[acimlessons_list] Review III, Lesson 116 - April 26

[Sue Roth]

Review III, Lesson 116 - April 26

"God's Will for me is perfect happiness."

"I share God's Will for happiness for me."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

See Practice Instructions for Review III

COMMENTARY

Somewhere in our collective psyche there is a dark and terrible myth. The
myth is that God's Will means suffering and sacrifice, the loss of all that
we love, giving up everything that is dear to us for the sake of His
Kingdom. Doing God's Will in this myth is a dark and cheerless thing. In one
of her books or lectures, Marianne Williamson characterized it as, "I
thought I would have to wear grey for the rest of my life."

God's Will is happiness. How could Love want anything else for us? Every
human being, even the lowest, wants those they love to be happy. How could
we have ever imagined that God, the perfect Lover, wanted anything other
than perfect happiness for us?

All our suffering, then, must come from a belief that there is some "other"
will opposing God's that wants to ruin our happiness. We secretly suspect,
perhaps, that that will is our own. If not, we know "they" are out there
someplace, and they have it in for us. Yet there is no "other" will. There
is no malevolent power stalking the universe and targeting us for
destruction. There is only God.

I share God's Will for happiness for me. I am not incurably
self-destructive, with some dark and unfathomable vein of antipathy towards
God, the universe, and myself inescapably driving me to death. My real will
is one with God's, and I will happiness. "I will there be light," as an
earlier lesson said. His Will is really all I want.

The Course talks a great deal about the dark foundations of the ego that
drive toward death. Those stygian currents do flow within our minds, and
they do warp and befoul our experience in this world. But the Course does
not leave us there, without hope. It bears the message that although the ego
seems very real, it is not us. It has no power over us; it is a mistaken
fabrication our minds have made. And because we made it, we can unmake it.
Because we chose it, we can choose again. If we stop being afraid of those
murky corners of our minds and look at them, we will recognize they have no
substance. We will see through them to our true Self. We will see what those
dark foundations have been hiding all this time: our own intense and burning
love for God, and His for us (T-13.III.2:8). Here, in the <real> foundation
of our being, we want what God wants, we love what God loves, and we will
what God wills.

Today, then, I let myself rest in the happy thought that at the root of my
being is an irresistable drive towards truth. Perhaps I do not yet
experience "perfect happiness," but I will. I must. Because the heart of my
heart wills it, and joins with God in willing it, and there is nothing that
stands in the way that has any reality or power to resist.

"Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished from accomplishment.
Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit's Voice may be, whatever voice
you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God's
Will <is> done" (T-13.XI.5:3,4).

   "There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure,
   and what He wills is as sure as He is" (T-13.XI.8:9).