A Course In Miracles Lesson 73

A Course In Miracles Lesson 73 states: I will there be light.

We humans have free will.  The word “will” means the power to have an interest in something.  The phrase “free will” is actually a repetition of the same concept because they are one and the same.  Freedom is the ability to choose and my will is my inherent preference, my spontaneous choice, and my desire.  Since the Unified Field of Creation created me like Itself, and that Creative Field is light, love, peace, freedom, and joy, all those qualities are within me and today those are the qualities I choose to experience.  Light comes from within.  Well-being is a choice we decide to let emerge from within.  Peace is a resolve to not let the movements of pain take you along with them.

Are we cold and insensitive if we do not allow ourselves to feel suffering?  What example would those who are suffering have if we did not present peace to them from our own inner determination to locate calm?  When we see all the fear and hostility in others and we let that pain pull us into pain, where is the pathway out of that pain?  It is not selfish to be well, calm, and undisturbed.  In our own struggles with distress, we have seen examples of calm and we have let those examples help us find our way to calmness.  By doing this for ourselves,  we become an example for others to help them find their way to peace.  This world needs your interest in peace to be strong.

What stops our interest in peace is an interest in grievances.  The part of you that believes life is pain and separation is what prevents peace.  Believing in separation is an act of will.  It is a willful act against true reality which we are free to assert because we were created free by creation. The part of your free will that believes you are a separated, vulnerable, isolated, single being maintains this belief through the use of grievances.  Through the detailed mental and verbal descriptions of wrongs done to you and to others, the ego part of you perpetuates an experience of hellish conditions in a violent, chaotic world.  Belief in such a world is a nightmare.  Nightmares are not real.  We wake from them and find that the only harm done is within our own inner experience.  We then shake off the dream and decide not to believe in its reality any further. We will the nightmare to be gone from us.

Today’s lesson wants us to again consider the concept that we came from a Source Field of all Creation.  Because this is where we come from and because that which creates, creates more of itself, we share the same thoughts and priorities as the Source Field which created us.  This means that, whether we decide to be aware of it or not, our primary desire is for peace and well-being.  This is a fact about us.  We are peace and we love peace.  Peace feels very good and creating peace is the only meaningful action we can ever take on this planet because it creates more of what we are. The power to have an interest in something is the power of will.  This power comes from a creative, loving, joyful origin.  

The part of us that does not register the existence of peace is likewise not registered by Peace either.  These two perspectives can not ever meet.  One perspective is real (Peace) and one perspective is an illusion, an interest in exploring an impossible notion. (Pain.) What is vital to understand about this dynamic is that Peace and pain are not equal.  One perspective comes out of the other.  Peace holds the space for all other choices to be investigated.  The most misunderstood concept in the symbol of the yin yang is the idea that light and dark are equal.  They are not.  The most overlooked aspect of that symbol is the circle defining it.  The circle is the larger space making it all possible.  Peace is and will always be the larger space to any other quality within reality.

We believe pain is real because we feel it so acutely so often.  But A Course In Miracles Lesson 73 wants us to consider that the mechanism which is feeling pain was built for that very purpose.  A physical body is an inherently sensitive thing which has been made (by our own interest/will) to experience and investigate that which, in reality, is not possible.  In order to enable the impossible, reality yields to the conjuring of illusions.  But this does not make the illusions real, it only enables them to be experienced.  Your eyes, skin, heart, and head are all intrinsic mechanisms of experiencing isolation and vulnerability.  Having a body is an adventure in separation which we chose of our own free will to experience.  We knew before we manifested into this body that it would not ever be real.  We also knew that once here, we would forget that we knew this.  And we also knew that forgetting would not be a permanent problem because we knew the way out of that trance would always be available to locate from within.  Like a safety leaver, it is not possible for us to lock ourselves into an illusion permanently because that illusion is being hosted by reality.  We are making believe our body our circumstances are all we are.  

Your body is not what you are.  Or rather, it is not all you are.  Your body is your own invention and it reflects your interests and your thought processes.  The ego part of you wants you to believe that pain is real.  Pain comes from a belief that you are alone and that you have been left by the One who loves you.  This has not and can not ever occur.  You can not separate from the fabric of all creation and somehow exist outside of it in some second realm not included in All that is.  There is no separation.  You are a part of all and you are a primary source for how the All expands.  The very life experience you are having is a journey of expansion.

