Commentary on ACIM Lesson 360

© 2010 Rev. David Seacord

What creates our blindness? With the brightness of God's Love continually blessing our lives, how do we lose our way?

Buddha's answer was: 'Desire'. I would language my current realization similarly as: 'Wanting creates blindness'.... And today it was not so difficult to find examples....

For on this precious Christmas Day I overate-- to the point of feeling ill--- and it was clearly 'wanting' related. For several days prior to escorting my Mother to a popular local buffet serving a Holiday Dinner I had been envisioning my meal there. I even stopped in twice (in advance) to 'prepare my boundaries' (what I would not touch) and figure out how I would use the available food to create a Christmas dinner appropriate for me, while Mom enjoyed whatever she wished. I knew socially that if I was there, I would be expected to eat, and since good money was being spent, I also 'wanted' to 'get my moneys worth' (additional justification for eating. So I was doubly blinded.... first by my frugality, and second, from gluttony.

In my defense, it was a holiday gluttony. Meaning I suspended a lot of rules for the pleasure of making myself sick. The upshot of which is I remembered why I don't do gluttony. And that is my 'last ditch remembrance deal' with God.

It goes like this: God, I hurt, please help me. (And God helps me.) Then everything is fine for a period, and I'm happy. Then I get bored with being happy. Then I forget why I am doing all the things that I do (the things God helped me learn so my life would stop hurting). Once I have forgotten, I have reduced immunity to the world's temptations, and so eventually I touch the temptation, and it is soooooo pleasurable. Pretty soon it is 'all over' (my resistance) and I just indulge. For a while that is...., until indulging starts to catch up on me. And I start hurting again. After a while, the hurting gets big, and THEN I remember God. Then I say "God, I hurt, please help me". (And God helps me.)

It's called spiritual adolescence. We all go through it many many times in the spiral curriculum of our lives. Each time is an opportunity to gain additional masteries. Like the advance boundaries...? Yes, I was tempted, but they held (for the most part).... I walked past tons of food doing it's best to seduce me.... sugars, deserts, baked goods, pastas, pizza, stuff fried in oil, dairy, ice cream etc.... I KO'd all them completely. So that was at least something of a win, because 'advance boundaries' held.

Another little win was hearing and listening to the guidance to wait to write this for several hours, instead of writing it at the time I normally do (which was when I was being sick). It was a win because I knew that whatever I wrote then would certainly be influenced by being sick, and that I would have a much better perspective to share later... (and I hope that is true).

So mostly where I failed is that I did was not prepare to face 'food greed', meaning eating more than is needed to maintain a healthy body. I could say that was just being asleep, but I'm not going to lie.... it was intentional. I wanted to gorge. I wanted that pleasure. But once pleasure pigging, I found it hard to stop.

The lesson? Wanting/desiring sense pleasure blinded me to remembering that taken too far, pleasure always leads to pain. And so the pain arrived with the message.... stop.... remember. Remember what? Remember the peace of the middle way (the Buddha would say).... all things (physical) in moderation.

Namaste,

David

______________________________

Lesson 360

Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.
Peace to my brother, who is one with me.
Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.

Father, it is Your peace that I would give, receiving it of You. I am Your Son, forever just as You created me, for the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed within me. I would reach to them in silence and in certainty, for nowhere else can certainty be found. Peace be to me, and peace to all the world. In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness. And with this thought we gladly say "Amen."