention to other things that I had missed before.  It was a lot like being awake in a dream that I knew I was awake in.  

 

Mastery in life is a lot like that.  Movies are designed with a intended fast pace built in, a device used to get us to 'suspend disbelief' and go with the plot, even if in our normal mentality we'd reject the plot's presumptions.  Often, the worse the movie, the faster the pace.  But if going to movies was a spiritual practice (which it often is, for this culture) there would be the need for depth of meaning and purpose in  them, so that the viewer could return to the screen many times and still find freshness and newness in the now familiar story.  

 

Our lives are similar, I think.  If we are on a shallow footing with ourselves, we will wake up bored and in resistance to our conditions.  This boredom is a sign we are not giving due attention to the miracles we are surrounded by.... that we are sleepwalking through life and taking the gifts of God for granted.  A breakthough  then would be to 're-see' again, from the point of view of 'no accidents' AND 'everything we are experiencing is our own creation'.  That (as I understand it) is the master's practice.....

 

The Master Jesus said "I will make all things new".  I am clear that means 'regardless of condition'....  'All things new' is the same as 'fully present and in the Now' (regardless of condition or content too).  It's a sign of being 'on target' (in terms of conscious awareness) when the running dialogue of the i-self is at a low enough level to allow the presence of the 'Unified Self' to exist (no matter the condition) as master of our 'puppet persons'.  Hazarat Inayat Khan, the great Sufi master, is quoted as saying "The purpose of life is to perfect the divine personality".  I have often contemplated this over the years.... and have come to see that 'training the i-self of my puppet person' (that which the world sees and relates to as the 'real me' but which of course is not, being only the shell) to be willing to stay quiet (non-reactive) and surrendered to the 'Great Unified God-Self's' use of 'my puppet' is the actual fulfillment of my heart desire.  Said another way, to let my Holiness be visible.  

 

And where does 'my holiness' then lead me?  Almost always directly to forgiving my judgements that I have habitually created and laid upon the world.  So that the conversation that I am completely bored with suddenly becomes amazingly interesting, or the work being done as drudgery becomes deeply pleasurable... so that (as Byron Katie teaches) everything 'reverses' and simply becomes 'more-perfect-Now'.   This reversal of the world is God's kiss upon our lives.  It is the blessing of a whole new future, one lived only in this moment.  It is like the last scene of Avatar.... we choose the kiss of goodbye to the old 'i', and awaken in a new life, at one with 'the people of the Way' (nothing/no one excluded, all beings seen equally).

 

Namaste, 

 

David

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First Person version.  

Lesson 133

I will not value what is valueless.

Sometimes in 'learning/teaching' there is a benefit (particularly after having gone through what seems like a lot of the 'theoretical' and gone far beyond what I have already personally learned) to come back to 'practical concerns'. This I will do today. I will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on how these lessons can be beneficial to me, and to you.

I do not ask too much of life, I ask far too little. Whenever I let my mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things I buy, to eminence as valued by the world, I ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from me the little that I have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for the satisfactions which the world contains. For there are no satisfactions 'in the world'.

Today I will list the real criteria by which I may test all things I think I desire. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they cannot ever replace 'what offers more'. The laws that govern choice I cannot make, no more than I can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing I can do; indeed, I must. But it is wise if I will learn the laws I set in motion when I choose, and what alternatives I choose between.

It has already been stressed (in this Course) that there are really only two choices, however many there appear to be. This range is set, and this no one can change. It would be most ungenerous to me to let the alternatives be limitless, and thus delay my final choice until I have 'considered all of them' in time... (and therefore to not have been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made).

Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what my choice must bring. It cannot give me just a little, forthere is no in between. Each choice I make brings everything to me, or nothing. Therefore, if I learn the tests by which I can distinguish everything from nothing, I will make the better choice.

First (on the list), if I choose a thing that will not last forever, what I chose is valueless. A temporary value is without any value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there (as a true reality), and it makes 'no offering' to me if I choose it. I am deceived by nothing in a form I think I like.

Next, if I choose to take a thing away from someone else, I will have nothing left. This is because, when I deny another's 'right to everything', I have denied my own also. I therefore will not recognize the things I really have, even denying they are there. Whoever seeks to take away something from another has been deceived by the illusion that 'loss can offer gain'. Yet loss will (and must) offer only loss, and nothing more.

My next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice I make of value to me? What attracts my mind to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all for me to be deceived. For what my ego wants, it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that I may see how "innocent" it is.

Yet is the ego's camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive only those who are content to be deceived. Its true goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will also believe that he has served the ego's hidden goals.

Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him, because he looks upon the tarnish as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego's goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. This erroneous 'guidance' teaches 'it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes', for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

And so I come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If I feel any guilt about my choice, I have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives. And thus, I do not realize there are still only two choices, and the alternative I think I chose seems fearful, (and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is).

All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to me in learning this? It is far more than merely letting me make choices easily and without pain.

Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which 'come with nothing to find everything' and claim it as their own. I will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. My two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes will each begin with this thought:

I will not value what is valueless, 
and only what has value do I seek, 
for only that do I desire to find.

And then I will be open to receiving 'what waits for everyone' who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which 'swing open as he comes'. Should I begin to let myself collect some needless burdens, or believe I see some difficult decisions facing me, let me be quick to answer with this simple thought:

I will not value what is valueless, 
for what is valuable (already) belongs to me.