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Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

 

Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

(1) The idea for today can be regarded as the central thought toward which all
our exercises are directed. God's is the only Will. When you have recognized
this, you have recognized that your will is His. The belief that conflict is
possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by
conflicting goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but
His.

(2) There is great peace in today's idea, and the exercises for today are
directed towards finding it. The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot
give rise to illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible. Let us try to
recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings.

(3) Begin the longer practice periods by repeating these thoughts several times,
slowly and with firm determination to understand what they mean, and to hold
them in mind:

There is no will but God's. I cannot be in conflict.<
Then spend several minutes in adding some related thoughts, such as:

I am at peace.
Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's.
My will and God's are one.
God wills peace for His Son.<

During this introductory phase, be sure to deal quickly with any conflict
thoughts that may cross your mind. Tell yourself immediately:

There is no will but God's.
These conflict thoughts are meaningless.<

(4) If there is one conflict area that seems particularly difficult to resolve,
single it out for special consideration. Think about it briefly but very
specifically, identify the particular person or persons and the situation or
situations involved, and tell yourself:

There is no will but God's. I share it with Him.
My conflicts about ______ cannot be real.<

(5) After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to
experience the peace to which your reality entitles you. Sink into it and feel
it closing around you. There may be some temptation to mistake these attempts
for withdrawal, but the difference is easily detected. If you are succeeding,
you will feel a deep sense of joy and an increased alertness, rather than a
feeling of drowsiness and enervation.

(6) Joy characterizes peace. By this experience will you recognize that you have
reached it. If you feel yourself slipping off into withdrawal, quickly repeat
the idea for today and try again. Do this as often as necessary. There is
definite gain in refusing to allow retreat into withdrawal, even if you do not
experience the peace you seek.

(7) In the shorter periods, which should be undertaken at regular and
predetermined intervals today, say to yourself:

There is no will but God's.
I seek His peace today.<

Then try to find what you are seeking. A minute or two every half an hour, with
eyes closed if possible, would be well spent on this today.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

(1:1) "The idea for today can be regarded as the central thought toward which
all our exercises are directed."

*This is Jesus' way of rephrasing for us our sole responsibility, which is to
accept the Atonement for ourselves. The tiny, mad idea, once taken seriously by
the ego, says the separation from God is a fact, and that the Son has a will
separate and distinct from the Will of his Creator. This "will" of the Son can
now establish its own reality as an autonomous entity. From that basic premise
the ego system logically follows, up to and including the making of the physical
universe. The ego is thus a statement that says there is indeed a will apart
from God's. This is in contrast to the principle of the Atonement that says
there is no will <but> God's. Any other thought is illusory, and therefore has
never happened. This idea is succinctly captured in the following lines from the
manual for teachers, in the context of the idea of separation:

"In time this happened very long ago. In reality it never happened at all."
(M.2.2.7)

Again, Jesus is saying this idea -- "there is no will but God's" -- is the
central thought of these exercises. In fact, it is the goal of A Course in
Miracles to teach and accept the Atonement for ourselves; to deny the seeming
reality of the ego thought system, which is based on the tiny, mad idea taken
seriously -- "[in the Son's forgetting to laugh at the tiny, mad idea] did the
thought become a serious idea" (T-27.VIII.6.3) -- and an individual self
believed to have an autonomous will outside the Will of God.*

(1:2-3) "God's is the only Will. When you have recognized this, you have
recognized that your will is His."

*This is the last thing the ego ever wants us to understand, because if our will
is His, there is no separation -- another way of stating the Atonement
principle, which undoes the ego. Moreover, if there is no other than God, there
can be no choosing and hence, no decision maker. The Holy Spirit holds this
Atonement thought in our minds, and the ego's fear of our choosing to identify
only with this motivates it to develop the strategy of mindlessness -- the world
of bodies. This fear is succinctly summarized in the following statement from
the text:

"You are afraid to know God's Will, because you believe it is not
yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear."
(T-11.1.10:3-4).*

(1:4) "The belief that conflict is possible has gone."

