Monday, April 27, 2015
Lesson 117: Review: “God, being Love, is also happiness.” “I seek what belongs to me in truth.”
The Course teaches us that God IS Love. We often have had ideas about God thinking God gives us love. This is true, but Jesus asks us here to take this understanding a step further. We are invited to see that God IS Love, meaning God can’t be anything else. God isn’t harboring some attack thoughts toward us or reserving punishment for the ways we believe we sinned. We can find certainty and comfort knowing that God will never be anything else but love. Therefore, we can just relax and step into the ease of knowing God will never treat us differently, with a hint of malice or a touch of anger.
God is always love and only love. Therefore, we can stop making other mental designs about God because they are just illusions our egos like to instill. God is forever the expression of Love, the provider of Love, the Creator of Love. God is everything about love and has no other Identity. God is just one simple truth. We don’t have to hope we can get time with God when the going is good. The deal is that God is always filled with love. Thus, we can rest and simply take in this perfect life of ever restored Love and constant connection with abundant love.
We are fortunate not to have to seek for anything, because what we hope for is already ours. The world often believes that we have to search sometimes endlessly or in exhaustive ways. Jesus assures us in the Course that God never separated us from the perfect love and kindness of God. God never gave us anything else but what has been ours the whole time. We can have the best time- not an ounce of nervousness- about whether we will find what God intends for us and what the Course says God always and already gave us.
We just have to realize we don’t have to suffer looking for the plenty of God because God wants only perfect love to be our experience and expression. Perfect love is God’s mark and this is how we know when we reach home because God just wants to give us our due. Know that our presence here on earth is blessed simply because God would and could never leave us without the sure power of love of the finest and happiest kind.
This lesson says, “Let me remember that love is also happiness, and nothing else brings joy. And so I choose to entertain no substitutes for love.” Let’s stay connected with the close connection between love and happiness. I think people often tend to get into relationships, or have friendships, or with kids where people get disconnected from the experience of joy. Sometimes people start to get in a rut and maybe have a hard time appreciating the person with whom we have the relationship. Sometimes people forget to be happy and to play and be light. What Jesus wants us to know here is that happiness is an essential ingredient in love. Therefore, let’s make time to stay focused as much as we can- as a practice- to love always like we are in the experience of something new and fresh and perfect. Let’s allow ourselves to be “in love” with everything and be insanely happy about those whom we love and about how we love.
This is the sure way to the kingdom of inner peace when we make love our constant state of mind.