Sunday, July 19, 2015
Lesson 200: “There is no peace except the peace of God.”
When we look elsewhere for the peace of God, we are always disappointed. The world we see feeds us incessantly images that appear as though we can reach a state of peace if we just look at the world. Our egos just stop and stare at the world and wait, wait, wait for some kind of peace to come from the masses. The ego is essentially hypnotized by the world and is persuaded to believe peace will come from the world’s sources. More or less we are simply making the world our idol- and whatever we believe there will give us peace is nothing but a false idol.
This is a terrible situation in which we often find ourselves if we are listening to the ego. We think things like- “if I lose this weight I will be at peace,” “right after I lose this much weight I will be at peace.” We think that new car will give us peace because it is so much “better” than our last car. We think if we just change our jobs we will get away from the barrage of degrading digs from our co- workers -and this will certainly result in our peace. Our ego has a long list of situations that will bring us peace. This ends up being ever so counterproductive to the acquiring of our peace. The world is always an idol and therefore is false. Any moment of seeming peace we find in the world or other than in God is only fleeting. We have to be committed to finding peace within our own minds and hearts first and only.
When we realize that peace can only come from our hearts, then at last we will find peace because we stopped our focus on getting it externally. What we want to do is have the serenity to just look to our own mind and not rely on other people or the external world to give us peace. Any other plan will just be a short lived high if we even get that. When we make sure we are looking to God for peace and acknowledging that it already exists within us then the result is that God’s peace is constant. It is ever readily available and easy to maintain when we understand the truth that God’s Love is the Source of this awesome peace.
This lesson says, “What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function, and does nothing.” This reminds us that forgiveness is also an illusion but the amazing thing about it is that it is the last illusion we need. When we forgive, this brings an energy that is so close to what God is that it is the last thing we need before we live only in the mind of God. Forgiveness ends the dream of insanity. The miracle ready mind always can give forgiveness to whomever we meet and whatever situation we meet so that we can bring love to whatever appears as a call for love in the world.
Forgiveness does nothing at all, as it simply undoes the error of the minds who are not expressing love and peace in the moment. This is why forgiveness is so extraordinary- it is a catalyst. It comes to the scene as we bring it, and then when applied to some amount of perceived insanity, it simply turns the light on energetically and physically and whatever the manifestation of insanity was. Forgiveness simply makes it all disappear because forgiveness heals it and ends the nightmare.