Course in Political Miracles: Lesson 45

"I want nothing and gain everything."

In last week's lesson I learned that not wanting particular outcomes or circumstances, in the sense of not considering them so important that my peace is in jeopardy, actually puts me in my power in an enormously strong position.

But being in my power in an enormously strong position ... guess what? Everything I really want is gained.

In a way I could say that wanting nothing on earth gains me everything in heaven. But by "heaven" I don't have to mean some place in the sky, do I? I could merely mean that I haven't "sold my soul", so to speak. I'm intact. I'm whole. I'm my own person. I'm Howard Roark all over again, if you will.

Howard Roark lives by his spirit. If outer circumstances do not seem favorable, he laughs. If everything seems to turn against him, he laughs. If people declare they are out to destroy him, he laughs.

Roark's joy cannot be touched because he has chosen to stay in touch with the joy inside himself.

If I were to want something outside myself more than I want my joy, then I will experience the pain of wanting when I could be experiencing the joy I already have inside myself. I experience what I choose to experience.

Does this mean I don't have preferences? Of course not. My spirit has many preferences. But my spirit is not attached to any of them. My spirit prefers the challenge of freedom over "guaranteed" security. My spirit prefers that I earn my way rather have some government providing my welfare with stolen money. My spirit rejoices in an economically free society and does not favor government manipulation of the economy.

But preferences don't say, "I have to have it or I will die!" A preference says something more like, "If it doesn't work out .... Oh, well! Whatever! Not having it is not going to destroy my peace."

A happy laughing child has preferences. A spoiled child has wants. A spoiled child uses anger, depression, and various other painful mechanisms to prove that having one's way is more important than experiencing one's inner peace.

This week my goal is to teach myself as never before that by wanting nothing outside myself I have everything I ever really wanted.

To this end, as I awaken each day I feel glad for the new day and I give myself an order for the day, 10 or 15 times aloud:

"Want nothing, listen inside, do as told."

This is a spiritual order. My inner voice would like nothing better than for me to not have earthly wants getting in the way of my hearing inside what really serves me and how I can really serve my spirit.

During the day each day I use this same statement as a mantra throughout the day, reminding myself:

"Want nothing, listen inside, do as told."

In case I'm too busy to use a mantra, I designate a specific time each hour to say to myself aloud over and over for a whole minute:

"Want nothing, listen inside, do as told."

During my longer meditation period I let my mind show me how it feels to want nothing outside myself, how it feels to listen inside and do as my spirit would have me do, and what are the benefits of wanting nothing and doing as told.

Before retiring each day I consider the possibility that maybe my spirit, my higher intelligence, knows better than my intellectual mind what is good for me and how to produce conditions of freedom never before experienced.

I say to myself as one last reminder before my peaceful sleep:

"By wanting nothing, I am free! By being free, I have everything!"







The device which even more deeply prepares freedom lovers for success, A Course in Miracles , talks about our ultimate need to free ourselves from every kind of slavery:

You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.




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Course in Relationship Miracles