I Want the Peace of God: Commentary on ACIM Review Lesson 205
I have updated and added to this blogpost which was originally written two years ago and is still potent today (you can read Lesson 205 at the bottom of this post). I mention this because the “current events” mentioned below are now dated–but just fill in the blank. Remember, in addition to whoever you think is innocent, you must also include the “guilty”–this is the only way to correct errors in the mind and regain Peace and Innocence. This is the only way to go Home.
It does not mean you are condoning bad behavior or cruelty. As Jesus says in Chapter 6 of A Course in Miracles, “… you might remember that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did not share this evaluation for myself. … If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. This is not a lesson a Son of God should want to teach if he is to realize his own salvation.” In this same chapter, there is a section called, “The Message of the Crucifixion” which is simply, “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” In section V. of that same chapter, we learn “The Lessons of the Holy Spirit,” which include three components. The second one is “To have peace, teach peace to learn it.”
While I abide where I am not at home, my purpose is the peace of God. How comforting to have a clear purpose and live in service of God’s Will. How relaxing to have only one choice: to choose the peace of God in every situation, with every person. My function and my life is to embrace the Christ … Christ meaning communion with my brothers … which surely leads to Union with God. Freedom is creating as God intended. Christ is the co-creation we are and which we continue extending, joyfully, effortlessly, inevitably.
Dare I feel this inexplicably, predictably happy and expansive when the world is suffering? Yes! It is the only way to feel in order to lead by example: All Is Well. Dreams are not Reality. We are not suffering bodies. We are not suffering minds. We are Free and Whole and Complete, Together as One. Not-enslaved, not-partial, not-incomplete. Not lonely, not afraid, not asleep. We are Awake in the Stillness of Eternal Being. That is the Truth.
Does this mean that my heart never aches? Eventually, yes. But for now my heart does ache, and I embrace the Truth simultaneously. Right now, on a personal level, my heart aches for Amy Winehouse who died yesterday after a long struggle with drugs, alcohol, rehab and self-destructive impulses. And on a global level, my heart aches for Norway and the unthinkable grief of so many after the bombing in Oslo and the massacre at the youth camp nearby. My heart aches for the victims, the families and friends, the workers and volunteers dealing with the aftermath, and the attack suspect, Anders Behring Breivik. Add Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman to the local list, and the Syrian civil war to the global list.
This list will never end, because the ego miscreated the world to constantly distract us from the real problem: that we are afraid of our Father, a Loving God whose very presence, if we become aware of It, will awaken us instantly to the fact that we are not bodies, we are free, for we are still as God created us. We are Spirit. We are formless Unity. We are Loving Light. To the ego this is death. To our True Self, this is the end of our case of mistaken identity. This is Life.
I allow that sadness to move through me and be released. I send each and every one of them the Peace of God, with Jesus as my teacher, and feel emotional weather move through me as the conviction of my spiritual life reinforces that removing blocks to the awareness of Love’s Presence inevitably reveals Love.
LESSON 205
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(185) I want the peace of God.
The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal, the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
