Lesson 13 – A meaningless world and fear

Today’s lesson in A Course In Miracles is a hairy one! To be honest, I really struggled with the original version of this lesson. So I yet again turned to Pam for help and I think I get it now!? Maybe??

Pam starts off by saying how miracles started happening in her life once she began giving up “meaningless ideas”. She also says that once she decides life is a certain way, all she’s seeing is a “cardboard cutout” of the thing. It’s all she can see. 

Her brian literally reconstructs an empty shell, a caricature of the teeming life that exists in every “now” moment. Pam can’t really see the people, the events, her own backyard, not as they are now. 

So she stops and notices that she is looking at a cardboard cutout of her story. She reminds herself that “as long as she does, the invisible grace and never-ending abundance remain invisible”.

You seriously need to get her book, if not the original – it’s brilliant!

Today’s exercise from the original Course

Repeat the following as you look around:

“I am looking at a meaningless world”

Then close your eyes and conclude with:

“A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God”.

What do I think this means?

The Course implies that recognising the meaninglessness of everything brings up anxiety in the people who are “separated” or not yet aware that there is more to life than what we see. It implies that we feel fear because we cannot see that there is more to the “cardboard cutouts” that we have constructed in our minds. 

So how do we apply this to our reality?

I think the best way to apply this to our reality is to understand and to be conscious of the fact that although we’re applying a meaning or perceiving a situation a certain way, it’s not necessarily “true”!

See? I told you this was a hairy one! Hopefully the next lesson will be easier to understand!