Lesson 116:

God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

God’s Will is perfect happiness for me.

And I can suffer but from the belief there is another will apart from His.

I share God’s Will for happiness for me.

I share my Father’s Will for me, His Son.

What He has given me is all I want.

What He has given me is all there is.

God Wills only that we are joyously in love, forever.

When we are looking out on our lives, at what we have or don’t have, did or didn’t do, what others have or do, we are attempting to use an unreal measure to determine what happiness is. This is what the Course means about the hierarchy of illusions; the ego’s attempt to order our thoughts.

A Course in Miracles gives a clear and simple guide for which we can determine if this is indeed the place we are evaluating our lives from. It says simply: “Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment.”

If we do not feel God’s Will for us, which is perfect happiness, then we have identified the ego. The ego, remember, is just a set of ideas about who we are apart from God; in other words, not real.

Even if it appears (appears being the operative word here) that we feel happy temporarily, until the next glitch, so to speak. Appearances are not reality.

Reality is eternal, unchanging and forever NOW. It is a state of being.

Within the framework of our self-concepts, and the evaluation of our happiness from that point of view, our thinking is disordered because the ego sees on the basis of its own lack. This is the only point of reference it has, because the ego’s origin was the idea of lack. Subsequently, it wanted to author itself and therefore, its ‘special’ world; to get more of something, instead of the eternal oneness, which is eternity.

God knows not of loss or more or other of any kind. He knows of His Son, in truth, as He created him, perfectly happy and perfectly at peace, NOW.

For the minuscule instant that the impossible thought entered the mind of the Son, and seemed put him to sleep to dream about this impossible thought’s inception and execution, God implemented the ‘wake-up call’ ~ the Atonement, complete with the memory of Him. This is the Holy Spirit; the predilection of the truth… His voice for eternal truth, now, forever- awake and ever-present within the mind that thinks it wants to dream. He is constant re-member-ing of the truth…

The Holy Spirit is like a gentle whisper, a familiar, yet almost indistinguishable melody somewhere in the background, not part of the dream at all, yet heard within the mind that dreams.

Like in this so-call life, when we seem to be sleeping and somewhere we can hear voices or become aware of another life going on around you, even though you’re currently identified with the dream you’re having at the time, thinking its real for a second. It starts to distract us from the dream and eventually we realize the dream for what it is and wake up to ‘reality’, because it’s real…

The ego had to come up with so many accompanying beliefs such as guilt and fear and pain, as parts of ‘so-called reality’ so we would to expend mind to avoid the relentless dissatisfaction and unhappiness inherent in illusion. This expenditure of mind can literally render the dreamer temporarily mindless to reality, now.

And this is where the self-concept, comprising the sinful, guilty son, who stole creation from God, a crime punishable by death, resides. So intolerable is this concept of self, that projection was required. Once projected out, the self sees itself as an innocent victim of circumstances, perpetrated by others.

These opposing selves are what the course refers to as the war against our selves. They reside together. The self-concept is an image and images can’t see, but the ego believes it can see. When we attempt to see through images, which are of time and space, we choose to block awareness of abstract cause/ effect, now, with linear time and space images. This is purpose for linear time, to blot out this awareness, and sort of give us a chance to run away from ourselves.

None of this is real. It’s a dream. And the crucial thing is to notice the way we feel… When it feels like discomfort, we realize we have identified ourselves with an appearance of reality. We accept that what we think we think might be false, since it doesn’t meet the criteria of ‘perfect peace’, and forgive the false as false…

This opens us up to listen deeper, stiller, quieter for the reinterpretation and meaning of what we are in truth. It is there. Still within the mind that thinks itself a concept, residing right along side the ego’s alternative, is the Self.

So, central to the reversal of wrong-minded thinking and self-concept identity to right-minded, Self-identity in God, is to notice how we feel.

We begin with today’s true state-ment:“God's Will for me is perfect happiness… God's Will is perfect happiness for me. And I can suffer but from the belief there is another will apart from His”…

From here we can remember that what appears as real, is an image we have made to stand for a mis-thought within our mind, projected away or split off to alleviate the horror of guilt and pain and sorrow and loss of innocence we have identified ourselves with through our belief in the ego. It isn’t that we have to do anything… we already are everything. It is simply choosing to accept the Atonement, instead, which employs the Holy Spirit’s present service through miracles, to restore us to the perfect happiness that is our nature and will with God’s…

‘I share God's Will for happiness for me… I share my Father's Will for me, His Son. What He has given me is all I want. What He has given me is all there is’… There is nothing to fear… The Holy Spirit guides us at the pace that is most helpful for all. We need do nothing. Whatever I think I need, is an error in judgment. Only the Holy Spirit can judge and always judges for wholeness. The section in the text called The Happy Dream is beautifully eloquent as a complimentary read today.

We forgive and see differently. The reel of time/space images of the past need not be played again. We have accepted the Atonement for ourselves, which is One in truth…

We but merely turn in the direction of truth, and peace of mind through our desire for it, and the Holy Spirit corrects our thinking, aligning it with truth. This simultaneously lines up the so-called peoples and events and circumstances, to reflect or witness to our state of mind.

God's Will for us, His Son, is perfect happiness…

Aren’t we beginning to see we share His will in truth and this is, after all, what makes us happy? We are beginning to accept the truth that what He has given us is all we really want…

Isn’t it delicious to see the sun on the horizon of our mind rising from within? Here rings the truth: What God has given is all there is… This is the glorious melody so familiar, brought forward to present/presence in Mind… Glory to God for His perfect gift of perfect happiness! ~