The Peace of God

Is the tide turning away from fear or towards it? There is a wonderful line at the beginning of A Course in Miracles: “Nothing real can be threatened.” What this tells me is that the converse is also true. Anything that is threatened is not real. So when we look at our lives, my personal life for example- I see that I only have about one month left before my savings are depleted. There is not enough money coming in to pay the mortgage, the credit card debt or the babysitter. If I sit with this reality long enough then the fear becomes bone-chilling and incapacitating. And yet, I see this time as a great test of trust. CNN is telling me we are at the precipice of a double-dip recession. Scientist are warning that the level of methane gas in the Gulf is so high that if there was a seismic gas explosion, it would lead to a tsunami that could inundate the gulf states killing 40 million and sending this great country into an economic collapse. The fear I write about is affecting everyone even if it is not consciously felt. We are protecting ourselves every second of the day. We feel irritated by the slightest annoyance, we distract ourselves from feeling the death of marine life, we ignore the signs that tell us now is the time to ask, “how can I help” and we instead recoil, retreat and re-double our efforts at a busy life.

What if we took this time as an opportunity to ask a different set of questions? What if I opened up to the part of me that is afraid and uncertain? What if I acted in spite of my fear? What if I believed that I am not my body and that Mother Earth knows how to get back into balance? How can I help her? I am writing this for many reasons. They are the thoughts that I am having on the eve of Independence Day. When a group of ill-equipped men and women risked everything to act in spite of fear. I am also writing this to show you that if I win the competition, there was a time, not in the distant past where I, like you felt afraid. I just decided to ask different questions.

"Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God."- A Course in Miracles