II. SECTION 12. What is the Ego?
Lesson 340 I can be free of suffering today.
- Father, I thank You for today, and for the freedom I am certain it will bring. This day is holy, for today Your Son will be redeemed. His suffering is done. For he will hear Your Voice directing him to find Christ’s vision through forgiveness and be free forever from all suffering. Thanks for today, my Father. I was born into this world but to achieve this day and what it holds in joy and freedom for Your holy Son and for the world he made, which is released along with him today.
- Be glad today! Be glad! There is no room for anything but joy and thanks today. Our Father has redeemed His Son this day. Not one of us but will be saved today. Not one who will remain in fear, and none the Father will not gather to Himself, awake in Heaven in the Heart of Love.[1]
As we come to our holy practice today, our hearts are lifted in hope and in gratitude. We accept our freedom from all that would hurt us, torment us, or tempt us away from our path to God. We have learned to exchange the ego’s seductions for the Thoughts that come from God’s Love. We have experienced what it feels like to have peace and joy while all around us there are calls and causes that would tempt us to lose our tempers, go to battle, or otherwise be unhappy. We have learned how to discern the thoughts of God which make happy from the insane alternatives offered by ego called worry, stress, and striving. Now that we trust in God and happily rest upon His promises, we have achieved our purpose – because we are free, we set the world free.
Be glad today! Jesus exclaims. Be glad! Today let joy and thankfulness grace our thoughts and words and deeds. Meditate upon all that God has done for us in our lives, the lessons we have learned, the ways in which our minds have been liberated from burdens and cares. This is the day of redemption for me and for you and for all of Creation.
Today we trade in our separated, puny, fragmented egos for our wholeness in Christ. This is our salvation. All of the things in the world that seemed out to get us, to steal our joy, and strip of us our worth fade away. We have no need to be afraid anymore, for God gathers us to His Heart of Love.
This is a beautiful place to be. Meditate throughout the day on our Father’s Heart of Love and allow thoughts of love to permeate your mind and heart and being. As our minds dwell upon God’s Heart of Love, they are made whole again. Our minds are rejuvenated for they are set free from the false “me” of ego, and restored to our divine nature of Christ, God’s Son. The light of heaven shines in our minds as we train our minds to today’s idea.
No matter how small and insignificant we may feel in the world, no matter how many mistakes we make, or how many tumbles we take – in God’s Kingdom we are one with Him, in His Creation we are whole, in God’s Heart of Love there is a spot for you and for me and nothing and nobody can take our place.
Yesterday I spent a large part of the day decorating our house for Christmas. As much as I dearly love to celebrate the birth of Christ, I felt dull and listless and a little numb to the holiday spirit. Every time I moved I seemed to be fighting gravity. Instead of letting it get to me, I simply accepted my low energy day with love and forgiveness. When I got tired, I sat down. When I got sleepy, I took a little snooze. I drank an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon with James and had a nice chat with him. Rather than sighing and fretting over my depleted energy, I just went with it. Outside the sky was gray and the temperature took a nose dive, and that was okay, too.
I thought of my daughter who would have been 39 years old on Monday had she lived past 18 years of age. I thought of how she loved to help me decorate our apartments for the holidays. How much she enjoyed the Christmas feasts. I recalled some of the funny stories she wrote about our family dinners. I thought of her warmth, her beautiful smile, her soulful brown eyes, and her graceful ways. Then when I was stringing lights around the handcrafted nativity set that my sister gave me the year Manda was born, the angel fell from its perch and snapped off its little blonde head.
It was not until after I had glued the angel’s head back on and put it back on its perch above the manger, that I realized that I had not said a bad word, experienced any anger, worry, or fret, or reacted to the breakage with anything but an immediate intention to put it back together again. It was a wonderful lesson in choosing healing instead of suffering. Jesus does not promise us that our loved ones will not die, that our treasured ornaments will not break, or that our relationships will always be hunky-dory. What Jesus tells us is that when things happen, we will not choose thoughts that make us suffer. We will choose forgiveness. We will choose healing. We will choose peace. When we choose healing, forgiveness, and peace, we are training our minds to God’s Love, we release ourselves from shame and blame, from unnecessary drama and trauma, from grief and despair. When we release ourselves, we release our loved ones who have finished their journey with us and have moved on. We no longer long for them in the flesh for we are one with them in spirit, even as we are one with God.
[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 340. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 472.
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the friar patch 