July 17th 2015 Lesson 66
My happiness and my function are one.
You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. This is because you do not really see the connection. Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. It is not a two-way battle. The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your function is. He knows that it is your happiness.
- Intention: Today we will try to go past
this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your
function. We will not engage in senseless arguments about what it is.
We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and
determining the means for achieving it. We will not indulge the ego by
listening to its attacks on truth. We will merely be glad that we can
find out what truth is.
Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. God gives you only happiness. Therefore, the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth.
- Practice: Begin the ten-to-fifteen-minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:
God gives me only happiness.He has given my function to me.
Therefore my function must be happiness.
Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not yet accept the conclusion. It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. Let us, then, think about the premises for a while, as we are practicing.
The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something He is not. Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil. God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have what He is not. Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil. And it is this definition of Him you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.
The second premise is that God has given you your function. We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.
Thus, it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice, or is made by the ego which you have made to replace Him. Which is true? Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?
Think about this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the many forms the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the ego's guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring you peace? We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego ever proposed. Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice.
You will listen to madness or hear the truth. Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. For God Himself shares it with us. Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.
- Application: In the shorter practice
periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour,
this form of the application is suggested:
My happiness and function are one, because God has given me both..
It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly and think about them a little while as you say them.
Insights/comments:
- It is very fortunate that our function and our happiness are one and the same. It is certainly true, even in our make-believe world that fulfilling one's function brings great happiness, and a sense of satisfaction. Dogs for example are quite happy when they can run and jump and bark; fish, likewise are happy when they can swim, and birds are happy when it can fly. Just so, we the children of God are happy when we can fulfill the function God gave to us. And that function is to be a light unto the world. We are what God created us to be; we are His one creation, His only begotten, His Kingdom, His completion. We are perfect, Spirit, free, at one with God, and can never not be what He created us to be. This is why we are the light of the world, and even as we appear to be human beings we are truly beings of light; more correctly light-beings. Light is what we emit because that is what we are. As light-beings, we naturally emit light, which is our natural function, it is what we do because of what we are, and because we cannot change what we are, we also cannot change our natural function. Our function is a natural consequence of what we are, and because it is one with our happiness, it is our natural source of happiness. We need not work, strive, struggle, nor sacrifice to perform our natural function to be happy, because they are one and the same and what we naturally are, so it is therefore not incorrect to say that we are naturally happy. Happiness is what we naturally are, it is not something we have to become.
Everyone is in search of more happiness, this is what occupies our time, and is the ultimate motive for all that we do. We want happiness to last, but now we know that it is easy to achieve, because it is inextricably tied to our function, and one cannot help but perform one's function, it is what we were made for it is our purpose.
I and my Creator are One.
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