April 25, 2018

Day 200 - A Course in Miracles

Day 200 - A Course in Miracles


Chapter Eighteen: The Dream and the Reality

VI. The Happy Dream

41 Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished would have no purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.

42 Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is itsfunction. Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is His function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred and to be forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will build your part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him you will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.

43 Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourselves for such a function? Yet it is possible because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this without the means is inconceivable. He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.

44 Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, "Thy Will be done," and not, "I want it otherwise." The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you have accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and use them.

45 It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.

46 When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness in spite of fear to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which you would rather have. He will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining and its blessing lie in the fact that it is now impossible for either of you to experience fear alone or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary or even possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without the other. And it will come to both at the request of either.

47 Whichever is saner at the time when the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:
48 I desire this holy instant for myself
That I may share it with my brother, whom I love.
It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me.
Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now.
And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit
That His Blessing may descend on us and keep us both in peace.



L e s s o n 200

There is no peace except the peace of God.

1 Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.

2 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 chaos, joy of pain and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing nor to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.

3 Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens easily to welcome you?

4 Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. 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 for you or anyone.

5 Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world if you would find escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.

6 What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and does nothing, for it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God's beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure, love and fear?

7 There is no peace except the peace of God because He has one Son, who cannot make a world in opposition to God's Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way and find the peace of God.

8 Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross to leave this world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic, vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God.

9 Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide our footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God where bodies have reality.

10 Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you look up and on toward Heaven, with the body's eyes but serving for an instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel its soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with love.

11 Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For 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. We seek no further. We are close to home and draw still nearer every time we say:

12 There is no peace except the peace of God, And I am glad and thankful it is so.

 365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


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