Lesson 231
Father, I will but to remember You.
What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find. Let me remember You. What else could I desire but the truth about myself?
This is your will, my brother. And you share this will with me, and with the One as well Who is our Father. To remember Him is Heaven. This we seek. And only this is what it will be given us to find.
Journal
I am being reminded that there is nothing in the world of value, nothing that I really want from the world. I can enjoy a beautiful spring day, a glorious sunset, the innocent sweet smile of a child. I can enjoy these things, but they are for me just symbols of the Love that is God, and weak symbols at that.
When I long to hug my granddaughter, I am longing for God. This is what I really seek. I don’t find it in the world, but within my Self. Let me look there, instead. This does not mean I cannot enjoy the love I find in the world. In fact, I enjoy it more knowing that the essence of it is eternal and unchanging. I cannot say that about any image of love the world has to offer.
Regina’s Tips
Appearance is full of variety. Therefore, it is tempting to mind and attention. When mind and attention are unleashed, they jump around from one desire to another.
There is nothing wrong with experiencing temporary appearance. Attention was created so that we can experience appearance. However, the grasping energy of desire is a distortion of this ability. I call it a distortion because it is based on a sense of lack. It is based on the idea that I am not fulfilled within my beingness, so I need something else from outside of me to fulfill me.
My Thoughts
Have you ever been satisfied with anything you experienced in the world? Have you ever said to yourself, “This is enough?” I haven’t. I can watch the best movie ever and find myself checking the listings for another. I can enjoy my families visit and when they leave, I am looking for something to take their place. Nothing is ever enough. I see that all my searching in the world is useless because it is coming from a place of lack and therefore, I will ultimately experience lack.
How can I, then, enjoy the world? The closer I come to knowing my Self and living from that place, the less I experience lack. I can now sit in my house and be comfortable without entertainment of any kind. Well, I have not yet overcome the mind’s desire to entertain with thoughts but even that is lessening as I learn to just let the thoughts be. But I used to need entertainment all the time, TV, books, music, company, something to fill the void. Without such a void, I am not so needy and do not feel lack as much.
Now I can enjoy the beauty around me, the TV show, the music, the company, all without needing it. It is a different experience. When someone calls to ask if I want to meet for lunch, I can say yes and enjoy the experience. If no one calls, I can eat alone and enjoy the experience. This is not entirely accomplished. There are times when I feel restless and I know it is because I have been listening to the ego thoughts again. Now that I know the difference, I can practice watching the thought without becoming involved in it.
I recently discovered a meditation track with the sound at 340 Mega Hertz. Wow! Talk about feeling absolutely calm and peaceful after listening to it. I don’t want to move from my spot on the couch even after it ends. I think that I can learn to accomplish this without the aid of a particular vibration. I continue to practice. I seek the peace of God.
Past Entry
My current practice, and maybe the only practice I will every need, is to remember that the peace of God is everything I want, and it is helping me with this lesson, too. What do I seek? I seek peace and happiness. I seek God. This has always been true. The reason I did not always achieve what I seek is that I was looking in the wrong place. I was confused about what would bring me peace and happiness.
When I was unhappy with a relationship, I thought the relationship was the problem and so I tried to fix it or leave it. I thought the right relationship would bring me peace and happiness. When I was sick, I sought to heal the body. I thought that a properly functioning body would bring me peace and happiness. The list of things I thought were necessary to be peaceful and happy are endless. They are different forms of the same thing, and because they were born of a confused mind, none of them was every going to get me what I wanted.
Now when I am not happy, I realize that I have returned to confusion and am looking for happiness where it cannot be found. I am learning to turn from that unhelpful and untrue belief and allow the Holy Spirit to purify my mind. I am learning that all these “fixes” for the unhappy and un-peaceful mind are just distractions that keep me in my suffering.
I do want to join with Jesus and my Father in perfect peace and eternal joy. I will never do this in the world. It is done in my mind because it is only in my mind that we are split from each other. I do it by choosing only the peace of God rather than choosing a new or different or improved worldly experience. The other day was a different experience of this.
I was not happy. I wasn’t unhappy, exactly. I just wasn’t happy. I couldn’t put my finger on anything particular. It was kind of vague and amorphous, but something was not right. Then last night as I watched a show, I suddenly felt very emotional. I decided to run with the feeling and began to cry and cry. To resist this and say to myself that I am not going to cry because that is not peaceful would have been dishonest. I felt like crying so I did.
The ego always wants to make a story out of everything, but I resisted that desire. Instead, I asked what this meant and just let it go to Spirit. I didn’t get words, but a feeling that emotional releases happen, and that it is nothing to be concerned about. I also felt strongly that while I will feel these things from time to time as I continue to undo the ego, it is important that I not stay in the emotion. I must not deny the emotion, but rather allow it, and then turn to the Holy Spirit for healing.
If I had given the emotion a story, I would have moved away from the peace of God. For instance, the main character in the show I was watching was a father uncertain that he had done a good job raising his son. He was feeling doubts and fears. I could easily have moved into my own story of these same kinds of doubts and fears. That is what the ego wanted to do, because it loves its little dramas, and because its goal is to keep the guilt stories coming. Feeling regretful about the past was a choice I could have made, but instead I chose the peace of God.