The universe played a little joke on me today. I awoke to two Awakening Together technical problems that needed to be looked at over coffee. This was before opening the Course to see today’s lesson.
What I noticed as I looked at these technical problems was the ‘sensibleness’ that led the looking. It was a feeling of “Here is what I can do now; here is what I can’t do now.” There was no artificial sense of over-responsibility or a lot of chatter about ‘me’ and ‘others’ and ‘the problem.’
When I did open the Course workbook and see today’s lesson, “the problem” it spoke about was clear. The lesson called it “separation,” but we experience it as thinking or mental chatter.
Things do come up that need to be handled, as they did with me today, but those things aren’t actually the problem. ‘Thinking’ (mental chatter) is the problem. ‘Thinking’ is the cause of all wars. Based on what we learned from NTI Ephesians and The Code, ‘thinking’ is even the cause of disease, weather patterns, etc.
If we look carefully at our thinking, we can see that it IS separation. After all, each of us thinks about ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ Each of us holds to a ‘personal’ point of view. We don’t find universal unity in the mind’s chatter.
Today’s workbook lesson says, “The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved.”
Early in the Gentle Healing group, we listened to an audio by Alan Watts. In that audio, he taught that our true Self is present and fully awake right now. In order to reach it, we need to dive to where it is. In other words, we need to take our attention off of the thinking mind’s chatter and seek inwardly toward the depth of our Self.
“Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems that seem to confront you [& that underlying constancy is mental chatter], you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. [You can remove your attention from mental chatter and seek your truth within.] And you would use the means, because you recognize the problem. [Clarity on the problem increases the desire to use the means to end all problems forever.]”
With that said, what do you think I should do? Should I go back to work on the two technical problems that I woke up to today, or should I be happy with the little I’ve done for now and go directly from this post into meditation?
Guess which answer I’ve decided on
