Lesson 101: “God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.”  

The Course teaches that God Wills for all of us that we get to live in the most perfect state of happiness.  This is such a departure from typical worldly ideology.  Usually the world says that God is only happy with us when we do exactly what is on His “ok to do” list.  That leaves essentially everything on the other list of doomed activities we can’t do if we want to maintain God’s love and devotion.  This is terrible when the church or lots of cultural arenas tell us that God is mostly disapproving of what we do.  Then we can feel overwhelmed at all the things we can’t do from the list of what God disapproves of.

This means we will spend all of our time in the vague hope that God will still find us worthy of a happy peaceful life and being loved, but it will feel like an uphill battle all the time.

When we have to try to live up to some random standards to win God’s love, then we will often feel crushed before we even start. 

If there is such a thin margin of what is acceptable to God in the standards of religion or certain churches then we will always feel like this situation is a lost cause.  We will often not even try because it seems like such a long shot.  This then means we get totally disconnected to that part of us that feels loved and lovable.  When we can’t connect to this we have lost our certainty.

No matter what is happening in the world, if we can’t come to that situation with certainty that we are loved by God then it all will seem like an impossible attainment. Furthermore, we will accept our downfall immediately because we can’t have faith that we can and will be loved.  If we don’t feel our own personal link to God’s love, then all of our activities will be reduced by our feelings of despair.  We can’t relax and enjoy life at all because we will always be on the edge of falling apart or certainly feel all the time our lack of connection to God’s love.  When we can’t remember that love connection then we feel not confident in any way.  We will believe instead in our own frailty and deficit.  We will not feel light because we will be fixed in the dense darkness where God is not.  Then we simply have no sense of powerful presence because we are not being fueled within from God’s love.

The Course teaches us that God totally loves us all the time and we can and will feel worthy all the time when we integrate this knowing into our lives.  The reason this totally matters is if we don’t feel certain about our worthiness is that then we can’t do anything with a place of ease.  We will always be on the edge of not being able to function in more than the most basic of activities because we just don’t feel inspired to do anything when we don’t feel God’s love.

Our inspiration is our love of doing whatever of what we are doing.  

The Course is teaching us how to be inspired.  The greatest worldly accomplishments come when people are inspired because it feels so good.  Inspiration connects us with God’s love.  We get excited about doing whatever we are inspired about.  This means we will add love to the project as we go.  The inspiration allows us to get into a mindset where we feel happy to work very hard at what we do.  We will put extra effort into taking care of whatever business because it feels exciting.  We get really enthusiastic about it.  We may then also spend more time on the project or work at great efficiency because we are connected with the highest energy we can be- God’s Love.

Therefore, the result of whatever we are doing will be beyond how extraordinary we could ever imagine it.  This is why it is so important to carry our certainty and inspiration with us in all of our worldly projects.  This is why our remembering our worth is the absolute backbone of how to have a fruitful and happy life.

When we feel good about ourselves we then have more self respect and will be inspired to take care of our life business with a pleasant emotional comfort in which we will feel great about ourselves. 

Then, we won’t be prone to doubt, which is the foundation of our blocks from accomplishing successful activities.

This is why the Course spends such extensive amount of time reminding us of this connection to our worthiness and our certainty.  This provides us with the most effective practical way to give us a heightened level of success in the world’s arena, whatever we do.  When we are emotionally stable and equanimous we also can spend more time being constructive in worldly activities in which we feel inspired.  We won’t have to spend time processing our ups and downs emotionally because they are more rare.   That is why we want to spend this time doing emotional and spiritual work that gives us a foundation upon which we can create extraordinary feats in the world.  And we feel connected to our peace of mind.  Therefore, not only will we be more successful in the world, we will also be happy along the way.  Nothing beats that.