*We find in these lessons -- which is why we are studying them so closely -- the
entirety of the ego's thought system as presented more fully in the text. If I
have a will that is separate from God's, the ego tells me I earned it by
triumphing over my Great Adversary. By thus winning the great conflict, I
deserve the wonderful fruits of individuality. This winning, however, is called
<sin> by the ego, followed by <guilt>, the projection of which causes us to make
a God in our image and likeness: One Who has been sinned against, and now
angrily and justifiably seeks retribution, an attack we justifiably <fear>. As
you may recall from our previous discussion, the second and third laws of chaos
(T-23.II.5-8) specifically address this issue of a vengeful, angry God; an image
present in everyone, regardless of their religion or lack thereof. In the
Western world, the image is grounded in the biblical God -- a vengeful deity who
believes in the reality of sin.

Once we project our sin, a seemingly eternal battleground is established in our
minds. <That> is the conflict -- between ourselves and God, since He is the One
we believe we have attacked, and Whose vengeance is demanded by our guilt. It
goes without saying that this is not the true God. However, within our insane
dream, which begins with the belief we are autonomous individuals, this conflict
is quite real. It leads us to repress the terrifying thought, and -- through
projection -- make up a world in which we see conflict all around us, but no
longer within our minds. We believe everyone and everything is at war with us,
the fragmentary shadows of the original conflict. Whether this takes the form of
outright enemies -- what we call special hate, or the more subtle enemies we
call our special loves -- the conflict remains. It is a battle not only with
individuals, but with life itself, the chief characteristic of which is death.
Hence, as Freud taught, from the moment we are born we are preparing to die. The
ultimate thought of death, therefore, is the primary conflict we experience
here, yet this is but a thought we have a will separate from God's. We won that
will by destroying Him, and now He is going to rise from the grave and destroy
us, seizing back the life we believe we took from Him.*

(1:5-6) "Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflicting
goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but His."

*Recall for a moment Lesson 24 and 25, in which Jesus explains that we do not
know our own best interests. One of the exercises had us take a problem and
think about its best solution. Jesus told us if we really did this
conscientiously we would realize we have conflicting goals and thus could not be
sure of what was best for us. One moment we think of something that would work
well, and in the next we think of something else. This forces us to decide
between these shifting goals, which is Jesus' way of teaching us that we do not
understand anything, and certainly not our own interests.

The conflicting goals we experience reflect the original conflict in our minds
between God and ourselves, which really is within ourselves. This ego-projection
of a God is made up. Thus He is not truly there, being nothing but a split-off
part of our already split minds. The ego's conflict is <one or the other, kill
or be killed> -- a conflict played out within our minds, because the figures in
our lives we believe are victimizing us are but characters in our own dreams:
hallucinatory figures of our delusional thought system. However, when we turn
away from the ego's thought system -- conflict, sin, and individuality -- and
are back with the Holy Spirit, we have accepted the Atonement. There is only
<one> goal -- already accepted -- which is remembering Who we are and returning
home.*

(2:1) "There is great peace in today's idea, and the exercises for today are
directed towards finding it."

*In fact, we can find peace <only> through this idea. It comes in many, many
different forms, but its essence is that peace is found in accepting the idea
that we never separated from God, and therefore are not separate from anyone or
anything else.*

(2:2-4) "The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot give rise to
illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible."

*The illusions are everything the ego tells us is true. Thus, once we begin with
the basic premise there is another will besides God's -- the tiny, mad idea
taken seriously, which leads us to believe that we exist as separate individuals
-- the other illusions logically follow: I am sinful, guilty, and afraid of
punishment, my inevitable fate if I am to remain in my mind. In order to project
this newly acquired self, I have to project the basic conflict between me and my
image of God, making a world in which I experience a new set of problems -- all
perceived outside my mind.

