Lesson 118: Review: “God’s peace and joy are mine.”  “Let me be still and listen to the truth.”

The Course is teaching us we are worth the effort.

When we listen to our egos complain and nag and get down on us, degrading us for our challenges, we then start to believe the ego’s rant.  Our egos give us such a hard time.

We just believe deeply that we are not worthy of standing up to the ego and just giving the ego a firm line about what is acceptable in our minds. 

We simply get so frustrated about the way the ego treats us, that we often numb out in our choice of addictive thinking and or behaviors.  Lots of us have at least one or more addictions.

The egos like to obsess on thinking in ways that make us feel powerless.  

The ego is a master at keeping us focused on these behaviors that keep us otherwise occupied, so we don’t make the time and effort to simply tune into the horror show that is happening in our minds.

It is so terrible to listen to the ego rattle on at length, that we often dissociate from listening to this and simply become so focused on some behavior that keeps us entirely occupied mentally.  When we obsess, it can be about negative thinking or we have a constant focus on when we will get that next chocolate fix.  Then we fantasize about our coworker and we spend time focusing on this fantasy because it feeds some part of us that feels needy.

We can’t spend time learning about how to heal these behaviors because we get so overly focused on carrying them out or not carrying them out.

Then we have so much guilt as a result, we spend the whole day back and forth with the inner dialogue about how bad we are because we are not living up to what the world says is ok.

What we must do is learn how to love ourselves and also be firm about making choices that are for our highest good.  

The Course is teaching us how to love ourselves.

We have God as our fail-safe. 

He is always there to take care of us and give us all the courage and support we need to make choices that truly nourish us and bring us peace.   The problem when we encounter addictions of any kind is that they never work because they are not from God. Addictions are all the same- they are all the ego’s approach to handling things.

The ego gets us overly involved in trying to manage them and this is a full time job for sure.

The Course is teaching us how to approach this managing of addictions totally differently.

The Course gives us tools to totally change the addictions, to finally heal them, not just cleverly disguise them.

The Course gives us understanding about the true nature of God, and the true nature of all of us.  This is ever so important to notice and get certain that we believe it.  In this, we find a way to continue to be willing to keep looking at our mental upsets and then feed them love.  This then is an entirely different foundation for how we approach whatever we are addicted to.

When we come with a full heart because we feel worthy then we can actually watch our minds for times when our thinking is insane and then totally outright choose something different.

We watch our minds because that is one really imperative part of the picture at healing our belief that our addictions are unstoppable.  Furthermore, we can slowly make behavioral changes as well.

When we get more disciplined at watching our minds this creates a much stronger connection with our willingness to be disciplined. 

Discipline seems like part of our lives as they are right now because we have already created a small groove in the path of our minds where discipline is functioning to whatever degree.  Then we just get better at discipline and then it feels normal to choose to exercise our self empowerment in the form of discipline.

The Course says that we are worth the effort.  We are invited to become really so clear about our worthiness that then the efforts we make to balance and sustain our lives in healthy and happy ways is not strange or so unfamiliar.  Then we can muster the willingness to make time and effort to take care of our lives and our minds in ways that feed us from our Godly Source.