To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights, we recommend
that you read the corresponding lesson in the Workbook of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
“My happiness and my function are one.”
Truly accepting that God has given me happiness and that my function is happiness is the release into pure joy. I can see why he calls this lesson a giant stride in returning Home. If I truly accepted this without reservation, then I would make only one choice, to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead in every instant.
If there is any resistance to the Holy Spirit’s Voice, it is because some part of my mind believes that God does not want my happiness. There is some form of belief that I must actually give up my happiness to follow the Holy Spirit’s direction. This means that in some part of my mind, I believe that happiness can be found in some other place than God. This is the lie the ego teaches over and over. It offers myriad forms to tempt me into believing they offer some happiness. Yet being solely illusion, they really offer only nothing. When I resist Holy Spirit’s lead, I am choosing nothing over everything, limitation over limitless joy.
I am deeply grateful for the Course, which is helping me to recognize the ego’s illusions for the nothingness they are and to see the joy that God is offering me in every instant, since before time began and after time is over. This is truly a lesson of joy. I choose to accept His gift today. I rest in gratitude.
God is Love. God is peace. God is joy. God is happiness. All that is real is an extension of God, one with God, unchanged. God is formless Love, unlimited by time or space. We all are formless Love, changeless, unlimited by time or space. What is not God or Love is illusion — false stories, dreaming. Dreams can never be real. The only thing to do with dreams is to let them go because they are nothing. To heal we don’t fight false stories, we see their nothingness. And as the false stories are laid down, which are barriers to remembering Love, what is true and real is there. It has always been there and always will be there. It is God. It is Love. It is happiness.
As I lay down dreams, see their nothingness, I awaken to what has always been and see that the dreams never were — just silly, silly stories. My function is to remember my true Identity, which is Love, which is happiness, which is peace. My function and my happiness are one. I experience my function as I open to holy instants, as I open to what is eternally real and true. That is my joy now, letting the Holy Spirit show me the difference between the real and the unreal, letting the Holy Spirit show me that the unreal stories could never bring me happiness. It is only as I open to the Holy Spirit that I am led to true and lasting eternal happiness, my true Identity as Love and nothing else.
There is great joy in knowing my happiness and my function are one. My experience of happiness is my experience of God, of Love. This occurs for me in both the physical and nonphysical realities I perceive. In other words, I can extend happiness and Love through my thoughts. I can also experience complete happiness in the beauty of a setting sun or the kind words I exchange with my neighbor. In both “realities” are the extension of Love. This is my function. This is my happiness. Great peace, great joy are my experience as I lay down any thought of separation and join in any form with the one Mind of Love in All.
God is fun. God is truly desirable, exciting. To think otherwise is to deceive myself. My relationship with God can only engender that which ignites the vitality within me. I no longer blame the unhappiness I pretend to have on God. If in any moment I find dullness, oppression, boredom, stress, disappointment about myself, I accept that it is because I think that about God.
God loves me so much. I know because God touches me with a joy that I understand. As I experience the kind of joy that I understand, I open up to more joy. I relate to higher levels of joy in this process. Never again will I convince myself that waking up with the Holy Spirit is about Self denial. My Self already is and the Holy Spirit speaks to me through that Self and invites me Home on a road of celebration and healing that does not understand sacrifice.
That is how I can devote my life to healing in the Holy Spirit. I have truly been touched by the Love of God, the compassion, the intimacy, the friendship. As I have let myself be touched so profoundly, I am inspired to love in a wondrous way that I once thought was unimaginable. I am grateful for the freedom and the power God has given me to share with Him.
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