Lesson 25 and the Meaning of Meaning
by Tom Baker
Date: March 21, 2010
Up until lesson 14 the Workbook lessons are concerned with having the student of the Course declare his or her thoughts to be meaningless and the projection of those thoughts, which is the world we see around us, also as meaningless. In the first nine lessons the meaningless of our thoughts and what we see results from our preoccupation with the past: "I see nothing as it is now." (W., Lesson 9, p. 15). Real meaning exists only in the Now. Yet a working definition of meaning is not given until the 25th lesson. With Lesson 25 meaning is defined in terms of purpose: "Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; this is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning."(W., Lesson 25, p. 38). He goes on to say we are used to seeing meaning in terms of ego goals and since we are not our ego then these goals are meaningless. Then in paragraph 4 he says something that is amazingly clarifying for me: "At the most superficial levels, you do recognized purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity [as is the computer I'm typing on right now]. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not."(W., Lesson 25, p. 38). It is not exactly that my thoughts are meaningless, it is more that the meaning is superficial, ego centered, and revolves around my personal interests. Jesus does not dignify this level of consciousness with the word "meaning". Why? Because real meaning occurs in the Now and is unified. In other words, real meaning is always for the purpose of love. How can we see this?
There is a wonderful story that comes out of World War II. There were two veterans, one who fought for the United States and the other who fought for Germany, having lunch together in a restaurant in Austria after the war. Both being alone, they had been seated together at the same table as is the European custom and discovered that both had been soldiers during the war, but on opposite sides. As they talked about the war, the American soldier began to have the oddest feeling of recognition toward the German man. He face looked familiar. He knew he did not know the man but he had seen the face and he felt deeply moved. But why? Then suddenly, the American remembered where he had seen the German man. The American had been a sniper during the war. He would sit hidden high up in a tree and pick off passing German soldiers with a high powered rifle. One day a group of German soldiers passed near his tree and stopped to have lunch. They put down their packs and weapons and passed around rations. The American sniper aimed his rifle at one of the soldiers, looking through the telescopic sight, ready to squeeze the trigger when the man turned and looked directly at him. Suddenly the sniper was looking into the man's blue eyes, beholding a gentle, friendly face, unmistakably the face of a person, not a target. The sniper could not pull the trigger. He felt a bond with the man that he could not over ride with the concept of "enemy." He lowered his rifle and let the Germans finish their lunch and moved on. The American had often felt guilty for not doing his duty that day, thinking that his failure to kill the Germans had perhaps caused other Americans to die. Yet today he was glad he had hesitated and in the words of the Course made his contact with the German soldier "meaningful." When the scope on the rifle brought into focus the German man's face the American sniper was brought into the Now and with a flash of deep recognition felt a unity with the man himself, a unity that had meaning beyond the temporary terms of war and its demands (the ego and its goals). At that moment he could have looked at his rifle and practiced Lesson 25 saying, "I do not know what this rifle (and its scope) is for," and made it meaningless and available to the Holy Spirit to use it for love. Which in fact It did. On that day in the theatre of combat there was a miracle. As the men sat at the table with each other having lunch they probably would have agreed with the 45th miracle principle: "A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have never met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware." (T. I. p. 6).
The Course is training us to be miracle minded and to think thoughts which represent the spiritual level of existence rather than the physical level: "Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual." (T. I. p. 3). The thoughts we are usually aware of are representative of the physical. The meaning here is superficial, snared by the past, and dominated by personal needs and desires. The Course is inviting us to practice these thoughts as "meaningless". I got a feel for this one day when I was sitting in the big Abbey church at the monastery where I used to live and teach. It was a day in early spring, late March, and the church was feeling warm. I was staring at a beautiful stain glass window portraying the Holy Family on their trip to Jerusalem where the twelve year old Jesus impressed the rabbis with his learning. I was mesmerized by the colorful scene painted on the window showing Joseph looking a little mad, Mary looking worried, and Jesus in a posture of prayer. I was thinking how I would have felt as each one of the figures, especially Jesus, when all of a sudden the janitor monk opened the bottom half of the window by tilting it forward, effectively replacing the bottom part of the picture with a scene of the actual outdoors. Suddenly I was looking at a tree, its gentle swaying branches sprouting delicate new spring-green leaves. Two seminarians sat on a bench underneath talking and laughing. I was filled with delight. The sudden immediacy made it beautiful and real. I had stopped thinking my other personal "religious/psychological" thoughts which were all about me. I was visiting the Now of delight. I was joyful for no particular reason. I told someone later that when the monk opened the window I felt like I was the spring and the spring was me. Once again the Now was accompanied by the sense of oneness, much deeper and more experiential than the psychological projection I was using with the figures painted on the window.
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says,
"You have learned how it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes the sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike. For if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any such credit? Even the tax collectors do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do as much, do they not? You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matt. 5: 38-42.
The instances I have given are sudden shifts in perception. They were not cultivated by the sniper or myself. With both shifts I use the word "suddenly". It is as if the shift "happened" to us. The Course slows down the process to show that there is an interval of meaninglessness that registers in normal consciousness as surprise. The sniper expected the face of the enemy and in the gap of surprise he allowed the Holy Spirit part of his mind to project the face of a brother. In my much less stressful example the expected picture literally changed so quickly into something else, that I allowed the gap of meaninglessness to remain open long enough for the Holy Spirit part of my mind to project delight onto the open window. The Course has us cultivate the willingness to experience this shift by first declaring that our thoughts are meaningless and then assuring us that we are safe with meaninglessness. Lesson 13 explicates our dilemma: "Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego 'challenge' each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space that meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own ideas there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own impotence and unreality. And on this alone is it correct.
It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognized the meaninglessness, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes that it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must be to you who equate yourself with the ego."(W. Lesson 13, p. 21). For the ego, nothing can remain meaningless for long. An interpretation must be found, fast, to fill the gap left by meaningless and keep us safe..... from God. In the concluding part of the exercise in Lesson 13 we are given the ego's interpretation of itself which, subconsciously, has become our interpretation of ourselves: "A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God."(W. Lesson 13, p. 21). We talk about this competition religiously by referring to "my will" and "God's will" and often interpret God's will as some form of sacrifice or punishment for our sins. In lesson 101 we are told that God's Will for us is perfect happiness: "God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless. Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. Fear not the Will of God. But turn to it in confidence that it will set you free from all the consequences sin has wrought in feverish imagination." (W. Lesson 101, pp. 182 & 183).
So do not be afraid. Meaninglessness is simply living in the realm of superficial purpose and narcissistic obsession. All of us have felt exasperation at the pettiness and meanness of so much of life and exclaimed, often just to ourselves, "There must be more than this!" God has heard us and A Course In Miracles and all the other forms of the cosmic speed-up are the Holy Spirit's answer.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2010