My part is essential in God’s plan for salvation.
1. Just as the Son of God completes His Father, your contribution completes your Father’s plan.
²Salvation must reverse the insane belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, living separate lives and going their separate ways.
³When separate minds share one single function, they are united in one purpose, for each of them is equally essential to all the rest.
2. God’s Will for you is perfect happiness.
²Why would you choose to go against His Will?
³The role He has assigned to you in His plan was given so you could be restored to what He wills.
⁴That role is as essential to His plan as it is to your happiness.
⁵Your joy must be complete so that those to whom He sends you may understand His plan. I
⁶They will see their own function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy smile.
3. Indeed, you are essential to God’s plan.
²Without your joy, His is incomplete.
³Without your smile, the world cannot be saved.
⁴As long as you remain sad, the Light God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and without brilliance.
⁵And no one smiles, for all laughter is but an echo of your own.
4. Truly, you are essential to God’s plan.
²Just as your Light increases the radiance of every Light that shines in Heaven, your joy on earth calls all minds to leave behind their sorrow and take their place with you in God’s plan.
³God’s messengers are joyful, and their joy heals all sorrow and despair.
⁴They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who will accept their Father’s gifts.
5. Today we will not allow ourselves to be sad.
²For if we are, we are failing to assume our role, which is essential to God’s plan and to our vision.
³To be sad is to signal that you would prefer to play another part, rather than the one God has given you.
⁴In that way, you are unable to show the world how great is the happiness He wills for you.
⁵And so, you do not recognize that it is already yours.
6. Today we will try to understand that our function here is to be happy.
²If you are sad, you are not fulfilling your role, and then the whole world is deprived of joy along with you.
³God asks you to be happy so that the world may see how much He loves His Son, and that His Will is that no sorrow shall diminish his joy, nor fear disturb his peace.
⁴Today you are God’s messenger.
⁵You carry His Happiness to everyone you look upon, and His Peace to all who gaze on you and see His message in your happy face.
7. Today we will prepare for this in our five-minute practices, feeling happiness rise within us, just as it is the Will of our Father—and our own.
²Begin the exercises with the thought that contains today’s idea.
³Then realize that your role is to be happy.
⁴This is the only thing ever asked of you or anyone who wants to take their rightful place among the messengers of God.
⁵Think of what this means.
⁶Truly, you were very mistaken in believing that you were asked to sacrifice.
⁷According to God’s plan, you only receive, and never lose anything, nor sacrifice, nor die.
8. Now let us try to find that joy which proves to us—and to the world—the true Will of God for us.
²Your function is to find it here and now.
³This is why you came. II
⁴Let this be the day you succeed.
9. Look deep within yourself, undismayed by all the foolish thoughts and meaningless goals you pass as you rise to meet the Christ in you.
²He will be there.
³And you can reach Him now.
⁴What would you rather look upon instead of Him Who waits for you to see Him?
⁵What petty thought could hold you back?
⁶What foolish goal could keep you from success, when it is God Himself Who calls to you?
10. He will be there.
²You are essential to His plan.
³Today you are His messenger.
⁴And you will surely find what He would have you give.
⁵Do not forget today’s idea between your longer practice periods.
⁶It is your Self Who calls to you today.
⁷And it is to Him you answer each time you remind yourself that you are essential to God’s plan for the salvation of the world.
I John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.”
John 16:24 “Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
II At last we are told what our function and our role are in God’s plan for the salvation of the world! This is the answer to that fundamental question that few ever ask: What am I living for?
Perhaps you have never asked yourself this question so directly, and it is curious that, although everyone recognizes the importance of asking it, the world offers no satisfactory answer—and probably no one has ever offered you one. It is also quite surprising that, while you can find endless manuals explaining the purpose of every object imaginable, not one of them explains what you are for—what your function is, the reason you have come.
Well, now you know why you were created; now you know what your role is—which should not surprise you either. Is it not precisely what you have instinctively sought throughout your existence: to be happy? For it is perfectly evident that everything you do and have ever done—absolutely everything—has always had exactly that purpose: happiness. You will find nothing truer than this—you were born to be happy.
Therefore, when you are not happy, it is also evident that you are malfunctioning, just like any mechanism with a broken internal part. In fact, when you are sad, depressed, or feel fear, anger, or any state of mind other than happiness, it is because you too have a damaged internal mechanism—your mind. Whenever you are not happy, it is because your mind is functioning wrongly; it is because you are thinking things that are not true. It is as simple as that.
