Greg Mackie's Blog Archive November 2005
November 29, 2005
I just returned from a Thanksgiving trip to visit my wife's relatives, which is why there hasn't been a blog entry for a while. It was a good trip. We connected with family and enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. Best of all from my standpoint, I felt like I made some real progress on my "being carefree" project-my attempt to live a life that is free of burdens and cares because God cares for me, the kind of life Jesus calls all of us to live (for more on this project, see my blog entry for November 4, 2005).
My typical reaction to these trips has been a sense of burden and weariness. There are so many plans to make. Traveling, whether by plane or by car, tires me out. My usual daily routine is destroyed. I'm sleeping in a different bed. I have to get up a lot earlier than I like. There's so much activity and socializing. Don't get me wrong: I actually get along with my wife's family very well, and there's always much that I enjoy on these trips. But all the hustle and bustle has worn me out so much in the past that I've invariably gotten sick.
This time, though, I was determined to have a different experience. Throughout the trip, in addition to working with my Course lesson for the day, I repeated to myself lines like "I can be free right now," "God is taking care of me," "I don't need to feel burdened by this," and "Father, my freedom is in you alone" (Lesson 321). To my surprise, it really worked. As the trip progressed, I felt a kind of lifting up, a sense of relief, a happy lightheartedness. I found myself saying, "Yes, I really can be free of care right now. Why not? What's standing in my way?" As a result, the trip was much more relaxing and enjoyable. There were times when I felt tired, but nothing like the deadening weariness I had felt in the past. And guess what? This time, I didn't get sick.
I'm starting to feel hopeful that I really can live that carefree life Jesus wants me to live every day. What a wonderful thing that would be! I'm continuing with my "carefree" practices day to day, and invite you to give them a try as well. May you find the joy that comes from realizing that "you need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you" (T-5.VII.1:4). Respond to this post
November 19, 2005
Has trying to learn the Course ever felt like a burden to you? It can be easy to see all the study and practice the Course asks of us as drudgery, especially if we never liked school much to begin with. The Course, however, encourages a different attitude-it invites us to be happy learners, especially in the Text section called "The Happy Learner" (T-14.II). But how do we become happy learners? The following is my summary of that section's counsel. (All of the paragraph-sentence references are from T-14.II.)
1. Recognize that your own learning has made you miserable.
Our own learning has been rooted in the ego. The foundation of our learning is the ego's fundamental premise that we are separate from God, completely on our own, and therefore self-creating. The goal of our learning is "ego autonomy" (T-11.V.4:4): to make the separation real.
But since the separation and the ego are literally nothing, both the foundation and the goal amount to "faith in nothing" (1:7). The foundation "means absolutely nothing" (1:5), and the goal that stems from it is "to make nothing everything" (5:4). To accomplish this goal, we have woven out of nothing all sorts of strange and distorted forms, feelings, actions, and reactions-in other words, our lives in this world as we know them. We have done this in the hope that we could make nothing real and therefore be happy.
Yet all this has brought us is misery. Why? We are miserable because the things we made out of nothing have not satisfied us. They are burdens, not treasures (1:8). We have believed that we could be content with nothing, but we can't be (5:7-8). In short, we are miserable because our learning goal is impossible: if we think the way to happiness is "to learn to do what you can never do" (1:4), what could we be but miserable? Our impossible learning goal has made us unhappy learners.
2. Give your own learning to the Holy Spirit, so that He can shine it away with the light of truth.
If our own learning has made us unhappy, then we need to unlearn it if we want to be happy. The way to happiness, then, is to "give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you" (6:1). He knows the ego and everything it stands for are nothing. He "brings the light of truth into the darkness" (4:3) of our learning and shines the darkness away.
In so doing, He replaces the meaningless foundation of our learning with "the firm foundation that truth is true" (6:1). He replaces our goal of trying to make nothing everything with the goal of recognizing the simple truth that "God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything" (8:7). In His eyes, learning this-that truth is true, and nothing else is true-is the only thing that could make us truly happy.
This will bring us happiness, because it undoes our mad belief that we could be content with nothing. Putting our faith in the Holy Spirit instead of in nothing allows "the universe of learning…[to] open up before you in all its gracious simplicity" (6:4). Unlike our learning goal, His learning goal is not only possible, but inevitable: how could we not eventually learn that truth is true? With such an easy learning goal, we will naturally become happy learners.
3. Extend that light of truth to your brothers by seeing them with the vision of Christ.
Once we have invited the Holy Spirit in and the light of truth has shined away the darkness of our own learning, there is one more thing that must be done: "Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness" (8:1). The light of truth in us extends to our brothers-both automatically and through active extension on our part-and frees them from their misery rooted in their faith in nothing. They too become "happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them" (4:5). And as such, they teach us the lesson we taught them: "When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him" (5:1; see also 4:9). As the Course says so often, teaching is the way that we learn.
It is through extending the lesson that truth is true to others-by seeing them with Christ's vision, or forgiving them-that this seemingly difficult lesson becomes easy (5:2). It is through awakening our brothers that we are awakened (8:2). It is through extension of the light of truth in us that our learning goal as happy learners is completely accomplished. Respond to this post
November 12, 2005
For those who started the Workbook on January 1, yesterday's lesson was Lesson 315, "All gifts my brothers give belong to me." The first paragraph of that lesson has always been a favorite of mine:
Each day a thousand treasures come to me with every passing moment. I am blessed with gifts throughout the day, in value far beyond all things of which I can conceive. A brother smiles upon another, and my heart is gladdened. Someone speaks a word of gratitude or mercy, and my mind receives this gift and takes it as its own. And everyone who finds the way to God becomes my savior, pointing out the way to me, and giving me his certainty that what he learned is surely mine as well.
