Today's meditation in A Course in Miracles begins with the following:
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
And joy and peace are my inheritance.
We are also told to remind ourselves as frequently as we can throughout the day:
God's gifts of joy and peace are all I want.
The idea of "inheritance" particularly struck me today. An inheritance is that which has been passed on to us from our ancestors. It is a birthright. God is the Ancestor of us all. We, His Children, have inherited the gifts He has bestowed upon us by the simple fact that we are His creations. The inheritance is ours for the taking. It is given freely. There is no work required, save the effort we must make to undo the illusions we have made, that we may behold God’s gifts for us.
God's gifts, as today's lesson points out, are Joy and Peace. These are derived from Love, and are Seen in Light. We have hidden these Holy Gifts behind the dark illusions we have chosen to produce on our planet, yet they are there, even amidst the darkness.
In improvisation (a la Whose Line Is It Anyway?), the actors must accept whatever it is their partners give them, good or bad. For instance, one actor may say to the other, "We're hitting some pretty rough waves on this sailboat," and her partner must accept that they are on a sailboat and move on with the scene. Each circumstance an actor presents is called a “gift,” and the cardinal rule of improv is saying “yes” and accepting those gifts. God’s gifts work the same way.
God is our partner here on earth, forever with us, eternally ensuring that we are never alone. Situations come our way, some of which appear to be “bad.” This is merely our faulty perception. There is a gift in every circumstance God provides for us. If we say “yes” to it, we are readily available to receive that gift. If we say “no,” we are just pushing it away.
Have you ever noticed that if a situation isn’t going so well, and you try to reject it, it just keeps coming back - and oftentimes, it gets worse? That is precisely because we haven’t accepted the gift which that apparently “bad” situation holds. Accept, rather than except. Remember that Joy and Peace abide in all things, in all people and in all situations. Sometimes we need to work a little to find it (and this is only because our minds have been re-programmed by the faulty ways of the world), but there is always a gift awaiting us.
In a situation that appears to be lacking in Joy, in Peace and in Love - in a situation where we find it particularly difficult to forgive - we must surrender it to God. Trust in His Strength. Like an onion, the layers of darkness must be peeled away one by one, which will eventually reveal the Light within. A situation like this occurred for me just this evening. I was in a disagreement where I saw no solution. After I realized this, I said calmly to the other person, "There is Joy in this. We may not be able to recognize it now, since we are in the process of peeling away the outer layer. But it is there." Then we surrendered it to God.
We are prone to forget, living in the world we do. The Real World is blind to us here, yet if we look deeply enough, we can feel it.
Imagine a world where we could actually see with our physical eyes the Joy and Love around us. Imagine if we could gaze at the Energy connecting each one of us together. Imagine if we could look at the Strength of Peace we all possess, which binds us all to one another.
We may not be able to see these things with our frail, human eyes, but we can sense them, and we can feel them, and we can bring their effects into the physical world we inhabit. Joy and Peace are our inheritance. They are ours to take freely, they are ours to give openly - they are ours to share unconditionally. So let us make manifest the Glory of God. Let us bring Joy and Peace, Love and Light, and their unparalleled Strength into all that we create here on earth, and we will behold Beauty like we never imagined possible.
Until tomorrow,
Journeyman
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