Why Wait for Heaven?

ACIM Workbook Lesson 131 – for Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Affirmation:  “No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.”

Selected Passage:

“{S]earching is inevitable here.  For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for.  But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so.  Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new, an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want. . . .

“Why wait for Heaven?  It is here today.  Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future.  (WB239, 240)”

Reflections:

1 – Heaven is Here and Now

Heaven is here and now.  We do not always believe this, and to the extent that we doubt it, then we do not see Heaven.  We will resume our search for Heaven, sometimes finding it and sometimes not.  It does not matter.  The will to find Heaven is all that is needed.  And God will guide every step.

2 – Why Do We Struggle?

Why do we search so long and hard?  Why do we struggle so?  A Course in Miracles outlines an easy approach to Heaven.  Its learning is not difficult, and, in fact, in one place in the Text the approach of ACIM is characterized as “simple.”  It is simple to the mind that has given itself over to the Holy Spirit for guidance.  Nobody who depends on this guidance needs to remain in conflict and confusion.  There is a better way, a different way, and ACIM guides us to find that new way.

3 – A Word from Edgar Cayce

Heaven is here and now.  A reading by Edgar Cayce retold the scene of the Last Supper in which Jesus is said to have made the assertion that Heaven is here and now, among our friends and dining in peace–even though turmoil awaited him and his followers.  If we believe Jesus’s words, we can be at peace.  We do not have to struggle.  This struggle has been our own confusion, and we can leave confusion behind at any time by consistently following guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer:

Dear Mother/Father,

I would enter Heaven on earth today.  I would not entertain thoughts of anger or attack, insecurity or disillusionment, negativism or overconfidence.  I would choose the Heaven on earth that You have prepared for me now.  Let me be satisfied with nothing less today.

If I stumble and fall today, please pick me up.  Your will for me is that I succeed in the things that are important to eternity–the love, the peace, the joy.  I would leave behind the worldly trappings of success as not important enough to clutter my mind.  I would not choose to ignore You by a fruitless searching after “success.”  There is no success that will make me happy if I try to live without You and Your guidance.

Amen.