I find this paragraph truly amazing. It is awesome to contemplate the idea that "a thousand treasures come to me with every passing moment." Just think: if a "moment" is equated with one minute, that would mean that we receive 1,440,000 treasures per day from our brothers; if a "moment" is equated with one second, that would mean 86,400,000 treasures per day. Of course, a "moment" is an unspecified unit of time-I'm just playing with the numbers here to help us get the full impact of this idea. The point is simply that we receive a huge bounty of spiritual treasures from our brothers each and every day, treasures "in value far beyond all things of which [we] can conceive." What would our lives be like if we truly opened our minds and fully embraced these treasures as our own?
What do these treasures look like? They could take many forms, I'm sure, but I find it striking that the forms described here are simply acts of ordinary human kindness: "a brother smiles upon another," "someone speaks a word of gratitude or mercy." This high regard for ordinary human kindness is typical of the Course. For instance, in the Manual we are told that salvation can take the form of smiling at a stranger in an elevator, not scolding a child when the child runs into you, or two students walking home together and becoming friends (see M-3.2). I love how the Course brings its profound metaphysical teachings down to earth in this way. The priceless treasures we receive from our brothers daily (and the treasures they receive from us) needn't look grand or dramatic as the world judges these things. Most of the time, they come not from doing great things but, as Mother Teresa said, from "doing little things with great love."
"And everyone who finds the way to God becomes my savior." All the great sages and saints who have walked the path we're walking lovingly give us their treasures as provisions for our journey. I think they give us treasures both by actively assisting us and by demonstrating through their example that what we seek truly can be found. I've heard it said that a saint is someone who makes it easy to believe in God. Everyone who finds the way to God leaves "shining footprints [that] point the way to truth" (W-pI.124.2:4), a trail that we can follow, a reason to believe that our journey will not be in vain, the certainty that what he or she learned is surely ours as well.
Let us, then, open up our storehouse and gratefully receive the treasures of all the "saints" in our midst-both the great spiritual masters who have completed the journey to God, and all those "ordinary" folks along the way who bless us with seemingly small acts of kindness every day. Let us give our own treasures to others, that we may fully receive all that has been given to us. Let us, through our giving and receiving, come to recognize the joyous truth that "God's treasure house can never be empty" (M-6.4:8). Respond to this post
You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you. You are His care because He loves you. (T-5.VII.1:4-5)
I belong to a small group that is focused on trying to really live the teachings of the historical Jesus. Recently, we discussed a major theme in those teachings: being carefree. For instance, in the gospels Jesus says we can be free of care about what we will eat or drink or wear, like the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field. We can be free of care about defending ourselves, turning the other cheek when someone strikes us and going the extra mile when someone makes demands on us. We can be free of care about status and social obligations, not worrying about getting the best seats at banquets and not letting the daily grind of work and family responsibilities keep us from a good celebration. We can be free of care in our giving, not turning away from one who wants to borrow from us and not even expecting the borrower to give anything back.
Why can we be free of care in all these situations? Because God takes care of us. Like the father of the prodigal son, He loves us and blesses us no matter how undeserving we may think we have become. He gives equally to the "just" and the "unjust," the "bad" and the "good." He knows what we need before we ask. He will give us this day our daily bread. We can trust completely in His boundless generosity. Like any loving father, our "Father in the heavens will give good things to those who ask him" (Mt 7:11).
How many of us live lives that are truly free of care? I doubt there are very many. Most of us think that to find happiness in this world-or at least to survive, if nothing else-we need to be careful, guarding against all the dangers out there and making sure to procure all the things we need. We devote ourselves to following the rules of conventional life, in the hope that we will be rewarded. Life becomes a heavy burden as we try desperately to fend off all those threats out there and juggle all the responsibilities we have taken on. We feel chained by the need to take care of ourselves and fulfill our obligations to those around us.
Sometimes the burden becomes so great that we try to throw it off by becoming careless. Some of us decide that happiness comes from throwing caution to the wind and jumping off the hamster wheel. We decide to break the rules of conventional life, to shed our obligations to others and free ourselves from the chains of responsibility. Yet being careless brings its own burdens. Throwing caution to the wind may be exciting for a while, but one wrong move can leave us with even heavier burdens than before, if it doesn't kill us first. Jumping off the hamster wheel sounds like a good idea, but all too often we end up struggling to survive, and we find that poverty isn't as free of care as we imagined in our bohemian fantasies. Shedding obligations and responsibility to others may feel liberating at first, but those obligations have a way of catching up with us, and trying to free ourselves of all commitments ultimately leaves us with the terrible burden of loneliness and a sense of purposelessness.
Neither being careful nor being careless is the answer. The problem with both options is that they are rooted in our assumption that it is our job to take care of ourselves in a hostile universe that doesn't care for us at all. Whether we think happiness lies in following the rules or breaking them, we think our happiness is up to us. But the real answer is not to rely on ourselves, but to "cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you." This is what being carefree is all about. We don't have to be careful, because God takes care of us. We don't have to be careless, because we no longer have any need to escape the burdens of being careful. Instead, our trust in God frees us from care and concern about ourselves, which frees us to be truly caring to others. We discover that happiness lies in letting God give to us so we can joyously give to all of "the holy ones especially entrusted to [our] care" (T-31.VII.8:3).
In our group, we've just started a six-week experiment in living this teaching. We're pairing up with buddies and devising practices based on the gospels and the Course (for those in the group who are Course students) to help us at least move in the direction of living the carefree life Jesus calls us to live. At the end of the six weeks, I'll let you know how the experiment turned out. Respond to this post
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