Final Learning Needed Turning Inward in Self-centeredness

“Realize that the self-centeredness of the final stage of your learning has been necessary. (Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 9.7)”

1 – Reassuring

This passage, in talking about our self-centeredness, is reassuring. We probably realize that our search has sometimes removed us from our surroundings, including our brothers and sisters. We need to be ready to return to them, but we are not to discount our self-centeredness as a lamentable aspect of our search. Jesus says that it was necessary.

2 – Understanding

If we had not turned inward, we probably would understand far less than we actually do now. And turning inward naturally turns one to the self. Jesus would have us to reach outward again once the elevated Self of form has been sustained.

3 – Prayer

We do not reach outward always, though, as Jesus himself spent hours in prayer, all alone, when on earth. We will always need a certain degree of inwardness, and sometimes this does become self-centeredness.

4 – To Stay within Ourselves

May we not stay within ourselves if it is at all possible to spend quality time with our loved ones. This is a day to rejoice and be glad that Jesus indeed did come to earth as a physical being.

5 – Leave Learning Behind

“You who have gained so much through your learning and your study and your sharing of the same may find it difficult to leave it behind. A choice made by you to stay with learning rather than to move beyond it would be an understandable choice, but you are needed now. (Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 9.9)”

6 – Learning

We are all used to learning, and many of us have spent years and years in fairly pleasant surroundings as we learned. We may look back on college or high school as one of the best times of our lives. So, if we think that we want to keep learning, maybe because it is so familiar, Jesus says here that we would make an understandable choice.

7 – Seeking

He wants us, though, to leave learning in the old style behind. That means that we really don’t need to keep seeking and seeking for our religious bearings. We have become, according to Jesus, The Accomplished. We have made progress through taking unto ourselves the tenets of A Course of Love, and now we need to move into creating a new world—not learning about creating, but genuine creating.

8 – The Accomplished

We won’t feel ready for this right away. We won’t feel that we are The Accomplished. We will fear that this is egotism rearing its ugly head once again.

9 – Jesus

Jesus believes that these are false ideas, that we are ready for creating a new world. And he is eager to have us do so.

10 – Guidance

What will we do? How will we create a new world? That will depend upon what our guidance tells us to do. Jesus is not predictive in A Course of Love, says that he won’t be. The new world has yet to be created, and he himself does not have those answers of what we will create. But the elevated Self of form in all of us will usher in a new era, and with that new era, we will be creating a new world.

11 – Bright Future

The future looks bright. We don’t need to hang back out of fear any longer. We don’t have to fear that the ego will come back, as long as we avoid attack, avoid judgment, and cease planning against contingencies to come. Leave fears behind. These are the criteria that we need to sustain the elevated Self of form.

12 – Sooner

May we all do so, sooner rather than later.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for reassuring me that my own, recognized, self-centeredness is not a thing to be lamented and for which to beg forgiveness. We need inwardness, which self-centeredness really is, and we need it to make progress toward the time when we will be free and easy with our brothers and sisters, reaching outward.

If our life situation allows it, today is a time for reaching out to those who have been closest to us. May we forget ourselves today, at least part of the time.

Amen.