As it says in A Course in Miracles, happiness is our birth right.
It’s just more fun to be happy, isn’t it?
Happiness is important to us. We always know when we are not experiencing happiness, when our peace is disturbed.
And we always know when we are in happiness, too.
And, when we are experiencing peace, we share it with those around us, and with all of consciousness.
So how we feel matters. How we experience ourselves matters.
Happiness is God’s will for us.
A Favorite Game Show
There was a favorite game show popular about 10 years ago called ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’. This game was great!
All of us wanted to see others answer these seeming impossible jeopardy type questions or just to see someone win all that money right on national television.
It is the structure of the rules to play this game that struck me as metaphorical to our everyday life when we are stumped or stuckand what we really want is to be happy.
How Do We Get Back There?
In the game when you were stumped, you called a lifeline, polled the audience or called a friend.
Often you think if you are on the spiritual path and you’re stumped or you are in the middle of slippage, you must be doing it wrong. This shouldn’t be happening.
We begin looking for answers or trying to change the effects, or we freeze like the contestants in the game show and when you’re in it you can’t find your way out.
This is the time to go to your life line. Go within. Go within, be still and quiet, go within as pure presence.
In this place of quiet awareness, the answer can/will come.
The Course is really good at giving you a practice and a formula for getting unstuck but, unfortunately, when you’re in it you are so committed to the mindset of illusions that you won’t listen and you can’t see until you let go of the attachment of being right or letting go the attachment of victim-hood.
The secret of salvation is this:
“I am doing this to myself. There is no other way to look at this and find Freedom.”
Anything that is not joy, that is not peace, that doesn’t feel good is required to show itself so we can clean it up.
Like many of you, I’ve been doing the course for a long time, over 10 years, and last week I found myself right in the middle of Hell in the mind over nothing.
This is what I did to get out:
Going to Your Lifeline
We all have the ability to go to our ‘Lifeline’.
We all have the inner life line, the Holy Spirit, when we are still. We must be still to hear…
- First I became very quiet and went within to the quiet place. Watching the mind. I was reminded of Workbook 125. In quiet I receive God’s word today. This means, When I’m quiet the mind is no longer running the show but it (the mind – passing clouds, the audience) can be seen from this place of quiet awareness.
- From here I intuited to read workbook 44: God is the light in which I see. This one idea invites me to reach the light and I used it as a mantra over and over and over and it worked to bring me back into alignment and experience peace for a time but it came back when I picked the thread back up (not as strong but it was there).
Calling a Friend
- A long time Course in Miracles friend and Lisa (who reminded me of the Truth and invited me to say what I was fearful about or what I was believing that could disturb my peace) reminded me to allow the discomfort in and be vulnerable. She did not ask for or want to talk about the story at all.
- Then I was invited to be quiet like I was on a silent retreat, just watching the mind and being grateful for every thought that comes up for the rest of the night. Gratitude and appreciation became a mantra for the next several hours.
This was an overnight healing for me and in my mind and it came from the Lifeline. A willingness to go to the Holy Spirit in Quiet Awareness. Being told what to do and what to say to whom becomes very natural and easy now and this is how the blocks in my mind that I can’t otherwise see are removed.
Salvation is the only accomplishment that has any meaning, because it the only one that has any real use to you at all. ~ Jesus
If You Find Yourself in Times of Trouble
Here’s what I recommend:
- Have a friend you can call who will remind you of the truth, one who is not going to people please you but instead will hold you to a higher order of seeing without the story and will listen to their own inner Teacher to hold your hand in the discomfort (a miracle worker).
- Go often into Quiet Awareness to your lifeline and watch the mind that wants to fix it or figure things out and let the thoughts just pass by. Let them be passers by…
I recommend reading workbook lessons 44-47.
God is the light in which I see.
God is the mind in which I think.
God is the love in which I forgive.
God is the strength in which I trust.
This is the Great Awakening. This is what we signed up for. 
If this is helpful for you, let me know.
If you would like to share your own practice for getting back to the Truth that has worked for you, please post in the comments and share it here for someone else.
I Love You,
Bill
p.s. Happiness is a decision. Are you ready for a life of joy?
