Sean Reagan

God, being Love, is also happiness.

Yesterday I asked if it made sense that love would bring forth anything other than happiness? I suggested that any logical inquiry would affirm that yes, love begets happiness.

Today’s lesson both confirms this truth, and extends is unto God, who is not apart from love.

Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it. Nor can it be experienced where love is not. Love has not limits, being everywhere. And therefore joy is everywhere as well (W-pI.103.1:1-5).

We might ask: okay, what’s the problem then?

The problem is that mind – being free to choose – can choose to not believe this, and instead make a world of fear, guilt, hate and violence and pretend that is its home and reality.

When mind does that, it effectively redefines love as both limited and capable of being opposed (W-pI.103.1:7). It ceases to reflect perfect safety and happiness, and instead reflects a situation in which attack and defense are reasonable.

Thus, our self-made love – and the world and selves subject to it – fail to achieve the liberation which is the function of our ACIM practice. God becomes a punisher, a capricious and unpredictable ruler, and we are sinners standing in dreadful opposition to Heaven.

If that or anything like it is our underlying thought system, then we are going to be unhappy indeed.

The current sequence of ACIM lessons aims to undo this strange belief, replacing it with the clear and helpful idea that God, being Love, is also happiness (W-pI.103.3:5).

If we are faithful to our practice, then we will experience a change in thought. Being will lighten.

. . . welcome all the happiness it brings as truth replaces fear, and joy becomes what you expect to take the place of pain. God, being, Love, it will be given you (W-pI.103.3:2-3).

If nothing else, we can rest in the assurance that there is another way, and we are now walking it. We can stop, go a step or two backwards, or merely take half-hearted baby steps. It doesn’t matter. We have made the choice to remember what we are in truth, and our choice becomes the light by which the memory dawns in our mind as reality.

What we are is love, and so happiness is our natural state, and in this understanding we realize our unconditional oneness with God.

←Lesson 102
Lesson 104→

Miracles are seen in light (lesson 91).

Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one (lesson 92).

Miracles are seen in light, a phenomenon which reflects God’s strength, which was given to us in creation without condition. While miracles may have observable external effects, they are mostly shifts in thinking from what we might loosely call egoic patterns to spiritual patterns. Or from fear to love.

When we are miracle-minded, we are thinking the way God thinks and – however briefly and tenuosly – are enlightened and awakened.

Miracles makes us happy. And, by making us happy, they naturally support further expressions and experiences of miracle-mindedness.

Thinking with God becomes our practice, and in this way light enters our living and gives us strength to face the fear that obstructs love.

It is an error to deny the world and our experience in it (e.g., T-2.IV.3:10-11). It’s better to simply be as honest about that experience as we can be. Where is it challenging? Where is it full of flow and ease? Where are we putting up resistance? What do we not want to look at?

A Course in Miracles is not trying to drive us to renunciation and asceticism. It is not a spiritual practice that doubles down on suffering and repentance. It is playful and sincere and fundamentally helpful.

Truly, the course aims to direct our attention to the source of conflict: and thus, the only location where change is possible: the mind. That is the essence of this review lesson. It asks us to turn within to our perception of weakness and strife, to understand this as a form of darkness that comes from attempting to live apart from God and our brothers and sisters, and to choose another way.

We are invited to avail ourselves of the healing light of God’s strength. We are asked to consider, in other words, bringing the separation to a close in one radiant embrace of God and love.

What else would we ask for? What else could make us happy?

Of course, it is unlikely that we are going to do this. It takes training, which comes from giving attention to the Holy Spirit’s still quiet voice, which in turn supports our willingness to be healed unconditionally, rather than insist on healing on personal terms (which are always set and defended by ego).

Thus, the introduction to this review period reminds us:

Do not forget how little you have learned.
Do not forget how much you can learn now.
Do not forget your Father’s need of you,
As you review these thoughts He gave to you (w-pI.rIII.in.13:1-3).

God’s strength is our strength: the truth of this is unaffected by either our denial of it or our projection. We cannot will away the Will that we share with God in Creation. We can delay the remembrance, yes, but the truth of it is beyond error.

So, in a sense, this lesson – neatly correlating with the theme of the review period – is a gentle reminder that we need not wait on time to know in a real and tangible way the peace of Christ which surpasses understanding.

←Lesson 110
Lesson 112→

I am as God created me.

The successive nature of the lessons – each one expanding, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly, on the previous – so that the whole workbook evolves or extends in the manner of a snowflake, a dynamic pattern beautifully extending itself, is one of the most beautiful and pleasing aspects of A Course in Miracles.

Thus, this lesson – with its gentle assertion that we are as God created us – is really the reason why the previous lesson is logically consistent and thus reliable. We can rest in God because we are natural extensions of God.

