ARCIM

Daily Lesson 101 ~
April 11

The Divine’s Will for me and all Its Children is perfect Peace and Happiness.

Today we will continue with the theme of Happiness, and Its Companion, Peace. Happiness and Peace are key Ideas in understanding what awakening means. You may still believe that awakening asks for suffering as penance or punishment for your flaws or “sins.” This is not so. Yet you must think it so while you believe that sin or flaw is real, and that the Children of the Divine can sin or be flawed.

If sin were real then punishment would be just and could not be escaped. Then the need would be for salvation rather than awakening, which could not be purchased except through someone’s suffering. If sin were real then happiness must be illusion, for they cannot both be true. Were sin real, the sinful would warrant only pain and death, and it is this they ask for, for they know it waits for them and it will seek them out and find them somewhere, sometime, in some form that evens the account they believe they owe to the Divine or life or the universe. In their fear they would escape their fate. And yet it will pursue, and they cannot escape.

If sin were real then salvation from it must be pain. Pain would be the cost of sin, and suffering could never be escaped if sin were real. If sin were real then salvation must be feared, for it would kill, slowly, taking everything away before it granted the welcome boon of death to victims who were little more than bones before the cost of sin was appeased. Death’s wrath would be merciless and boundless, but entirely just. If sin were real then salvation’s offering would be death, and meted out in cruel form to match the vicious wishes in which the belief in sin was born. If sin were real then salvation would become your bitter enemy, the curse of the Divine upon you who have brought suffering to Its Child.

Who would seek out such savage punishment? Who would not flee this mad idea of salvation, and attempt in every way they can to drown the voice that offers it to them? Why would they try to listen, or accept its offering?

The practice periods today are needed to clear away such insane ideas. The exercises teach the happy lesson that sin and flaw are not real, and that all you may believe must result from them will never happen, for it has no cause. Accept Atonement with an open heart and mind that cherish no lingering belief that you have made a devil of the Children of the Divine, including yourself.

There is no sin or flaw in truth. We practice with this Thought as often as we can today, because It is the basis for today’s idea. The Divine’s Will for you is perfect Peace and Happiness because there is no sin or flaw in reality, and suffering is causeless. Peace and Joy are truly just, and pain is merely the sign that you have misunderstood yourself. Fear not the Will of the Divine. Just turn to It with confidence that It will set you free from all the consequences that the belief in sin and flaw has wrought in feverish imagination. Say:

“The Divine’s Will for me and all Its Children is perfect Peace and Happiness. There is no sin or flaw in truth. The belief in them has no consequence in Reality.”

So should you start your practice periods, and then attempt again to find the Peace and Joy these thoughts will introduce into your mind.

Give these hourly five minutes gladly, to remove the heavy load you laid upon yourself with the insane belief that sin and flaw are real. Today release yourself from madness. You are set on Freedom’s Road, and now today’s idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still swifter to the waiting goal of Peace and Joy. There is no sin or flaw. Remember this today, and tell yourself as often as you can:

“The Divine’s Will for me and all Its Children is perfect Peace and Happiness. This is the Truth because there is no sin or flaw.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 7: Healing and the Realm of Heaven Within

 

3. The Art and Science of Healing

As has often been acknowledged, healing is both an art and a science. It is an art because it depends on inspiration in the sense that this Course uses the term. In this sense, inspiration is the opposite of dis-spiration or desperation, and means to bring Joy. The dis-spirited are depressed because they believe that they are literally “without the spirit,” which is an illusion. You do not put the spirit in anyone by inspiring them, because that would be a form of enchantment magic, and therefore would not be real healing. But you do recognize the spirit that is already there, and thereby awaken to it. This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the Life. The spirit is not asleep in the mind of the sick, but the part of the mind that has the potential to recognize spirit and be glad is temporarily asleep.