These, then, are the illusions, and they stem from our not accepting the
principle of the Atonement that there is no will but God's, which means the
separation never happened. Therefore, once these illusions are looked at and let
go, there can be no conflict, which, again, is between our guilty, sinful part
of ourselves we do not want to let into our awareness, and the guilty, sinful
part of ourselves we have projected as the image of God. When the thought of sin
is no longer accorded faith, there can be no illusions or conflict; and
therefore no pain or suffering.*

(2:5-3:1) "Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this
recognition brings."
"Begin the longer practice periods by repeating these thoughts several times,
slowly and with firm determination to understand what they mean, and to hold
them in mind:"

*I mentioned twice before than many statements in the workbook can be
misunderstood as affirmations, similar to those found in many New Age systems
where they shout down people's ego's by replacing negative thoughts with
positive ones. It is quite obvious this does not work, for all it accomplishes
is our repressing our bad thoughts into the unconscious, and whatever is
repressed has a most unfortunate way of finding its way back out, either in
attacking others (judgment) and/or attacking ourselves (sickness).

Jesus is not encouraging us to bring truth to the illusion -- the truth of these
statements to the illusions we believe in -- but rather is teaching us to
bring the illusions of our ego's thoughts to this truth. Whenever we are tempted
to feel upset, therefore, we need to bring that upset and all its seeming causes
to the truth: we made this up. We know we have because there is no Will but
God's.

To repeat, these are not statements we should use to shout down our ego's, but
instead we should bring our ego's raucous shrieks of guilt and judgment to the
lesson's gentle thought. This process holds not only for these exercises, but
for all the others. Thus we say:*

(3:2-3) "There is no will but God's. I cannot be in conflict."

*This means that when you find yourself unhappy or upset in the course of the
day and honestly look at your ego, you would realize you are upset because you
believe you are in conflict -- someone or something has brought you pain, and
that is the "cause" or the problem. If you recall the statement -- "There is no
will but God's. I cannot be in conflict" -- you recognize that everything you
now perceive comes from the thought that you are in conflict with God. You
suffer at someone else's hands, feel ill, or have lost your peace as a result of
conditions in the world -- all because you believe that you have separated from
your Creator. Stated another way, conflict means duality, which is the essence
of the ego's illusory state of separation; while the Will of God expresses the
non-dualistic truth of the oneness of our reality as God's Son.

This lesson continues the process of training that would have us begin to always
-- not just here, but always -- revisit the ego thought system that underlies
our being upset, angry, depressed, sick, anxious, or fearful. When we look at
the ego with Jesus beside us, we automatically do what he is asking of us in
this lesson. As he tells us at the beginning of the text, he is the Atonement
(T-1.III.4:1): the experience and symbol within our dream that there is no Will
but God's. His loving principle within our minds is proof that nothing has come
between us and the Love of God, and that, moreover, nothing <could> come between
us and this Love, as we now read:*

(3:4-9) "Then spend several minutes in adding some related thoughts, such as:

I am at peace.
Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's.
My will and God's are one.
God wills peace for His Son."

*Jesus continues by telling us how to proceed in these exercises:*

(3:10-13) "During this introductory phase, be sure to deal quickly with any
conflict thoughts that may cross your mind. Tell yourself immediately:

There is no will but God's.
These conflict thoughts are meaningless."

*Once again, Jesus does not want us to shout down our pain or deny our
experience of conflict with anyone or anything, but to bring our suffering to
him. This is analogous to what the great Indian teacher Krishnamurti emphasized
is his teachings: <Stay with the pain.> This was not a call to masochism. It was
a plea to his students not to cover the pain, but to continue on through it to
the love beyond. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus is the one who leads us through
the pain we have first brought to him, to the peace that awaits us beyond the
ego's veil of conflict.*

(4:1) "If there is one conflict area that seems particularly difficult to
resolve, single it out for special consideration."

*As we have seen throughout these lessons, Jesus is asking us to pay careful
attention to our minds, to search them to find the thoughts of conflict. We then
move back from our unhappiness and distress to the underlying thought of
separation that is the basis for the experience of specific conflicts. Rather
than seek to avoid the particular difficult conflict situation, we are
encouraged by Jesus to pay attention to it -- to "single it out for special
consideration" -- which means bringing it to him so that the mind's guilt can be
looked at and let go.*

(4:2-5) "Think about it briefly but very
specifically, identify the particular person or persons and the situation or
situations involved, and tell yourself:

There is no will but God's. I share it with Him.
My conflicts about ______ cannot be real."