If you are remain as God created you, appearances cannot replace the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substituted for live, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you (W-pI.110.3:1-2).

The world of suffering and fear – in which pain comes and goes, sometimes replaced by pleasure, sometimes merely by a bland neutrality that is neither joful nor joyless – is an effect of believing we are other than as God created us. It reflects the belief that our existence is up to us. But if we remain in Creation as God wills, then the world constructed by our will is simply an error which can be easily corrected. Lesson 110 is the correction.

In this way – symphonically, cumulatively – the lessons together naturally loosen the bonds of ego and deepen our capacity to make contact with “the Self Who is the holy Son of God Himself” (W-pI.110.7:1).

Two aspects of this lesson bear special notice. The first is the pointed observation in the second sentence of the first paragraph that this one lesson would save both us and the world if we only believe it. Implicit in that comment is the fact that we do not believe it but can. It is a challenge to us because it is a reminder that salvation need not be a future event but a present recollection. Our suffering can end now, if we will only give up the crazy idea that our will is separate from God’s.

Thus, it is helpful to face that fact of unbelief where it is within us. Indeed, the whole illusion of separation – the vast network of projection alienating us from love – is premised on this unbelief. When we do not resist the truth that we are unbelievers, then the Holy Spirit is able to gently enter our dream of separation and begin to heal it by reminding us that separation is not so. Awareness of the problem is always precedent to its solution (W-pI.79.1:1).

The other aspect of this lesson that stands out is its quiet confidence that the undoing of our seeming separation is neither unduly complicated nor mysterious. It is simple in nature and so the solution is as well. The whole truth of A Course in Miracles can be found in the idea that God created us and nothing has ever intervened to change or undo that fact. Thus, we are assured that we “need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it from the past” (W-pI.110.3:3).

The healing power of today’s idea is limitless. It is the birthplace of all miracles, the great restorer of the truth to the awareness of the world (W-pI.110.5:1-2).

And so we can seek in confidence the interior Christ who is savior unto the world and our self because we are not seeking an elusive trickster who delights in confounding and frustrating us, but rather our true Self whose Word is the liberation of the world (W-pI.110.8:1). We want to be found; we want to be saved.

It is helpful to approach these lessons with the humility and willingness of a student who unconditionally trusts their teacher. When we do that, our progress away from dreams of fear and toward informed and creative wakefulness is assured. At any moment we might recall – in a deep and foundational way – that we are the Christ we seek. And if not today, then tomorrow or the day after. There is nothing else to find.

That is the power of the workbook – its ability, through a guide who is within us but not of us – to reliably bring into  application the abstract glory of the text. For we are as God created us – a truth in no way conditioned upon our belief –  and so abide forever in divine peace and eternity.

←Lesson 109
Lesson 111→

I rest in God.

In Lesson 108 we learn that by giving attention to what is the same is the means by which we remember the Thought of God in which all Creation is brought forth. We practiced offering love to our brothers and sisters from the stillness of our mind and realizing that our gift to them was in fact God’s gift to us. Giving and receiving are the same.

Today, on the heels of that lesson, we take our rest. We claim the peace and happiness that comes from knowing only the certainty of God.

There is no problem that it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God (W-pI.109.4:2-3).

The lesson is one of respite: of finding and making use of some space in which to relax and breathe and remember the sure end to our  (apparently) long and difficult sojourn.

This is a day of peace. You rest in God, and while the world is torn by winds of hate your rest remains completely undisturbed. Yours is the rest of Truth. Appearances cannot intrude on you (W-pI.109.4:1-4).

Lesson 109 speaks to both the God-created Self outside of time and space and the egoic self, characterized by its belief in the reality of the world and the body. We take our rest from the “world’s appearances” and feel the peace at both the level of the body and the spirit.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are. If we need to be assured that it’s okay we can’t make a mortgage payment or that somebody we love is dying of cancer, then the course will facilitate a healing response. It readily meets without resistance the form in which we utter the cry for love.

At the same time, if we are ready and able to perceive God in the abstract fullness of God’s perfection – beyond symbols, beyond language, in the dissolution of space and time – then that too will be given. Love responds to love, readily flowing in and through whatever form in which it temporarily encounters itself.

Being met we are is the Holy Spirit’s function, for us brought forth in our study and practice of A Course in Miracles. The Holy Spirit can do this because it knows what we have forgotten: it is not possible to be separate from God. It is only possible to believe that we are separate from God.

Thus, what we are in truth remains at home in the undivided fullness of creation, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. Forgetfulness has no effect on what is forgotten.

You can never be deprived of your perfect holiness because its Source goes with you wherever you go. You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go (W-pI.41.4:1-2).

