ARCIM

Daily Lesson 200 ~
July 19

The Peace of the Divine is the only peace there is.

Seek you no further. The Peace of the Divine is the only peace you will find. 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 the Divine, unless you seek for misery and pain.

This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding Happiness where there is none, of being saved by what can only hurt, of making peace of chaos, joy of pain, and heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die in order to live. You can only be asking for failure and defeat.

Yet you can ask as easily for Love, for Happiness, and for eternal Life in Peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you already have must succeed. To ask that what is false be made true can only fail.

Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer for what cannot be found. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for what can only be experienced as tragedy in the end, when you have only to perceive with open eyes to find that Heaven is before you, through a Door that opens easily to welcome you?

Come Home. You have not found your happiness in inhospitable places, or in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you have long 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 your prison house, or a jail for anyone. Freedom is given you where you looked upon only chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world if you would find release. You will be bound until all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes, and honored as they are. You didn’t create yourself or your brothers or sisters. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as they are.

What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and does nothing, for it is unknown in Heaven. It is only in the nightmare of separation that it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the Release of the Divine’s beloved Children from evil dreams that they imagine, yet believe are true, a worthy Purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure, Love and fear?

The Peace of the Divine is the only peace there is because the Divine has only one Family, the Members of which cannot make a world in opposition to the Divine’s Will and to their own, which are the same. What could they hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here that they would seek for Peace? Or must they realize that, as they look on it, the world can only deceive? Yet can they learn to perceive it another way, and in this Way find the Peace of the Divine.

Peace is the Bridge that everyone will cross to leave this world behind. But this Bridge begins within the world perceived clearly, and leading from this fresh perception to the Gate of Heaven and beyond. Peace is the Answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors. Now the Way is easy, sloping gently toward the Bridge where Freedom waits within the Peace of the Divine.

Find your way today. We go to Heaven, and the Path is straight. Only if you attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless wasted time on thorny byways. The Divine alone is sure, and It will guide your footsteps. It has not and will never abandon Its Children in need, nor let them stray endlessly from their Home. The Creator calls and Its Children will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from the Divine, where bodies seem to have reality.

Now is there Silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you see upward and onward toward Heaven, with the body’s eyes serving merely an Instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel Its soft Embrace surround your heart and mind with Comfort and with Love.

Today we seek no idols. Peace cannot be found in them. The Peace of the Divine is ours, and only this do we want and will we accept. Peace be to us today. For we have found the simple, happy Way to leave the world of delusion and confusion, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single Purpose and Companionship. For Peace is Union if It be of the Divine. We seek no further. We are close to our Home, and draw still nearer every time we say:

 

“The Peace of the Divine is the only peace there is,

and I am glad and thankful it is so.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 18: The Reality of the Holy Relationship

 

8. The Substitution of Fragmentation for Wholeness

To substitute is to “accept instead.” If you consider exactly what this entails, you will perceive how much at variance substituting is with the Goal the Holy Spirit has given you and your sisters and brothers, and would accomplish through you and for you.

To substitute is to choose between, rejecting one in favor of another. For this purpose the one is judged more valuable, and the other is replaced by it. Relationships in which substitution occur are thus fragmented, and their purpose becomes split accordingly. These are special relationships. To fragment is to exclude. Through exclusion, substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation.

The Holy Spirit never substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. It does not judge between them, knowing they are One. Being united, they are One because they are seen as the same. Substitution is clearly a process in which they are looked upon as different. Spirit would unite, while substitution would separate.

Nothing can come between what the Divine has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as One. But everything seems to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. Love is the one true Feeling, and in It substitution is impossible. But fear involves substitution by definition, for it is the illusion of Love’s replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each seems to require a different type of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems. For in fear no one is perceived as complete. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, which are used as the standard for comparison for either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting out a special form of fear.

Those who believe that the Divine is fear made just one substitution. This was the substitution of fragmentation for Wholeness, which has since taken many forms. In the minds of the separated ones, Wholeness has become splintered and divided and subdivided again, over and over, so that it is now almost impossible to perceive that It once was One, and still is what It was. That one error, which brought Truth to be perceived as illusion, Infinity as time, and Life as death, was all that was ever made in this world. The entire world of illusions rests upon this error. Everything looked upon reflects it. And every special relationship ever made is part of it.

