Lesson 200: “There is no peace except the peace of God.”

This lesson says, “You will be bound till all the world is seen as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is.” 

The only problem we have is that the ego is a judging machine.  Our egos make everyone the enemy. 

We find grievances about our brothers and sisters and the world, as commonly as we breathe. 

They come constantly through our days.  We make others responsible for the grievances and suffering we feel.

We blame them because the ego is incredibly resistant to growing self-awareness or self-improvement because it might make us seem like we acknowledge that we are imperfect. 

Or, we could be criticized in some way by others.  Our ego does absolutely everything when it comes to creating mischief.  But the ego never wants to do anything but bury our heads in the sand, and deny any awareness of this, because to the ego, this feels safer.

The ego is always in competition with everyone and frets over how we will be looked upon by others.  This is a terribly steep slope where we are bound to slip and fall because we have no sure footing.

The ego assumes with ferocity that our brothers and sisters as the ones we don’t want to join with.

Thus, we hold them at arm’s length since we criticize them utterly.  This is all the ego’s doing.  This is insane for sure.  The problem is that we perceive in others an error.

We make them the problem, and we feel justified in complaining about them, and want to send them attack energy. 

The ego has no justification for this but it is simply what the ego likes.

The problem is that all this attack energy coming from the ego always ends up as a total block to our awareness of love’s presence.

 When we make others the enemy, this is simply our own error.  No matter what they do, this is not even real.  They are not real the Course says.

We and God are the only things out there. 

This means that our work is to sit and look at our own minds first. 

When we attack others for something they seemingly did, we must come first to our own thinking and see how we contribute to the situation.  

This inner responsibility first on our own parts is the only way to get to a real solution that is peaceful and proactive.

We must look at our own issues first and give them to God without reserve, or feel them and release them, or see them as unreal, whatever is best. 

We make sure we listen to the ego’s voice, and just give it to God for correction, while we set ourselves free. 

This work we do on ourselves is the only way to heaven because only then are we willing to come to our hearts, be authentic, and see it as it is. 

When we are honest with ourselves and God then we truly heal because we are not hiding anything from God’s altar.  

We are invited in the Course to see all of our brothers and sisters first as not our enemies.

Our grievances about them we can attend to from inside our own minds and hearts.

We first stop pushing them away from union because we feel angry and resentful of them for whatever they did. 

Then, we remember that we can not just see them as not our enemies, but rather truly embrace that they are God’s Sons and Daughters exactly as they are, and are equally blessed as we are. 

That means we can show up with our inner knowing that they are as worthy as we are.  That shifts our whole mentality.