I struggled a bit today with the A Course in Miracles lesson as it felt like it was saying I have to reject everything I love in the world, and I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m misinterpreting the message. Given that I don\u2019t really know whether I am or not, I\u2019m just going to continue with my habit stacking and practical happiness-chasing, anxiety-reducing journey, while at the same time doing the forgiving and letting go of grievances.<\/p>\n
One insight I gained today is that all of the pain and darkness in this world, the bombs, the hunger, the illness etc, is the same thing as ANY of the pain and darkness we feel inside, however small and insignificant it might feel. So, when I hold a grievance against a client for not getting back to me about a job and leaving me not knowing what was going on, that\u2019s actually perpetuating the sadness and pain in the world. It\u2019s completely linked to and the same as those big evils of the world that I perceive to be much worse. In other words, there is no gradual scale of evil and goodness, with some kind of neutral thought or action at the centre of the scale. This is a very early lesson in ACIM actually, that I have no neutral thoughts and there are no neutral things, but I didn\u2019t really understand it at the time. I now think that it means there is no sliding scale between extremely evil at one end and extremely good at the other, with all these slightly bad actions and thoughts, and moderately good actions and thoughts, and neutral actions and thoughts in between. There is literally only good and bad. You are either thinking or doing something bad and perpetuating darkness and causing harm to everyone on this planet, or you are thinking or doing something good and light and pure, and thus helping to free everyone on this planet and move them towards the light.<\/p>\n
I feel like there is so much I still don\u2019t understand here.<\/p>\n
But if the above is true, and I feel like it is, then what today\u2019s lesson means, which says that I desire there to be light, in other words I want to live in a world of light and love and peace and goodness, is simply to always, in every moment, to choose to drop the bad thoughts and choose good thoughts instead.<\/p>\n
What this is saying is to acknowledge and state again and again, the only thing I want, the only thing that matters to me is goodness and light and peace and love and understanding, and only the good things in life.<\/p>\n
When I state it like that, I wonder why we even have to be told this. Surely it\u2019s obvious that we want that.<\/p>\n
But when I look at the list of grievances I wrote down this morning that are currently on my mind, I can see that clearly I DO have to be reminded! Like I say, I\u2019m still slightly annoyed at a client for emailing me about a job and then going off on holiday for a week and not answering my messages. I\u2019m annoyed at myself for not running sensibly last night, maybe pushing too hard and being competitive, and also for not just relaxing and enjoying the evening. I\u2019m envious of a particular running YouTuber\u2019s success because it just feels really unfair! I know, it\u2019s hilariously infantile and pathetic of me, and might seem trivial and unimportant. Some people might even say that you can use anger and annoyance of that kind to motivate yourself to train harder. But ACIM says that you are only ever blocking the light of the world by thinking that way. Or even in a more real-world way, training based on anger is probably not going to get you the results you want anyway.<\/p>\n
In these and probably countless unnoticed ways, every day I\u2019m blocking the light and preventing myself from finding inner peace. I feel like ACIM gets us to shine a light onto all those little darknesses in our hearts, that we\u2019ve been carrying around with us for so long they just seem normal and harmless.<\/p>\n
So, like I say, I\u2019m working on letting go of these grievances, forgiving these perceived wrongdoings, day by day. But at the same time, I\u2019m continuing to work on my happiness habits, in the hope of also moving towards a better life. This is the practical approach, and while, every day when I read ACIM, I ask myself whether, by continuing to care about running and money and success and all these other trappings of life, I\u2019m focusing on the wrong things, for now I\u2019m going to continue with the habits, which I don\u2019t think are wrong in themselves, but keep doing the forgiveness work. To give a practical example, I can continue to train for my next half marathon, without holding on to any perceived frustrations about my progress or comparing myself to others, and as another example, I can put good boundaries and practices in place when working with my clients to ensure I don’t get taken advantage of or work for nothing or waste my time, but I can still let go of any frustration or anger when someone is inconsiderate or things don’t go to plan.<\/p>\n