predencia

‘There is no peace except the peace of God.’

Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.

Come home. You have found your happiness in foreign places in and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone.

Today we seek no idols. Peace cannot be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:

There is no peace except the peace of God.

And I am glad and thankful it is so.

I read the whole lesson (about a thousand words) twice through today, and then randomly turned to the manual for teachers section of the book and landed on the heading ‘What is the peace of God?’ It isn’t often that I add anything else from the manual to these lessons but as I’ve not been feeling at peace for so long, I was struck by what I read.

It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world. How is it recognised? How is it found? And being found, how can it be retained? …How is the peace of God retained, once it is found? Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you do not recognise that you have picked it up again.

In an instant I understood what I’d done. I had, unknowingly, picked up the sword of anger, frustration, guilt, and thoughts of lack; all the fear-based emotions that I had successfully relinquished when I sat in God’s peace. I had begun to do battle with the world again, and only succeeded in making myself sick and miserable. Reading those words was like someone shining a big light onto me and showing me the futility of what I was doing. I was horrified. Then I began to laugh.

I visualised myself laying down a heavy sword that I’ve been wielding, and instantly felt peace return, like someone poured it in from the top of my head and it flowed to every cell in my body. I was stunned. Could it be this easy? Then I remembered a passage from Lesson 196 (para 4) ‘It is not time we need for this. It is willingness. For what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant but the grace of God.’

I felt happy. The mountain of worries that had been slowly building suddenly shrunk to the pile of dust they really are. With inner peace, the peace of God, there is no space to engage in worry.

But when did I pick up the sword again? With some reflection I recognised that it was a gradual process. Watching a bit too much TV, engaging in a few too many blame conversations, harbouring thoughts of lack, and a few too many ‘how dare they?’ It all added up, and before I knew it the sword was back in my hand and being wielded. It’s no wonder I was tired and sick; all that takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy.

But I’ve put the sword down now. I sent emails of love to those people I’d felt the need to point out their faults to them. One responded immediately, and had, indeed, been trying to contact me to enquire of my welfare, while I was still in blame mode.

I had forgotten that in my defencelessness my safety lies, and began to defend myself. I’ve remembered now, and have found peace again. I’ve come home.

‘I am not a body. I am free.’

Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it cannot be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed.

The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked. It is essential for your progress in this course that you accept today’s idea, and hold it very dear. Cherish today’s idea, and practice it today, and every day.

And God Himself extends His Love and happiness each time you say:

I am not a body. I am free. I hear the voice that God has given me, and it is only this my mind obeys.

This lesson, on a day when I woke again with a raw and very painful throat, is a timely reminder that I am not a body. I decided to do some deep inner work with meditation and journaling. I identified a direct link between a decrease in these practices and an increase in body issues. I also identified issues relating to loss and failure, and to not speaking my truth to those who most need to hear it.

On the other hand I reminded myself that I’m doing my best in what has been a very challenging year so far. Without the spiritual practices things could have been worse.

After a long chat with a friend, who is an amazing reflector, my throat calmed; and as I took steps to speak the truth to those who need to hear it, it’s calmed even more. I am definitely not just a body, and I am as free as I allow myself to be.

Will let myself go at Ceroc tonight.

‘Only my condemnation injures me.’

Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For if you believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.

Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death.

Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you. The truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:

Only my condemnation injures me.
Only my own forgiveness sets me free.

Seems like the more this lesson of forgiveness is hammered home the more susceptible I become to emotional imbalances resulting in physical symptoms. Today I woke with a fiery throat and a heavy head – verging on a headache. I immediately looked up throat in my Louise Hay book. The causes of throat problems according to You Can Heal your Life are; The in ability to speak up for one’s self. Swallowed anger. Stifled creativity, Refusal to change.

After much reflection, meditation and self Reiki, I accepted that it was probably due to stifled creativity and not saying things that need saying to at least two people. If the other two apply I’m not yet aware of them.

I wish I could get this life right on a more consistent basis.

‘It can be but my gratitude I earn.’

Here is the second step we take to free your mind from the belief in outside force pitted against your own. You make attempts at kindness and forgiveness. Yet you turn them to attack again, unless you find external gratitude and lavish thanks. Your gifts must be received with honour, lest they be withdrawn. And so you think God’s gifts are loans at best; at worst, deceptions which would cheat you of defences, to ensure that when He strikes He will not fail to kill.

How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not what their thoughts can do? God blesses every gift you give to Him, and every gift is given Him, because it can be given only to yourself.

The day began at 6 a.m., working on the novel – checking the manuscript for corrections against proofread manuscript. A long, tedious, but essential task, but I completed it in time to send the few alternations still required back to the publisher.

Then the day just got very busy with viewings and a move in, which lasted a full two hours – my longest to date. I kept reminding myself that every time I forgave anyone, (and I had a lot to forgive today) I was forgiving myself. So I guess there was a lot I had to forgive myself for today. And yet, after all this time, it still sometimes feels that forgiving is ‘letting them off the hook.’ But then, why would I want to keep anyone on a hook?

‘It can be but myself I crucify.’

When this is firmly understood and kept in full awareness, you will not attempt to harm yourself, nor make your body slave to vengeance. You will not attack yourself, and you will realise that to attack another is but to attack yourself. You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed.