Thus, in its gentle call to rest, the lesson reminds us that we are ideas in the Mind of God and that “ideas leave not their source” (T-26.VII.4:7). In a way, wherever we meet the course is where we are supposed to meet it, because it is there at that moment and in that set of circumstances that we can best perceive and accept the memory of God.

We are allowed to rest in God! How beautiful and comforting to know this, and how nurturing and supportive to accept it as the single fact of our existence. We rest in God: and we are home.

←Lesson 108
Lesson 110→

I share God’s Will for happiness for me.

There are really two parts to today’s lesson.

First, we declare our intention to accept God’s Will for us, and to realize the happiness that Will assures us is ours. Second, this declaration – this acceptance – effectively denies that pain and suffering are real and serve any function.

God’s plan for salvation brings joy and peace to our mind which, in turn, is naturally extended through our mind to other minds.

Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last (W-pI.102.3:2-5).

Do we believe this is true?

There is a simple test: are we, in fact, that happy? If we are, then we have accepted the joy and peace that God placed in us in creation. If not, then we are still giving attention to pain and suffering; we still think they offer us something of value.

That’s okay, too! But it does mean that we need to give attention to the belief that pain and suffering are real and meaningful in spite of the hurt they bring. A Course in Miracles suggests that when we do this, we will eventually realize the illusory nature of suffering.

. . . pain is purposeless, without a cause and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase at all. It offers nothing and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence, like itself (W-pI.102.2:1-4).

Is that true for you? Is that your experience of pain and suffering?

It can be hard to realize that we are allowed to be happy, that giving attention to happiness is a just and helpful practice, ordained by God. But if we think about it a little, is it not true? What else but happiness could love want for us? What else could it bring forth?

The answers can seem obvious but again, if they are not our experience – if they are not true for us but merely ideals – then we need to go into that. We need to give attention to why we are unhappy and what the blocks to happiness are.

Today’s lesson is an opportunity to make that commitment and begin that inquiry. Our practice of it affirms our conviction that we do, in fact, share God’s Will for our happiness.

←Lesson 101
Lesson 103→

My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.

A salient quality of remembering our unity with God is joy. When we ascend to the Christ within us – when we accept that Christ is within us – then joy and peace become our natural condition. We can no more avoid it than we avoid the stars while walking at night under cloudless skies.

You are indeed essential to God’s Plan. Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. While you are sad, the light that God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lusterless, and no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours (W-pI.100.3:1-4).

Lesson 100 of A Course in Miracles makes clear that salvation is not about suffering. It is not about enduring sacrifice upon sacrifice, loss upon loss, and grief upon grief. Nor is it about postponing happiness until we meet some metaphysical conditions in the far off future.

Rather, lesson 100 urges us to see that we can be happy now – here in these apparent bodies in this apparent world – and that this happiness is a condition of what we are in Truth, and – importantly – that happiness is intimately yoked to service.

Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God’s plan. God’s messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair (W-pI.100.4:2-3).

Thus, our joy serves as a beacon to our brothers and sisters. It reminds them that this world is not their home, and that together we will recognize our real home. Heaven is joining, just as separation was division.

And so in a sense we are putting our foot down. There are many reasons to feel sorrow and grief. Just look at the world: war and hunger, sickness and death. We can’t pay the bills. We are powerless before the vacuum of internal fear and guilt. The world and our bodies in them will always offer a reason to be down. Lesson 100 insists that we say reject that and opt instead for another – for a better – way.

We will not let ourselves be sad today. For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God’s plan, as well as to our vision. Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God (W-pI.100.5:1-3).

We need to trust that if joy is God’s will for us, then it cannot be impossible to achieve. It cannot even be hard to achieve. If it is – if we perceive it as such – then we are still heeding the dictates of ego. God longs to extend joy just as we long to receive it. Indeed, the two longings are the same longing.

Where is joy? Within us. How do we find it? By looking for it. By actively looking for it. By faithfully looking for it. That which is undertaken with full trust that it is not undertaken alone cannot fail.

So we remind ourselves that joy is natural and God’s will for us – that salvation is incomplete without it – and that our brothers and sisters await our acceptance of this simple and essential truth. We begin the day with this reminder and we make contact with it hourly, more than hourly even.

When we do this, the light will dawn on our still-darkened minds. And as it does, it will automatically extend to other minds. How will we know this? We will experience it as both an interior warming and an exterior helpfulness. The feeling will arise and its symbols will follow in the world. Expect kindness and offer it as well. Don’t deviate from Christ in either form or content.

It is your Self Who calls to you today. And it is Him you answer, every time you tell yourself you are essential to God’s plan for the salvation of the world (W-pI.100.10:6-7).

The secret to joy is that there is no secret: it is there always, awaiting only our recognition. To recognize it is to offer it up. And to share it with others is the essence of Heaven itself.

←Lesson 99
Lesson 101→