ACIM: The Conditions of Inner Peace

Faith is the condition of inner peace, because it accepts all aspects of experience equally. It trusts God entirely, and allows only the Holy Spirit – not ego – to determine what a given situation or relationship means. To be faithful is to be quiet and still, completely confident that God’s Will is Love, even if that is not instantly or easily clear.

In the world, in a body, faith is simply acceptance without conditions or qualifications. It’s raining on the day we planned a picnic. Faith says, thank you for the rain, what else would you like to do with me today? Faithlessness – which is ego, which is fear – tries to negotiate. It says I don’t like the rain but I’ll deal with it if everyone I invited to the picnic agrees to meet at the diner instead.

When we accept life without placing conditions or qualifications on our acceptance, then we are living – even if only briefly – in what A Course in Miracles calls the holy instant.

The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it. It is a situation of perfect peace, simply because you have let it be what it is (T-17.VIII.1:4-6).

This is hard, right? The picnic example is kind of silly. What happens when it’s a parent or a spouse dying? What happens when it’s war erupting? What happens when it’s kids starving to death? What kind of cruel sadistic God tells us to accept those difficulties and horrors?

The god projected by fear, that’s who. And we are Creations of the God of Love.

Come back for a moment to the picnic example. We had a picnic planned – delicious salads, sweet iced tea, we invited all our friends. And then it rains. Set your feelings aside for a moment (they matter way less than we think). Do you have the picnic anyway? No. You reschedule it, or move it inside.

In other words, you respond in a calm, rational and helpful way.

So that is what we do as miracle workers when our dearest loves die, when war erupts and kids starve. We respond in a calm, rational and helpful way. It’s not a spiritual crisis. It really isn’t.

The spiritual crisis, so-called, is upstream of the response we make in these bodies in the world. The spiritual crisis is our refusal to accept the situation, which is always because we place our will before God’s Will, and don’t listen to the Holy Spirit.

Thus, the war and the picnic are just symptoms of the same problem, which is our belief in the reality of separation, which manifest as resisting God and trying to arrange and control the details of our lives (and often other people’s lives, too). And there is – because this A Course in Miracles we are talking about – a better way.

Let truth be what it is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it encompass every situation and bring you peace (T-17.VIII.2:2-4).

Start with something easy. Your morning coffee by the window or the drive to work or whatever. Let it be what it is. Accept it unconditionally. Can you see how everything is perfect? Can you see how you need do nothing?

And can you see how this perfection includes you finishing your coffee? Or getting to work? Or whatever? God does not take anything, but only gives and gives and gives. “You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator” (T-1.I.24:2).

As we get better at this faith-based acceptance, this living without resistance, this gentle embrace of the holy instant, we scale up. We apply it to the larger so-called problem – war, death, famine and evil. And it works. It heals all of them easily and equally. You know why? Because we are the Christ. There is nothing we cannot love, nothing we cannot accept.

This acceptance is our mission. This is our calling as serious students of A Course in Miracles.

Give as you have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond any situation that could hold you back, and keep you separate from Him Whose Call you answered (T-17.VIII.6:6-7).

Do you see? Our living rises far beyond even the possibility of opposition. And without opponents, there is no conflict, only peace. Therefore, our living becomes peace-filled. Peace is the gift we give because peace is the gift we receive.

From the bottom of my heart: thank you.