Lesson 93: “Light and peace and joy abide in me.”

In the dictionary, abide means to remain.  Abide means that this is going to stay with us all the time.  To abide means that these are all part of me and all others because God gives us all.  The Course teaches us to remove any past memory of thinking that there is anything inside of us that is not perfect, whole and healed.  The ego gives us the notion that we could be something else besides what is holy and sacred and worthy.  The ego says that we are full of problems in the form of complaints that always come out in the form of complaint.  And these complaints are always just versions of attack.

No matter what they look like, or no matter how much we vary the form of the complaint, it still remains the same.  Attack is all not of God because God sits only in His certainty and peace.  His power is in his certainty and peace.   Therefore, we never have to think God will stoop to some level of attacking because He is already perfectly strong, and sound, and resilient in protecting Himself via the certainty alone.  This is why God demonstrates for us His certainty and shows us how to implement God’s certainty into our own minds so we never have a moment where we need to have attack within our minds.

We can evaluate what we see and glean information without any moment of attack, which is nothing other than judgement.  We don’t have to lower our minds into thinking that is originating from a place of attack.  We don’t have to do this now because we are learning how to not be judgmental of what we see.

Furthermore, we don’t have inner turmoil about it so we don’t have to make any attack thoughts about it. 

This means we can simply choose to stay out of the battleground in our minds. 

We can use God as our example about how to live in the certainty that everything is fine and good and all perfectly planned by God.  When we simply hold this in our minds then when we encounter the world’s faux pas we no longer cringe at them or find ourselves despondent.  We rather hold an open mind and heart because we are not subject to the same suffering that we used to feel when we think with the ego mind.

The Course teaches us that all we have to do is remove the blocks to love’s presence.  That means that we need to appreciate that attack thoughts are all block’s to love’s presence.  Here- we have this perfectly logical plan and practice where we can get to peace when we reconnect with Love’s presence.  We can do this but first we need to stay committed to catching those thoughts and feelings that have attack at the root.  All of these are anything that is fear or not love.

This means that anything that may be camouflaging the fear is also necessarily some form of attack. 

This is why we need to be vigilant in our minds so that we catch when these things occur.  The Course is teaching us how to live in peace of mind.  However, we need to stay on task that in regular life we need to keep noticing when our minds are engrossed with attack thoughts.

What we want to do is not become obsessed with attack thoughts.  When we want to learn something, and we are inexperienced at exploring that particular topic within our minds and hearts, sometimes we sway to the side of the continuum where we get overly involved with it.  We want to be gentle about our minds and truly care about ourselves..  Therefore, what we can do is work on implementing the Course lessons when it works for our lives.  We want to not become overly focused on doing the workbook in a way where we feel obsessive about it.  This is why the Course always teaches all lessons in the world come from a place of non attachment.  When we are not attached or at least less attached, it is easier to not fall into the habit of being overly obsessive.

We want to see what’s happening internally and act on it so that we make space for a new way of relating to our thinking.  Let us simply allow no involvement with our thinking to be knock us out of our worldly rhythms.  It can help when we are working on healing things like addictive thinking (which is thinking without the accompanying sense of non attachment) to stay grounded in our strong habitual practices.  We want to stay focused on our middle way.  We want to make our life practices in the middle way as best as possible.  This is the way to live in peace.

This is the way to be happy when we enjoy the world but we are not attached to what we experience there because we know it is not real. 

Just keep appreciating the middle way in the world. 

The Course says that in our spiritual perspective we are meant to be completely committed to engaging in God energy and purpose because this is most happy and sustaining in the life we live.  And then while we simultaneously live in the world, we want to practice being moderate in our behaviors there because we are learning that just the right amount in the world is enough there.  Then with loving God, we go to the greatest lengths of being totally immersed in God’s love.  This spiritual way is the way to true joy.

We balance the world and spirit in a way that we celebrate both. 

We just keep coming back to meeting them in their unique ways individually while we simultaneously carry them within as a merged outlook that functions perfectly as a whole.