To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple, we recommend that
you read the corresponding chapter and section in the Text of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
Read ACIM Chapter 5, Introduction (page 72)
Think about an experience when you felt really happy. Your heart was so filled with joy, it overflowed. You didn’t want to contain it; you wanted to share it. You just radiated happiness. Because of its radiance, joy is contagious, because it resonates with the joy that is everyone’s natural state. We must actively deny joy, deny our true Self, in order to be unhappy.
As you shared your joy with others, chances are they responded in one of two ways. Some chose to join you in your joy and accepted it as their own. But someone in a funk, who wanted to stay in their funk, would be disturbed by your joy. They would respond either by trying to get away from you or trying to find a way to get you out of your joy so they wouldn’t have to give up their funk.
Workbook Lessons 101 through 103 tell us that God’s Will for us is perfect happiness and we share that Will. It tells us that God, being Love, is also happiness. The Course also tells us that our true Self is Love, so our true Self must be happiness. That is why any state that is not wholly joyous indicates a need for healing. It indicates that we have somehow perceived ourselves as separate from our Self, Which is happiness.
If we are sick, we are not in our right mind. If we are not happy, we are not in our right mind. Depression, anxiety, fear, guilt, anger, unhappiness — all these come from joining with the ego. The ego was born from the desire to separate from the oneness of God. Within God’s oneness is joy and happiness. Therefore it is not surprising that we would experience a lack of joy and happiness when we join with the ego thought system of separation.
On page 22 of the Text, it says, “Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.” Feeling angry, sad, separated and alone is a painful experience. But there comes a time when we have had enough of it. We come to a turning point. We become willing to open to a better way. This openness provides the Holy Spirit with an opportunity to bring us a change of mind, a change in our perception.
As we are willing to let ourselves be led by the Holy Spirit, we are gradually, step by step, led away from the thought system of separation and toward the recognition of our oneness. As we are willing to lay the ego thought system down, the knowing of our true Self returns to our awareness. With this knowing comes joy and happiness. With this knowing, our mind is healed. We see the ego thought system as what brings us pain and the Spirit of Wholeness as what brings us joy and happiness.
We become more willing to return to our inner Spirit of joy which always resides in our minds. We become willing to quiet our mind of the ego’s constant chatter and, in that stillness, we find the joy of our true inner Spirit. We let ourselves be returned to our true Self. We let ourselves accept the Love, peace and joy that is innately ours. We let ourselves be shown that we are one with our brother. We let all thoughts of separation fall away, for we no longer value them. We see that these perspectives only bring us unhappiness. We become willing to accept true happiness, which is the same as accepting our inheritance from God. We let our mind be healed. We let ourselves find the happiness that is always there in our minds, waiting for our return to the oneness of Love.
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