Second Fiddle is Better
Commentary to JWK:MJL #9: Servant of God
What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive are upside down until we listen to the Voice for God. ²It seems that we will gain autonomy but by our striving to be separate, and that our independence from the rest of God’s creation is the way in which salvation is obtained. ³Yet all we find is sickness, suffering and loss and death. ⁴This is not what our Father wills for us, nor is there any second to His Will. ⁵To join with His is but to find our own. ⁶And since our will is His, it is to Him that we must go to recognize our will. (ACIM, W-328.1:1-6)
Fundamentally, this quote is the theme of the ninth essay in JWK’s bundle The Mysteries of Jesus in our Lives. The language is just from a different time, but the fundamental concepts are alike. As the Course also says, they come from everywhere and nowhere:
A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. ²His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s. ³Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure. ⁴A light has entered the darkness. ⁵It may be a single light, but that is enough. ⁶He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him. ⁷He has become a bringer of salvation. ⁸He has become a teacher of God.
2. They come from all over the world. ²They come from all religions and from no religion. ³They are the ones who have answered. ⁴The Call is universal. ⁵It goes on all the time everywhere. ⁶It calls for teachers to speak for It and redeem the world. ⁷Many hear It, but few will answer. ⁸Yet it is all a matter of time. ⁹Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can be a long, long way off.
The ego is pure selfishness, and yet you never get there. I can’t get no satisfaction! Or, as the Course says, the ego’s motto is seek but do not find. The constant story is striving for something, and finding there’s no there there, and then we give ourselves yet another goal, but the Course suggests, Jesus suggests, that there is more to life.
In this article JWK reflects on the notion that all the failures that are seemingly ours when we abandon the rat race, are nothing. The world has reduced the greatest spiritual truths to meaningless religious ritual, which get us nowhere, they are just window dressing that pretties up our refusal to actually follow these great teachers. Conversely, many a time great teachers live among us and we ignore them, we have no clue who they are. He refers in that context to the Chassidic legend of the 36 Zaddikim, who are unknown but who make all the difference. The point is we do not understand enlightenment one way or another, until one day we realize as the Course puts it:
Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. (ACIM, W-188.1:4)
and:
There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. ²You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. ³Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. ⁴And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. ⁵Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.
2. The world is an illusion.
Kaiser cites John on this point:
You study the Scriptures diligently, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are the ones that testify about Me; still you refuse to come to Me to have life. (John 5:39-40)
Studying the Bible, or the Course, or any other supposedly Holy Scripture does nothing for us, although it may get us an A in Sunday school. What Jesus asks us always, in the Bible, in the Course, and whenever and wherever we meet him, is to trust him and to follow him, to his Kingdom that is NOT of this world.
Ken Wapnick often says about the workbook lessons in the Course that a good Course student messes them up, but forgives himself. What matters is is the experience of forgiveness. Never to let perfection be the enemy of progress, so the ego’s constant urge is ultimately self-destructive, it is the experience that counts, for in the moments of forgiveness is when we let Jesus into our lives. Kaiser’s term “Mysteries,” is exactly about that, those quiet teaching moments when we let Jesus into our lives. Kaiser speaks of overcoming the general disease, that is exactly what he means to overcome the ego’s urge to always be first, which merely confirms us in the illusion that we don’t need Jesus, but we’re dying inside, and when we get to the top, there’s no there there.
The only thing that can die in us is the perishable. Kaiser follows the line from the Old Testament book of Isaiah on the meaning of service to God, to the way Jesus expressed it in his life. He explores how we are always in a battle to maintain the status quo, which is exactly what keeps the ego in charge, and us in chains. We may dress this up by projecting some savior who would come and save us, but that is an illusion which merely excuses us for doing nothing. That idea of a distant savior is what keeps us in bondage. Socrates spoke of freedom and he was invited to suicide himself, by drinking hemlock, and Jesus did not fare much better…
In Kaiser’s way of describing it there is a bit too much of an emphasis on suffering. The Course minimizes that by pointing out always that it is the ego hanging on to the old which suffers, but in the end that is meaningless. Woven into the article in several ways is the contrast between the organized religions and simply following Jesus, and listening to the call of spirit. He concludes on his version of the theme that when the student is ready, the teacher will show up, and that is how it will always be.
You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. ⁷You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. (ACIM, T-6.I.6:6-7)