Lesson: Week 15
by Tom Baker
Commentary
Several years ago I heard a man who had had a near death experience say that our present American society was an experiment in individuality to see if we could be independent in our lives without losing our link with God as our creator. The results so far in this experiment appear to be mixed. On the one hand we have lots of individual freedoms but on the other hand we, as a society, lack spiritual or transcendent values. To use an automobile metaphor we have big engines but no steering wheels. We’re all dressed up but are not sure where to go. The Course says that our lack of resolve in respect to where we are headed is the result of the authority problem. The authority problem arises when we believe we are the author of ourselves and project this delusion onto others. This is what brings judgment both on ourselves and others. When I am my own creation I use judgment to narrowly define myself with a handful of attributes and do the same with others. Thus I am a caricature of what God created and others on whom I have projected are a version of that caricature. The self-created person is an incomplete and tiny version of the self created by God. As a result we have lost the power of our author, God.
To find the power of God again we must renounce all rejection. Since rejection makes us see others and ourselves in segments we can never know the whole, flowing self, only snapshots of the self. Thus the wonderment with which the enlightened person sees the world is out of reach for the person who uses judgment to create the world in his or her own image. Judgment sees only the world in pieces and often mainly bad pieces at that. When we say a person is a mixed bag we are seeing a severely edited version of that person based on our own self creation. The solution to "playing small" is not to dream big or wish big but to once again reach out the hand in faith to our Author who is the reason for our peace.
The Course advises us not to wish but to will: "Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is." (Text, p. 49). Wishes are from the ego, but will is from the Holy Spirit who knows from whence we came.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2014