Lesson 103
God, being Love, is also happiness.
Let us assume that it is easy to correlate happiness with love. When we feel loved, we are generally also feeling joyful. Love and happiness have a symbiotic relationship that can be understood by the mind and the Mind. However, the mind, ego, sees this happiness as limited. To the ego, love can be taken away. Love can be lost. Love can die. Love can fizzle. In a world based on ego, love is an up and down rollercoaster rather than the steady state flow of Love that is experienced by Truth, by Mind. In our discoveries in miracles today, we come to know more about the eternal Love and happiness of God, while clearing our minds of the lesser god we created who withdraws such endowments on a whim.
“This strange belief would limit happiness by redefining love as limited, and introducing opposition in what has no limit and no opposite” (ACIM Lesson 103 1:7).
It is important that we correct our misguided thinking that earthly love is equivalent to the eternal Love of God. Anything that is made in the world, such as human love, has no lasting power and was created similar to its environment, limited. Earthly love does appear to vanish, have stipulations and conditions, and inevitably can cause pain. This sort of love has an expiration date like a milk carton and is like the fine print at the bottom of a contract, full of terms and conditions and impossible to read, so you just sign on the dotted line. We have mistaken this love to be that of God thus we jump to the conclusion that Love can be just as painful and misleading. And as it goes, anything that we know to cause us pain, we fear, no?
Think about the fear of needles. If you have a fear of needles it is most likely because you have experienced pain with them or seen someone in pain because of them. It is often correlated that needles only come from going to the doctor’s office, thus is born the relationship between a doctor and pain, leaving one in fear of going to the doctor in general. We have created a similar situation with God. We have falsely believed that the pain from the finite love on earth is that of God, thus creating a sense of fear around God. We are unsure of the Love She is offering. We hold part of ourselves back, believing it can be taken away just like the other kinds of love we have experienced. We enjoy Her happiness, but still in the back of our minds we know it to be fleeting and wait for the moment it does so. This is not the experience of Love that is God’s Will. This is a love that we have misconstrued; making us apprehensive and thinking we must control and manipulate this love so as to not feel pain. Can you clearly see how there is no happiness in such a love?
Rather what is being asked of us is to surrender to a higher Love that is guaranteed to never dissipate in its happiness, power, and flow. In our practice periods today, we are called to more subtly question the slightly ever so damning God we have created, the one whose love is limited. In our walk Home there can be no doubt left aside that associates God with any version of fear or separation. That is why we continue to go deeper into our minds to reconcile any other version of God we have fabricated, no matter how astute it may be.
As we have unraveling our creation of God, at the same time we have been building a new foundation of trust where God can truly be seen and Her happiness experienced. This is the miracle. We are releasing our fears so that we may no longer have any fears to release, because once in our Truth, we are welcomed with only Love and happiness. This we are guaranteed as a Child of God.
I encourage you to continue your commitment to the hourly reminders of today’s lesson. We have nothing to lose by giving up the limited love we created. We have only Real Love to gain. See for yourself, Love Always Wins!
Namaste.