Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.
ACIM Chapter 29,VII,1
‘Seek not outside yourself’ is a statement of what is true about us as holy children of God. We cannot actually seek outside ourselves because our Self is everything, so it is impossible to seek for something outside of everything. We are everything because God, who is everything, created us like Himself and so we share His characteristics and identity as one with everything. This does not mean that we are equal to God, for He created us but we did not create Him. But because He created us like Himself, we too can be Father to our creations and share our oneness with them.
A tidal wave is one with a small ripple on the ocean because they share the common characteristics of ocean-ness and wetness, but they are certainly not equal in size or power. To say that two thing are one is to say that they share a common basis, that theey share the same characteristics and potentials, that what is possible for one is possible for the other. But to say that they are equal is to say that they are one and the same thing, with no distinction between them. This is also true of our relationship with God, we are one and the same, but this divine oneness makes sense only from His perspective. From our perspective there is still the distinction that He created us.
‘Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there.’ Peace of mind is what we want most, and the only place we can find peace is in Heaven, and since Heaven is within us, true and lasting peace can only be found within us. The thing that separates our inner Self from our outer self is the body, which acts as a fence or a limitation on our one true, eternally unlimited Self. The body is the outward expression of our insane desire and vain attempts to find peace outside of God’s kingdom. It is impossible to separate into parts that which is everything. Just as it is illusory to see a ripple, a current, a wave, or a whirlpool as separate or distinct from the water of which it is a part, just so it is illusory to see a body, or an ego-self as separate or distinct from the one eternally divine consciousness of which it is a part, and from which it arises, is sustained for awhile, and finally resolved back into.
All that we want now, ever wanted, and will ever want, is here inside us, for that is where God, the source and fountainhead of all that is exists, and we too exist along with Him in our true state without the illusory limitations imposed by bodies. So why insist like petulant children on searching outside ourselves, demanding that what we want is there, rather than where it truly is. Choose happiness instead of righteousness and find the peace you seek where it is, inside yourSelf. This inner searching is not only simpler and more fruitful, it is the only sure path to peace.
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