My birthday lesson: ACIM Lesson 276

On my birthday today I don’t really feel different from any other day although it is one with a “0” on the end. It was not always the case.

For many years as a younger person I felt tormented by my negative thoughts and worries, especially that self-critical voice telling me I was not good enough, nice enough, competitive enough, not a good enough daughter to my parents, was too angry and so on. But on my birthday I would awake feeling great and no matter what happened that day, nothing would bother me: hard days at work, flat tires, getting soaking wet in a thunderstorm, the Yankees losing. For one day a year the harsh superego lifted and I realized how I could feel if that voice in my head would just stop.

Another myth I created around this abnormal reaction to my birthday was that I could not possibly be as miserable as I felt, otherwise why would I be so inordinately happy on my birthday for no good reason? Didn’t this mean I celebrated my birth and my life?

Years went by and I had lots of therapy and a long psychoanalysis (under the guise of a training analysis, it was truly therapeutic). Some time during my analysis I realized I was no longer inordinately happy on my birthday but I also was not so unhappy all the other days of the year. I lamented the loss of that special day because I felt so good that day. I blamed my analysis for showing me the truth.

The above are all myths and false beliefs. Yes, I am here on earth and yes, the harsh voice in my head has been softened and tempered with listening only for that other voice, the voice for God. Each day is the same as I am trying to live it in peace and gratitude, despite what may happen in my “outside” life: family illnesses and adult children’s troubles, the uncertainty of the future and the forgetting of the past.

Being a “sensitive” child, I remember I used to cry in class at the drop of a hat if the teacher said something I considered critical or frightening. At about the age of 8 I said to myself, “Irene, you’ve got to stop this crying. You’re not a baby any more and no one else in bursting into tears in school. It’s time to stop.” Right then and there I resolved I would never cry in class again and indeed I never did.

As I turn 60 (wow I just said that, interesting!) I have resolved, in the same way, to give up my sense of fear. If I could stop myself from crying at 8, why can’t I stop myself if a fearful thought enters my mind? It is only a thought, fabricated by the ego, and that is the ego’s job: to create thoughts. I can have the thought, but I can observe it, even wonder at it and as much of the time as I can remember, forgive myself for having it and even laugh at it.

Today’s ACIM lesson, number 276, is specially connected to me energetically due to it falling on my date of birth. It is something I try to heed: The Word of God is given me to speak.

Thanks, God, for the reminder.