How often do you try to discover your strengths by looking for some outside source to give you the strength you only think you are lacking?
Be it physical or psychological or emotional strength, to discover your strengths like much of the world you may feel it is somewhere to be found.
Have you ever had the strong urge to make a statement that you know is true, and your own conviction in the matter is burning in your heart, but you still seek additional support that you are unable to attain-and then the subject becomes buried?
Such a statement may be of a physical nature, such as proving yourself, or a verbal message you want to give; it really makes no difference.
It seems we must always point to the past as a reference for the support we need. Often some lawyers and judges are good at this when citing past court cases where one ruling weighed over another.
If you have idols that you look to in order to discover your strengths, then how many idols must actually exist in the world today? What is so special about an idol, and what does one truly do for you? Do you really understand where the power lies in an idol?
The answers to these questions contain a lot of uncertainty, and our uncertainty is what gives an idol its power.
How quick are we to believe the latest news from the one who judges everybody and who seems to rule the neighborhood or the office? You know this person-the one who always has the inside scoop on the drama that he or she creates.
For that matter, how often do we believe what the newspapers print on the latest scandal? Court cases are a prime example, when they are brought to our attention on the evening news.
Idol worship is an image of someone or something that we value for what we think it is, in comparison to what we think we are.
Idol worship constantly, which is of a body, a thing, a place, a situation or circumstance; the news, an object owned or wanted, even a right demanded or achieved.
These examples of idol worship are all the same: something we think gives us strength.
Don’t let an idol’s form deceive you. In some manner we believe an idol can complete our inferiority and make us feel safe in a world perceived as dangerous, filled with forces that threaten our peace of mind.
Often we believe our idol worship has the power to supply our lacks, and give us value we think we cannot attain on our own.
When you have an idol it is your way of enslaving yourself to littleness and to loss. You will try to seek beyond your little self for the strength to raise your head, seen as accomplishment.
Perhaps you enslaved yourself so low, you actually did achieve to rise to another level that the world will recognize you for.
You thank your idol, and thus have separated yourself from the “losers” in the world from whom you stand apart. But this sort of perceived “gain” is, in reality, further tragic separation from the oneness that is your true Self.
A Course in Miracles states, “An idol is a false impression or a false belief that the ego uses to keep the past alive.”
Idol worship occupies a gap in your mind between the past and the presence of the true Christ-mind in you, which is always in the “now.” Idol worship has a goal opposite that of the Holy Spirit’s bridging of perception to knowledge.
Your own idol worship strives to build its bridge from past to future with a bypass over the present or the “now.” It doesn’t see any benefits to the “now,” just as it will never understand eternity.
To the Christ in you