Healing is also a science because it obeys the Laws of the Divine, Whose Laws are forever true. Because They are always true, They are perfectly dependable, and therefore universal in application. The aim of all real science is neither prediction nor control, but only understanding. This is because science does not establish the laws it seeks, cannot reliably discover them through prediction, and has no real control over them at all. Science is nothing more than an approach to what already is. Like inspiration, it can be misunderstood as “magic,” and will be whenever it is undertaken as separate from what already is, and perceived as a means for establishing this separate thing. To believe that this is possible is to believe you can do it. This can only be the voice of the ego.

Truth can only be recognized, and need only be recognized for It to be invited into your mind. Inspiration is of the Spirit, and Certainty is of the Divine according to Its Laws. Both therefore come from the same Source, because Inspiration comes from the Voice of the Divine and Certainty comes from the Laws of the Divine. Healing does not come directly from the Divine, who knows Its Creations as perfectly Whole. But healing is nevertheless of the Divine because it proceeds from Its Voice and from Its Laws. Healing is the result of These working in a state of mind that has temporarily forgotten the Divine. This state of mind is unknown to the Divine, and therefore does not exist. But those who sleep are dazed, or better, unaware. And because they are unaware they do not know.

The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you that It is in you. This is an intermediary step in your knowing that you are in the Divine because you are Part of It. The miracles that the Holy Spirit inspires can have no levels or orders of magnitude of difficulty because every part of Creation is of one Order. This Order is the Divine’s Will and yours. The Laws of the Divine establish this Order, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of It. When you heal, you are remembering the Laws of the Divine and forgetting the laws of the ego. This Course stated before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. When it is properly conceived, then, forgetting is therefore not the opposite of remembering. Perceived improperly, forgetting induces a perception of conflict with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, forgetting can be used as a way out of conflict, as all proper perception can.

All abilities should be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who knows how to use them properly. It can use them only for healing, because It knows you only as whole. Through healing you learn of Wholeness, and through learning of Wholeness you learn to remember the Divine. You have forgotten the Divine, but the Holy Spirit still knows that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering, and not perceived as a separate ability that opposes an opposite. Opposition is the way the ego tries to use all abilities, because its goal is always to make you believe that you are separate and in opposition. This is the function you gave the ego in your mind. In this sense the ego’s goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit’s, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego mindset always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal.

As you heal you are healed because the Holy Spirit sees no levels or orders of magnitude of healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, because it is the only way of perceiving the Divine Family without this belief. This perception is therefore in accord with the Laws of the Divine even in a state of mind that is out of accord with Its Mind. But the Strength of right perception is so great that It brings the mind into accord with the Divine Mind, because the mind yields to Its Pull, which is in all of us.

To oppose the Pull or the Will of the Divine is not an ability but a delusion. The ego believes that it has this ability, and that it can offer this ability to you as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all, and therefore merely wastes time. The Divine has given you a Gift that you both want and have and are. When you do not use It, you do not know you have It. By not knowing this, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching Knowledge by thinking in accordance with the Laws of the Divine and recognizing Their Universality. Without this Recognition, you have made the Laws Themselves meaningless to you. But the Laws are not meaningless, because all Meaning is contained by Them and in Them.

Seek first the Realm of Heaven because that is where the Laws of the Divine operate truly, and They can only operate truly because They are the Laws of Truth. But seek this only because nothing else could ever be found, and to attempt to do so only wastes time. There is nothing else to find because there is nothing else. The Divine is All in All in a very literal sense. All Being is in It because It is all Being. You are therefore in It because your being is Its Being.

Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger that the ego has induced in you and dazed you with, by not recognizing the ego’s existence in your sisters and brothers, because it cannot be recognized, being nothing. This strengthens the awareness of the Holy Spirit in both of you because it is a refusal to acknowledge that fear has any reality. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Divine Family, because It is what the Divine Family is. By their awakening to Love, the Children of the Divine merely forget what they are not. This enables them to remember what they are.