Commentary on ACIM Lesson 103

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

God, Being Love, is also happiness.

 

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I have spent the day (Monday) being with the impact of my personal Achilles Heel, which is the fact that I am 'alone' (not in a 'happy intimate personal relationship'), and that ego-I is 'not so happy' about that.  I also know I have already answered myself (in this area) in the last few Commentaries, and I am confronted with the challenge of actually living those answers.  

 

My self-investigation was triggered because of the acknowledgement I wrote in yesterdays Commentary (that ego-I 'still has issues', and the one that I mentioned was 'dealing with loneliness' occasionally).  Also, the fact that the Course is focusing on happiness right now is present in the background, as I am seeing that a big stop (hurdle) for me to being completely happy is my personal desire to be in a truly happy intimate relationship.  My 'problem' reduces down to my ego-I's judgmental requirements about what I demand such an intimacy should/must look like.  And I am realizing it is not just my problem, but it is a very common problem for a lot of people. In other words, it's a cultural problem that I personally have alive in myself.    

 

One of my favorite lectures on relationships is on an old tape I ran across years ago by a man named Terry Gorski.  The framework he presented included the stats that about 80 percent of us come from pretty dysfunctional families (he described what that looked like) and if that's you (like it is me), we do relationship much more from an addictive model than a naturally healthy model. We didn't have a healthy model modeled for us (neither did our parents).  And so we get addictive model 'crashing' results at times.  For me the 'area of intimate relationship' has been a 'spiritual sore spot'---a part of life that I have never fully been happy in, and never had the 'dream come true' experience (more than briefly) in any of the many relationships I have attempted with the best of intentions.  I keep believing that will transform.  Unfortunately, I have often walked the road to 'relationship hell' in the name of the search for Love (but actually, I am now seeing, in the search for 'the perfect sexuallove').  I am 'not proud' of my relationship 'failures' because they all could have worked if I had not been addicted to my version of what a perfect (sexual) relationship for me would have looked like.  Now alone for over a year, and in a new town in order to help out my aged parents (who must now deal with 'the end approaching' without having many functional relationship tools themselves) part of me 'looks in the mirror' and has given up on intimate relationship (I'll just accept I'm a celibate monk etc), part of me still goes unconscious and bites 'when triggered' by 'somebody maybe matching' my addictive hoping.  Neither one of those positions is the 'happiness of God' that the Course is working (training) me and you to have become real.  I am clear the Course writer knows our humanity, and knows well what the barriers are to each of us being willing to let go of our imagined needs enough to receive God's fully alive ecstatic happiness.  

 

Obviously, those barriers (which are all 'wants' that ego-I has said I 'must have') have to be let go of for real happiness to be my experience.  It's a pretty clear insanity....  the 'wants' that I must have so that I can be happy are the very reasons I cannot 'be happy'.  I mean, both personal intimate love and God's Impersonal Love are available, but I keep saying 'no thanks, I'm looking for something different' (meaning but not saying, 'the Perfect One' [which nobody ever IS]),  and then of course, I am alone, and unhappy about that, and am left 'waiting, yearning, all that'.  Covered that 'brilliantly' a couple days ago, right?  (And still working on getting it...)  

 

There is much I have not gotten into words yet, and I don't know how to 'sew this up' right now.  It's time to get this Commentary sent off, time for me to 'do the Course' too.  I'm sure there is more coming, as this spiritual surgery is clearly absolutely necessary for me to allow to happen.  Being God's Love in the world is why I am here, I know that.  Continuing to 'harbor without exposing' an addictive substitute for authentic Self-Love will sabotage (and already has 'in the past') my ability to be that Love.  There is a much larger possibility waiting on the other side of this for myself, and for any other who recognizes themselves here.  To get 'there', I know I must 'be here', in this soup, in this impact, in this surgery.  

 

And, that it's a good idea to keep 'doing the Course'.  More later.  

 

Namaste,

 

David