Sean Reagan

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→

Salvation is my only function here.

It is challenging sometimes to remember that salvation in A Course in Miracles is essentially a saving from something that never happened. Indeed, salvation can be said to be the simple remembrance that separation is an illusion, not an actual problem that we are charged with solving. 

[Salvation] reflects the truth because it is the means by which you can escape illusions. Yet it is not yet the truth because it undoes what was never done (W-pI.99.2:4-5).

Hence, salvation reflects a kind of helpful borderland – a liminal space – that, like forgiveness, allows us to “undo” what was never done (W-pI.99.2:3).

We believe what we think, and project a world that confirms our beliefs. Therefore, because we believe that we are separated from God and Creation, and live a life premised on that separation – the separation is effectively real to us. In truth it never happened. In our thoughts, it did. So we need correction, rescue, help.

Salvation rescues us from the mistaken belief that it is possible to forcibly leave God and set up divine shop on our own. It corrects the mistaken belief, and thus realigns the mind with Reality.

Thus, if we are going to be saved, salvation must do two things. First, it has to recognize that what the mind thinks happened, never happened. But second – and in apparent contradiction of the first point – it has to respect the mind’s mistaken belief.

The plan of salvation has to function both in illusion and with illusion in order  to undo illusion. Of this plan, A Course in Miracles is effusive.

What joins the separated mind and thoughts with Mind and Thought which are forever one? What plan could hold the truth inviolate, yet recognize the need illusions bring, and offer means by which they are undone without attack, and with no touch of pain? What but a Thought of God could be this plan, by which the never done is overlooked, and sins forgotten which were never real? (W-pI.99.4:1-3)

This plan resides in our healed mind and is the Holy Spirit’s domain. It is the simple idea that our only function is salvation, that God is still love, and that what we appear to endure in separation is not God’s will but an illusion readily undone.

Practicing Lesson 99 simply involves reminding ourselves of this truth as often as possible. We give five minutes every hour – and as often as practicable and desirable in between – to remembering that God is Love, that suffering and anguish are not God’s will, and that we are not separate from God.

All the world of pain is not his will. Forgive yourself the Thought He wanted this for you. Then let the Thought with which He has replaced all your mistakes enter the darkened places of your mind that thought the thoughts that never were His will (W-pI.99.7:4-6).

Our job in this lesson is to create space. We do this through repetition. Each time we remind ourselves that God is Love, and are open to the truth of it, then the ego’s capacity for disruption and chaos is diminished. Our minds long to dwell in the simple clarity of God. All that is asked of us is willingness.

Importantly, Lesson 99 also asks us to surrender our secrets: to keep nothing from God. This matters! The dark corners of our mind – the secrets that we would keep to ourselves forever – are the means by which the ego keeps the separation active in our minds. They beget shame, guilt, resentment and other forms of fear. Thus we are asked to “[o]pen your secrets to His kindly light, and see how bright this light still shines in you (W-pI.99.8:4).

Salvation is our function because remembering God is our function. And it is not a question of whether we will go, but when.

You cannot lose the gifts your Father gave. You do not want to be another self. You have not function that is not of God (W-pI.99.10:2-4).

Thus, Lesson 99 is simultaneously a call to deepen our practice through repetition of the simple idea that God is Love, but it also reassures us that we cannot fail to remember God. There is a pervasive confidence in this lesson: a sense that we are ready at last to give over to the Holy Spirit all that we would withhold from God and thus be liberated to know again the Love that is our Source and true identity.

←Lesson 98
Lesson 100→

I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

A nontrivial aspect of awakening as A Course in Miracles anticipates it is realizing that our true Self is free of error, including the error of believing that sin is possible. Accepting this becomes a gateway to realizing that we are not bodies but “thoughts in the mind of God,” for whom only joy and peace are possible.

The guiltless have no fear, for they are safe and recognize their safety. They do not appeal to magic, nor invent escapes from fancied threats without reality. They rest in quiet certainty that they will do what it is given them to do (W-pI.98.3:1-3).

Our function is to accept atonement for ourselves, which naturally aligns us with our healed mind, which naturally extends a quiet joy and peace unto the world. As the course makes clear, in choosing salvation and bringing forth its effects, we are not alone (e.g., W-pI.98.4:4).

Our acceptance of atonement will assume a worldly form. We might find ourselves taking a new approach to our marriage or to parenting. Perhaps we will find a new job or move to a new city. Go to therapy, do yoga, hike the Appalachian Trail.

The form our function takes is not what matters. What matters is what we extend through that form. And the critical element of this is getting out of our own way. We don’t demand that life do this and that. We don’t become addicted to perfect outcomes as ego would have them. We become passive without quitting. We’re watching, we’re here but we aren’t addicted. We aren’t invested.

This means that we have to be willing to let ego go. Ego is simply the voice that constantly narrates our living, constantly judging and assessing it, forever reinforcing the fundamental separation of a self split from both Creator and Creation.