*I cannot realize the conflicts between you and me are unreal unless I accept
the fact that I have made them real, <very real>. We first have to look at the
conflict as we experience it, and then retrace it to its source. This process of
looking, of course, is the sum and substance of A Course in Miracles, a process
that is impossible unless we look in the right place: the decision-making part
of the mind, where the mistake was first made. The close of Chapter 5 in the
text provides one example of Jesus' explicit teaching in this regard:

"... the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless
within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your
thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the
Atonement in peace." (T-5.VII.6:4-6).

Elsewhere in the text Jesus discusses conflict and how it is resolved by the
vision of the Holy Spirit, the sharing of which is the goal of A Course in
Miracles:

"The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot
perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the
apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. I have
said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it
is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He
wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not
understandable." (T-7.VI.6:1-5).

Again, this is why Jesus wants us to perceive the conflict; that we may see
<beyond> it to the truth.

This concludes the first part of the exercise. The second part follows:*

(5:1) "After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to
experience the peace to which your reality entitles you."

*In other words, we have first to be aware of our obscuring thoughts, the clouds
that in an earlier lesson Jesus told us he would take us through (Lesson 70).
Beyond these clouds of defense is the peace of God. Consistently Jesus reminds
us that peace cannot come without first undoing the conflict; light is returned
to us only when we to go through the darkness; and love cannot be remembered
unless we look at the hate.*

(5:2-4) "Sink into it and feel it closing around you. There may be some
temptation to mistake these attempts for withdrawal, but the difference is
easily detected. If you are succeeding, you will feel a deep sense of joy and an
increased alertness, rather than a feeling of drowsiness and enervation."

*Many people experience a tendency to fall asleep when they begin to meditate or
do the lessons. This is Jesus' point of reference here, and he is helping us
understand its defensive purpose of protecting our fear. Drowsiness does not
happen because we are overtired or insincere students. It comes because we fear
the state of peace. When we are aware of our thoughts of conflict we will not
fall asleep. We should therefore ask ourselves why we stay awake with these
thoughts, and fall asleep when we are on the verge of getting beyond them to the
peace of God. The answer is obvious. Peace is threatening because it says there
is no will but God's, and ours is one with His. If the separation never
happened; then we never happened either. <That> is the fear; the fear of losing
our individual self.

It is important when you begin to distract yourself -- by being tired, falling
asleep, or thinking of everything but the exercise -- that you not judge
yourself or feel guilty, but realize the distraction is coming from your fear of
the lessons' goal.*

(6) "Joy characterizes peace. By this experience will you recognize that you
have reached it. If you feel yourself slipping off into withdrawal, quickly
repeat the idea for today and try again. Do this as often as necessary. There is
definite gain in refusing to allow retreat into withdrawal, even if you do not
experience the peace you seek."

*What is helpful about such statements is Jesus' gentleness in pointing out our
potential resistance to these lessons. If he is expecting us to have difficulty
and does not judge us for it, there is no reason, again, to judge ourselves when
we forget to do the exercises, or begin them and promptly fall asleep.

When we allow ourselves to move beyond the thoughts of anger, depression, and
conflict, we joyously feel the peace of knowing our sins are forgiven and have
had no effect on the love and light within. Such joy is impossible if we do not
first accept our self-concepts of sin, guilt, and failure. "Failing" the
workbook offers us perfect opportunities of looking at these ego concepts, and
then moving beyond them to the truth about ourselves.*

(7) "In the shorter periods, which should be undertaken at regular and
predetermined intervals today, say to yourself:

There is no will but God's.
I seek His peace today.


Then try to find what you are seeking. A minute or two every half an hour, with
eyes closed if possible, would be well spent on this today."

*If the goal of peace is truly ours, we shall happily embrace the means of
attaining it as well. Our constant remembrances throughout the day reflect this
embrace. Therefore, once again, forgetting "the minute or two" we are asked to
spend every thirty minutes helps us get in touch with our ambivalence about the
goal. This alerts us to our inner conflict, and provides constant opportunities
for forgiving ourselves for the "sin" of pushing God away. From time to time we
shall return to this important aspect of our workbook practice.*


Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson
719-369-1822
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