The real world

Right now, as I’m typing this, right now, if I pause and ask for help and accept it, I can experience my reality, and yours, as spiritual beings in a different world. But if I read the newspaper or watch cable news or listen to talk radio and think about BP, the oil spill and the seeming inadequacy of the Federal response and the other news of politicians wanting to turn the clock back on civil rights, I’m right back in the same old dysfunctional, hypocritical, aggravating world.

Here’s what the Course says I can do about that: “Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: ‘The real world is not like this. It has no [oil wells and oil spills, no wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate [and afraid]. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss [sickness or pain]. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever.’

“The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal.

“You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began.” [Boy, that’s the truth! We say there’s progress, but is there, really? We’ve never, ever been closer to making the planet un-inhabitable for our species.] The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time.

“Nothing you made but has the mark of death [the ego] upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into another world.

“Yet [as yesterday’s post says] the real world has the power to touch you even here, because you love it.”