The Holy Spirit is our alternative to ego. When ego is let go, the Holy Instant reappears. We remember it and in it the Holy Spirit speaks.

He will enable you to understand your special function. He will open up the way to happiness, and peace and trust will be His gifts . . . And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven (W-pI.98.9:2-3, 5).

In this way, the Holy Spirit becomes our Teacher, gently teaching us how to notice ego and let go of ego, and thus to prefer the creativity and grace of liberation. We meet our own Self, and that Self is not apart from God. When we know this as our reality, it becomes all that we teach in turn.

←Lesson 97
Lesson 99→

I am spirit.

This is a positive declaration of our reality; it is an assertion of truth, according to A Course in Miracles. Do you believe it? Is it your reality?

It is also a negative assertion. That is, by declaring that we are spirit, it simultaneously declares that we are not bodies.

It accepts no split identity, nor tries to weave opposing factors into unity. It simply states the truth (W-pI.97.1:2-3).

When we say that we are spirit – implicitly accepting that we are not bodies – we also leave behind the many conflicts and problems that bodies have in the world. Starving kids, cancer, long day at work – these are not problems. They aren’t even experiences. They are illusions masking the simple truth that we are spirit “in whose mind abides the miracle in which all time stands still” (W-pI.97.4:1).

Is this your truth? If not, why not? Do you want it to be? Where is the resistance? Where is the glad acceptance?

This current sequence of lessons shifts our focus from larger blocks of time at the beginning and end of the day to hourly five-minute intervals given to the Holy Spirit, whose strength and integrity carry us past resistance and into glad acceptance.

Give Him the minutes which He needs today, to help you understand with Him you are the spirit that abides in Him, and calls through His Voice to every living thing; offers His sight to everyone who asks; replaces error with the simple truth (W-pI.97.4:4).

This is kin to giving permission to our right mind – that part of us that knows it remains united with its Creator in Creation – to effectively run the show for a bit. The effects of that release are significant and they are not for us alone.

The Holy Spirit will be glad to take five minutes of each hour from your hands, and carry them around this aching world where pain and misery appear to rule. He will not overlook one open mind that will accept the healing gifts they bring, and he will lay them everywhere He knows they will be welcome (W-pI.97.5:1-2).

Salvation is not singular but relational. When we give attention to the healing of our brothers and sisters, it returns to us as a brilliant and steady light that both leads out of the darkness and forever undoes our habit of getting lost or distracted (W-pI.97.6:2-3).

We are spirit. What does this mean for you? How will you know? Each small step we take today – regardless of how timidly or uncertainly or reluctantly we take it – teaches us what it means. And the effect of that teaching is a certainty about self-identity that yields only peace and quiet joy.

←Lesson 96
Lesson 98→

Salvation comes from my one Self.

The specific invitation that A Course in Miracles makes is always to give attention to what is within rather than what is without. We are not seeking a missing piece in the world which we can find and integrate and thus restore our self to glory but rather undoing our mistaken belief that anything is missing at all.

This is what the course means when it teaches us that salvation comes from the unified Self, the one Self that we are in truth, forever whole and perfect in Creation, as befits the Love that is our Creator.

You are one Self, united and secure in light and joy and peace . . . You are one Self, complete and healed and whole, with power to lift the veil of darkness from the world, and let the light in you come through to teach the world the truth about yourself (W-pI.95.12:1, 3).

Yet we cannot know this about our self if we experience as having degrees, or parts. If we project a dual rather than an nondual nature, we are lost and have deprived ourselves of salvation.

The fact that truth and illusion cannot be reconciled, no matter how you try, what means you use and where you see the problem, must be accepted if you would be saved. Until you have accepted this, you will attempt an endless list of goals you cannot reach; a senseless series of expenditures of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt, each one as futile as the one before, and failing as the next one surely will (W-pI.96.2:1-2).

This is a conflict between a self that we make and project, which has nothing to do with the Self that is united with God. The Self united with God cannot be divided. All our hope rests on accepting this, even if we do not yet believe it, or even see a way towards believing it.

Thus, it is a question of giving our mind and all its power of creation over to Spirit, holding on to not a single shred of egoic will. A mind that believes it is contained by a body will inevitably perceive itself as attacked, and will defend itself in kind.

The solution is simply to deny that the body is the mind’s home, and to allow the mind to remember the Holy Spirit’s gentle presence and sure guidance. This is actual experience that we have; we let go of the egoic narrative. What remains is the quiet confidence of Spirit, who quickly reminds us of our Creator and our place in Creation.

The Holy Spirit holds salvation in your mind, and offers it the way to peace. Salvation is a thought you share with God, because His Voice accepted it for you and answered in your name that it was done (W-pI.96.7:2-3).

Thus, our practice becomes one of giving attention to the stillness in which ego is undone because it is seen clearly that it never existed at all. And then, our practice becomes one of listening to the Voice that speaks in that stillness, teaching us that our mind can only “bless all things” (W-pI.96.10:4).

←Lesson 95
Lesson 97→