II. The Happy Learner, P 1
1 The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the “treasure” that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.
Journal
The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner. That doesn’t sound too hard, and yet, Jesus says that we who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that we are miserable and not happy. So he is saying both that we are miserable and that we don’t even realize it. I had to think about that a bit. Is it true? Well, it is not as true as it used to be, for sure. But I can remember it being very true.
I can remember when I was a teenager that I was most happy when there was some drama or other going on in my life. I kinda got into that Myron as sad and abused image. I liked the attention and I found it a role I could play easily. So when I had the chance to play it up, I took full advantage of it and it made me weirdly happy.
I also remember when I was married the first time. The marriage was reaching its first (and pretty much last) challenge, and looking back I see that once again I liked the drama and feeling sorry for Myron. I wrote these long sad, pitiful entries into a journal. Later when I went back and read some of them I was actually embarrassed enough at my immaturity and ridiculous display that I threw the journal away. But at that time, my misery was something I valued and in that weird way it made me happy.
There were many other examples, but I eventually matured and stopped seeking happiness through misery. Well at least it got less blatant, and eventually, more subtle. So do I still do that? I guess I must because here I am, still dreaming of a world where misery is always right around the corner, seemingly waiting to surprise me with an attack. We know though that nothing is in our world without our consent, so I must be making myself miserable. Therefore I must be still confused about the difference between misery and happiness. Now that is beyond weird considering what I know now.
The good news is that I am now aware that there is a difference between misery and happiness. That is a good thing because the Holy Spirit needs that contrast to help me see differently. So I bring misery into my life now, but since I have had some mind healing I know what happiness feels like, and I don’t enjoy misery anymore, or at least I more quickly notice that I’m not happy. This contrast between misery and happiness has taught me to quickly return my mind to God. It has created a distaste for drama and for feeling mistreated, and especially for feeling like a victim.
Jesus is also telling us that we are still looking to the world to find value. We do this when we bring unhappiness into our life and then try to change the circumstances to make things better. In the interim period when I was still learning not to value misery, I still spent a lot of time trying to make my world nicer. I collected neat things. I was unhappy when I didn’t have a nice car. I fretted endlessly about money and things. Then when I started getting these things, I felt personal pride at their acquisition and since I thought I was personally responsible, I was miserable because I might not be able to keep them.
Then there is the spiritual ego that took pride in my progress on this path. But that was just as much a dead end as taking pride in acquiring things. I was never enough, never good enough, always just not there yet. I bemoaned my errors and lack of progress and though I didn’t realize it, this was the same behavior as I had in my early life. Poor Myron, she works so hard on her spiritual path and yet she just can’t quite make it. Failing was my misery, but also my happiness. It kept me in the world, kept my story going, and at the same time let me feel pious because I was such a dedicated seeker.
Now what I can see is that I still hold onto guilt and guilt is the cause of all misery. I know that guilt is not real and that I don’t have to keep it, and yet I do. So there must still be the thought that it has some value to me, even though I know that doesn’t make sense and I can hardly believe it is true of me. But here I am.
The difference now is that I am letting guilt and fear go. I am dedicated to this. I am very aware of the contrast between misery and true happiness. I have little patience for unhappiness and I act much more quickly now when I become confused about that. I will not continue to make the untrue true any longer than absolutely necessary, nor will I judge myself for the process I seem to be going through. This is real progress.
One more thought about this. I have been doing the holiness lessons and I love them. This time through, they are more helpful than ever before because I believe them more than ever before. So in one of the practices with them I noticed that I had a lot of pain in my knee. I must have hurt it somehow. I said that in this situation with the pain in my knee, there is nothing my holiness cannot do. I said that my holiness blesses this knee situation. I said that in this belief in pain and the desire for it, there is nothing my holiness cannot do.
Then I felt uneasy because nothing seemed to be happening, but I also know that Jesus is never wrong. So I stayed with it. What I realized yesterday is that the aching knee is of my own making and I make it to prove that the truth is not true and I better just stay where I am. Since the pain is an illusion, I can just disregard it. I kept the belief in my holiness to the forefront of my mind. Today, there is only a twinge in the knee. So strange that I must still talk myself out of misery. It must be that I still get confused and think that misery is happiness. But I also know this isn’t true.
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