Beyond this world there is a world I want.
Lesson 129 saves us from the nihilism that can arise from rejecting the world. It makes clear that our learning process does not involve just the negative, but also a positive. This world holds nothing we want; but there is a world beyond it that we do want.
You cannot stop with the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for, you will only be depressed. Our emphasis is not on giving up the world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with joy, and capable of offering you peace (W-pI.129.1:2-3).
Exhange is the critical idea here. We are not giving up something of little value for nothing; rather, we are exchanging something of literally no value for that which is beyond value. The Holy Spirit facilitates this transaction, which is effectively with God. We are trading fear for love. We are giving up meaninglessness for actual knowledge.
Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. And God Himself speaks to His Son, as His Son speaks to Him . . . Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one (W-pI.129.4:1-2, 4).
So Lesson 129 is not about a transaction in the literal sense – like trading a winter coat that does not fit for one that does. Rather, it is about remembering – by placing no conditions on – that God speaks to us constantly, Whose Voice is our voice, speaking a message of love that we created.
Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in His Father’s Will, at one with it, with no llusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true (W-pI.125.9:3-4).
What do we want? Do we want to hear only God’s Voice or do we want the trinkets and conflicts and sorrows of the world? For what we want we will get. The choice is wholly our own. And if we are honest, are the grounds for our choosing not perfectly clear?
What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed . . . It waits but for your choosing it, to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want (W-pI.129.6:2-3, 5).
So for today, we close our eyes and seek not what the world offers, but that which rests beyond the world. We are not given today to the body’s concerns – to the ups and down of the world. We raise our spiritual sight beyond appearances to see “lights that are not of this world light one by one, until where one begins another ends loses all meaning as they blend into one’ (W-pI.129.7:5).
This is symbolic language – because words cannot describe our communication with God (e.g., W-pI.129.4:3). Yet what it describes is what experience when we seek the world that appears beyond this one. Our eyes and their function are set aside; our minds fill with joyful understanding.
We give up the world and we lose nothing and gain everything.
