It’s so easy to get caught up in the outside world, in the everyday grind of being, doing, getting and achieving.  Such is the position most of us find ourselves in in our modern society.  We are currently living through turbulent times.  As I write this article, the cost of living here in Australia is at unprecedented levels.  Mortgage rates and everyday costs are rising rapidly, and standards of living dropping just as quickly.  Many people are finding themselves having to work longer and harder to support their families, and some are barely scraping through.  The situation is tenuous, and things seem as though they could fall apart at any moment.  

 

When things in our life seem to be going south, the ‘normal’ response is to frantically try and adjust our outer circumstances in an attempt to fix what we perceive of as our ‘not good enough’ worldly situation.  We spend most of our time swept away in the tides of insanity, caught up revelling in our ego identities and making the world and our situations both very important and very real.  

 

As students of A Course in Miracles, when we find ourselves in this predicament it is always because we have failed to remember that the world is just an effect, instead giving it the baseless title of ’cause of all our upsets’.  We have forgotten that the world is not an outside force happening to us but is, in fact, coming from us.  Like spectators in a movie theatre, we have been trying to fix the screen rather than addressing the real problem – the projector.  So, what is the projector?  The projector is the mind, the one who is doing the dreaming, and the projection is the world, the illusory images we think we are seeing outside of us that are really only playing out within the mind’s screen. 

 

Every striving we have in the world is for one thing only – to fulfill the perceived needs of our bodies and other bodies around us.  What is it that needs food, clothing, shelter or money but the body?  When we are driven by these things we feel as if we are trapped within its walls, bound by its needs and desires, and that our very existence depends on us keeping it safe.  In our dreaming state we have forgotten that we are the Christ Mind, wholly taken care of and lacking in nothing.  We have instead identified with this vulnerable and easily harmed thing we call the body, and we think it is who we are.  

 

Our attempts to try to protect and defend the body only achieve one thing, which is to block the remembrance of our true Self, thus keeping us seemingly trapped in the illusion.  We seek desired outcomes in the world, thinking that by fixing what is outside all our problems will be solved. But the problem isn’t outside in the world, it is within the mind, and only by changing our mind can we release our chains. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence (W.p1.199.1:2).

 

So, what is it that we are really trying to achieve when we are striving our way through this dream life, hauling this cumbersome load of worldly goals and ambitions along with us?  What is it exactly that we are seeking when we try to fix what is appearing on the screen of our life?  We are seeking for nothing less than the Self we think we have lost.  And, whether we consciously know it or not, we are seeking for our Source, and we are seeking for home.  The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is “Know thyself.” There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost ( T-8.III.5:1-3).  But our search can only ever be successful if we make the choice to turn away from aimlessly wandering along the endless pathways of the world.  We must cease searching outside and instead turn our search within.

 

So, we will all still have to do things with the body while we appear to be here. We will still need to work, and make money, and address our worldly situations as best we can when they arise.  But you never do it alone, and you can always choose to see any situation with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego.  We needn’t take our seemingly worldly problems so seriously, like our very lives depend on it.  Maybe our bodily life does depend on it, but let us try to remember that the body has no life outside the mind that is dreaming it, and what we really are can never be threatened by the images of a false world, no matter how scary these images may appear to be.  Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream (T-27.VIII.10:6).