Lesson 1: Nothing I see... means anything.

For this first post, I'd like to start with some background. Near the turn of the new year 2008, at a girl's dinner, my friend Kate asked her friends to express 2007 and 2008 using just one word for each. Given the timing, the word for 2007 naturally represented more of a reflection of the past, and the word for 2008 represented a vision for the future. For 2007 I chose "Love," and for 2008 I chose "Super Power" (or "Supah-Powah" as my friend Charley suggested!)

It's already one month into the year of "Supah-Powah", and so I am a little out of sync with the timing of my project with "A Course in Miracles", but such is life. I think it is my vision of 2008 as a year of Super Power that has spawned my interest. My intention is to embark on "A Course in Miracles" as a student, reading the book and practicing the daily "Lesson" it offers over the next year, beginning today. I expect to have "slack periods" in which it is impossible to make this course a daily activity. But I do intend to move through the "Lessons" sequentially, with the hope of taking one lesson at least every few days, if not daily. I have had this book on my mind for quite some time now, ordered it last year, and for whatever reason, opened it up for the first time last night. In some ways, I guess this tentative leading into the book only means everything is lined up inside me to invite the lessons that may come with this book, and the time to explore it has finally arrived.

If anyone out there has read thus far, and wants to join me, I would love your company! Please join me in experiencing and sharing about this "Course". I recommend you purchase the book: "A Course in Miracles: Foundation for Inner Peace." Get the version which includes the "Workbook for students" and "Manual for Teachers". Or, I haven't looked into it, but I am sure there are many circles, both online and off, in which you can explore this work with guides or groups.

Today's Lesson states: Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything.

Upon considering this, I feel confused and want to beg the question: Why? Why does everything mean nothing? Effectively, that is what this lesson is saying. But I realize that the point of this lesson, as with most lessons, will become clearer with context. I just took some time to look around me to try it! I see a water bottle, a motorola talkabout, my wedding ring, my fingers typing, my cell phone, a wooden box, postage stamps, my dog Baxter. I have asked myself to settle quickly and calmly into this idea that "nothing I see...means anything". I am breathing consciously so as to be able to focus in this way. A pang of sadness comes up as I release the idea that everything surrounding me has meaning. There is something depressing for me about this and I feel a bit of tension in considering it. Particularly when it comes to the "living" things in my list, such as my dog and my hands. How could these things not mean anything? What about "intrinsic worth"?

I think part of experiencing this "Course" will be to simply allow it to unfold. Like a mystery. What is the point of learning something you already understand? So I am committing right now to being a student of this course with as much openness, and generosity of perspective as I can possibly yield.

With that resonating in my experience in this moment, I can better sense the "lesson" in "Nothing I see... means anything." It is another version of the metaphysical concept that "life is an illusion," also known as "Maya".

Nothing I see in this room... means anything.

Yes! There is a fleeting, almost magic moment, when I can feel this truth resonating inside me. This level of truth wells up from within the deepest part of me: my soul. (I can even sense this truth in my heart - which otherwise seems to have the opposite function in life of imbuing everything with value and meaning.) Even when it comes to the dog, even with it comes to my hands, I can sense this Lesson. We are both just a mixture of energy and matter. We are both just "bodies".. things that exist. Like everything else that exists, living, breathing.. or not. No different than a tiny bug hidden in the Amazon, that never got noticed, or a ray of light shining through my window.

I so quickly go to the desire to see the "sacred" in things, especially when it comes to "living" things. But that is not today's lesson. The lesson is intended to be used with complete indiscrimination while practicing, and that all things are like the other as far as the application of this idea of "nothing means anything" goes.

I can see why this is a "Course". It is going to be a learning, stretching and perhaps mot of all a re-learning or remembering process.