The Purpose of Seeing
This is one of many challenging, often misunderstood, lines from A Course in Miracles. On one level, it refers to the concept that everything we experience, we want to experience. This is obviously not on the level of consciousness. Most of us would never say we want bad things to happen in our life or the lives of other people we care about. But on another level, it implies that the meaning we give to every situation in our life is totally up to us. And that meaning is whatever we want it to be.
The Course differentiates between two thought systems in the mind: ego and spirit. And we are always choosing one or the other. We can tell which choice we’ve made by how we feel. If we feel anything other than complete, unconditional joy and love for everyone and everything – then we’ve chosen the ego. Which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is pretty much all the time.
So, back to the quote on the purpose of seeing: if we’ve made the choice for the ego mind, then everything we see will be a symbol of attack, defense, special interests, conditional happiness, and those sorts of things.
If, instead, we make the choice for spirit (or, another term I like to use is presence), then we experience joy, shared interests, a connectedness with everyone, and true happiness.
Thus the purpose of all seeing is to show us which mind we have chosen. Let’s practice making the choice for presence. The results are blissful.
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