Commentary on ACIM Lesson 200

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

There is no peace except the peace of God.

Yes, let us stop fooling ourselves.... let us stop wasting our lives in the pursuit of empty and meaningless goals that will never bring us to true happiness. There is no peace of mind possible without 'the living presence of God' firmly attached to our minds and hearts.

Anything we do without God as our guide will leave us disappointed at best, suicidally bankrupt at 'worst'. Obviously this is not the fulfillment of our dream of being happy. So let us stop, get quiet, and go nowhere, until we have seen that what is missing is simply the knowledge of who we actually are (and have always been).

Is it not time by now at least to receive this knowledge, which our ego has spent our lives seeking everywhere but where it is. What a perfect self-deception! Our whole life we search for our own happiness trusting a guide who is committed to never ever leading us to it.

And the painful thing is to realize this guide is something we each individually created.... in some moment of personal failure to being able to be with something very painful specific event(s) that happened in our lives, we disassociated from the wholeness and the perfection and the trust we had known, and created a false identity....our ego.... whose purpose was then and only purpose is still to keep us from feeling that pain again.

Thus we became insulated, and unable to experience life directly. And without the direct experience of life, there is not joy available to us, only counterfeit forms of pleasure... always temporary... never trustable... never whole.

What must we do? We must unlearn. That is all. The spiritual journey is one of unlearning our defenses to life. As we ask for this and are willing to allow this to occur, we are led to the doorways of ever expanding awareness, until in time, we have regained our innocence, and can feel life directly again.

Innocence is completely different from 'not guilty' by the way. Innocence is perfect purity. It is this that we recognize in God, for God is the source of our innocence. Let us be deeply grateful that this is so, for this is our way out of our isolation.

Namaste,

David

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Lesson 200

There is no peace except the peace of God.

Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. 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 God, 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 to live. You cannot but be asking for 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 have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens easily to welcome you?

Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you 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 a prison house or jail for anyone.

Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.

What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function, and does nothing. For it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God's beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes 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?

There is no peace except the peace of God, because He has one Son who cannot make a world in opposition to God's Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality, because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God.

Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross, to leave this world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way 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 lies within the peace of God.

Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide our footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God, where bodies 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 look up and on toward Heaven, with the body's eyes but serving for 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 can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:

There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.