Spiritual lessons from a table
A Motley Mystic Monday Moment
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Welcome to the Motley Mystic Monday Moment. Each week I'll be providing you with a tool you can use for your spiritual growth and giving you an invitation to think differently about your spirituality and how you're connecting with the Divine (God, the Universe, the Holy – however you may understand this overall life-giving force).
A table is just a table, right? According to Lesson 28 in the Workbook from A Course in Miracles, tables can be our ticket to a miracle. Tables can have a lot of meaning. To Jesus, they represented the idolatry of the moneychangers. He upended those tables in a protest of how the temple system exploited the poor.
Tables are a place to gather – where we put down our weapons and sit face to face in communion with family, friends, strangers and sometimes even enemies. Tables are place to feel vulnerable – or powerful, especially if it's the president or some top executive sitting across from us. Tables have a lot of meaning – but we're the ones who give them their meaning.
This lesson invites us to gaze upon a table – maybe one that already has a meaning for us, like a family heirloom table or the restaurant table where we met our true love for a first date. Get that table in your vision – either literally or in your head – and say, "Above all else I want to see this table differently."
It's not just tables we're trying to see differently – but the whole world we live in where everyone has a point of view. Everyone has an opinion. Often those opinions become our identity. You identify as "liberal," or "conservative," or "independent," or whatever other label you can contrive. Your perception has not only become your reality – but your fixed identity.
This has to do with a psychological phenomenon called "confirmation bias." We have what we believe to be a fixed set of beliefs about the world and we reject any evidence that contradicts it (even if that evidence is factually provable) and embrace evidence that confirms our beliefs (even if that evidence is demonstrably false).
Two studies from Stanford University back up this idea. When students were told a set of what they believed were facts about suicide and a firefighter’s performance, they remained convinced in their original beliefs even after those beliefs were totally refuted by the researchers afterward. Our reactions are linked to the primitive communities we formed way back in our evolution, according cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber who wrote a book a few years ago called The Enigma of Reason.
Reason, according to Mercier and Sperber, writes Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, evolved to "prevent us from getting screwed by the other members of our group. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments."
In short, the unwillingness to see things differently than you already do could save you from dying while hunting a wooly mammoth for the community dinner. It’s no wonder we’re so hesitant to give up the ideas we’ve built our lives around. We see them as our defense – our source of bodily safety.
A Course in Miracles reminds us that this is where we make our biggest mistake: We believe that we have a body that needs defending. Nobody wants to be a wooly mammoth's lunch while we're trying to make it our lunch, but when we believe that protection of the body is our paramount responsibility in this world, we've already been eaten by our ego.
We are in these bodies because our first case of confirmation bias is our belief in separation. I believe I am here writing this blog while other separate beings are out there living their own lives independent from mine. I believe I need to protect myself from those other bodies who may do me physical harm or get more than their fair share of the limited resources of this world. That breeds fear within me so I seek for ideas and reasons and beliefs to show why I'm right and they're all wrong.
Then, we'll argue about it on Facebook.
The body came into being because of this belief in separation – because we have forgotten who we really are. We are not these bodies. When we die, we will discard this form like a suit of clothing and re-enter the oneness with God that we never really have left. The body is here to help us remember that we can achieve that oneness before our physical bodies die, because our bodies are a tool of communication that the Holy Spirit uses to teach us how to remove all the barriers to love we have built that produced this world of separation and fear in the first place. While we must take care of the bodies we’ve been given, their protection is not our ultimate goal. Our goal is to remember who we are – to end the separation and regain the ultimate Reality of unity where bodies are not needed.
We can begin that with something as simple as a table, as this lesson says. It asks us to look at a table and say, "Above all else I want to see this table differently." By doing this, we are practicing releasing the ego's preconceived notions about the world around us.
This lesson says, "You could, in fact, gain vision from just that table, if you would withdraw all your own ideas from it, and look upon it with a completely open mind. It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe. In using the table as a subject for applying the idea for today, you are therefore really asking to see the purpose of the universe."
In one of my past writing workshops, we did this lesson and talked about tables and how they don’t mean what we think they do and that we’ve given them all their meaning. One participant wrote about a traumatic event involving a table that had happened early in their lives and how it had become part of their identity and had tainted their relationship not just with tables, but with people in subsequent relationships that brought up these painful memories. The exercise helped this participant begin to see tables differently and they were greatly relieved to learn that they could release their past beliefs about something so seemingly benign that had deeply affected them for years.
This is what a miracle looks like in action. It releases us from past fears and perceptions into the truth about the world and ourselves. This lesson sets the stage for such miracles in our lives by inviting us to release our confirmation bias – to be willing to see things differently and stop building our entire lives around avoiding being eaten alive by the world around us. Rest assured, the ego world is all about eating you for lunch, and it may very well succeed. Our true peace, though – the kind that passes all understanding – doesn't depend on the safety of our bodies, because when we can see differently, we understand that we are not these bodies and our true identity is so much more magnificent, because we truly are the light of the world.
So, here's your practice for the week – whenever you are in a situation where you don't see an immediate solution – or you want to work with feelings from your past that continue to plague you, say this, "Above all else I want to see this differently." Name the situation, emotion or thought.
For example, "Above all else, I want to see my relationship with my mother – or another loved one – differently." Or, "Above all else, I want to see my career differently," or your spirituality, or your relationship with the Holy, or an object that, like my writing workshop participant, brings up old, painful memories.
Say the sentence slowly and give yourself time. Write about it if that's something that can help you. Meditate on this sentence – listen to the silence for the miracle – that shift in perception that will surely come when we take the time to make room for it.
Dedicate yourself to seeing just one thing differently this week. If you continue this practice – trying to see beyond what your ego says is the only solution or the only way to seek, think or feel about a situation – you'll eventually loosen the ego's grip on your perception and it will change. That is the definition of a miracle – a new perception – a way of seeing the world differently that restores you to your true identity as peace, joy and love.
When we can do this, says the Muslim mystic poet Hafiz, we will begin to see the innate innocence and holiness of everything around us. The world becomes a holy book revealing the purpose of the universe.
"A candle giving advice to the sun can make the sun smile
because of the flame's remarkable innocence.
Maybe I should be careful about saying something like this,
but every holy book … lifts the corners of my mouth,
and even makes me giggle a bit."
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Music for the Journey
“Crumbs from Your Table” - U2
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.