My happiness and my function are one.
Our happiness and our function will almost certainly appear different in form but in reality they are the same thing. They are not similar; they are not related through cause and effect. They are identical. Our function and our happiness are one.
This sameness is why the Holy Spirit never responds to ego’s provocations and attacks. Ego is desperate to keep our happiness and function separate, for only then can it keep us in the state of dissatisfaction and confusion upon which its existence depends.
But the Holy Spirit’s calm certainty about what we are in truth forever prevails.
God gives you only happiness. Therefore, the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different (W-pI.66.4:2-3).
Ego wants to analyze. Ego wants to argue with today’s lesson. It wants to make it about definitions with which reasonable people can disagree. It wants to brainstorm the various means by which we might achieve happiness. A better job? More sex? Chocolate? How about moving to the Carribean?
These are attacks on the truth of what we are, and the nature of God’s gift to us. With the Holy Spirit we bypass analysis and go straight to knowledge, as befits creations of a wholly loving God.
Yet the lesson recognizes that the temptations of ego remain alluring. So it offers us a very powerful exercise of logic and reason, designed to quiet ego and restore our minds to the creative openness and willingness characteristic of our true nature.
First, God gives only happiness (W-pI.66.5:2). In order for this to be false, we have to define God as evil, capricious and manipulative. Do we really believe that this fairly or accurately describes God?
Second, God has given us our function (W-pI.66.5:3). There are only two possibilities here: either the Holy Spirit, which speaks for God and knows us in our confusion, represents our function, or our function is made by ego, which is an illusion capable only of bringing forth more illusions.
Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts (W-pI.66.8:3-4)?
Finally, the lesson gently invites us to “hear the truth” rather than “listen to madness” (W-pI.66.10:1). We have been listening to the deranged voice of ego for a long time. Has it made us happy? Has it brought us peace? Has it helped us to bring joy and peace to our brothers and sisters?
In honesty, can we not see there must be another way?
A Course in Miracles emphasizes the all-or-nothing nature of salvation. We can listen to ego or the Holy Spirit. We can’t listen to both. We cannot compromise between truth and lies. Reality is not both whole and in fragments.
On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try to realize that only the truth is true (W-pI.66.10:6-8).
Our happiness and our function are identical; what is the same can never be different or separate. And only truth is true. On this foundation rests our – and the world’s – salvation.
l reviewed this lesson yesterday.
‘My happiness and my function are one’.
l think the Holly Spirit would like us to accept and embrace our function: being the light of the world, the forgiver of the world and the bringer of peace to the minds of the world.
My experience is that when l remember my true Self l am more content, harmonious and in alignment with peace and love. When l remember the true Self in others, all of my interactions with others are enhanced, go smoothly and sometimes we connect to the joy inside us. We laugh and smile over ‘little things’.
When l ‘forgive the world’, l have a sense of accepting things as they are rather than trying to change things or trying to influence or manipulate people/events in my favour. When l accept, l literally let go of the tightness inside me and am more able to remember my true Self and feel at peace.
When l am doing any of these things: remembering my true Self, relating to the true Self in others, accepting of people, situations/events l am bringing peace to the minds of the world by resonating these energies, thoughts and feelings of ease, peace and harmony back to the Oneness/one mind.
Even though l am a beginner and think from one day to the next that l don’t really understand what l thought l understood the previous day/week, l’m enjoying the learning experiences. l’d rather live a conscious life, rather live from one day to the next in a type of default mode of conditioned pre-programmed unconsciousness. lf that is even what many people do (Dr. Joe Dispenza). Even though living the Courses principals and searching for the truth is hard, in my opinion it’s harder to live a meaningless life without purpose and truth. So l continue to try and look at everything with an open mind, as much as l can and as often as l am able. Or, look after the fact of how this could have been improved/mitigated and so on.
Blessings,
Jayney