Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

Peace First

Last week I was summoned to jury duty in the county where I live.  I had some misgivings about being called to this service.  Yes, one must do their duty as a citizen, but all the issues of sitting in judgment of another person disturbed my mind.  Years ago, when I was in the practice of law, I wanted to be called for jury duty because I was curious about how the process operates from inside the jury room.  At this point in my life, I was not sure how I felt about having to listen to evidence in the court room and then make a formal legal decision about guilt.  For you see, I was called to a criminal case.  As I sat in the jury assembly room at the beginning of the first day, I told Holy Spirit that I left it entirely in His hands as to whether I should be chosen.  Of course, I was chosen because this opportunity for practicing peace in the ego world was mine.

Serving on the jury brought to mind years of challenging experiences in deciding to study law, law school, clerking, practicing law, clients, cases, colleagues, political ventures, and the list goes on and on.  My life flashed before me.  While I did not know any of the lawyers, I had attended law school with the judge on the case.  I guess Holy Spirit wanted to make sure the practice opportunity would not include just strangers!

I listened intently the first day of the trial, to the lawyers and witnesses.  I tried to keep an open mind and not let my knowledge of the process influence my thoughts.  This was very difficult.  By the time I drove home that evening, I felt disturbed and sorry I hadn’t said that I could not do this, that I could not sit in judgment of another’s guilt.  I am not so sure, anyway, that the court would have accepted my line that I made up the whole story to keep myself in illusion.

After the trial finished, we began jury deliberations.  The other eleven persons insisted that I be the jury foreperson as I had been a lawyer.  I told them I didn’t fancy myself any super-juror and perhaps one of them might be better suited, but I felt guided to go with the request and lead the group using my facilitator training.  We deliberated almost 6 hours on the three counts and found the defendant guilty on all three.  That night I had to attend the funeral for a 20 year old suicide, my sister-in-law’s nephew, but that is another story.

By Saturday morning, my level of peace was greatly disturbed.  I was in touch with the idea that I had made up this ego drama to convince myself of the reality of illusion - all concocted to rob me of my peace.  I was called to judge guilt for charged crimes in the ego world and I did.  And yet the defendant’s reality is that of Son of God, and how can I judge him.  He was not acting peaceful, he was acting in the ego delusion of drunken rage, aggression, threats, weapons.  I kept thinking that as I joined in this story with him, seeing it as real and with consequences, I am in the sickness of illusion with him.  And now, my ego wants to join in the illusion of guilt, having played the ego game for several days.  Now I am guilty for having seen guilt in him.  But what to do?  Now we are both Son of God believing we live in an ego world along with all the other players.

How to reconcile acting in the ego world and yet see innocence in my mind became imperative.  On Saturday I was not able to function well because I was so disconnected from peace.  I participated in the Saturday morning teleconference of the Pathways Joining with Holy Spirit Service and that helped me.  I then took Saturday afternoon to meditate, read from ACIM, reviewed Course 910, Living in the World While Waking Up (one I had taken several years ago, and an excellent course), and wrote extensively in my journal with guidance from Holy Spirit.  I followed the advice written on a course worksheet entitled “Peace First” that is included with many of the Pathways ministerial courses.  I put reconnecting with peace first and uppermost in my mind.

Over the course of the afternoon, I came to the awareness that Holy Spirit had great purpose in the circumstances and events that truly showed me places in my mind that needed healing.  I came to see that I want no other gods before me - gods of pain, guilt, rage, despair, grief, judgments, legal definitions - ego gods that ego adores.  I came to realize my great need for healing because I was cowering before false gods.  I practiced refocusing on truth.  I asked for higher perspective, for healing, for return to peace.  Over and over I asked, and I was answered with the promise that if I refuse to worship false gods, they will disappear out of the nothingness from which they came, no matter how the form appears to me.  I must overlook the gods of chaos and focus on the One God and His Voice which constantly tell us the truth.

By the end of the day I recognized that God gives us the strength to walk past our little gods in peace.  We have no strength on our own to do this for the ego world falls in worship at the gods it has made, crying out in fear and anguish and appeasement, calling endlessly for love and never receiving what it longs for because it has genuflected at the altar of false gods.  Ego will cry in the wilderness of falsity and delusion until its tears are spent, and still there is no peace.  Only when the mind calls on the strength of the One God can it leave the desert thirst for love and drink at the fountain of eternal love which never runs dry.

It may take hours in coming to this point, hours of willingness and practice, hours of giving over and opening to truth, hours of listening and writing, but I can come here to feel God is with me and that is all that counts.  It is only when I get here that I see my brother is here with me, holy, pure, loved, innocent unharmed, unhurt in any way.  He is here with God as well, free to be himself, his True Self.  I affirm this truth for us, for him and for me.  We are one in God and with God in truth and that is all that counts.  That is all that is important.  There is nothing else that means anything.

I still have much to say about this, and I will take the opportunity to do so in time.  I wanted to share with my readers this particular essence of my experience.  Peace is ours.  It my seem lost at times but it really isn’t.  We can reconnect with our peace if we are willing.  It may take some time and effort but we can emerge once again from the nightmare of suffering into another dawn of peace.  We can come once again to the awareness of our existence as Beloved Child of God, of God, with God, feeling loved, happy and knowing all is truly well.  But we must make peace a priority and refuse to try to function without it.  I learned that peace is always possible and that it is truly my choice.  I made it my choice.  I share the blessings of that choice with you.

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