In this video recording of a class (given for the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise), we start with a review of Workbook Lesson 66: My happiness and my function are one. (ACIM, W-66); here are the first three paragraphs of that simple, sane and sweet advice:
“1. You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. ²This is because you do not really see the connection. ³Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. ⁴Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.
2. The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is.²So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is.³It is not a two-way battle.⁴The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond.⁵He knows what your function is.⁶He knows that it is your happiness.
3. Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your function.²We will not engage in senseless arguments about what it is.³We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it.⁴We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth.⁵We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is.” (ACIM, W-66.1:1–3:5)
A quick summary is:
“If I want to be happy, I have to forgive.”
We then explore sections 20 and 21 in ACIM’s Manual For Teachers. As a reminder, the Course emphasizes that we are all students and teachers all the time, as we are teaching ourselves and learning one of only two thought systems: insanity (ego) or sanity (Holy Spirit.) Here are the first three paragraphs of these sections, prefaced by a favorite quote from the 4th paragraph, which asks us if compromising profound unchanging peace is really what we want!
“A tranquil mind is not a little gift.” (ACIM, M-20.4:8)
20. What Is the Peace of God?
1. It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world. ²How is it recognized? ³How is it found? ⁴And being found, how can it be retained? ⁵Let us consider each of these questions separately, for each reflects a different step along the way.
2. First, how can the peace of God be recognized? ²God’s peace is recognized at first by just one thing; in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences. ³It calls to mind nothing that went before. ⁴It brings with it no past associations. ⁵It is a new thing entirely. ⁶There is a contrast, yes, between this thing and all the past. ⁷But strangely, it is not a contrast of true differences. ⁸The past just slips away, and in its place is everlasting quiet. ⁹Only that. ¹⁰The contrast first perceived has merely gone. ¹¹Quiet has reached to cover everything.
3. How is this quiet found? ²No one can fail to find it who but seeks out its conditions. ³God’s peace can never come where anger is, for anger must deny that peace exists. ⁴Who sees anger as justified in any way or any circumstance proclaims that peace is meaningless, and must believe that it cannot exist. ⁵In this condition, peace cannot be found. ⁶Therefore, forgiveness is the necessary condition for finding the peace of God. ⁷More than this, given forgiveness there must be peace. ⁸For what except attack will lead to war? ⁹And what but peace is opposite to war? ¹⁰Here the initial contrast stands out clear and apparent. ¹¹Yet when peace is found, the war is meaningless. ¹²And it is conflict now that is perceived as nonexistent and unreal.
21. What Is the Role of Words in Healing?
1. Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. ²The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. ³What you ask for you receive. ⁴But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. ⁵Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. ⁶It does not matter. ⁷God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. ⁸Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. ⁹Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. ¹⁰They are thus twice removed from reality.
2. As symbols, words have quite specific references. ²Even when they seem most abstract, the picture that comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. ³Unless a specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word has little or no practical meaning, and thus cannot help the healing process. ⁴The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. ⁵It always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the bringers of the desired experience in the opinion of the asker. ⁶The words, then, are symbols for the things asked for, but the things themselves but stand for the experiences that are hoped for.
3. The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. ²If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. ³It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. ⁴If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own. ⁵The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. ⁶Herein lie hell and Heaven. ⁷The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. ⁸It is enough. ⁹His words do not matter. ¹⁰Only the Word of God has any meaning, because it symbolizes that which has no human symbols at all. ¹¹The Holy Spirit alone understands what this Word stands for. ¹²And this, too, is enough.
In section 20, we realize that the peace the Course leads us to transcends anything this world has to offer. Why do we persist in looking for peace (in the world) where it never will be found? True peace has nothing to do with the past and is truly unlike anything we’ve taught ourselves before … fortunately!
There are almost a thousand (948) instances of the word “peace” in ACIM! Inner Peace is the foundation and the goal of ACIM’s curriculum, as well as the name of the publisher!
In section 21, we see the familiar quote that words are mere “symbols of symbols” and symbols are not going to satisfy us when we all really want reality. Kenneth Wapnick rightly points out that the Course draws heavily from Platonic thinking about the importance of examining symbols – the ideal seems lost when we obsessively identify with specifics that are merely symbols of what those specifics represent. We are so accustomed to thinking of our “selves” as our identity that the course’s swapping of what we think of as symbols, metaphors, and representations and reality is a challenging practice that typically takes lots of patience and persistence to look more mindfully at everything and everyone. What if the pure abstract Love – beyond the scope of the Course’s curriculum but which it leads us to inexorably – IS our reality … and our bodies, this planet, and everything in space-time are merely symbols? We merely need to ask Holy Spirit to help us reverse this silly reversal by looking at each value we hold. The forgiveness process involves questioning how we might have sabotaged our peace by making it contingent on what happens … or doesn’t happen … in the world of specifics – the symbols in our mind our egos obsess over endlessly.
This video was recorded on March 7, 2022.
(I highly recommend Lyn and Tim’s almost daily SFACIM zoom classes!)
Speaking of symbols, I recently discovered that when I use “smiley” faces made with a colon, dash and a right parenthesis, I get a HUGE yellow graphic of a smiley face, so I’m using considerable restraint to not use these until I figure out why MailChimp is making this replacement. Just assume there are lots of smileys where the humor is self-evident! (Picture a smiley here!)