This is day one of my journal at the end of the day. For quite some time I have endeavored to begin each day with the lesson and an anticipation that I will experience great insight. I have also ended each day reflecting on those insights ignoring all those things that seemed to have happened because the insights are the only things that really matter. Today on my ride home ( I have been meditating for 35 years for reasons that I do not know. I have found that my best meditations come while driving. The longer the drive the better it is. (Except when I’m paying for the gas!) It’s been years since I have had my car radio on.) and I thought; (I am laughing right now because I felt compelled to type it but I didn’t actually think) I knew that I had to start an end of the day journal as soon as I got home and settled before the day faded to memory. Today was a particularly eventful day both in truth and illusion but I have promised to only reflect on the truth.
I began the day reading the lesson with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee stimulating my body from the cup in my hand. (I don’t know why I drink it because the smell is sufficient) and I checked my e-mails:
“There’s no such thing as the ego.
You need never mention it again, if you so choose.”
“I know that”! I thought. Language is strange. There is a big difference between knowing and KNOWING if you know what I mean. If you don’t you will. The e-mail was obviously in response to my recent my recent obsession with that three lettered aberration that I have named my latest challenge in a long line of conquests that define the ride that I have been on. I reflected as has been my ritual each morning. I don’t hum or recite a mantra, I just reflect. No goals to get anywhere. (I even do it hung over.) I was transported to my youth when my father would read me “The little engine that could.” I think (I dislike that word!) that was the title. A little train approached a large mountain and feared that it wouldn’t make it over. As it proceeded up that mountain it kept reciting, “I think I can” over and over and finally struggling and against all odds it made it to the top! The emotion in my father’s voice is memorable. My response was, “But if he didn’t have that thought that he couldn’t in the first place then he wouldn’t have had to work as hard to get up that mountain. He made it, so he could have. Why didn’t he think he could have before?” Well, I obviously didn’t get it. Today I KNOW that I really did get it. That became his favorite read. Please don’t read victimization into this. He was doing his job as a good father (I love him for it) and there were many other influences there to support this teaching. Eventually I succumbed to the teaching and “realized” that the only way I could feel the sense of achievement in this life was to build and overcome obstacles. The bigger the better, as they say. I became very adept at it. My father was proud of me. I also see the upside down logic that the course talks about. We do things backwards. Why would any sane person fight himself to feel good about himself? We do it and we adore doing it. That one thought is the definition of that three letter thing that I have vowed to never use again. Not only that, I know (notice the small letters?) that there is only one thought that we repeat over and over again just changing our perspective so it appears different. One thought in one instant of time.
But the best part of the day was the lesson. At the beginning I struggled with remembering to do the lesson. Then I remembered to do it but I couldn’t remember the lesson so I made flash cards to remind me of it. Like 1 + 1 = 2. He says we are like children and he is correct. For some time I have remembered and would recite it in my mind, do the exercises and feel each day as if I had completed my assignment. Today I could feel it. I can’t describe it any other way. I left the house and it came with me. It was with me all day. I didn’t feel the need to practice it or recite it because it was just there with me all the time. Unfortunately it is fading as it does at night when fatigue hits. “There is nothing that my holiness cannot do.” I feel like a kid going on a field trip every day. I can’t wait to see where I go tomorrow.
