I Am Worthy #3

This was a very interesting class. We repeated the affirmation was found on p. 262 and I asked the question whether or not there was anything in there that stood out for people. The first response we received was the idea was a sense of choice.

From that point on we really never returned to the book (not sorry about that, the discussion and discovery was one of the best we’ve had). We spent our time not only exploring choice but also knowing the things or understanding or getting a better feel for the things that we are attached to. Before we talked about the affirmation, I began the class by pointing out that the title of the chapter is I am Worthy , but up until this point there was no mention of worthiness or unworthiness. All the material up to now was speaking about attachments and values. I was attempting to discover a link between worth or worthiness and values and attachments. What I became aware of was that our attachments do not necessarily make us worthy or unworthy. In our own lives and in the eyes of other people, what attachments do on some level or maybe many levels, is to take our attention or our focus away from the truth of who we are and that is a Divine child of God.

Without realizing it, I think we explored this issue in many many different ways. Some that were expressed quite often were being right, how our values influence us, how values influence our relationship to others, and whether or not there is a standard for “bring right.” 

As we talked about being right there almost seem to be the stigma connected with being right— jokingly that there's something wrong about being right, but that is not the case. The difficulty was in holding onto our rightness or righteousness and by doing so we make somebody else wrong. Of course no matter what side of that we are on, it brings us more and more of a sense of separation. Now I struggle with this just as much as anybody, and I found this class struggle in some positive ways. The struggle appeared because there were questions that came up or statements that were made that I really could not respond to with my thinking mind. I noticed as we progressed, and actually became close to the end of our session, was that by being as good with words as I can be that I was also becoming attached to me being right! I somehow lost track of our relationship with one another and that it is not about rightness, or proving something, or being smarter or better than, it is much more essentially being in the flow and being flow of the truth of who we are.

As I sat with our discussion on Sunday morning I became aware that there was something that I did not make reference to directly although I do think it was a subtle piece to what we were exploring. And that is that we are not speaking of the personality self which is always going to be a limited form of our consciousness. It is our sacred self or Divine self that we are working on continuing to recover and discover. Essentially what we are being asked to do is to go beyond the personality self, not to deny it. We are asked to become aware that the personality, the limited ego self, is an  aspect of you and me that is still ensconced in a particular set of ideas and values of rightness or wrongness and it would be foolish for us to deny that piece. However, we are being asked to go beyond it and to see with the eyes of the Christ, to see ourselves and one another with the eyes of Christ. 

And how would that change the way I see you? How would that change the way I see myself? And then taking that a step further, we are praying to be able to see this situation that might be causing so much consternation, to see the situation with the eyes of the Christ. And what would that be like? Now, I do not know what that is going to look like because in many ways I am still attached to the way I am perceiving the situation and of course the way I am perceiving it will produce either a sense of rightness or wrongness.

Seeing the situation with the eyes of the Christ— that is how I am going to end this today. My prayer our prayer, seeing with the eyes of the Christ.

I did not notice as our discussion went deeper and deeper that I continued to have answers or explanations for what was happening and I noticed to my dismay that I was just as attached to being right as anybody else was. It was not until later that I realized as I sat with all of this that many of my responses and much of what I was hearing from other people was coming from the sense of living in and identifying with what we might call this personality self. And we are told we are learning that is not who you are, yet we are truly being asked not to not deny that, but to also see beyond it to see beyond the personality self to the truth of who you are, the truth of who I am. In the consciousness of the Christ there is no conflict, there is no right or wrong, there just IS.