Our current goals:
- Widen the horizons of our vision
- Take direct approaches to uncover the blocks that keep our vision narrow
- Lift those blocks, however briefly, in order to experience the sense of liberation that comes when the blocks are removed
- Intensify our motivation for freedom
It has always amazed me that a huge dog, like a Great Dane, and a very small dog, like a Chihuahua, recognize each other as the same animal. The huge Great Dane does not mistake the Chihuahua for a squirrel or rodent, and the Chihuahua doesn’t think the Great Dane is a monster. They recognize each other as the same.
Today’s workbook lesson asks us to be more like the Great Dane and the Chihuahua. You see, we have a tendency to focus on differences. In fact, we do more than that. We define a thing based on its difference from another thing. We also define circumstances based on their difference from other circumstances. The lesson says, “By this split you think you are established as a [individual] unity which functions with an independent will.”
In other words, we get our sense of separation from the tendency to focus on and define by differences.
Today’s workbook lesson says, “Such is the teaching of the world. It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through. But … Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, …”
We are not asked to drop the many names and descriptors that humans have given to things. These, the Course admits, are helpful to communication. But we are asked to drop believing that these many named differences have any real meaning. We are asked to look to the “one Identity which all things share.” We are asked to remember the “single Source which unifies all things within Itself.”
The workbook lesson says, “God has no name. And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. … No one can fail who seeks the meaning of the Name of God. Experience must come to supplement the Word. But first you must accept the Name for all reality, and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see, but have not interfered with truth at all. One Name we bring into our practicing. One Name we use to unify our sight.”
Today we will continue to use the Name of God mantra. However, as we use this mantra today, let’s contemplate the sameness in all things as it relates to the Name of God, a sameness that is represented by the Name of God.
