May 10th 2014 Lesson 13
A meaningless world engenders fear.
Today's idea like yesterday's highlights the truth that a meaningless world is impossible. Nothing without meaning exists, so we should not be upset or fearful about what does not exist. God create a meaningful world, but we having made our own meaning to cover His are upset and fearful due to the guilt we feel about overwriting our meaning unto the world.
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 it is correct.
It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize what is meaningless, 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 also be to you who equate yourself with the ego.
- Intention: Three or four practice periods are recommended, with each lasting about a minute or so. This is our first attempt at stating an explicit cause and effect relationship of a kind which you are very inexperienced in recognizing.
- Practice: With eyes closed, repeat today's idea to yourself. Then open your eyes, and look around you slowly, saying to yourself:
Repeat this statement to yourself as you look about. Then close your eyes and continue with:
A meaningless world engenders fear
because I think I am in competition with God.
because I think I am in competition with God.
- Application: You may find it difficult to avoid resistance, in one form or another, to this concluding statement. Whatever form such resistance may take, remind yourself that you are really afraid of such a thought because of the "vengeance" of the "enemy." You are not expected to believe the statement at this point, and will probably dismiss it as preposterous. Note carefully, however, any signs of overt or covert fear which it may arouse. Do not dwell on the concluding statement, and try not even to think of it except during the practice periods. That will suffice at present.
Insights/comments:
- A meaningless world is a world of randomness or chance; a world of duality, a world of uncertainty. God did not create a meaningless world, and only what God created exists; all else is illusion, fantasy and dreams. Therefore if we see a meaningless world, (or meaninglessness in anything for that matter) we are seeing illusion, we are quite literally seeing what is not there. This is not an easy concept for us to accept, but it is one that we must begin to approach if we are to experience the world as God created it, as opposed to what we made of it.
To recognize something as meaningless is to recognize that it is not real; that it is an illusion. Illusions are neither good or bad, they are simply unreal, so we have no reason to be upset by them or afraid of them, so long as we recognize them as illusions. If we do not recognize an illusion as an illusion, it can indeed make us upset and fearful. A nightmare, for example, is an illusion that we believe is real while we are dreaming, and so we are afraid. But the basis for this fear is entirely removed when we awake and realize that we were only dreaming. The solution for the fear we feel with respect to illusions then, is simply to recognize them as illusions and not reality.
The world we made by giving our meaning to God's creation is the basis for our most fundamental fear, the fear of "death." The guilt we feel for having superimposed our meaning onto God's creation literally engenders in us the fear of death, for God is our creator, and He alone can "uncreate" us as punishment for us having made His creation a "living hell" for ourselves. This fear is based on our belief in a vengeful and punishing God. Remove this basis and we remove the basis for all fear. In truth, we are one with God so it is inconceivable that God who is all-mighty, all-knowing, and all-present need seek vengeance at all. And it is even less conceivable that he seek vengeance on His own creation who is a part of Himself. Furthermore, it is infinitely far less conceivable that He seek vengeance by punishing his own Self. This is just the story we made ourselves believe, the meaning we gave ourselves about what God is and about what we are. This is make-believe; illusions; fantasy!
What God did not create does not exist and is therefore an illusion! Realize (make real) this one idea and all fear is removed.
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