Lesson 118:

God’s peace and joy are mine.

Today I will accept God’s peace and joy, in glad exchange for all the substitutes that I have made for happiness and peace.

Let me be still and listen to the truth.

Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the might Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am God’s perfect Son.

All ways~ always, all I ever wanted was peace and joy, consistently, constantly. I only wanted to not have something missing. I only wanted not to feel incomplete and needy. I wanted to be happy. But I wasn’t.

I was so obliviously immersed in the ‘outside world’ concept, looking for the right set of circumstances, (people, things, looks, events, labels) , whatever would prove my worthiness. And once worthy, I would be happy. And that worthiness and happiness would, hopefully, bring me peace and rest from an inner state of despair I seemed to have been born with. I seemed to have been born believing that the body was me.

It seemed that from the first second my bare feet hit the ground, I’d been afraid I had some free floating fear of being found out… I felt split between this inner fearful, unworthy self, which I kept exclusively to myself, and this outward persona of the people.

The mantra of my public self was, “can’t everybody just get along? Can’t we all just be happy”? I needed people to obey…

My private mind was another story. It was the private lonely hell of not-enough-ness, of undetermined guilty unworthiness. It had another mantra, “I’m sorry…”

I see now that my public jovial personality was an idol designed to maneuver my environment into acting and being and feeling in such a way that it would cover over my feelings of inadequacy and secret shame/ guilt.

There was a constant story going on; of “If you would just (fill in the blank), I would feel complete, I could be at peace, I would be happy…” I developed a style of deflection and humor that even I believed at times. Until, of course, I was alone.

Within my own private mind, I was stuck in the loneliness of nothingness and the emptiness my idols left in their wake… It was an intolerable state, hence the compulsive drive to people my world with an audience for my public self.

Even my ideas about love were meant to satisfy this unfulfilled-ness… I was a user and everyone and thing were my drugs. I was also a pusher, in desperate need of companions willing to pretend.

Here’s the thing; all illusions are like this. They are idols designed to give us what we think we lack. They are specific, little forms for which we willingly squeeze ourselves into, for the promise of joy and peace.

Like the course says, “It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols and you ask for loss. Decide for truth and everything is yours… Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited.” (T-30.III.1-3)

Gratefully, what happened for me was total dissatisfaction with every idol, with myself and the entire fragmented state of illusive illusory happiness. It is a state of death by belief-system.

At some point, we all recognize, back in ancient memory, deep within the mind, that this whole trumped-up gig is a fraud… I did. That life is being. It is the essence of love present whenever, for an instant we are stilled from the raucousness of what we called life.

This awareness doesn’t actually speak the English language, but a more universal language of experience. It feels like something ‘real’ instead of the separate shadows of the bad film, is reaching to pull you into awareness. Here’s my story;

On disillusionments death bed, in an attempt to stop the #@! %in’ screaming, the bossing me around, the rules and broken promises, the hell, the loneliness, I fell to my knees, spent… ‘I’ was over.

I prayed the honest prayer of the desperate and innocent… “There must be another way! I want it! Please help!”… The screaming stopped.

And truth came softly, quietly in the essence of peace and safety, feeling like a whisper saying, “You are perfect love, complete and wholly loved. It will be all right now. I’ve got it all taken care of; you need not worry. There is nothing to fear, you are at home and I am with you. You will never be alone again…” This is the peace of God. This is the fullness of completion. This is constant abiding joy… This is the foundation of my life today. This is sort of the manta, in my language, which truth speaks and guides me with today… What substitute would I settle for instead of this?

None. When the temptation to forget arises, the compulsion to squeeze myself or you into small thoughts of forms of nothingness arise, the surefire remedy is to simply be still and listen…

I’m not talking about ‘finding a quiet place by myself, somewhere, although for years it did.

I am referring to the state that is always within mind; always present and active regardless of what the body surroundings seem to be. It is instantly available for the willing mind that wholly desires it... It always comes…

We are but asked to let our true will be done, and seek no longer for the things we don’t really want…. “Indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams”.

We are free from illusions grip, because it is our will is one with God’s; fear is gone because its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. And by this will, we are but restored to what we are. This is God’s plan for salvation, to give the Son back to Himself, in truth.

“The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not its goal, for the escape from guilt becomes its aim. The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the place of idols, which are sought no longer, for their "gifts" are not held dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and understood”…

Thank you for joining me in the real world where God’s peace and joy are ours and we rest assured in the stillness that speaks the voice of truth…