January 16, 2007
It's been a long time since I've posted a new blog entry—the holidays are a very busy time for me, as they are for so many of us. This year, I spent Christmas in Las Vegas with my father, his wife, my brother, and my niece. I always get a kick out of Vegas. The Vegas Strip is a place that seems to epitomize ego. It reminds me of this passage from the Manual:
[The world's perception] rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. (M-8.1:2-4)
That's the Vegas Strip: "each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized," each flashing light, blaring big screen, and sidewalk hawker says, "Come here and spend your money, indulge your body, inflate your specialness, find your happiness."
And yet, there's really no more ego in Vegas than there is anywhere else. It's just a bigger, flashier version of what our senses are bombarded with all the time. The entire world we see is the ego's hotel and casino, trying to get us to spend our money, indulge our body, inflate our specialness, and find our happiness in worldly terms. Yet we don't have to be sucked in. We have this amazing Course that teaches us how to look beyond the neon glare of the ego to the light of God in everything. When we catch a glimpse of the eternal light revealed by the vision of Christ, we see the ego's glitz and glitter from a whole new perspective:
The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them.…[It] will put them all in one category; they are unreal. (M-8.6:1-2, 4)
As we choose the vision of Christ, "all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless" (T-31.VI.1:8). Imagine seeing the Vegas Strip in your life with this kind of vision. Imagine looking past all those worldly things that seem to promise such happiness yet end up delivering despair (as anyone who has lost his shirt in Vegas can tell you). Imagine being transfixed by a vision that brings healing and comfort and blessing to everyone. Is that not something you want to see? This vision is ours as we decide to leave the "Las Vegas" of the world's perception and let the Holy Spirit show us a new way to see.
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