I. The Direction of the Curriculum, Paragraph 3
3 Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make. Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition so alien to the Kingdom that you cannot understand the state that prevails within it.
As I read this, I thought of my last marriage. Toward the end, I spent a lot of my time responding to ego thoughts in my mind and so it was more a war than a joining. It’s kind of funny when I think of it, but I divorced him because I wanted peace. It is kind of a metaphor for ego. The ego says if we want to be happy we must separate ourselves from God and from each other.
God on the other hand is Wholeness. If we want to be happy we choose peace over war. We choose sharing rather than attacking. When I was married, I listened to the ego tell me that I needed to defend myself against my husband’s selfish behavior, that he was the cause of my unhappiness. And yet, peace is the condition of the Kingdom and in choosing to separate myself in order to gain peace, I was asking that the Kingdom be something it is not. I was asking that it be separation rather than Wholeness. It was a ridiculous request.
I’m not saying that I am guilty for choosing divorce or even that I wish I had chosen differently. I am just noticing that I was looking for peace where I could not find it. After the divorce I spent several years learning how to have the peace I did not achieve through divorce. I had to forgive myself and him, and that took awhile because I often hid from myself my true feelings and so they couldn’t be healed.
Eventually, I did look at it all and allow it to be healed. The final piece came when it was completely healed and I spontaneously apologized for my part without any sense of loss or any need to defend myself. I apologized without expectation or need for a response from him. I doubt he ever saw his part in it, but that is none of my business and does not affect me.
I am completely at peace with that relationship. That means I don’t think he is responsible for how I feel. I don’t blame him for anything he did or any effect his actions had on anyone. I freed him from my grievances and so I freed myself. Now I understand that the reason forgiving him freed us both is that we are each a part of the other’s peace. We are one and if we continued to separate through anger and blame, we would both suffer.
Was this hard to do? I had many compelling reasons to hold a grievance against him. And it took a long time to work my way to this point that I realized there was nothing to forgive. In spite of this, I know it was not hard. All I had to do was let it go, knowing that I wanted peace more than I wanted the grievance.
That it took so long, and that I felt like it was hard was testament to my desire to be right rather than happy. But, no, it wasn’t hard to do. It required only that I choose peace and that I recognize that my peace is dependent on my desire to hear the Voice of God Which speaks for Wholeness. I only need to answer that call, with the certainty that nothing else is more important.
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