Perhaps you understand this reasoning, which is perfectly logical, and probably you agree with it, and yet you will often find yourself feeling bad—fully aware that you are not happy—and unable to escape that situation.
When that happens, remember that it is because your mind is conceiving falsehoods, erroneous thoughts, and unjust condemnations. At times these are conscious contents—and those are relatively easy to address, as long as you have the humility to recognize that you must have been mistaken when you thought that way. Only your pride can prevent the healing of such thoughts; only if you cling to the need to be right can you deprive yourself of happiness in that instant.
But other times—and this happens with most human beings, most of the time—it is old mental contents buried deep in consciousness which, though not surfacing in identifiable form, manifest as nameless depression, anonymous apathy, or a tendency toward anger that betrays hidden fears. These are ancient habits of erroneous thinking, forgotten by the conscious mind, yet still active in its depths.
This Course heals in both cases, and if practiced wholeheartedly, it always heals. Be honest and courageous with the first kind. Acknowledge the harmful thought that poisons your heart and correct it at once. You can be healed of that in an instant. It is very easy. Look upon the situation with clean eyes and correct it. Change your way of thinking by seeking the light present in every circumstance—you already know how; you need only place your will in it. And of course it is worth it! The relief is immediate and the reward immense. As said: this is very easy and requires only honesty, humility, and courage.
The old hidden resentments require another strategy. Here patience, perseverance, and faith are needed. You will have noticed the great emphasis this Course places on mental discipline. You will also have noticed that you are asked to do the same thing, many times, and over many days. Changing your old mental habits requires deep work over a long period. Understand that you have been deceiving yourself for most of your life. This is not about a single specific error that you can easily identify and immediately correct—it is about completely reversing an entire thought system. It is no trivial task. Still, you will accomplish it.
You may recall that at the beginning of the Text of this Course you were told that everyone is entitled to miracles, but that purification must first come. This is precisely that: the purification your mind needs in order to work miracles as a natural habit—because of your miracle-mindedness, and because you are happy. You always see the luminous side of life because you live in the certainty of being the Son of God—you know it, you live it, and you are joyful. You have been healed, and now you inevitably heal others. You need not even try to—you heal because you are happy and have become a healer.
Rejoice that you are practicing today’s Lesson of happiness—number one hundred. Never forget it. Think of how far you have come and how much you have discovered about yourself and about truth. It is a genuine privilege and an honor to be where you are and to be doing what you are doing. Make no mistake: you did not arrive here by chance—you have earned it.
Take this opportunity and recognize what true happiness is: joy in the heart, peace in the mind, and the absolute certainty that it will always be so.
How simple it is to be happy!
But how difficult it is to be simple!
(Gururaj Ananda Yogui)
Being happy is very easy, but it requires a condition that is often difficult to meet: you cannot focus on or follow the world’s interpretation of reality. You need another—one that is almost its opposite.
This individual who has said “yes” to God’s plan for salvation and who has found happiness—what must he do to maintain that happiness and bring and offer it to others?
He must completely disregard all the world’s stories and keep his mind fixed on God. If this is not the case, it is utterly impossible to be truly happy in this world.
If you believe the story the world tells about itself, how could you be happy?
How could you be happy if you believe the stories you see on television, those you read in newspapers, the misfortunes your friends, neighbors, or family recount—or those you tell yourself most of the time?Believing those, how could you possibly be happy? Thus, to be happy is impossible.
How can you be happy if, after hearing those stories, you believe that they are true, that they are important, and that they concern you?
For, look closely: all the world’s efforts at communication are aimed at involving you in its insane way of interpreting reality.
Do you see now why happiness is impossible that way?
In that discouraging situation, the first thing you must tell yourself is: those problems are not real, they are not important—but they do concern me, because I have the responsibility of assuming my role in God’s plan for salvation. And next: the remedies the world proposes are not the solution. They will never work. They will only perpetuate and worsen the problems.
God’s plan for salvation is spiritual, because the problem is spiritual. The world is disturbed by effects but knows nothing of the true cause. The world’s problem is separation, and by addressing that single cause, all the world’s problems are resolved.
The mind of the Son of God is fractured, like two tectonic plates colliding deep beneath the sea. The world is concerned with the devastating effects of the waves that the quake causes on the surface, but the problem lies at the depths.
Heal that—and you will have healed everything.