You may have been surprised at hearing how very different Reality is from how you have conceived and perceived the world to be. This surprise was because you did not realize the immensity of that one original error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough as you begin to perceive them clearly. But nothing you have ever perceived begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of the Realm of Heaven, to shatter Knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to further substitutions.

That was the first projection of error outward. The world of illusions arose to hide the error, becoming the ego’s finite and temporal domain that was by definition one of scarcity. The world became the screen on which the error was projected, and drawn between you and Truth. For Truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless, and only increase is conceivable. And Grace mercifully designated the world to also be the screen on which the Divine’s Meaning could be seen.

Think not that it is strange that a world in which everything is backward and upside down arose from this error of substitution. For Truth brought into this illusion could only remain within in quiet, and take no part at all in the senseless projection by which this world was made. Call it not sin, but madness, that made this world, for such it was, and so it still remains. Do not invest the world with guilt, for guilt implies the error was accomplished in reality. And, above all, be not afraid of it. When you seem to perceive some twisted form of the original error rise to frighten you, say only,

 

“The Divine is perfect Love, and in It is no fear,”

 

and fear will disappear.

The Truth will always free you, and It has not left you to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is Sanity, just as insanity must be outside you, since there is nothing outside of you, and insanity is nothing. You only believe it is the other way—that Truth is outside of you and error and guilt within.

Your little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity, and swirling lightly off on a mad course like a feather dancing wildly in the wind, have no substance. They fuse and merge and separate in shifting and totally meaningless patterns, which need not be assessed at all. To assess them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are not real differences at all. None of them matters, and it is this that they have in common, and nothing else. But only this understanding is necessary to perceive them all the same. Let them go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning until they disappear, far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately Calm within, where, in holy Stillness, dwells the living Divine in Whose Presence you have always been, and Who has always been with you.

In the Calm within, the Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your senseless journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the Truth and Safety within. It brings to the Truth all the meaningless projections and wild substitutions that you have placed outside you. Thus, It reverses the course of madness, and restores you to Reason. In your holy relationship, where Spirit has taken charge of everything at your request, It has set the course inward to the Truth you share.

True Sharing is unknown in what appears to be the troubled world outside you, and it is this that makes the world appear troubled. There what is called sharing is merely a form of substitution, because it is not total. In reality, substitution and true Sharing have nothing in common.

Within yourselves you love each other with perfect Love. Here is holy ground, in which no substitutes can enter, and where only the Truth about each other can abide. Here you are joined in the Divine—joined together as much as you are with It. The original error of substitution and resulting separation have never entered here, nor ever will. Here is the radiant Truth to which the Holy Spirit submitted your relationship. Let Spirit bring your relationship here, where you would have it be. Give It just a little faith in each other, to help It show you that no substitute you made for Heaven can keep you from It.

In you there is no separation, and no substitute can keep you from each other. Your reality was the Divine’s Creation, and has no substitute. You are so firmly joined in Truth that only the Divine is there. And It could never accept something else instead of you. It loves you both as It does all Its Children, equally and as One. And as It loves you, so you are. You are not joined together by illusions, but in the Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken the Holy Place in which you stand together.

The Divine is with you, my sisters and brothers. Let us join in It in Peace and Gratitude, and accept Its Gift of our most holy and perfect Reality, that we share in It. Heaven is restored to all the Divine Family through your holy relationship. For in it is the Divine Family, whole and beautiful, safe in your Love. Heaven has answered quietly, for all illusions have been gently brought unto the Truth in you, and Love has shined upon you, blessing your relationship with Truth. The Divine and Its whole Creation have entered it together.

How lovely and holy is your relationship, with the Truth shining upon it! Heaven beholds it, and rejoices that you have let it come to you. The Universe within you stands with you together. And Heaven beholds with Love what is joined in It, along with Its Creator.

Whom the Divine has called should hear no call for substitutes. The call for substitutes is only an echo of the original error that seemed to shatter Heaven. For what became of Peace in those who listened to this call? Return with me to Heaven, walking together out of this world, and through another to the Loveliness and Joy that the other holds within it.

You know now that it is not in this world that Happiness can be found. You would no longer weaken and break apart what seems already broken and hopeless, but would prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in returning to Wholeness what has been ravaged by substitution and separation. You have been called together to the most holy function that this world contains. It is the only one that has no limits, and that reaches to every broken fragment of the Divine Family, with healing and uniting Comfort.

This function is offered you in your holy relationship. Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted and received. The Peace of the Divine is given you, with the glowing Purpose in which you join. The holy Light that brought you together must extend as you accept It.