In the Year 1 tip based on ACIM Workbook Lesson 362, I shared this excerpt from Floyd Henderson’s book, The Final Understanding:
So many take their favorite teaching method and its teachings as the final step, adopting a religious or spiritual persona and fixating in that role for the remainder of the manifestation…doing spiritual stuff and eating spiritual stuff and wearing spiritual stuff and—in all of their spiritual doingness—living in what they take to be a most non-natural, supernatural, “elevated,” “higher” (and yes, “separate and different”) manner.
NTI addresses this same stumbling block in one of my favorite paragraphs in the entire book:
The search for truth is not truth itself, so do not stop there. Many have heard this call to search and have accepted it, but they have stopped, thinking themselves complete. You are not complete until you are Truth, so do not stop at the call. It is your beginning, but it is not your end. To find the truth, you must walk until your end.
This is what was so important about the last section of A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students. We learned that there are two awakenings, awakening to unity consciousness and then awakening beyond unity consciousness, beyond the pure I Am presence, beyond subject awareness. It is so important to know “keep going.” Even when you think you are complete, keep going. We are blessed to have this knowledge.
Today’s reading cautions us “not to judge the symbols. Do not look for truth there.” This is the same as the teaching from NTI Revelation, Chapter 1, which says, “Do not idolize anything within the world or any symbol or any thought that is sent to lead you from the world. Hold to them as they are useful, but let them go when their usefulness has past. You are to keep moving by letting go until you find yourself with nothing left to hold onto.”
In other words, the spiritual path can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Our favorite spiritual teacher can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Our favorite scripture or spiritual teaching can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Even our own clarity can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. We want to avoid these common ego traps, which are a lot like quick sand. First we get stuck, and then we are sucked in and swallowed.
That’s why one of Awakening Together’s five core values is:
We affirm one true Self as the only truth. We live this value by embracing what is helpful on the path of awakening without idolizing any spiritual doctrine as truth.
We are here to become empty of everything, “to keep moving by letting go until you find yourself with nothing left to hold onto.”
