✴︎【Miracle Note 13】The True Nature of a World Lived in Endurance
A world where endurance has become the 'norm'
A long time ago, someone told me this:
“Children go to school to learn how to endure. It’s practice for when you become an adult and have to work at a company, even if you don’t want to.”
When I heard that, I felt a strong sense of discomfort.
“Is life meant for living in endurance, working in endurance, and then finally dying?”
But I didn’t say anything at the time.
Because that person was someone who believed that and lived every day in endurance.
In this country of Japan, I wonder if there are quite a lot of people who think the same way.
Endurance is a virtue.
Even if you aren’t rewarded now, you surely will be someday.
Since everyone else is doing their best, you have to do your best too.
That it’s 'normal,' 'correct,' and 'the way things are.'
Living like that, like the dead, and eventually truly dying.
…Because that is what the 'world' is.
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The world of the ego is 'nothing'
To borrow the words of ACIM, it is this:
“That is all the world of the ego is.”
That is all the world of the ego is.
“Nothing.”
Nothing.
“It has no meaning.”
It has no meaning.
“It does not exist.”
It does not exist.
It might sound like a pretty harsh way of putting it.
But for me, these words strangely resonated.
Enduring, bearing it, and in exchange for occasional small happinesses, telling yourself, 'This is life.'
Is that really a world with any meaning?
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Lesson 10 — Pausing to ask, 'Are these thoughts really my own?'
Here, I’d like to touch upon Lesson 10 of the Workbook.
“My thoughts do not mean anything.”
My thoughts do not mean anything.
What is being addressed in this lesson is the ego’s thinking itself.
In the lessons up to now, we have realized:
“What I am seeing”
“That what I thought was the present was actually the past”
In Lesson 10, we go even further.
The thoughts you think you are 'thinking' are not true thoughts at all.
What fills your mind is:
“Past memories”
“Reactions”
“Judgments”
“Defenses”
It is a state where there are no true thoughts.
ACIM also says this:
“your mind is really a blank.”Your mind is really a blank.
And acknowledging this state of having no thoughts is the prerequisite for truly 'seeing.'
What is being asked for here is not to force your thoughts to stop.
It is simply to notice, 'Oh, this thought that just came up has no meaning.'
Just by doing that, room is created for true thoughts to enter.
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This world where endurance has become the norm.
A world that believes without doubt that this is 'normal.'
But what if that is a world created by the ego?
What if it is something with no meaning and no substance?
From the moment you notice that question, awakening quietly begins.
I think I will write the rest next time.
Well then, that’s all for today.
Thank you for reading.