The cute story line of the rich man who took care of business, and most importantly, took care of tomorrow, and then died the next instant, makes the point in a very graphic way. This is certainly a very central point of Jesus's teaching as we also know it from the Course. The ego's strategy keeps an imaginary past in memory in the present (so that I'm never really present, for to be really in the present would be to be in eternity), and reacts from those past emotions to who and what we meet today, thereby setting up a future that becomes a repeat of the past in a different form, and in effect ensuring the results it is seeking to prevent. So we are shadowboxing while we think we're taking care of businesses, or fighting windmills, à la Don Quijote. The following passage from the Course highlights how the ego's sleight of hand works:
The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.
"Now" has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego's dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is. And you will receive messages from him out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now.
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. They carry the spots of pain in your mind, directing you to attack in the present in retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is one of future pain. Unless you learn that past pain is an illusion, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the many opportunities you could find for release in the present. The ego would preserve your nightmares, and prevent you from awakening and understanding they are past. Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the encounter holy, would be excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself, and the encounter is holy because you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be, and the present is without meaning. (ACIM:T-13.IV.4-6)
Conversely, to see "the face of Christ" in our brothers, in everyone we meet, requires that we forgive completely and accept the Atonement for ourselves, so that we finally can be present in the present, and not building special relationships based on our projections, but joining with our brothers in that eternal present, and letting the Holy Spirit direct our steps. The story of Logion 63 is a stark reminder of the total pointlessness of the ego's strategies, for as the modern saying goes, "you can't take it with you," and in the example of the rich man ensuring his riches into the future, only to die the next day, this is demonstrated rather graphically. The point is that the ego really robs us of the present, which is the only time there is, and it substitutes its illusions.
The "other" choice is portrayed in the Course as follows:
When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite
apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other.
For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you reached
the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far
was to decide which branch you will take now. The way you came no
longer matters. It can no longer serve. No one who reaches this far
can make the wrong decision, although he can delay. And there is no
part of the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing
where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go.
It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is decided. There will be nothing you will not be told, if you acknowledge this.
And so you and your brother stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. Let it be lifted! Raise it together with your brother, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either you or your brother alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it is almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here, before the veil. Think what will happen after. The Love of Christ will light your face, and shine from it into a darkened world that needs the light. And from this holy place He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will become His messenger, returning Him unto Himself. (ACIM:T-22.IV.1-3)
It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is decided. There will be nothing you will not be told, if you acknowledge this.
And so you and your brother stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. Let it be lifted! Raise it together with your brother, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either you or your brother alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it is almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here, before the veil. Think what will happen after. The Love of Christ will light your face, and shine from it into a darkened world that needs the light. And from this holy place He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will become His messenger, returning Him unto Himself. (ACIM:T-22.IV.1-3)
All of these issues are so primordial that we recognize them immediately, and the image of Logion 63 is a classic. The alternative that's posed by Jesus's teachings invites us, not by blindly accepting his authority, but by following him, in trusting the steps he shows, and validating through our own experience that it works.
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