It is said that people decide in the first three
minutes of meeting you whether they are going to like you or not. Instant
assessments of non-verbal clues, our appearance, manner, voice - and their own
associations to any of those - carry more weight than anything we say or try to
put across. And we do the same with them. We navigate the world by a process of
continuous evaluation. Where does this person, or this aspect of a person, or
this situation, or this item on the supermarket shelf sit on my inner scale
between good and bad, between like and not like, between move towards or back
away from?
For it is not only people that we judge. Did you
ever do those little drawings of amoeba in your biology class at school? That
eloquent blob that spreads itself into open arms as it flows towards a speck of
food, and then enfolds it into itself; or that recoils from a hostile element and
streams away from it? This is how we are too, when out shopping or at a party,
or choosing a career or a partner. Some of us are more flexible and ready to
fine-tune our initial judgements in the light of further information or
experience. Some cling more obstinately to their prejudices and find reasons to
justify them. But when we are not set in stream-away-from mode, we are all on
the hunt for crumbs to enfold.
The trouble is, the Course tells us, we are not the blobs
we think we are, and our lives and happiness do not depend on the crumbs we
think we need.
Everything
the ego tells you that you need will hurt you...For what you think you need
will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you
unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you
(T13 VII 11)
The media are fascinated with stories of compulsive,
extreme hoarders, who have literally tightened up their world against the light
with so much clutter that they have to crawl through tunnels of their own junk;
or the emergency services are unable to reach or even to find them when they finally
suffocate under the piles of their collected
stuff. These cases show us a nightmare vision of our own inability to
distinguish true worth from imagined worth. We are all attached to things for
the sake of whatever we think they can give us, projecting our inner worth outside
of us, so that we see value, security, affection out there instead of experiencing
it within us. It would be a mistake to suppose that just because you can
distinguish a comparative value of a pile of old newspapers and a
photograph of someone you love, or between the remains of last month's fish and
chips and a gold watch - just because you are more orderly and the amoeba in
you can detect more confidently when to enfold and when not to enfold - you are
no less bound to the illusions of this world.
Anything
in this world that you believe is good and valuable and worth striving for can
hurt you, and will do so. Not because it has the power to hurt, but just
because you have denied it is but an illusion, and made it real (T26 VI 1)
There is nothing out there that is of more worth
than anything else. There is nothing out
there. As long as you fail to recognize that you have given to anyone and
anything all the meaning it holds for you, you will feel deprived if the person
goes away or the thing is stolen, or breaks, or decays.
It
is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I
want, and it will be as everything to me." And this must fail to
satisfy... (T30 III)
"We seek without us the wonders that are within
us. There is all Africa and her prodigies in
us," as Sir Thomas Browne said. By projecting value outside us, and then
trying to get it back by possessing the thing that now seems to embody what we
think we need, we make ourselves eternally needy. 'Don't miss out!' shout the
advertisements. 'Get more for less!' 'Here is what you've been looking for, what
you must have, what people who know
say is good for you.' The world sees a difference between the child who clings
to a bit of rag for comfort while its sucks its thumb, and the millionaire who
buys an Old Master painting. There is nothing wrong with either of them, except
the intrinsic fear of loss, and the belief that the importance of the thing
lies in itself, rather than in the way the mind perceives it.
Recognize
what does not matter (T12 III 4), then, and hold to what does:
peace, truth, love. This makes it much easier to live in a world of illusions
without being either dismayed or entrapped by them. This frees you to enjoy, whether
you keep or let go. Relationships between you and another person, or between
you and your environment and the many objects in it, are not defined by what
they are, but by the quality of your affection and respect for them.
You
do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it you
look upon with love. This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its
value is not in itself, but yours is in you (T12 VI 3)
While you can think of anything or anyone with love,
you have it for ever, whether it is there externally for your eyes to look on,
or inwardly for you to rejoice with. Everything else is only a semblance, and
has no power to make you either happy or unhappy. Today I will remember what I
entirely value. I will not value what is
valueless (W133).
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