The part of you that has decided to believe isolation is possible has made a complete world for you to live in and believe is real.  That is how powerful your will is.  The illusions we have created in this world are not a problem for Creation.  They are only a problem for us when we want to stop experiencing self-induced confusion.  When we want the illusion to stop, we need to ask for help out of what we have gotten ourselves into.  Having jumped with full conviction into a chasm, we need to reach for a rope to climb out.  We can not think ourselves out of our self-made illusion.  To truly dissolve it, we turn towards what it is not.  We turn towards qualities of peace and wholeness.  We choose to see unity.  We will there be light in the darkness we willed for ourselves.  As soon as we make this choice, peace will return.  It will be faint and barely imperceptible at first because we have conjured so much distress for so long.  But if we open ourselves to receive even the faintest experience of peace, the quiet moment in the grass outside, the sky, the stillness of the curtains, we will be choosing light.  We will be climbing out of our adventures in darkness.

From inside the illusion, you do not know you want peace.  You do not fully understand how entrained you have become to have an interest in pain.  No one in their right mind would be interested in pain and this is only an indication that you are not in your right mind when your actions engage in conflict-causing events.  Interest in pain is a physical addiction that runs very deep within the self-made human psyche.  To dissolve that addiction takes a miracle.  This course is that miracle and each daily lesson adds a new kind of logic to your faulty logic so that steps can lead you up and out of the misguided thinking causing pain.  Today’s lesson introduces us to realize the vastness of our inner capacities of will and conviction.  

Like a snake who has no arms or legs, your will, your conviction is what propels you forward.  How do you do that?  How does the snake move forward? Conviction to do so.  Conviction is what you are.  Conviction is what every living being is.  Thus far, your conviction has envisioned pain.  To notions of isolation and agony, you have said, “Yes, let it be so.”  But today we will there be light.  Today we envision peace, relaxation, wellness, calm, and we say, “Let it be so.”

If you find this lesson hard to take in, if there is a strong reaction in you of resistance in the form of anger, depression, or confusion, take a smaller step by saying, “I do not know how to feel calm but I want to learn.”  When we see that an absence of peace in our life is not because of an absence of peace but rather because of our interest in experiencing conflict, we can recognize that we want something we do not really want.  We can then acknowledge that we have the pull to argue or lash out and to these impulses, we can say, I want to lash out.  But more than this impulse, I want to want peace.  I want to release an interest in the cycle of pain.  I am angry.  I am sad.  I feel a need for these feelings and I have reasons for them (grievances).  Let me remember now that nothing in this world is made of any lasting power.  Everything in this world fades away like a dream.  Beyond the veil of this dream is wellness.  If I am in pain, I am holding tightly to that which can not remain.  

Creation did not create a state of destruction.  Creation is creative and only creative.  Creation is freedom to believe in illusions if we so choose.  But no amount of belief in the unreal or untrue will ever make it real or true.  What is true endures.  What is true is there at the end and does not end.  Reality will be there whether you align with it or not.  Aligning with the truth is the only way to ever find real meaning.  A Course in Miracles Lesson 73 again helps us to locate the part of you that is always connected to the Supreme Ultimate power of all creation.

So… today is quite a day!  As is every day.  

We are asked to sit quietly with eyes closed for 15 minutes and ask ourselves if we really want pain.  Recognize these concepts as a self-made experiment we no longer wish to investigate.  Declare in your mind or even out loud, “I want peace.”  Your conviction for wanting peace will not be strong at first.  And that is why A Course In Miracles is guiding us in how to build our conviction.  This conviction for peace above all else will be the energy we will use when the ego part of us tries to argue back from its insane logic.  We will not get caught in the logic of isolation because we will a new logic to emerge in our minds.  Our willing it is what brings that logic into being.  So do not listen to the list of reasons why something is not right.  It may very well not be right, or it may not be as wrong as you think.  Regardless, it is not for us to ever figure out dysfunction.  When we refrain from following the ego’s logic we are able to glimpse the ego for what it is, a small child in the process of growing up.  

We will succeed in today’s lesson because Creation Itself wills it will be so.  When God wants something, it is so.  God wants your peace.  God will not interfere with how you choose to find that peace for yourself.  Only remember, suffering is not ever anything God wants for you.  The way out of pain is to say in the face of it, “I will there be light here.”  Let the qualities of peace come into your mind and be known to you.  Open the door and let light in by saying today’s lesson several times an hour.  Recall the concept as frequently as you can.  Recalling the lesson frequently is giving your mind a megadose of strong perception and resilience.  We have trained our minds to register fear and pain.  We must now train that same mind to register peace and joy.  We will there be light.