After the response to the poem for the Don Giovanni performance, I went for a long walk with my recorder this morning and began to learn the lines. I had a craving for Sunday dinner and gave in to it. Cooked brown stew chicken. Ate it early enough to be able to fit into a very tiny black dress to go and see Oliver Samuel in Who A Di Don at a packed AlexanderTheatre. He did not disappoint, combining political comment with sharp observations of Jamaican society, and the habits and beliefs of Caribbean people. Comedy delivered with precision timing. It’s been a while since I laughed so much – and yes, I was reminded how good laughter is for the soul.

But somewhere in among the laughter, I remembered today’s lesson, so vividly portrayed on stage, of what happens when we decide to take vengeance on those we think have wronged us. Well, its no wonder we believe that to attack is to protect. It’s what most of us were weaned on and is constantly bombarded with. The big soap operas are steeped in it; the more extreme the vengeance sought the bigger the ratings.

And yet the lesson says that all of this conditioning can be undone quickly, all it requires is a willingness on our part. For what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant by the grace of God.

I am willing.

‘Love is the way I walk I gratitude.’

Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The most they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? And who would suffer less because he sees another suffer more? Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.

Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger malice and revenge. We have been given everything. God has cared for us, and calls us his Son. Can there be more than this?

I have much to be grateful for today. Was it because I handed over the future to God yesterday? Was it because I focused on love today? Whatever the reason I had a permanent smile on my face all day.

Apart from the general well-being that I felt after reading this lesson in the morning, I also had a fantastic reception of the piece I wrote for the Don Giovanni production. Then I went with a friend to The Custard Factory to see an exhibition of another friend’s paintings and photos. Unfortunately we got there too late and the pictures had been removed in the morning. Even this disappointment didn’t dampen my spirits as we hung out and had lunch in the café next to the gallery. I love the new gallery by the way. It was good to watch a wedding party enjoy a day of sunshine.

And then, completely out of the blue, I was presented with an opportunity to fast track my life in the direction I want to take it. I’m still pinching myself. Is this what surrender brings? Well, of course. I know it is. So I ask the question again. Why do I forget?

I feel renewed focus, and more willingness to surrender to the God in me.

‘I place the future in the Hands of God.’

Today’s idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven’s gate; the quiet pace of peace, where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short to journey still to be pursued.

Accept today’s idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt.

God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They are all one to him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world, the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are but asked to let the future go, and place it in God’s Hands.

In what was a busy and exhausting day, which involved a lot of travelling, I struggled to stay with the thought that past present and future are one. Indeed,  the concept became even more confused as I discussed it with a friend, as part of our three hour conversation.

I was prepared to go with the affirmation though, purely as an affirmation, and found some peace, especially towards the end of the day. I’m happy to hand over my future at this point, because I could certainly use some help with what direction to take.

‘All things are lessons God would have me learn.’

God does not see contradictions. Yet his son believes he sees them. Thus he has a need for One who can correct his erring sight and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases.

These are the lessons God would have you learn. His will reflects them all, and they reflect His loving kindness to the Son he loves. Each lesson has a central thought; the same is all of them. The form alone is changed, with different circumstances and events; with different characters and different themes, apparently but not real. They are the same in fundamental content. It is this:

Forgive, and you will see this differently.

These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. This is the lesson God would have you learn: There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him, and to salvation of the world. To all that speaks of terror, answer:

I will forgive, and this will disappear.

To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering, repeat these self-same words. And then you will hold the key that opens Heaven’s gate, and bring the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to heaven. Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him.

I can’t believe how many times I need to hear the message of forgiveness for it to sink in. There are people I really need to forgive and have been holding on to their guilt and in the process punishing myself. I mean, what else can I say? Apart from the words above of course.

I went to ACIM support group tonight and saw so much more in the lesson than doing it on my own. It was particularly reassuring to hear that other people had been experiencing issues to do with forgiveness this week. We ended with a meditation called ‘rise above and see the love’ which takes you above the situation that you are finding it hard to forgive and see it from a higher place. When I looked at it from that vantage point the whole issue seemed so petty, and I could really see how I’d been projecting my own fear, in the form of guilt and rejection onto the other person. How by making them wrong I was also making myself wrong, and then punishing myself for it.

Tonight made me see that it’s not just the other person I have to forgive, but also myself. No, I don’t always get it right, and there’s no point beating myself up about it. I need to love myself more, and send some love out to the other person.

Another great thing about the group is the cake at the end, home made frosted apple cake. Hmmmm!

‘I have a function God would have me fill.’

It is your Father’s holy Will that you complete Himself, and that your Self shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, or love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating on its name, forever one with God and with your Self. Yet what can such a function mean within a world of envy, hatred and attack?

Therefore, you have a function in the world in its own terms. For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp? Forgiveness represents your function here. Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome, because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone. Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid, to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.

I got the second version of the book cover today, and I like it more than the first. With some tweaking I could grow to love it. I thought my function was to write, but apparently it’s to forgive. So the writing is just a side-line then? But I have been forgiving myself, or rather remembering to love myself, and the pain has subsided. Following a massage and a reflexology treatment yesterday the swelling is rapidly subsiding too.

At Ceroc I didn’t sit down once. I’m getting more confident, and even the guy who usually tries to avoid dancing with me said how much I’d improved. I celebrated with a rum and coke. My first in 8 months!