LESSON SIXTY-SIX

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face. The Guidance is in normal type In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You. When You see the word ‘YOU’ capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.

My happiness and my function are one.

Could anything but happiness result from Be-ing what You really are, and pain from denying It?  If You scrub a dirty floor with Your favorite white blouse, will the result make You happy? Likewise would You wear a washcloth on a dinner date in place of the blouse?

Just so, denial and refusal of Your function can only make You very miserable, although You try hard to hide it with distractions.

Your Function is to live Love that stands behind forgiveness and makes it viable.

To live Your Function is pure Joy and brings Your Be-ing into harmony with All of the Universe.

It’s quite simple and relaxing to Be What You really are. Why not try it out?  What could You lose from giving it a try?

¹ 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.

Could One Love universally and not be happy?  That would be impossible.  The more the Love, the more the happiness.

Love is not something that You look to get, but what You look to give.  And in giving are You receiving.  How is that?  It’s very simple.  God is the Source of Love.  It flows to You naturally; yet You don’t notice It until You wish to gift Your Brother with It.  Then do You realize that It always has been present here as You.

² 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.

Will You accept it?  When You give Love quite freely, Love wells up in You, like a never-ending fountain, spilling out, running over, and blessing Every One You meet.

³ Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your function. We will not engage in ceaseless arguments about what it is. We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. – Every One of You knows whether You are truly happy or whether You aren’t. This happiness is quite apart from One’s own human story.  There is a quiet peacefulness to it, a feeling of grateful contentment due to nothing in particular at all.  It makes no sense to the ego, for it’s natural to You. – 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. 

This peaceful feeling is so natural to You, and easy to accept for it fits You perfectly.

⁴ 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.

God is the only Giver of Your Good.  Yet the ego does claim otherwise, insisting that You listen to it instead of God, Who it has shoved way up in the sky and unavailable, or so it tells You.  Don’t listen.

The ego is the first lie, and the father of all lying.  God is simply good.

⁵ Begin the ten- to 15-minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:

⁶ God gives me only happiness.
He has given my function to me.
Therefore my function must be happiness.

⁷ 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.

⁸ 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. – The very thought that God could be aught but Love has one source: what else but the ego. It has a very vested interest in You fearing God.  For its survival does depend upon it. – Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil.  – In Truth, it is the ego mind that is incapable of giving happiness. God is but Love, and Love is happiness. – 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.  – Again, the ego has created a great atmosphere of fear concerning God. “Vengeance is Mine” proclaims the Bible, attributing this statement to God, when it does belong squarely to the ego.  It is this thinking that this Course aims to fix.  – And it is this definition of Him which you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.

This is very clear and very simple.

⁹ 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 which the ego always engenders and the love which the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.

You would think that the choice would be quite easy and quite simple.  And yet it isn’t.  For like foolish children You’ve followed the pied piper called the ego for so many eons that its teaching is as close to You as breathing.

Yet You do remain the Son of God, and You can shift as naturally to Reality as breathing.  I’ve stayed with the dream to help You do it.

¹⁰ 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?

And since it is diametrically opposed to God in every way, how good for You could its gifts be?

¹¹ Think about this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the many forms which the illusion of your function has taken in your mind and the many ways in which you try to find salvation under the ego’s guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring you peace?

The ego’s idea of salvation is but dying to ensure that You will stay within the dream, rather than choosing to Awaken.  Which sounds better to You: endless rounds of painful dreaming or the freedom of Awaking to the Love of God.

¹² We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego has 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.

¹³ 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.

As long as You dream, the choice exists: Truth versus illusion.  Truth is happiness.  Illusion isn’t (isn’t happiness and just plain isn’t) .

¹⁴ In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested:

¹⁵ My happiness and function are one
because God has given me both.

Remember that God has not given You both happiness and sorrow.  The Gifts of Love are only Good.

¹⁶ It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly and think about them a little as you say them.

And they are Gifts unspeakable, quite on beyond gratitude.

It is a privilege to be asked to Love for it shows You must be willing, as well as able.

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[Thank you Dear Brother]

*Sun~Rose is the scribe of the recently published book, “YOU ARE LOVED AND SAFE: PREP NOTES FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE“, Jesus’ Guidance on the Miracle Principles

She is also author of, “RADIANT LIFE: RAW FOOD AND THE PRESENCE OF LOVE”

BOTH now available on amazon.com