There is no peace except the peace of God.
When we learn that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists then we know the peace of God, and when we know the peace of God, there is nothing left to seek because there is nothing left to know. All our thoughts and beliefs to the contrary have merely obscured what was always true. Nothing is missing; everything is given.
This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved by what can only hurt; of making peace of choas, joy of pain, and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die to live (W-pI.200.2:1-2).
We do not need to suffer. Suffering is optional, not inevitable. If there is anything A Course in Miracles aims to teach us it is this. If we want to know peace and happiness, and if we are willing to recognize that the only obstacles to knowledge are the ones we impose, then we will remember peace.
Why is the law? Because it is how God created us. It is the way life is, when we no longer resist life, when we no longer insist it appear this way or that. To ask for what we already have must succeed (e.g., W-pI.200.3:3).
This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone (W-pI.200.4:3-5).
All that we need to do is change our mind about the purpose of the world. It is not given to bind us in chains of sorrow and loss but rather to learn that we cannot be bound. What we are in truth transcends the limitations of the body and the world. This understanding is a gift that we give to ourselves, by giving it to our brothers and sisters.
The question is never how do we see ourselves, but rather how we see our brothers and sisters. Are we willing to see them as God does? Are we willing to not see them as God does not?
We remember what we are in truth when we realize that all we want to do is extend to the world a blessing. We don’t even have to extend the blessing. Simply acknowledging that love is our will, and that we share that will with God, is sufficient. Peace is the bridge that we cross together as we leave the world of suffering and pain (e.g., W-pI.200.8:1).
Today’s lesson invites us to hold no goal but the goal of happiness, and it also invites us to remember that the way to reach the goal – to be happy – is to give happiness to others, without qualification or condition. Nothing else is worthy of us.
The idols to which the lesson refers are the false gods of social status, possession, past grievances, and personal ambition. Can we – for a few minutes – set them aside? They are not real and they obscure our awareness of what is. Can we discover what is real when what is unreal is laid gently to rest? Is it a question of willingness, not secret knowledge or supernatural strength.
Is it possible that when we set the gaudy trinkets and false goals of the egoic self down that we will no longer want to pick them up? And even when we do, find that they no longer fit our hands? Because they never satisfied our desire to know ourselves as God does.
. . . we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God (W-pI.200.11:5-6).
There is nothing left to find; there never was. Nor is a day coming when there will be. There is only – there was always only – the peace of God. Together we make it so.
